No doubt. Just a typical spring for us on our place. Tough to plan on Spring and Summer plots when you can't get any work done until early June normally. Last year a lot of our place stayed dry and our clover took off. Had better bucks this past fall by far. Incredible what just one year of good spring nutrition can do to a herd. Water started receding this past weekend so hoping it will fall out pretty quickly over the next week or so.

One of the plots that I'll be attempting the Throw & Mow method on this coming fall holds a lot of moisture/water. It's typically very dry in Oct at planting time, begins to hold moisture in Dec and will have standing water in low areas in Jan.

Just got back from a road trip to Iowa. Past millions of acres of farmlands being planted in Iowa, Nebraska, Arkansas, Tennessee, Mississippi, and Alabama. Nearly 100% of farmers who I saw planting - and there were literally thousands of them on my ten day trip - were tilling the soil in some way. Verticle tillage, deep plowing, minimal tillage, etc. These are multi-million dollar operations that are feeding the entire world. Didn't see a single bush hog In a field or a single farmer using the mow & throw method. Maybe if CNC could just get his message to them

If you've paid one ounce of attention to CNC and bothered to read any of the info posted about it, the one common theme is that what works for one guy, may not work for the next guy. I don't recall anyone saying that this method was the panacea that would change farming as we know it. I bet there are some crops that it may not work with at all.

Another thing to keep in mind is that people are resistant to change. If their farming practices have been paying the bills, why risk your paycheck to try a new method? CNC's method is definitely more environmentally friendly. It also seems to be yielding good results for him. He's provided pretty convincing photographic evidence of this. Why throw stones at a guy that has a good thing going? I don't get it.

I was a bit surprised myself at the absence of no-till farming operations by the big guys. I personally no-till but think mow and throw is silly. CNC needs rocks thrown at him Maybe it will knock some sense into him and he will begin to realize things like seed to soil contact, seed population, and proper seed spacing are critical factors to successful farming

He isn't farming. He is growing food plots.

I have used spray, throw and mow for my foodplots and it has worked very well especially considering the reduced inputs. I wouldn't use the same method if I was trying to grow a crop to harvest, but harvesting a crop isn't the goal.

I think you're the one not paying attention. What I get from him is ANYONE who doesn't use his method is wrong. I bet others get the same vibe.

Glad to see everyone is still interested in learning more about the Throw and Mow Method.........

And it bothers you sooo much.. yet here you are. CNC's opening comments were that this thread was for guys that WANTED to try his method and respectfully asked those opposed to debate him elsewhere. I for one would like to follow this thread without having to filter through all the bs.

Most folks with hunting property - especially leased land - have very little plantable acerage. Flat, open, plantable land is at a premium. Plant it like professional farmers do using proven methods that have worked for centuries, modern methods like no-till drilling, or simply throw your seed on top of the grass and hope for the best. I'll take what's behind door number 2.

This is said BS I was refering to. If you dont agree FINE! Just dont clutter up this thread with your unwanted opinions. Ever wonder how weeds grow? Do you disc up your yard and plant them? NO! they grow from the seed being spread every time you mow your grass or get blow in or tracked it. Yet somehow those little weed seeds manage to grow in your thick centipede sod. Sheesh, I just dont get why you guys care what someone else does.

……..and they accuse me of being the one that’s calling other folks “wrong”.

A good example of what you are talking about is all of the “throw and mow” clover that can be seen along the roadways right now despite no one tilling up the roadsides every year. I believe you could also find vetch in there as well along with the clover in most places.

No BS LOL , read Yelps post again, please. OK, I'm done.

My brassicas were demolished last fall by the deer browsing pressure. So, with that last mowing that you saw a few pics back…..I threw out 2 lbs per acre of turnips. This was not a terminating mowing of the rye….it will rebound and go to seed in the next few weeks. The idea being that the turnips will fill in any gaps of space and shade out the understory with a dense leaf canopy. This will do a couple of things…..1) It will smother out any weed competition that would eventually come in…and 2) The low to the ground, dense foliage will create a greenhouse effect over the soil surface which will rapidly speed up the decomposition of the remaining thatch……which will give us a more decomposed surface to broadcast our sunn hemp and buckwheat onto at the end of May or first of June. Again, this effect should have been created by one fall planting of rye, clover, brassica….but the combination of the deer wiping out the brassicas and me burying some of my clover too deep under thatch has left more space in the understory than I would like.

You can see the turnips beginning to sprout in the pic below…filling in any gaps. Ideally, you would want you soil surface to be more decomposed that this but I’m still getting plenty enough germination for it to serve its purpose.



I should probably also mention again that a lot of thing you see me doing are experiments to see what works, what doesn’t, the limitations of the method, etc…..Don’t feel like you have to try and replicate everything you see in my testing threads. Just learn and understand the principles of what we are doing and then do your own thing. My hunting club plots are still a good year behind my test plots here at home. I likely won’t do anything to them this again this summer other than adding a little fert during May or June.....letting the summer "weeds" produce biomass.

How much fertilizer do you apply in the Spring and Fall?

I apply Ca, P, & K just according to what the soil tests show. I apply N a couple weeks after a crop comes up or by visually reading the field to tell me it needs N. With all of the biomass I have on the surface, I probably should have applied some N earlier this spring. I wish I was closer to a chicken industry so I could get some litter to spread on the field.

How much does your soil test call for per acre?

I haven't gotten a soil test done yet this spring. I'll probably send one in sometimes in the next 2-3 weeks. I'm curious to see how well my K is still holding and if my pH has come on up into the 6's.

Riverwood, nobody is just throwing seed on top of grass. You spray and kill the standing vegetation, which thins it out and exposes the soil. Sew your seed and bushhog or drag the standing vegetation down over the seed. I've been doing it for several years and i have fine plots. Again, i don't give a rats ass how any you plant your plots, but don't act like this is ridiculous, when thousands of people are doing it. I see people throw grass seed into their yard all the time and cover it with hay. I've never seen anyone plow up their yard, and yet they grow grass, just fine. I'm glad there are some open minded people in the world, or we would all still be living in freaking caves.

Mayday!!....Mayday!!!!.....

Several people have requested that we have one thread on here showing the throw and mow method being used without out any back and forth arguments between us and the folks who strongly disagree. By all means blum....flame away....but let's keep this thread clean and use the Throw and Mow Debate Thread to hash out our differences.

Carry on.