First Time Wheat Cultivation

[ChrisCY]

Are you growing Wheat as food source for you or as food plot for animals?

What is growing in this area now?

Tine cultivator will be much faster than tiller but may have trouble with clods if currently grass and weeds.

If grass & weeds and growing as food source for you then getting rid of grass and weeds is more important than food plot.

I believe You can buy hand seed spreaders that are crank operated. Like other have stated getting the seed rate consistent is the challenge.

We used to seed wet spots in fields with hand spreader and then run spring tine drag over to help lightly bury the seed. This was on ground that was tilled.

Thanks for the rply. As a food source! So how would I use the tine cultivator to plant from zero?

 

[LittleBittyBigJohn]

Thanks for that. When you say something to drag on top. Is there a DIY implement you have in mind?

There are endless options for this. I've seen box springs, a length of chainlink fence behind a board, fence panel, heavy log... on and on. Just anything you can rig up to pull that will disturb the top of the dirt a little and hopefully flatten it out some at the same time.

 

[rgr33]

Not being a wheat farmer, I am wondering if it’s advisable to use pre emerge in this situation.

In this area, weeds would find that kind of cultivated ground quite inviting.

 

[mo1]

Hello friends,

I would like to know the basics of wheat planting. I owe a Massey Ferguson 2615 with a rotary tiller implement as well as a tine cultivator. Are these enough for planting the seed? And how is it done? Not wanting to pay a fortune on new implements if required

There are a few ways to do it.

If you no-till, you spray nonselective herbicide on the field to kill it, then use a no-till drill to plant the wheat. You can often rent a no-till drill from many co-ops, ASCS offices, and sometimes the state DNR or University extension.

Conventional tillage generally is one of the following:

If the land has not been tilled in the last several years, you would moldboard plow in the fall, let the soil mellow over the winter, use a tandem disc to break up the furrows, and then use a spring-tooth, spike tooth, or heavy chain drag to smooth the soil before using a grain drill to plant.

If the land has been tilled in the last few years, you can either do as above and moldboard plow, or you can chisel plow, then run a field cultivator or disc, then a spring-tooth/spike tooth harrow or chain drag. This results in more residue on the surface of the soil but results in less disturbance of the soil and less erosion potential vs. conventional moldboard plowing. You can also get away with two passes over the field vs. three if you use a chisel plow + field cultivator with an attached spring-tooth harrow.

There is also vertical tillage which basically uses shallow versions of field cultivators and such, that came along after my family quit doing any kind of row crops so I don't have personal experience with it.

We initially moldboard plowed, disced, and spike tooth dragged after putting fields back in production after being fallow for 10+ years. After that we did the chisel plow + field cultivator with an attached spring-tooth harrow for soil prep for our beans/wheat rotation.

Given what you have for a tractor and equipment, you would do best to get an old 3-14 or 3-16 moldboard plow and turn over the dirt at least a month before you intend on planting. If you are doing spring wheat, plow in the fall and let the soil mellow over the winter. This kills the grass/weeds/etc. on the surface that would plug up your tiller. Then just before you want to plant, run your tiller over the plowed ground to prepare your seedbed. Ideally you would borrow a drill, but if you can't, then get a 3 point broadcast spreader to broadcast your wheat and use a roller (preferable) or a pretty non-aggressive chain drag (or even a log, piece of chain-link fence, mattress spring, etc.) to work the seed into the soil. That will work decently well at the expense of being a lot slower than what's mentioned above.

I am not sure exactly what your "tine cultivator" is, it could be a bunch of different things, some of which could be useful, some not. You won't be able to cultivate wheat for weed control once it emerges as the row spacing is too narrow (usually 7 1/2" spacing) or if you broadcast there are no rows at all to cultivate in between. We accomplished weed control in wheat by planting winter wheat, the wheat would outcompete annual weeds newly germinating the following spring once it awakened from dormancy in the spring. The biennials were killed by the tillage before the wheat was planted.

Here's another question- what do you intend to do with the wheat when it's grown? Is it a food plot or going to be grazed? Is it going to be hayed? Are you going to harvest it for grain?