I cut and planted the same day caught a rain that night and it did fine. No gly because the field was clean under that jungle.

What month are y'all planting sun hemp?

Late April early May.

I started planting my beans last year on March 31 and folks made fun of me but they weren't laughing when the got to 6+ foot tall. It's all about soil temp

Can plant up til July 4 also. Stuff grows rapid and will grow up til a hard frost too. It's good for building up poor ground too or newly brought in logging decks, cutovers etc.

If feeding deer is your goal not hunting over it then early planting is a great browse reduction tool.

257 is dead on and I could tell the difference in the plots that had sun hemp during the summer. They looked better longer through the winter. I my opinion it should be a top option in poor soils and small areas and it a great mixer if the proper rates are used.

I wouldn't mind having a summer plot, however, I don't know that I want it to wolf out like in the pics.

Just don't get over 15lbs per acre sunn hemp in your mix. It will outcompete/shade out most growth. Dax's mix is a good one, I will do about the same this year. IC peas are cheap, fill the mix with them in place of Laredo beans in small plots. Or add a tall sorghum with less sunn hemp.

12-14 ft is no lie. I had a field full of it. These are 15lbs per acre, drilled and calibrated.

Mid-August in south Alabama, it was still growing at this point.



Youth weekend, not growing:

Yeah don't play with beans in the mix unless you have a 5 acre field or your pissing in the wind. IC peas thrive in it and climb thats really all you needed unless you want to get cute like me. Remember keep the sun hemp to around 10#s so it doesn't crowd out the peas. I shot doves over it at my house this year on some with sunflower in them and the deer had destroyed the peas. I was able to do that because I sprayed a pre (prowl) and the field was clean other then the standing hemp and sunflower.

Summer planter secret here over browsing is bad but weed competition after early browsing equals crop failure. A weed free field especially early in growing season after the browsing starts is key to good results.

You need more deer.

It is recommended to mow the sunn hemp when it gets 6' tall down to 18" and let it regrow, that keeps the stalks from becoming to big and hard and also keeps it young and deer like young growth.

dax how hard is it to get the field cleaned up to plant for fall after having the sun hemp in there, If you don't have alot of time to come back and bush hog it through the summer is it worth planting?

The reason it looks like that is because of the amount of acres I plant and they were preoccupied with other fields at different times during the summer (soybeans). As you see form the pics sun hemp is a tool to help the peas and other plants in the mix and to creat max biomass. Now by October they had ate everything including the leaves on the hemp they could reach. Something I've noticed is the deer love the hemp when it is small they seemed to browse on it and leave everything else alone at first. This gives the peas time to get well established. Another big factor to growing the jungles last year was the amount of rain and early planting. I put a homemade plot saver on one field as a test and it got out of control the growth was unbelievable but after taking it down they eventually cleaned it out.

So y'all are planting sun hemp in the warm season, then mowing and planting cool season crops? Seems like a winner.

It's a little tuff to disc even with nice big equipment but I put the bat wing on it and it did fine. Basically looked like other areas that were over grown. I did have a small pile or two of stubble in every field but by December they looked just like the plowed fields. I did have to run over some of it a couple times but it beats plowing and leveling/dragging.

I assume you mean a field that is just Sunn Hemp. If it was a mix wouldnt you be mowing the peas down? I have had a poor crop of soybeans the last few years and corn is so expensive, I had planned on planting 40 pounds of IC and 10 pounds of sunflowers per acre in my big fields (most are 5-8 acres). Should I use sunn hemp instead of sunflowers?

I was thinking the IC\Sunflowers so I would not have to mow it to keep the stalks under control so I could plant a cool season crop in them in the fall.

I don't touch it during the summer by late September early October it's going to be annihilated or the peas will be anyhow. Just mow the standing hemp spray gly if it's needed and spread cereal grains and clover. Add some cereal rye in your fall plot mix it does very well in T&M and so does any small clover type seed.

Oats don't do as well as wheat and cereal rye in T&M in my experience but I put some in my mix anyhow. I plant 150# min of cereal per acre normally wheat is my base and cereal rye and oats are are added in smaller amounts. Then I come back and top sow clover by itself so I now exactly how much I'm putting out after I have got the field the way I want it. I never drag or cover clover I spread in on finished fields and hope for rain.