Yeah, it will never pay to fertilize that field for hay. It may be worth a round or two of crushed limestone instead. A soil test as someone said is probably a good idea.
So cool. You'll create some memories for sure. The big thing in Oregon right now for horses is Teff. Has about 7.2% sugar. Yes, horses are becoming pre-diabetic as well as humans.
I am in East Texas and Vasseygrass is about to take over my pasture. What herbicide are you using to kill it?
I was amazed at the aging equipment you have in apparent usable condition! Warms the "get by with what we got" heart! It doesn't sound like you are in the high volume hay-as-a-cash-crop business and (thinking I have a pretty clear vision of your circumstance,) why do you bother to use that hay conditioner? Most people in that era used the conditioner ONLY if they had a hurried need to take up the hay a day before it would otherwise have dried. Maybe that hurry is "you" these days with so much going on, but unless you need to expedite things by a day it is wasting a lot of man and machine time IMO. Many in that era used a hay tedder between cutting and raking. The tedder does double duty in that it worked if you had an unfortunate rain too.
The best thing I have found is Pastora, or I use a 10' weed wick with a 50% roundup 50% water mix and when the vasie grass gets up above the hay grass enough that the wick won't drape on the grass I drag the wick across it and that's all it needs within 2 weeks it's smoked, the problem with just about any herbicide for vasie grass is it stunt's your hay grass growth for a couple of weeks, the weed wick won't. I may start spraying a pre-emergence after I cut next time to see if that helps.
That's awesome. I just started getting into it and bought, what appears to be the same sickle mower you have. I bought a JD 37 sickle mower. I don't have rear hydro ports so I ran the two hydraulic lines to my bucket and borrowed 2. The sickle mower blew out the hydraulic cylinder so a farmer up the street helped me replace that. Then the brush guard snapped off so I had to disassemble the pitman arm to clean out all the grass and then take the guard to a welder to fix it correctly. As you say, things will break down and it's been good learning how to put it all back together. I did my soil test last year, added pelletized lime and 19-19-19 and the field is coming on strong.
Can you clarify a little bit? "50% Roundup" might mean several things. Roundup as sold in the stores ready to spray is 0.96% glyphosate. The glyphosate concentrate sold many places (like Tractor Supply, etc.) is typically 41% glyphosate. Pretty well any likely mix chosen is going to kill the grass too, except that wicking it on (with the undesired stuff being high) may preserve some of the grass.
Okay I take full strength glyophospate Roundup or generic I believe that is 41% and I put 1 gallon of it in the wick and then I add 1 gallon of water, at that point I have what I call a 50/50 mix, if you wait until the vasie grass is about 1 foot taller than your haygrass and with the weed wick attached to your frontend loader so you can raise and lower it accordingly to just drape across the vassie grass you will kill it dead and will not kill one blade of your haygrass, you aren't spraying it just wetting the tall shoots of vassie with the mix, it's a flawless operation.
OK, I understand. That means you are using 20.5% glyphosate mixture which is more than twice the highest concentration recommended by the USDA for ANY killing application ! Man that is STRONG !! Besides that, the price of 41% glyphosate at TSC went from $54 for 2.5 gal last year to just over $135 this year. That means at current prices (well last week, may be far higher now...) you are putting $50 worth of glyphosate in your rig...? Somehow I doubt it , but I'll take your word for it.
