Planting Wheat

[npaden]

Looks great!

Some of mine is coming up now. We haven't gotten any rain since I planted so that isn't helping much. There are a few spots where I went over it more than once with the disc after planting and I think I lost too much moisture and those areas aren't coming up yet.

 

[3RRL]

Man, all those pictures look great. Mine is not even in the ground yet. I will be planting this weekend and hope for rain soon. If my plot looks half that good I'll be pleased.

 

[RobJ]

rain is a wonderful thing. We finally got some so I'll have to see what happened in 10 days. So much for planing a 5 weeks ago.

 

[npaden]

Well, it didn't rain for over a month after I got everything planted and I was getting pretty worried because not much had come up. We got an inch of rain 2 weeks ago and another inch last week and it all pretty much came up now.

I left the best spot of sorghum and it has finally headed out and looks decent. Still pretty patchy, but maybe it will attract some wildlife.

Haven't seen much wildlife on it yet, but the dogs seem to enjoy grazing on it. It is a pretty funny sight!

I'm just happy that the wheat is finally coming up!

 

[3RRL]

nathan,
I very happy for you, man. I'm still waiting for the rain out at my place or my little food plot will end up being a bust. Your photos are great! Good luck.

 

[EddieWalker]

Nathan,

You got some funny looking cattle in your part of Texas!!! hahahaha

Seriously, I never realized you had those canyons next to your place. I bet they hold some deer. Is that were you expect to pull them from to your food plot?

Eddie

 

[andrewj]

Hi Nathan,

Since your just doing this to attract wildlife, why are you using just wheat?

I'm no expert on this, bur variety is extremly important to bring in more animals and to keep them around.

You could do it a coupld of different ways. Split up the five acres into half or 3/4 acre plots and plant each one seperate with something different.

Find a good mix of seeds and do it all in a mixture of plants that will bring them in and keep them there.

For my food plot this year, I'm just putting out bird seed from Walmart. A fifty pound sack costs under $10 and should do half an acre pretty good. The bird seed has about a dozen different types of plants it grows real easy around my bird feeders.

I know that's just a wild idea I'm gonna try without knowing if it will work or not. You could try some crazy ideas too. Just have fun with it and see what works.

Across the nation, there are programs called CRP where the goverment pays landowners to plant there fields with native grasses and plants to help the wildlife. You wouldn't qualify, but you can do some searching to see what they plant and maybe find out where to get it.

I've seen some of the biggest deer and elk in CRP fields before hunting season. Of course, I've never been able to get permision to hunt those fields, but I know for a fact that wildlife use them allot!!!

Good luck,
Eddie

actually Eddie, he's right on target. around here wheat brings in deer consistently when it first comes up, and fattens them up when it goes to seed. plus, dove get fat on the wheat berries too. I've never heard of putting bird seed down in such a quantify, plus you may be introducing invasive plants in to your field, and you may regret that later...

 

[npaden]

Crappy picture because it was almost dark and they were running but had some very good visitors to the wheat patch tonight!

The buck looks really nice!!

Hopefully they will start making regular visits!

 

[EddieWalker]

Congratulations!!!!

I'd say your food plot is a total sucess!!!!!!

Eddie

 

[npaden]

The deer were out there again this morning and I got some better pictures of them. The buck wasn't quite as big as he looked at first but he is still pretty nice. Hopefully they will enjoy my wheat and pond and make some babies!

I stuck around a bit too long and they ended up running off. They didn't run far and I left them alone and hopefully they will be back on a regular basis.

They moved off into some brush and I watched them for about 30 minutes. So far it seems that there are just these 2 deer around. I realize this isn't very exciting to some people that have deer coming out their ears, but in the previous 6 years I've lived here I've seen a total of 5 deer, and each time I saw them I only saw them one time. I checked the hunting regulations and Lubbock county doesn't have a hunting season for deer so I think they are safe for now.

 

[RobJ]

WOW excellant camera work there man. Looks like a long lense or you were just plain close

Here is my latest food plot. You can sort of see the outer ring that was planted 2 weeks ago. Just hand tossed rye, then drug. Got about 1.5" of rain a couple days after. I put some fertilizer on this past weekend.

Eddie, For your plots you might try some whole oats. Last time I bought they were about $8 a 50# bag. Ask for whole oats instead of seed oats. Those cost more. But most all of the whole oats will still germinate. The rye I tried this year was about $20 for 50#if I recall.

 

[andrewj]

I think there is as much difference in farming as building I guess.

The local people tell me I don't need to fertilize. ... if I put 400lbs per acre of fertilizer out there and 200lbs per acre of seed... This is more of a test to see if I can even get something to grow and to keep the weeds from taking over.

Thanks, Nathan

soil sample is 7 dollars. there is no cheaper "test" to see if you can grow something.

 

[N80]

I've got to do that next year. Two of my little oat plots have gone belly up but one of them is still good and green. I suspect it is a pH thing. Plan on doing several locations. Knowing how much lime to put down is probably the issue for me. Seen some bucks in my little plots but nothing worth shooting. My place is paved with white oak acorns this year so the plots probably aren't drawing as well as in lean years.

 

[RobJ]

I've got to do that next year. Two of my little oat plots have gone belly up but one of them is still good and green. I suspect it is a pH thing. Plan on doing several locations. Knowing how much lime to put down is probably the issue for me. Seen some bucks in my little plots but nothing worth shooting. My place is paved with white oak acorns this year so the plots probably aren't drawing as well as in lean years.

Down here if you got white oaks in a draw you hunt there. They love those big fat acorns! I guess they know it's less work than a little pin oak.

 

[flusher]

I have a 2 row planter and a 8' disc, shredder, blade and subsoiler for implements now.

Any thoughts or recommendations?

Thanks, Nathan

Notice that you pull an 8' tandem disc with your Bota 4200.
Evidently your 4200 has no problem pulling that disc.
Is your disc a 3-pt implement or a drag disc? New or pre-owned? Manufacturer?

I have a 1966 MF-135 diesel that I'm restoring and it has about the same engine and pto hp specs as your tractor. I'm trying to decide what kind of disc to get to put in about 7 acres of hay.

 

[HomeBrew2]

... 7 acres of hay.

Oh, oh, that sounds like work

 

[npaden]

It's a 3 point disc. It was setup as a Category II hitch but they switched it to Category I for me. No idea what brand, I bought it for $600 used from a used equipment dealer.

The tractor knows it's back there when it is digging in good. I was using 6th gear for a while but when it was really digging in good it started knocking so I went down to 5th and even in 5th it knocked a few times.

From what I understand a 42hp 4wd tractor will outpull a 42hp 2wd tractor but I'm not sure on that. I'm not getting very much wheel slippage but that could be your limiting factor pulling this with a 2wd.

 

[N80]

Down here if you got white oaks in a draw you hunt there. They love those big fat acorns! I guess they know it's less work than a little pin oak.

They do attract well but there are so many this year they can go anywhere to get them. In years past, if the acorn crop was bad but you could find one white oak with acorns, it was better than a feeder (which is illegal in my part of the state).

We got pigs on my place now. Fat and black but probably competeing with the deer and turkey. Shooting them hasn't decreased the population at all. There are more every year. I haven't shot one this year but I watched a drove of 10 the other afternoon for over an hour; eating acrons the whole time. None of them over 150 pounds. Probably good eaters but I was waiting for a big buck. Killed a decent 8 pointer in the same place about a week before. He was fighting a bigger buck that I never got a good look at. Was hoping to see the big one, but never did. Just noisy pigs.

npaden,

That's a nice little disk for a good price. Box tubing rather than angle iron is nice. It doesn't look like you can change the angle of the disk arms, but that probably is no big deal. No idea at all who makes it? I'd love to find a set like that for that price.

As to the OP, I scraped up a small area and planted some wheat and it came up nice and green but hasn't gotten very tall, maybe 8 inches. The deer haven't touched it at all, but they've eaten the oats almost to the ground. I don't know if it will ever come to seed, but maybe they'll like it better then. Surely the turkeys will.

 

[flusher]

It's a 3 point disc. It was setup as a Category II hitch but they switched it to Category I for me. No idea what brand, I bought it for $600 used from a used equipment dealer.

The tractor knows it's back there when it is digging in good. I was using 6th gear for a while but when it was really digging in good it started knocking so I went down to 5th and even in 5th it knocked a few times.

From what I understand a 42hp 4wd tractor will outpull a 42hp 2wd tractor but I'm not sure on that. I'm not getting very much wheel slippage but that could be your limiting factor pulling this with a 2wd.

Thanks for the info. My 135 is 2wd, of course, and the rears are pretty worn. Makes me lean toward a 7-ft tandem disc or even a 6-footer. My wheel track is 82" wide. I may go with a 3-pt 6-ft disc and add a hitch to convert it to a drag disc. Then I can use a 3-pt drawbar and offset the hitch point by 12 inches to cover one of the wheel tracks.

 

[npaden]

WOW excellant camera work there man. Looks like a long lens or you were just plain close.

Thanks. I was about 150 yards away in both of those pictures. Using a 70-300mm lens on the camera zoomed all the way.

The pictures turned out a little better when it was actually light outside!