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.

 

[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.

 

[npaden]

Well, I didn't do any soil samples or put any fertilizer down this year and everything seems to be going really well still. I guess I got lucky. I do need to take pictures of it, it grew in really thick and since it isn't getting grazed very much it is probably about 4" to 6" tall in most spots.

I'm not sure what I'm going to do next year. If it heads out and goes to seed I may just see what it does on a volunteer basis next year. I think I will probably go back in and plant some sunflowers and sorghum again this spring in some spots also.

Now that I have some more land I will probably do some soil samples for that and will probably go ahead and do a soil sample on this land as well. I don't know if I could justify spending much money on fertilizing this land though.

Nathan

 

[Green is Keen]

npaden -

Found your thread today and enjoyed the read. Enjoyed even more the fact that your project produced such great results and hope that I too can reap such success.

Thanks for the post, it is inspirational.....

 

[npaden]

Well, it was a BEAUTIFUL day out today (75 and no wind) and I took my 2 month old son out for a walk tonight after work and brought the camera and took a couple pictures of the wheat.

The sun was going down so as usual, my pictures aren't very good but I think you can get a good idea of what it looks like.

It looks good to me, but I've never grown anything like this before so I don't really know what it should look like. It is nice and green and the wildlife seems to like it though!

 

[EddieWalker]

I had no idea that's what wheat looked like. It's kind of nice looking!!!

Great picture!!

Thanks,
Eddie

 

[redlevel]

Good pictures and a nice looking food plot. Have you bought the kid a rifle yet?

I went back and read the first few pages of this thread. I have a question for you. You said that you put the first 100 pounds of seed on less than an acre. Dio you have a much better stand of wheat on that acre?

Also a comment. If you will put about 50 units of nitrogen (approximately 150 lb ammonium nitrate) per acre, that wheat will really green up, be much more palatable to the deer, and will make a bunch of seed heads to keep the deer coming through the soring and early summer. Some say that deer don't eat wheat seed heads, but I know from recent experience that they do. It will also make wonderful nesting habitat for quail, too. Without herbicide, it will grow up in a mixture of wheat and native weeds and grasses, which isn't necessarily bad. With herbicide, the wheat will be much cleaner, which is good also. In other words, it is a win/win situation. (I really hate that term, so why am I using it?)

I sowed this field in Oct. 05 with about 125 lb of wheat seed, and harrowed it in. This is what it looked like in June 06. The brown you see is wheat maturing, and the green is Summer weeds just coming up.

This is what it looked like two weeks ago Feb 07. I did not put herbicide down, but did apply about 50 units of nitrogen. Many of the weeds are common ragweed, which is good for quail. I'll probably let this part of the field continue to grow naturally for another year, when I'll start with the same rotation.

Just to give you an idea what to expect. I did not have enough seed heads left to harrow in and re-seed. The deer ate them all up through the summer.

Mark

 

[npaden]

Thanks for the input and the pictures. Actually the area that I overseeded didn't look any better than the rest of it. It seems that the area that I was able to disc up the best and get fresh clean soil up is where it did the best. There are some areas where it was a little more rocky and the disc didn't dig in as well that it doesn't look as good.

That picture from June 2006 looks really good. I will look into how much 600lbs of fertilizer would cost and might as well throw it down if it doesn't cost much. I probably need to do that soon before it gets much higher.

As far as herbicides, I'm actually pretty impressed with how relatively weed free it is right now. That was actually one of the original reasons for doing this because that 5 acres had been disturbed a few years back and the native grasses were gone and it was getting overtaken with weeds.

I actually ended up planting a 50/50 mix of wheat and oats, I've never seen oats head out so that will be interesting too.

I'm curious if it will provide food for the quail and dove when it heads out this summer.

Thanks again for the input.

Nathan

 

[npaden]

Well we got some rain and the wheat TOOK OFF!!!

It is just starting to head out and looks GREAT!

Here are a couple pictures from the same spot as the last ones with the same stroller and same dog.

Not bad for less than 2 months of growth!

 

[EddieWalker]

That's really amazing!!! Now that it's growing, what do you do with it? I know it's for the animals, but is there a time when you cut it down? When do you disk it in and do it all over again? Is there a time when it's not any good any more?

Thanks,
Eddie

 

[npaden]

Actually I have no idea what I'm going to do with it. It is really looking good and it seems a waste for it to just sit there but I don't think there is enough to harvest or anything especially since it is a wheat and oat mix. Maybe in the fall I can just disc it lightly and it will come back up?

 

[redlevel]

Actually I have no idea what I'm going to do with it. It is really looking good and it seems a waste for it to just sit there but I don't think there is enough to harvest or anything especially since it is a wheat and oat mix. Maybe in the fall I can just disc it lightly and it will come back up?

That looks great. I guess you could call your first food plot experiment a resounding success. I bet you're getting a lot of nocturnal visiters.

You have lots of options about what to do with it. You could just let it sit there and feed deer. I guess you discovered that there are more deer in the area than you originally thought. You may or may not have enough seed heads left this fall to just harrow it in to reseed. Its just according to how many deer will be grazing on it. You could also mow/harrow out some strips to plant sunflowers or milo. Didn't you leave part of it in the middle with some sorghum on it? I would definately seed that in sorghum or sunflowers.

Did I read correctly that there is no open season on deer in your county? That doesn't sound right. If you like to shoot doves, you could go in about a week before the first season and mow the stalks, then either burn or disk it. Doves like some bare ground, and disking usually leaves enough seed on top to attract doves. Burning also is a good way to do it if there isn't too much green stuff that would keep it from burning well.

If you chose to go that route, you could then just start over with a little more seed and the disk. If you just leave it as is, and there are still a few seed heads, you can mow to scatter the seed, then disk it in.

Congratulations on your success.