What kind of row cropping do you do?

I'm liking the rain, cause we weren't getting any when ya'll were gettin it. I'll take the rain anyway i can get it, beats the alternative. Ideally, if it would rain once a week, we would be in paradise, but that ain't gonna happen. Crimson, might as well pick them greens and boil em up, might have to add a little sugar to em but they'll still be good.

Bout to cook some up this weekend to go along with some squash�..

Paging Westflgator. how many acres of row crop ground are you working?

None. I have a small farm (92 acres) that I'm transitioning from pines to farmland. Not planning to row crop, will be planting mostly Perennial Peanut for high quaility hay. I have been researching and experimenting on my plots with alternative fertilization for lower costs, and long term soil building techniques, that I plan to utilize on my hay fields in the future. So far the results have been very good.

To get back to the subject at hand, while researching a year or so back, I ran across the youtube video that I posted above, which explains the no till concepts(same principles as "Throw & Mow"). I thought those on this thread who were interested in those concepts might enjoy the video as well. For those who are not interested I would say don't watch it...

No till is a great farming practice. I've never said otherwise. There's a major difference between no till and mow throw however. Westflgator you got a major undertaking converting from pines back to tillable farmland. Good luck and be patient with it. We got a lot of that going on. Remember chicken litter can be your best friend in the process.

I agree there is a big difference in planting techniques but the soil concepts are the same.

Foodplotting is not row cropping either.

This was the test field late yesterday evening during an absolute monsoon. You can see that the field was infiltrating the water without major ponding or erosion. There are lots of fields standing in puddles around here this morning. After rains such as these subside is a good time to take a look and see how well your field is infiltrating water. Do your see erosion occurring? Do you see areas where major run off is occurring? What is the condition of your soil surface now after the heavy rains? Just some questions to ask yourself and be mindful of�.. What is just as important as the amount of rain that falls is the amount that your field can soak up. Most of our summer rains come in fast, heavy downpours similar to what we just saw. The green you see are the turnips perking back up.

Understand. But I treat my plots same as I do row crop to give me max results.

Max results?? What results are we trying to maximize�.Is it kill deer or produce pics for Farmer�s Digest? The goals of food plotting and farming are nothing the same. Do you consider �cost� in there anywhere with food plotting?�.or what about the return on your (cost)investment? Do you have twice as many deer for all the money spent? Do you have an additional 10 inches of antler on every buck for all the coin it costs to imitate high yield row farming?

�..or�..

Are you still just attracting the same local goats to the same openings as I am doing for a fraction of the cost or input?


Our main goal for the vast majority of food plotters out there is to simply keep attracting the local deer to our openings in the woods��..Its not trying to produce high yielding, high cost row crops that give us back very little real return on all the money spent. Most folks with only a few acres of food plots aren�t changing anything about the deer herd no matter what they grow nor how high yielding it is�..The end result is still the same. You�re just accomplishing the goal of attracting the local goats to that opening. I could spend hundreds of dollars this summer and hours of time trying to grow 2 acres of the highest yielding corn ever grown in Alabama or I could spend a fraction of that money and grow 2 acres of clover and weeds��Come October 15th it won�t make a damn bit of difference. The same deer herd will be walking out in front of me waiting to get stuck with an arrow.

Again��.we are food plotting not row cropping....

Well as stated before you're like talking to my 6 yr old. I never said a damn thing about horns or any crap like that. I just apply the tools I've got and knowledge I have of fertility and seed and chemicals to grow 100plus bushel corn for deer and birds. The faster I can grow a stalk and get it to maturity the more food I can grow there fore it last longer into the season. Maybe I just enjoy doing it too. Maybe resources don't matter to me.

Good lawd, what a difference a week makes. A week ago we all thought you two were gonna go for a roll in the throw-n-mow clover, now ya'll fussin' and fightin' again. Worse than an old married couple.

I need to get back in the field soon. Too much time on my hands.

I'm like 257. I really enjoy the whole farming thing. Sort of like painting. Nothing better looking than a nice, weed free, soybean or corn field that you've done own your own. I don't golf, don't fish, just enjoy my tractor time. Yeah it cost $ but everything does

(Krrr!!!) �2�1��Houston, we have lift off.�



Seedlings are sprouting up out of the hay everywhere now. In this picture you can see milo starting to shoot up through the turnips. It looks like there�s going to be plenty of milo. There was some millet in that bird seed I threw out so I wouldn�t be surprised to see some of it before its over. Some of it is going to be volunteer Egyptian wheat as well. Lots of diversity in the field. You can also see hairy vetch that�s bouncing back after just being mowed and not sprayed. Hairy vetch is a great provider of nitrogen.




Here you can see buckwheat, milo, and cowpeas just beginning to poke through the top of the hay filling in the open spaces between the turnips. They�ll likely be new seedlings popping up for a couple of weeks.



One more pics of the new seedlings filling in��I'll probably throw out a little N in a week or two depending on how the rain plays out. I'll go with 50 lbs of 33-0-0 per acre.

Are the deer using that field? Is it showing sign of browsing?

Yes�.the deer never really quit using the test field now. Usage has peaks and valleys throughout the year depending on the state of the natural forage. I�ll be lucky if anything I just planted other than the milo and volunteer EW make it to actually do much. That�s one of the reasons I�m planting turnips in the spring. They were wiped out last fall. I want the soil health benefits that things like turnips and radishes provide so I thought I would see if I could grow some in the spring. The turnips were dirt cheap to throw out a couple lbs as an experiment before doing it with radishes. They should go to seed some time this summer and reseed for fall.

Last summer the peas stayed alive and kept trying to put back out but they were ate up as quick as they could grow. That�s why long term my summer plots will just likely be clover and weeds�.. and possibly radishes. I�m not really accomplishing anything different with a plot like this than I would with a plot of clover and diverse weeds�.other than just spending more money on seed. The same deer are using the plot either way. The reason I don�t sweat some weeds coming in is because once all this stuff gets wiped out�.I still need something to produce biomass and keep feeding the soil OM. If that�s what�s going to happen anyways then why not just skip straight to the part where you are growing clover and weeds. Growing a heavy crop of biomass in the summer would benefit most folks much more than providing the deer with a few hundred dollars of seedlings to wipe out.

My corn sunflowers and grain sorghum will need topdressing with urea once it dries out enough to get over it. How many units of urea should I put out CNC?

If you're just wanting to provide biomass, then why pay to plant anything?