What should I seed with - oats

I want to plants oats and underseed with timothy/clover in the
northeast. The field is currently plowed waiting to thaw so I can
disc it.

To help in planting I have the following tools:
-10 ft wheel disc
-10 ft light s-tine harrow (they call them danish harrows here)
-8 ft brillion seeder
-big vicon pendulum seeder

What I don't have is a drill.

I'm thinking of applying my woodash (1 ton acre) discing the
field,
then spreading the oats with the vicon, light harrow, then roll my
underseeding on with the brillion.

Am I gonna end up in trouble due to poor depth control from
harrowing in seed? Do I really need to find a drill?

You have the right plan as far as i think. You can broadcast oats and go over them lightly, just to bury them maybe an inch or so. They can be 3/4 to 1 1/2 inches. Then overseed with the brillion which has packer wheels on it i imagine for your clover seed. The oats are seasonal and will be cut as forage i imagine, so they are just more for cover. You dont want to mess up on the seeding of your clover though, so take care and do it right and make sure the seeder is all set precisely.

If that's what you've got, that's how i'd do it. No reason it won't work...

I have broadcast oats with a 3 point hitch fertilizer spreader and chain harrowed them in before and it worked fine. What you plan to do should work fine to.

Back in the early days they broadcast them all the time. Dad always broadcast oats and just harrowed them in with a spike toothed harrow with good results.

If I was going to plant Hay, Oats, or Wheat today; It would be with a broadcast spreader, & a good harrow. Timothy, & clover would be fine broadcasting; but You probably need to spread the Timothy, & Clover together; then go back & do the oats by themselves. I like to use a tractor with oversized tires, & light weight for broadcasting.

If You buy 5, or more ton of fertilizer in a furnished pull type spreader they probably wouldn't object to using their machine to spread the oats with If You have a lot to spread. Especially if You need several loads of fertilizer.

The oats are there because I can't use chemical weed control. Owners of the field have a drinking water spring right in the middle.

Are you going to harvest the oats? If I understand right, you're using them for weed control. That's a fair idea. You can seed lighter than if you were trying to get a money crop off it.

Drills are nice but a heck of a lot of oats, clover and grass seed has been broadcast and harrowed in with success- as long as it isn't too windy.

I don't think I'd disc them in. I'd use the S tine to work the oats in then go over it with the Brillion to seed the clover/timothy.

Beg or borrow a drill if you can.... otherwise spread the oats with the vicon and take all the cut off the disc and run it as shallow as possible. Actually, it might not be a bad idea to make a blind pass with the brillion first to firm things up, then put the oats down, then disc, then come back with the brillion and the seed... I've put oats in like this and the main problem is that if the ground is too loose before you spread the seed... the disc will BURY it... and then it's 3 weeks before you see it, if at all.
Honestly, after the last time... I swore I'd never do that again. Got to be a drill around you can rent?

What do you pay for the wood ash up there? Is that all tied up in knots and dealt through a broker or can you deal direct with JDI?

Rod

I've planted oats by broadcasting. I used a moldboard plow and one pass with the disc, then planted, disc'd again. This is small 3 pt tillage tools, the disc is too light to really go deep, but covered the seed just about right, it all came up, as I planted thick for the grasses.

The first year oats were planted here in quite some time was broadcast after tillage, 5-18 plow and a late model heavy JD disc, then the cultipacker, a brillion with double rollers. I did not like the waste of seed with that, way too much on top, the ground firmed up or what, it still came in thick and a decent harvest, but there was something left to be desired.

Thats only one half of what you want to do though, but would think, depending on the soils and conditions, you could do as I did and get some cover on the 2nd pass with the disc, then plant the finer seed, cultipack, certainly would work here. The farmer I used to help always planted oats as a cover, when planting hay ground, but that was with an older drill, not sure if he had the grass seed box on that, it was a JD drill, he got a much newer one in '09 but that just had seed and fertilizer boxes on it, never worked with him when planting hay grasses. It would seem that after discing in the oats, you have a firm seed bed, 2x as many passes of tire tracks, not sure if compaction would be an issue.

No drill available, a good friend has a nice 5400 but its on a coulter cart and set up for soybeans only, plus they don't loan equipment. I'm watching carefully for a drill, missed a 200$ IH10 last year, haven't seen anything under 2000$ since.

The ash you go through a broker in NS who manages it for JDI. They bid it through several trucking companies depending where you are in the province. The ash tests out different depending where you get it from, the trucking company screens and separates metal before crushing to get the lumps out so it spreads much nicer than most. I paid extra to get better ash that is 1:1 lime and higher in potash. The ash is technically free and you pay a handling and trucking cost based on zone. If you get it yourself from the truckers crusher plant its pretty cheap.

I didn't think she had JDI tied up too....
All I can say is... the ones doing the trucking down here are making DAMN good money for all they're doing. The guys hauling into Hawkesbury would be so glad as to make as much as the clowns hauling ash out.
They're now talking that the new bio plant ash will be disposed of rather than land applied as well...

As far as the drill goes... you might find something down in truro next sat. Take a run down? There was an 8300 went through there last fall for cheap and I got a gut feeling it will be there again... Take a run down, 10 am start.

Rod

It was just about exactly 1000$ for 30 tons trucked 200 km. I'll see if I can go down, planning on looking at an IH81 combine in sussex next weekend already.

Seems to me that it was a bit less than that here... like mabey 600 for a trailer load... but... that"s trucking about 140 km from Hawkesbury and it"s not fit to put through a material spreader. Most of them were spreading it with a slinger to break up the lumps. In my book... 600 bucks for 4 hours with an end dump is damn good money.

Rod

Well, it wasn't their best day, it was during that Jan thaw and both trucks got stuck. The second truck driver was impatient and tried to walk himself out and ended up with the load against his end gate and stuck up to his axles. Why he decided to drive off the bare gravel road into the only standing water in the field is a mystery. They wouldn't pay for a wrecker to pull him out, wanted me to pay. Landowner not impressed. I had to dig out the flooded ditch next to the pile asap. Not a great day.

A drill is the ticket!

There was an IH10 for $500 on kijiji here a bit ago...add is gone now.

At least you have the brillion for the grass seed...

For what you have, I am thinking disc, s tine, broadcast oats and then brillion pack...

There is a nice looking semi-mount 5100 outside Sussex for sale
but its way more than my price range. Hmm just thinking, a
neighbour has an old wooden box MF is his quonset hut, I wonder if
he greased it up when he parked it 30 years ago?

It probably still works....not much to go wrong on them as long as they were cleaned up of any fertilizer when put away.

We seed with an old wooden box steel wheel IH, it does the job, cost next to nothing many years ago and is still usable.