Chufa Plot Coming in Nicely

My text camera sent me a picture this morning. Since I’ve had some rain the chufa and weeds have taken off. Time to hit them with some clethodim and milestone.

Looks good Mike

Looks great

Good looking patch

Very nice..

Looks good

All three of mine look really good. I don’t have any weeds or anything in mine and they are about knee deep. I wanna know though why do you spray them to kill the weeds when during the winter everything is gonna die and that’s when the turkeys tear them up. Do you spray to keep the weeds choked back so they can grow. I’ve never had any problems with weeds in my chufas is the reason why I am asking

JD consider yourself lucky on the weeds. I spray to keep the grass and other unwanted weeds from taking over my chufa and using up my fertilizer. My chufa is planted in what use to be in crop production and it has plenty of weed seed from years of farming it.

Great looking chufas! Looks like the perfect time to spray them.

JD, do you have new ground? I've seen chufas do well without herbicide on new ground, but land that has been in fields for years will usually not make anything without them.

Heck, they're already scratching in one of my re-gen fields. Probably going to have to figure our another spot to put some in to get them into next spring.

No sir it’s deer food plots that I started planting half in chufas for the turkeys and half I plant for the deer instead of planting the whole field for deer I just split them up.

That's a good plan, and good way to use your openings. I'm guessing that those openings haven't had a warm season crop, like corn or cotton, grown on them in recent years? My fields have been in near continuous cultivation since the 1820s, and I suspect Squeaky's have too. When you have that situation, you either use herbicides or you will just get a crop of weeds.

Yea I definitely haven’t had and army worms on any of my properties. Most of my chufa patches are typically half acre. I’ve got three of those and one is about a 1/4 acre. It’s sandy ground as well but I’ve got a fine stand of them. I did the same thing last year and from January to turkey season they were hammering them.

Hey PCP, do you rotate the Chufa at your house or is it on the same plot every year ?

It's the only suitable place I have, so no way to rotate. I think this is the 5th year, and I believe at this point it looks better than any plot I've ever had. It's been over 10 days since a rain, so it needs one bad. I don't think Squeaky will mind me posting a pic in his thread:




My other plots went over a month without rain after I planted. I thought there was little chance of them making anything, but we've gotten 3" in the past 10 days and they actually look pretty good.

I planted an Acre of Chufas here in Chambers County 3 years.....made a good crop. Turkeys never would hit them. Decided....Welp....I'll run the harrow down through them one time to uncover some....still no Takers. They never did hit them. Guess they just didn't know what they were.....Very STRANGE!!

Home plot looks good PCP

It is strange, and very different from my experience. This little plot was planted 70 days ago and the turkeys are digging them up, and have been for a couple of weeks now. I ran a flock of hens and poults, along with 2 gobblers, out of it yesterday. This is the edge of the field and the lowest ground, and they are starting here. I pulled up part of a plant and there were more tubers than I expected this early. They haven't dug any on the higher ground, and they probably haven't made much there. How did they know to start in the better ground, and how did they know that there was already enough tubers to make it worth their trouble to dig them? I have no idea, but I do think my turkeys must be a lot smarter than your turkeys.

Still, I wish they would leave them alone until they mature.

Damn hogs found mine and ruined them. There isn’t a plant standing

Mine is looking good. I pulled a few and have several nuts on all the roots. This is the second year for them.
Do you guys cut/mo them?

I've never heard of mowing them; would think that would be counterproductive. I've always wanted the tops to grow for as long as possible and get as tall as possible. Glad yours are looking good!

Thank you we’ve never grown it before. I’m just not sure how to maintain it. Thank you.

Mine are pretty choked out with weeds do you think it’s too late to try spraying them?

It would depend on when planted and where. Mine at home have dead tops, so they are done. The ones in Perry county are still green and growing, but the weeds are getting really bad on them too. The fall rains have kept them growing a little later than normal.

I am not spraying mine again, I don't think it would pay for itself. But I could be wrong; spray them and tell us how they do.

I planted around July 18 they still seem to be green and growing and it’s in Monroe county I’ll try it and see if it helps

Hogs actually destroyed one of our plots for the first time ever but with all the rain all the chufas they did not eat were sitting on top of the dirt for a few days and there were thousands of them, trapped the hogs, turkeys ate most of the chufas so I guess it was a win. The other 8 plots have been brown for a couple weeks so should have made a bunch of chufas