It’s all good. I think you’re definitely seeing the forest instead of getting hung up on individual trees as so many folks do. A disk and a bushhog are nothing more than tools. The most important thing is to be able to assess your situation and then apply the tool and method best suited to that unique scenario while still keeping in mind our long term goals of soil improvement. It's just like it says on the Undercover Farmers video....."It's not about the tools, it's about the understanding."

You may make some mistakes along the way but you can’t be scared of failure if you want to discover something new. Being observant like you’re doing will greatly expand your hands on experience/knowledge over time. You just saw how to terminate a crop without spraying…. and it’s sure not a bad thing that our fields have a nice mulch mat on them over the next few weeks leading up to us planting. We’ll very likely have good soil moisture to plant into when you combine that mat with the fact the we terminated a lot of the vegetation and it’s not using water anymore. We’re more less banking the moisture we get over the next few weeks.

Crimson, what you paying for cereal rye? I can't find elbon or abruzzi, just pennington's wintergrazer. It's $17/bag.

I haven't checked yet. I usually get my stuff from the Co-op in Notasulga and they have always had it. I hope it's come back down a little this year.

Well crimson, i'm headed to the club this afternoon to spray, and i've decided to try the new method, spray throw and walk away. I'm going to spray today and come back this weekend and throw my seed. I normally would drag the thatch down, but i think it will grow better with the thatch standing, but still shading the soil. It should keep the deer from hammering it too soon as well. We'll see. I've found that after i spray and wait 10-14 days, the grass is already pressed down in a mat. The seed still makes it to the soil, but it makes it hard for the plant to push up thru the mat sometimes.

Cool!...Good luck with it. I've got a powerline I'm going to experiment with. It's grown up pretty thick in vegetation and I think will provide a good canopy. We'll see.....I have a lot of faith in what that book says. The author was basically doing the same exact experiments that we are and everything about the method and thinking have fallen right in line so far. The author is well ahead of us too in experience. He spent a lifetime experimenting and was an agricultural research professor to begin with.

To keep all our experiments on the up and up....I need to report that my early planting of turnips was a flop. I got good germination in the pockets of broadleafs that terminated but between the drought and bugs, most of it bit the dust or just petered out. I went ahead and sprayed the whole field yesterday and plan on planting in another 2-3 weeks. I'm waiting on these 90+ temps to go away first and some moisture ahead of planting. Soil is really dry right now. It's gonna take a good rain to get it back right for planting.

Throw and mow question, with it as dry as it is, I assume you wait for a period of time when rain is in the forecast just like plowing and planting?

Yes, but its not as crtical, because its covered in thatch. If everybody waiting on the rains to begin, well, good luck with that because October is the driest month of the year. To me, its best to get it down with rain in the forecast and hopefully one of these scattered showers will hit your plots. I don't know about you but i don't have esp, and the weather guys are wrong so much you just don't know when to plant anymore, so i plant when i always do, middle to late September. My farm is planted and i plan to plant my club Sunday. Good luck.

JMO....but I would wait a little longer if you have the choice. The weather forecast is still looking like more summer right now. Hopefully within another week or two will see that major season changing cold front push through. I'd at least wait until next weekend and see if things are looking more favorable then. Right now it's just looking like it's going to be another hot, dry week.

This is a little farther discussion into why I would not choose to plant now. I think you should definitely look at long term trends when making decisions. It’s the smart thing to do……But when it comes to making the individual year to year decisions on when to plant…..I think you should first and foremost take the current conditions into considerations if given a choice of when to plant.

Some years we may have tropical systems push out the gulf….some years we may have early cold fronts push through with slow soaking rains and cooler temps….and some years we may have summer linger on for an extra couple weeks.

A couple considerations…..My soil is not bone dry right now but at the same time, it’s not that moist either. There is a big outbreak of armyworms this year. The forecast I’m looking at is showing less than 50% rain chances (30% here) with high temps in the low to mid 90’s for the next week. Putting seed out right now is putting it at a high risk of bad things happening…..birds, continued drought, partial germination, etc…..If given the choice….I’m waiting on better conditions before trying to crank my field up.

Very likely within the next two weeks we will see highs dip down into the lower 80’s or maybe even a good front that pushes us the 70’s. It will likely have rain associated with it. Either on that front or the week or two following that front is when I would plant. If we look like we’re going to have a wet pattern move in over the 7-day, then I don’t mind waiting and planting just behind the front. The less days my seed is sitting in poor conditions the better. All I need is that one cycle of good conditions and the field will be off and running easily by bow opener. You can go from nothing to green in about 10 days if conditions are good.

Here’s where I’m sitting right now. As I said a few posts back, my experimenting with trying to double crop got me way off from what I needed to be to do a throw and mow planting. I’m just going to adapt. I sprayed several days ago and mowed the remaining thatch down yesterday evening. I went back this morning and spot sprayed a few clumps of nutsedge with a hot dose of gly.



Now I’m just gonna wait and let this hay break down a little. There’s a mix of fresh hay and old hay/weed stalks that’s in a very decomposed state. The top 5-6 inches of soil is light and sorta flufffy like potting soil. My hopes are that some of these minor rain chances this weekend pan out and I get everything watered down good enough to soak it. Once we get a cold front then I’m going to do my best to mix in the seed and fert without really turning lots of soil…more like tettering hay. I’ll have to play with the bite of the disks a little but I’m thinking just a minor amount of angle will work.

The caged teaweed is mature now. It’s got a boatload of seed on the bushes. This is only a small fraction of the seed. I've got several bushes spilling out of the baskets. All of those little bulbs contains a cluster of seeds. All I’m doing is cutting the branches into sections and pitching them here and there around the field. I figure it’ll seed itself enough to get it started in patches. I really like this plant so far. The deer left it alone there for a little while but they came back to it late in the summer just before it seeded.



Here’s something else I really liked. This is the soil underneath the plants. The thick canopy is excellent for decomposing biomass on the soil surfaace. This would be a perfect soil surface to broadcast a seed onto and let germinate under the canopy of the teawead before mowing it and removing the overstory. It's extremely light and fluffy.

I saw lots of people planting last weekend in this extreme drought we're having. Last Sat night it came a quick down pour and hasn't rain since I have a feeling alot of those folks have messed up big time.

I sprayed my fields last week and they are just beginning to yellow. Two fields where full of 3 ft ragweed and not sure how good thats going to work for thatch?

Yeah, it’s ugly conditions out there right now. My yard was dying and that little rain perked it up for a few days and now it’s right back to dying again. These hot days are brutal.

I think you'll be fine if the ragweed is that tall if its thick as well.

In anticipation for next summer, what would be your choice for the summer plants? I'm planning on planting my oats/rye/wheat/clover/rape combination as soon as this weather gets right. I would like to come behind it next spring with a good summer plot, and would like yalls recommendations. It will be my first throw and mow, as I have only recently discovered this process, and already have a mowed and sprayed field, ready to run over with a disc.

It completely depends on your situation. For most folks, I would recommend growing natural vegetation and spending your money on lime and other nutrients.

So there is no benefit to planting a warm season plot such as buckwheat or ic peas? I have already amended with lime, and will be fertilizing throughout the fall.

In theory yes….in practical applications, not always and more often than not...no. I’d have to assess someone’s overall situation before saying whether or not I would recommend for them to plant summer plots. For some folks it makes sense….for many it does not. If you’re only planting small plots that have no hopes of keeping up with deer browsing, then I’d rather see someone grow a lush field of fertilized natural vegetation with some clover mixed in that the deer still fed on, but that also produced lots of above ground biomass production and root growth.

Ok, awesome, thanks for the reply. Sounds like I'll be in the 2nd category, because my fields are only around 2 acres. With that being said, after I plant this fall, do I cut it at all throughout the year or just wait til next fall to throw n mow?

You can mow in the spring to knock back the cereal grains if you think that they’re completely shading out the clover. If not just let it go and the deer with hammer the seed heads when they mature. I’d hit it in late spring April/May with 50 lbs/ac of 34-0-0 and 50 lbs/ac of 0-0-60……..then another 50 lbs/ac of 34-0-0 in July if its feasible to do so. I’d do a soil test in Sept and adjust nutrients from there.

Well, i went to the club and spread my seed, just as i got done and was getting ready to spray, the rains came. Couldn't have timed it more perfect. I'll spray today when i get off. We got good rain at the club and on my farm. It had actually rained a couple times at the club before i planted. There were mudholes full of water.