plowing sandy soil

is it a good idea or bad idea? found a little 5 acre patch that has melons on it two years ago and nothing last year. full of 7 foot weeds and texas sandbur's(or whatever they are called). have a jd 494 planter so no till is not a good option but with all the weeds and stickers a good plowing would be nice. but it would probably blow. thought about plow and haul maure on it right away and disc it. thoughts from those of you that farm in sandy soils??
 
It plows a whole lot easier than clay!! LOL! My ground is pretty light--Allegan County, Mi.--but I plow down my corn stalks and any weeds. I haven't had a lot of blowing, but keep in mind I only plat food plots, usually a half acre or less.

Larry
 
One thing I'm learning in the sandy soils around here is to work them as little as possible and seed as soon as possible. They do dry out fast.
Might get away with discing and pulling a spiked tooth harrow at the same time. The guys that have them around here often plow, then go over it with a roller harrow/packer. Either way it is one, maybe two passes and then seed it.
 
Down here our farm is sandy soil, if not doing no till you grow winter cover of tall rye and plow and work strips between wide rows of the rye grass as wind breaks for spring crop.March and April are windy dry here. After spring we disk -plow- disk under spring crop for short 60 day summer cover crop of Sunn hemp, rainy season here all summer. and turn it under in August for our fall winter planting. Need to work and feed organic material in for best crops on sand to hold your inputs and moisture in the soil.We grow some type of produce all year.
The BTO's that grow row crops here use no till into winter rye that they spray to kill before seeding, Than after their crops they disk in the late summer to Oct. just before planting their winter rye.
 
Why not disk the weeds and manure in first and than no till. The trash from weeds and manure will help stop the blowing of soil.
 
If your disk will crop it fine enough or have a no till seeder other wise you might be better off making a nice seed bed so seeds get good soil contact to germinate. Don't forget weeds disk ed up will have seeds you may need to run over it after they germinate to keep your weed pressure down in your crop. Some ways work better for other, don't be afraid to try something new.Good luck with your crop.
 
We have taken fields with grass and weeds like that and controled burned them. We disk a strip around the out side of field and back fire it. It cleans trash and kills a lot of seeds. We have a tractor and sprayer with plenty of water to put out any thing that would jump strip.
We did this on a number of fields.
 
Those texas sand burs are nasty.You will have them stuck to your tires and then spreading them back to your place.With the 7ft weeds you will probably have to disc them to cut them up before they will go threw the plow. I think you'll find that the disc will work the ground up good enough.Hauling the manure on there is a good idea. That should help keep it from blowing.Try to keep those sand burs sprayed. Good luck.
 
i disced it to know down the weeks, seemed to work pretty good. did part of it twice and really buried the weeds, so thinking i will haul manure on it, disc and plant. i"d do not till but my planter wont work on that, but am gonna spray roundup and hopefully get it under control.
thanks for the thoughts.
 

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