Planting Wheat

[npaden]

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.

Yeah, I was pretty happy with it. It is fully adjustable as fare as the angle, just loosen up the bolts where the gangs connect to the box tubing and slide it open or closed. No idea on who made it though.

 

[RobJ]

Here is one my BIL bought, $800 I think, 8' if I recall, maybe 9. He calls it a banjo disk. Totally adjustable. You can straighten out the gangs where it'll do nothing but slice straight lines in the field. Turn them in to make a terrace.

 

[RobJ]

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.

Ya know, if you eat what you kill, try a pig. You might pass on a buck unless you want a mount. A wild pig (IMO) tastes like a Grocery store pig. But a deer is a deer, not a cow. I'll trade 2 deer for a pig anyday. There was a good pig thread here in the rural section recently. under bow hunting if I recall.

 

[N80]

Yes, I don't kill it if I won't eat it, except for a coyote maybe. We used to shoot pigs down in the low country that you could eat, but they weren't great. Tough and stringy and if it was a boar it was very gamey. I haven't eaten these local pigs yet....but they look tastey. The ones down in the lowcountry were big, but fairly skinny. These local pigs are plump. Lots of acorns and probably a lot of corn (illegal baiting is common). So they will eat well, especially one of the smaller 150 pounders. I'd like to kill one of the big boars we've seen from time to time, 300+ easily, but they won't eat as well.

 

[npaden]

Okay,

It seems like the wheat and oats are a big success!

Before this year we saw 5 deer in 6 years. This year so far we saw the whitetail buck and doe that I posted pictures of, then saw another doe (could have been the same one), then a mule deer buck and then last Sunday I saw 4 at once. That made 8 deer in 3 months!

Well, tonight there were 12 deer out on the field that I had planted!!!

10 does and 2 bucks. These were mule deer.

I got some pictures, but taking pictures of deer 300 - 400 yards away at dusk is not something I've figured out how to do very well yet.

There are 10 does in the first picture and the buck was pretty big, but the picture of it turned out really blurry but you can still see that it was a buck for sure. There was another smaller buck that I saw as well but never got a picture of it.

I'm pretty excited. I guess it seems like planting the wheat and oats has been a big hit with the local wildlife population so far! I should post some pictures of the plants, it is pretty thick and green.

FWIW, Nathan

 

[wushaw]

Good job It sure is nice to see the results of having fun on a tractor.

 

[andrewj]

Get the spreader. If five acres is what you are working, it will be more practical to fertilize it yourself than to hire someone to bring a truck in.

Disc it up good. Spread about 2-2.5 bushels of seed wheat per acre. You can set the angle on the discs so it isn't throwing much dirt and go over it lightly with the harrow, or you can rig up some kind of drag. Many people use an old section of chain link fence. I use an old rotary-hoe type implement.

You need some fertilizer, even if you are planting just for wildlife. Probably three to four hundred pounds of 5-10-15 now, and then about 150 lbs of ammonium nitrate in late January or so. If you really want to keep it clean, spray it with 2 4 D in late February. This makes an excellent dove field for next September.

thousands of dollars if I buy it by the bag and take a weekend to spread it myself in my little spreader, 800 dollars to have truck come in and fertilize my acreage according to soil sample, or.....120 bucks for two truckloads of chicken litter. which one do you think I went with? The point I wanted to make was fertilizing 5 acres yourelf bag by bag is insane. have a truck come in. plus, they can mix in lime/sulphur if you need.

 

[EddieWalker]

Nathan,

Congratulations!! Your success if inspirational.

Do you plant them again every year? Do you just leave them to grow? What do you do next?

Thanks,
Eddie

 

[redlevel]

thousands of dollars if I buy it by the bag and take a weekend to spread it myself in my little spreader, 800 dollars to have truck come in and fertilize my acreage according to soil sample, or.....120 bucks for two truckloads of chicken litter. which one do you think I went with? The point I wanted to make was fertilizing 5 acres yourelf bag by bag is insane. have a truck come in. plus, they can mix in lime/sulphur if you need.

I just happened to see this one brought back up. I agree, the two truckloads of chicken litter is about as good as you can do. But I don't understand why you say it is "insane" to spread fertilizer on 5 acres by yourself, or why it should cost "thousands of dollars" vs. $800 for the truck to spread it. In the first place, it is going to be hard to get a truck to come out for just five acres in a lot of places. If you happen to be 20 miles from the fertilizer dealer, he is probably going to charge you a $100 surcharge to deliver fertilizer for such a small acreage. In the second place, it will take me about 90 minutes to spread 400 lbs per acre on 5 acres. If I have someone opening bags and pouring the fertilizer in the spreader, cut that time to about an hour. That's with a relatively small spreader, one that will hold about 400 lbs. Such a spreader will cost you around $300. The one way back on page two is about 600 lb capacity and he said $400. I will do a lot better job of spreading evenly than will the average fertilizer truck driver, too. Over the last 40 years I have probably spread fertilizer on a couple thousand acres doing five to twenty acres at the time with a cone spreader and a 35hp tractor.

To the original poster: it looks like your plots did just what you wanted them to do; attract wildlife. As I think I said way back on an earlier page, it ain't rocket science.

Mark

 

[Robert_in_NY]

There are a lot of ways to spread fertilizer by yourself. Here I just grab a couple of pallets of bagged fertilzer and go to where I am going to spread and fill the Vicon and go. It doesn't take very long to use a ton by bag. If you are going to do a lot of acerage and want to use a Vicon or similar cone spreader the local fertilizer dealer has gravity wagons with augers so all you do is start the motor on the wagon (unless it is hydraulic in which case you just use a tractor) and fill the hopper and go. It doesn't take much time at all. The grape farmers spread thousands of acres every year here this way.

And if you decide you want to spread some fetilizer somewhere else you just load up the Vicon and go. You don't have to talk to a truck driver or worry about him not making it to a food plot (which most trucks can not make it to a lot of food plots I have seen).

There is no right way but as long as the guy doing it or paying for it is happy then that is all that matters. I actually enjoy spreading fetilizer as it is peaceful.