I am tired of spending a full day trying to plant one two acre plot. I am going to try this early and if no success, I will come in and disc it and replant. If this happens I will have to bring topsoil in for and cover the entire plot. I can't keep fighting this thing!

It sounds like you’re on the right road. Don’t worry about trying to remove rocks unless you just have some bolders……build soil over the top of the little ones. I used to hunt a rocky property up in Tallapoosa Co years ago and it seemed like the rocky plots just grew more rocks no matter how many you picked up. Go heavy on some cereal rye this fall and try to grow out a really thick crop of rye hay next spring…..followed by another thick crop of summer grass. Keep giving it some N periodically to keep it pushing out growth and keep your nutrients balanced as you go. Stay patient....

I am really hoping that it works. The thought of having to cover with topsoil isn't very pleasant to my ears because I have the PH level of the current soil right. I will give it a go and post results along the way, Thanks for the encouragement.

I’m seeing a little recovery from the field despite the dry weather. I actually picked up 0.3 inches yesterday but I need more than that to really get the ground good and wet. These little ragweed shoots that are beginning to emerge now is exactly what I was trying to produce. These are actually shooting off of a mature stalk that I “trampled”. The tender new shoots will soon offer the deer something palatable at a time when all of the other ragweed is going to seed.

CNC, you have dry weather and I don't think we have had 10 days this summer without rain down here in south Alabama.

I was doing great too up until the day I tried this experiment..….go figure. I’ve just gotten unlucky with how the showers came through. I had a couple of good storms pass by so close that the wind was blowing hard but no rain. I talked to my neighbor one day after one of the storms came through and just 2 miles away he said they had gotten over an inch that day while I didn't get squat. It’s still not dry, dry or anything…..just not what I wanted to jump start the recovery of the field.

Got a question about this method. So I have a 2 acre area that was cleared out and unfortunately, the dirt was turned over in a good bit of it burying some stumps. The "good" soil looks gray on top, but the other stuff looks like a mixture of clay and sand. I've limed it two years now and the pH is back up near 6. I re-limed again this year, but haven't re-tested. Each liming has brought the soil up .5-.7 so this one should get it well over six.

Anyway, the last two years haven't produced much in the way of a food plot, even with rye last year, although last year that could be because of the drought. This summer I let it grow up hoping to use this method, but its still patchy in places and the weeds are thin in others (meaning you can see the dirt). Will this method still work? I really see this as the only way (other than topsoil) to put some organic matter back on top of this soil.

If I do it, what do I use the first year? Just rye and crimson clover?

Yes, I would start out with cereal rye and either crimson or yuchi arrowleaf clover. It sounds like your thatch is thin so either drag your seed in or take most of the angle out of your disks and barely scratch the surface to cover the seed. If you have a pretty soft surface then dragging will likely be enough. If its formed a crust though, you may want to scratch it with the disk. To help with future biomass production, be sure not to skimp on the nitrogen and make sure your P&K stay at good levels.

So do I still fertilize seed and then mow? Or do I fertilize, seed and then light drag or disc? Do I not mow at all?

Take a pic if you get a chance. This is one of those situations where I would adapt my technique to the conditions of the field. No, you don’t necessarily have to mow if your thatch is thin. Broadcast your seed and fert and then just lightly disk over it to press down the vegetation and scratch the soil surface a little. If the soil surface is really soft and a drag would scratch it a little….then you could just drag over it. Go with 100-150 lbs/ac of cereal grain so that this will be the last time you have this issue.

See how I’m using my disk here to press down the vegetation and lightly scratch the soil surface…..something like this. I took a lot of the angle out so the disk didn’t cut deep. With thin vegetation you may want to take nearly all of the bite out.

I'll take a pic tomorrow and try to upload it. Thanks.

Good deal.....Take a pic of the soil surface too.

Since it’s getting so late into summer and we're only a few weeks away from planting…..I decided to go ahead and bushhog everything and get it ready to plant. I’m gonna just drag my seed in with a chainlink fence again this year. I wanted to post this pic to give you an idea of how soft the topsoil is right now and why it doesn’t need to be “broken up”. I pulled the hay back off this spot so you could see the impression left by my tractor tire. This happens by adding large crops of biomass over the course of several years. My plans are to broadcast my cereal grains and drag them in….then come back and broadcast the clover seed over the top.

Hi, new to this forum. I have about a 3 acre field that has never been disc, pines cut off it about 6 years ago. It has native grass growing in it, and i am thinking about planting the entire thing in throw and mow instead of discing. Where do I even start?

Welcome.....It’s so hard to assess each different situation without seeing it. Take some pics if you get a chance. We need to assess the situation first before deciding what would be your best way of getting started. A few things I’d want to look at right off is the soil type and the condition of the soil surface. Are we dealing with loose sand or harder clay soil?? Is there a heavy duff layer of debris built up like a mat across the soil surface???

If the field is native warm season grasses then I’d go out on a limb and say you don’t have a hard pan to worry about. Those things are deep rooted plants. The thing I’m concerned about though, just picturing it my head, is a heavy build-up of old biomass on the soil surface. If that’s the case then you may want to lightly disk the top couple inches of soil just to loosen that up and get some debris off the surface. I’m cycling crops of biomass in a way that each one is nearly gone by the time I’m ready to sow seed. That’s one of the reasons I did the simulated mob grazing experiment this year. I needed to speed up the decomposition of all that biomass just a little so I wouldn’t have a heavy duff layer of old biomass across the actual soil when I got ready to plant.

If this is the case then I would broadcast seed and fert and then pull over it lightly with a disk just like the pic a few posts back showing the simulated mob grazing experiment……laying the “hay” over and lightly breaking that mat…..you may want to spray before or after just to insure a good kill on the grass. If you don’t have a lot of biomass on the surface and the grass is thick enough to cover your seed well, then broadcasting some cereal grains and clover may work just fine. Again though, take some pics if you get a chance.

CNC,

The patch looks like the first picture, but the other pictures show what much of the soil/top layer looks like. And, yes, there is a crust on top. This reddish/orangish soil is what i was talking about above that has no organic matter in it.

Well, NVM. I'm having trouble with the photos. Each time, I try to post them, it's not a long url. My photos are on google photo, any idea how to get them here?

Hmmm, I'm not sure on that one. I'm using the "imgur" website now.

Keep trying to post the pics up but it sounds like you’re still gonna need to scratch that crust off the top. It doesn’t mean you have to let it really dig or anything….just loosen up that crust enough to get some cereal rye established. Unless you have a lot to plant to where cost would be too much then I would go HEAVY on your cereal rye seeding rate….purposely over kill it. Add your fert and continue to hit with nitrogen over the winter and through next spring….low doses every 6-8 weeks. For sure hit with some nitrogen right as spring starts to green up and the rye begins to bolt. What we’re trying to do is push out enough growth out of the rye crop that we produce enough hay to get the soil surface covered next spring. That’s the major first hurdle to have to get over.

Something that's a good idea for anyone to do is to take a shovel and dig down a couple feet in your plot....check out what's going on in the subsoil....look to see if there are different horizons....how deep are they??? Are they restricting root growth? etc..etc...

Used imgur. Let's see if this works.

Yep....I'd broadcast my seed and fert and then lightly scratch over it like we're talking about. Take a lot of the angle out of your disk if you can where you only have enough bite to cut the vegetation and break the top inch or so.