Hay field questions

Had a little 4 acre bottom, cows grazed in it last winter and it was pretty rough. I disced it 3x (2 to full cut, 1 light cut). I'm going to drill it to rye, then beans for baleage next year. Then I'll disc a couple of times and put back to timothy. Situations like this, I set the disc to minimum cut, got slow, and carry a little of the weight on the wheels, does fine.

If the ground has been idle for several years or it has been row cropped lately I will break with a 4x14 breaking plow. This gets the old residue underneath to help it break down.

If it is just grass, and the ground is not hard as a rock, I will do a complete burnoff with gramoxone.

I then disk a couple times to get the seedbed worked up pretty good. I use a 21' IH 496 or a 16' IH 480 with 7 inch spacing to get a good level bed.

After the discing is done, I go over it once and sometimes twice with a du-all. I think it is a 26 footer. This breaks up any clods that are left and gets a good seedbed.

I then roll with a cultimulcher like the one in the other post pic. This gets you a good so;id bed.

I will then use a 3-point spreader to spread seed at a rate of about 12 to 15 lbs per acre. Depending on the soil type I may run the packer over it after seeding but not always. Bermuda doesn't really need to be more than 1/8" under the surface.

One key is to get all this done wnd get your seed sown before the soil gets too dry. You want a moist seedbed to help with germination.

Jay

The seeding was done with a grain drill, with oats and alfalfa in the hopper, the oats was the field crop the year of planting and the alfalfa came the next season, after four or five years the alfalfa would thin out and be gradually taken over by brome grass. Then they would generally plow it under and go with some row crop in that field.

I guess being dairy country the alfalfa was the most prevelant crop, nobody that I knew ever planted anything else. Brome grass grew native as far as I know. In the dry years a few people would take "meadow hay" which was usually in wetlands noramlly unfarmable. It was probably canary or reedgrass.

Eric

Most smaller seeded hay crops like a firm seedbed, alfalfa for instance likes a seed bed firm enough you can dribble a basketball on. A disk will work for seed bed preperations but they can cause ridging which you don't want, a field cultivator would be a better choice if you have one, if not several passes with a harrow after a disk would work too. You can never get a hayfield too smooth and there is nothing worse than a rough one so send some time to get it right before you seed it. We like to run a cultimulcher like the one pictured both before and after we put the seeding in to get the ground really smooth and to insure good seed/soil contact.

--->Paul