I just enjoy friendly debate myself. No feud here.

Way to go Nighthunter, ruining hunting season for yet another group of nice people.

I don't have any agenda. I guess from now on, if anybody needs something specific they can pm me. Don't want to come off as being aggressive. LOL

"In the northern part of Alabama in the Tennessee Valley area, a lot of cotton is grown. We initially came into the area and worked with farmers to develop a system to help them do a better job of using conservation tillage practices without losing yield," he explains. Producers had adopted no-till practices, but yields were down in some cases by as much as 50%.

"Our research found that by planting a cover crop, producers could go back and actually increase yields by 5% to 10% over conventional-tillage practices," he says. "Today, more than 80% of the acreage in that area uses conservation-tillage practices."

In the Coastal Plains area, which is prone to hardpan formation, early results indicate a 10% to 15% yield increase in cotton and corn when using a cover crop and in-row subsoiling, a common conservation practice for the region.

"We've found that good cover crop management in the Southeast pays dividends in increased yields and better soil health," Raper says.

http://www.no-tillfarmer.com/pages/Featu...Cover-Crops.php





On fields where he also planted cover crops, McCormack said his yields were event better. “Looking back, plowing up my fields was reducing my yields.” Like a growing number of farmers across the nation, McCormack is sold on the benefits of improving soil health. He plans to continue experimenting with different varieties and combinations of cover crops, including planting multiple species on nearly all of his 6,000 no-till acres this fall.

http://southeastfarmpress.com/grains/tennessee-grower-sold-no-till-cover-crops

http://southeastfarmpress.com/soybeans/no-till-system-can-increase-soybean-yields

http://southeastfarmpress.com/no-till-leads-way-top-north-carolina-corn-yields

This is a classic case of finding some literature and selectively citing it to support your argument when it really doesn't. Did you read the article? Yes it was printed by Oklahoma State but your quote above was found in the article, not as testimony, but as an observation by an individual that had been interviewed. This article was about planting wheat with a no-till drill versus traditional tillage. This article was not even remotely close to the sow and mow method.

Allow me to quote the summary of the article for you:
"The economics of no-till relative to conventional tillage depend on farm size. The list prices of effective no-till grain drills are from two to three times greater than the list prices of conventional drills. No-till equipped air seeders list for 30 to 40 percent more than con- ventional air seeders of the same width, but the dif- ference in drill/seeder cost decreases as the size of the drill/seeder increases.
A general finding of the case study is that if 4.5 pints of glyphosate per acre can successfully control weeds, no-till for continuous wheat production is cost-competitive with conventional tillage. While the costs may be similar between the systems, pro- ducers must also consider potential differences in yield and revenue. For a field that is relatively free of weeds, the glyphosate system as budgeted may work for one or two years. However, most experi- ment station trials conducted in Oklahoma of no-till versus conventional tillage for continuous wheat managed to produce grain, have found that weeds often become a very serious problem after two or three years. Most studies have also found that in a continuous wheat system in regions with annual rainfall in excess of 26 inches, wheat grain yields are often less in the no-till plots. The cost savings from switching to no-till may be insufficient to offset the expected yield loss. For these reasons (weeds and yields), no-till is not currently recommended for continuous monoculture wheat managed to pro- duce grain. However, some growers have been able to manage weed problems by using a rotation that includes wheat for forage-only (graze out) along with wheat for grain."

Yes I read the article and the argument has nothing to do specifically with the throw and mow method. There was a statement made that "No-till equals no-yield" and that's just not true. I posted numerous links to back up my position. Are you saying that I'm wrong or is this just a classic case of you trying to play a game of gotcha? Seems as though I'm not the only one selectively choosing.

Oops

Anyone up for a LGBT dog hunt?

You must not read Aldeer, it's the only way any seed can be properly planted and it's the only way to build organic matter in your soil and it's so easy that it's impossible to do it wrong and it works every time.

Nut up and prove someone wrong instead of just resorting to sarcasm and being an asshat. That seems to be the default response on here when you don’t know how to defend your position in a debate….either that or just throwing out credentials. How about posting some facts to support your side of the argument instead.

I've got two facts for you.

Resistant Pigweed and Cogongrass (Jap Grass for the dirt road S AL residents)

RP was CREATED by No Till farming practices and over use of one particular kind of herbicide, and Cogongrass can only EFFECTIVELY be controlled with tillage.

I say this and now will admit to using a hybrid method of BOTH practices. We spray all our plots 4-8 weeks ahead of planting. We MAY mow some of them first depending on how much DORMANT stuff is present and tall in the plot. Roundup only works on living green weeds, as it has to be taken into the plant to work.

Then we come back at planting and spread seed and fertilizer (sometimes in the same mix, although there are dangers to that), then we disk ONCE, lightly, to cover the seed and fertilizer we just spread.

WE prefer to get our fertilizer UNDER the ground! as it CAN wash away when left on top (seed can too).

There are pluses and minuses to every kind of way of doing it and no one is the right way EVERYWHERE! I would be hesitant to use the throw and mow method on a hillside type plot, but excessive tillage there would be just as bad.

There is no real WRONG or RIGHT way to do everything everywhere, but some people get almost evangelical (Pentecostal?) and start crowing about how THEIR way is superior to everybody else's.

THAT is what people respond to negatively IMHO. YMMV.

As to the DANGERS referenced above about mixing seed and fertilizer! I will expand on that a little.

It's almost comical to watch the reactions you get sometimes when you mention mixing seed and fertilizer (I mean in bulk, in a buggy, versus sacks in a spin spreader), to people who've ALWAYS done it the hard way.

"I don't know how much we'll be putting out that way, or what if we RUN OUT!?", is the most common response.

There are two answers to this. IF you know the acreages of your plots! and how to drive X number of feet away from plot edges and from your last pass, a buggy is MUCH easier on everybody.

The caveat I referenced above is, I HAVE BEEN TOLD (by people at the Co-op's who presumably should know), that IF you mix seed and fertilizer together in a buggy, it needs to be spread within a few hours of being mixed. Supposedly if it sits mixed too long (say overnight), the fertilizer will react with the seed and ruin the germination (growing ability) of the seed.

It's never happened to me, but I've never let it set overnight either.

Your nutrients will go where the water goes. That’s why good soil structure and proper water infiltration are so important. Does a 2 inch rain soak up into your plot or does the water runoff?

No argument on the gly resistant weeds. I will “preach” with you on that one. I think we should all start being a little more mindful of our chemical use. You can read nearly any thread about planting food plots now and spraying is involved. Many times its multiple sprayings. I’ve cut my method down to only spraying once in the fall and I’m thinking about trying to eliminate it as well. I just may have to plant a little later than I normally do. In the spring I use the mature rye as a weed suppressor and I rotate crops once its went to seed. No need for gly that way.

Good stuff!…….

X2
IF you have a good bit of acreage, good roads and fields this is the best option in my opinion. Its easier,faster, and cheaper per acre. If you pull soil samples you can have the fertilizer custom blended to meet the soil requirements.

Robert D......Here is my problem with disking in nutrients to keep them from washing away. How many times have you worked your tail off to prepare a nice seed bed for your plots?



Only to get hit by this a few days later.......



....and then that pretty seed bed ends up looking like this. Even though I disked my fertilizer in...most of it still washed away along with the topsoil that's no longer there either. Your nutrients will go where the water goes. Proper soil structure and water infiltration are key. My future infiltration is now ruined in the pic below. I have a surface like concrete.

Do you want me to pick and choose snip-it's from articles and copy and paste information off the internet to "prove" my way is better? I base what I do off of my experiences. I've tried both methods of planting. I've used drills, spread seed and bush hogged over it and I've settled on traditional means because it works better in our soil and I can build organic matter faster in a much deeper layer of soil than can be done with no til planting. I hope your methods are easily adaptable to a variety of conditions because you've preached your methods hard enough that you've got quite a few people on here following your advice. Let's see how that works out for them in the long run.

Cant we all just get along

If long-term results are what’s used to judge then I’ll be more than happy. I suspect though that criticism will rain in shortly after the first failure. Many people who claim to have done it both ways have done one way all their life and the other way they gave a try one day. Changing the dynamics of soil function takes time and patience. Patience for many folks doesn’t extend past the first bump in the road.

I suspect that you suspect that I've not planted enough no til to form an opinion, but you'd be wrong about that.

Here's what I don't like about your approach. You seem to have an agenda. You preach the benefits of no til (and there are benefits of no til) but you seem so focused on proving that your way is right that you have given very little information regarding what happens when it doesn't work. You seem to have quite a few people here who are going to follow your advice. I hope for your sake that they don't experience one of those "bumps in the road" you alluded to. Also it takes YEARS of no til practices to reap the benefits from it. Not many people have a long term lease or own the land they hunt on, so most people can't have the patience (your word) to see those benefits. When people try scattering seed on a unprepared seed bed on the hard red clay food plots that are prevalent on 75% of the state then they're likely in for their "first failure." (your words again)

Folks it's as simple as this: SOMETHING has to hold moisture to the seed you sow, and it really needs to be covered with SOMETHING, or you're likely going to have a TOTAL FAILURE of your food plots. If you have turkeys in your area, you dang well BETTER cover the seed with SOMETHING. SOMETHING can be DIRT or it can be THATCH. If you don't have enough of one, use the other.

Only on Aldeer can a thread about foot plots turn into a cock swinging contest.

Well....at least we're talking about food plots and not cocks.