Corn Field To Grass Field

[PBinWA]

One point from my experience, the more effort you put into making the lawn as smooth and flat as possible the faster you will be able to mow it later. It's one of those things where a few extra hours up front will save you tons of hours later.

Look into renting a Bobcat with an attachment called a "soil conditioner". This would probably cost you less than $1000 for a day and you would have a great surface for planting seed.

[john_bud]

Originally Posted by PBinWA

One point from my experience, the more effort you put into making the lawn as smooth and flat as possible the faster you will be able to mow it later. It's one of those things where a few extra hours up front will save you tons of hours later.

Look into renting a Bobcat with an attachment called a "soil conditioner". This would probably cost you less than $1000 for a day and you would have a great surface for planting seed.

Now that is some good advice!

jb

[firefighter9208]

Why not turn it into a hay field. Surely you have a local farmer that would contract to cut the hay off of it. They would fertilize it, spray for weeds, and cut the hay every 4 to 6 weeks. It would cut down a lot on the costs of maintenance for you and provide another hay field for a farmer. Just a thought.?


Chris

[andrewj]

Originally Posted by farmerjim

depending on what the field looks like now and how long it was used for corn, if possible i would mold board plow it first. then harrow it up and pick out the rocks, then smooth it out and plant your grass. the plow will bury any weed seeds that may have been growing within the corn. definately take a soil sample b4 planting grass as corn likes lots of N (nitrogen) for growth and some grasses may not do well. again i would check around b4 deciding what grass to plant. there are many theorys on rotating crops from corn to grass, since i was a kid my family has always done what i mentioned above when going from corn to grass on the farm and it has always done well, but different areas may differ from my location. cornell university has some really good guidelines for doing what you want to, you may want to look into that.
Cornell Cooperative Extension Resource Center & Store :: Agriculture :: 2007 Field Crop Guide

inverting the soil layer and putting topsoil below clay can be a huge mistake: before bottom plowing, determine how deep topsoil is. One thing's for sure, if you invert the clay on top of the topsoil, then you will be guaranteed to need either lime/sulpher in addition to a lot of fertilizer. So in that respect, doing "something" for the sake of doing something can be a mistake. First step is soil sample, if it is no more nutritious than 8 inches down, then you may consider using a bottom plow, just that you may also turn up some rocks to contend with.

[flusher]

Originally Posted by andrewj

inverting the soil layer and putting topsoil below clay can be a huge mistake: before bottom plowing, determine how deep topsoil is. One thing's for sure, if you invert the clay on top of the topsoil, then you will be guaranteed to need either lime/sulpher in addition to a lot of fertilizer. So in that respect, doing "something" for the sake of doing something can be a mistake. First step is soil sample, if it is no more nutritious than 8 inches down, then you may consider using a bottom plow, just that you may also turn up some rocks to contend with.

Since your field has corn stubble, chances are it's already been done over with a moldboard plow. Probably no need to repeat that process.

If it were my field, I'd go over it with a heavy offset disc (a primary tillage tool), followed by a symmetric tandem disc (a secondary tillage tool) and then finish it off with some type of drag (my favorite is a drag made from old auto/truck tires chained together). Then you'll have a nice seedbed ready for planting. If the corn crop is recent, the ground may be sufficiently loosened that you could skip the work with the offset disc.

My neighbor plants 10 acres of hay and does the prep using a Ford 8N (28 hp engine) and a 7-ft symmetric tandem disc. He runs the disc criss cross and diagonally (4 passes over the ground) and then smooths and levels with a simple chain link fence drag.