It takes a long time. I think it was January before the pods naturally cracked and dropped seed last year.

Very helpful information here! Thanks for this thread!

I went and checked on our field today. It’s coming along pretty good. I walked up on this section and could hear the buzzing from all the bees. Seemed like every flower had a bumblebee or a honey bee in it.

Nice looking field, whack n stack!

I think the only way mine could be ready for opening day would be gly it now. It's still blooming, so I plan to just let it grow.

It’ll keep blooming and die as soon as the first frost hits it. But if you wanna hunt it opening day, id spray it next week, bush hog it, and burn it.

Thanks. I'll spray a strip next week and then bush hog it the next. I don't plan to hunt it opening day, so not in a big hurry.

For anyone interested in Sesame, here is a stalk with pods that are starting to crack open. I sprayed this spot with gly last week and that caused the pods to start to break open. I think it needs to dry at least another week before a bush hog is gonna do a good job of spreading the seed. I've sprayed about a third of the field.

The dove magnet has produced a whole lot of seed, but I have very few doves. There is fresh harvested corn a few miles away and it's hard to compete with that.

My sesame is doing well, and the best looking tallest plants are the ones that were initially shaded by the proso millet. Some of those are 36” plus.

After running the bush hog over the sesame that has already been sprayed, here is what the ground looks like:



Unfortunately, few doves have gotten the memo. I didn't plan on an opening day shoot, and it's a good thing I didn't. I think I am giving up, but it does appear that sesame could be a good crop for them in dove country. Good luck to all shooting today.

I took this picture yesterday morning. This stuff was planted in early may and is just now losing the leaves and quit flowering.

That's an interesting picture; thanks for adding it to the discussion. One thing I can see is that I planted mine a lot denser than you did. It looks like your individual plants are mostly forked and putting out several main stems. It looks like they have produced a lot of pods. It's a good looking field with a lot of dove food. I think you can manage it to produce doves all the way to the end of the last season if you are interested in doing that

Here's the last picture I have of mine; I think it was made September 10:



You can see that nearly all of my plants are a single stem, though they all still produced a lot of pods. All the leaves and blooms were long gone when I made the picture. The green you see is sicklepod. I didn't get any rain for a month after planting and the herbicide didn't work very well. Still, I don't think the weeds hurt production a whole lot. They were mostly behind the sesame and didn't get to it's height until the sesame was done.

The pods are cracked open and gradually dropping seed. During the heat of the day, the doves will get in the standing sesame, but late in the afternoon they will be in the bush hogged part where the seed is thick on the ground.

My dove field was a failure, but I think it was due entirely to the fact that there just aren't many in the area. I don't plan to try again at this location, but will help my uncle at his place. I will say that my doves had a choice of wheat on bare ground, a dove magnet field that was mostly millet and mowed clean, bush hogged strips of Egyptian wheat, or sesame, and they chose the sesame 100%. I never saw more than 25 at any one time, but every last one of them was always in the sesame. I think it can be a great dove food if you have doves.

Good luck getting to shoot yours.

For reference purposes, here’s what my stand looked like after the first cold snap last week. Pods just now started to crack.

Those look like they have a lot of seed in them; good luck drawing in some birds