first foray into farming - game planning

BeeBazaar

Member
I'm planning my farming adventure now. Im planted 3 acres this past spring and I'm going to do some fall farming too. I'm trying to game plan, and I'm not 100% sure I'm on the right path. Ill add ~7 more acres next year to the mix maybe. All of this will be Bee Forage. I have honey bees and i'm growing the number of hives

This past spring, I mowed 3 acres very short then disc'ed it. I have a Ferg TO20 and that didn't do very good. I then drop seeded / fertilized and tried to roll it. My seeder is a 48" gandy drop seeder and the roller was just a lawn roller. Both of those were done with my quad. mostly because that metal seat. I bought a Oliver 1650 diesel recently to have something actually enjoyable to be on.

I planted:
buckewheat
Hairy Vetch
Hubam Clover
Sunflower
Phacelia
Rapeseed
Sunflower

I planted everything on the whole plot. fertilized once when I planted. I spilled a bunch of fertilizer at one point and that area grew great, so I think I didnt use enough. I also had my soil tested.

I think I'm going to change my mix and not mix everything. I think I will plant 3 x 1 acre strips.
1 will be Hubam clover
1 will be sunflower
1 will be buckwheat

I may add camelina and Mustard to the sunflower patch tho since it blooms early. I choose those because they are great nectar sources and the sunflower / buckwheat is cheap also. The hubam is kinda pricey, but it has been in bloom since July 2nd and its still going strong. The phacelia and rapeseed never did much and the vetch was kind of underwhelming, esp for the cost of those.

So my game plan is this:
Bush hog early NOV
followed by plowing
followed by discing
followed by cultipacker
then seed Hubam, buckwheat, and camelina/ mustard.
and cultipack again.

early february I will reseed the hubam and the buckwheat again
fertilize, possibly more mustard
cultipack

early march I will reseed the buckwheat

early april i will reseed the buckwheat and seed the sunflower and fertilize again

In June I will seed more clover and more buckwheat and fertilize again.

The idea is to have the field bloom with desirable nectar sources as much as possible. does this sound like a solid plan? too much? not enough?

The sunflower will be in the middle because I cant drive over the stalks like the rest of the stuff and to my understanding, I can drive over the rest and it will just stand back up. so i will have to broadcast fertilize from the edges of the sunflower.

I still need a plow. Im looking at a 3 bottom semi mount. are they all the same for the most part? did the become much more user friendly with newer models? I see an oliver 4240 but I want something relevant too... will plowing kill everything growing now? will it prevent seeds from growing that dropped?
I want reseeding of everything I grow.

I have a 5' 3pt disc, but I'm looking for at least an 8' wheel disc, but hats not dire as I can make due.

I may still seed with the ATV and the gandy 48" drop seeder and look at getting a broadcast spreader early next year. The gandy did great i think, plus I have my settings

and I need a cultipacker. The roller was just not enough to do any good.

So whats my path forward guys?
Thanks,
Phil

sorry for the book....
 
Are you in the Southern Hemisphere, or in the Deep South of USA to be doing any of this in November, February? I?m typically deep under snow those months....

Paul
 
SW ohio. Typically getting cold but not no snow yet. Last year i removed my honey supers oct 31st. I plan on starting as soon as i remove them
 
Oliver made some of the best plows. Newer plows have taller frames and more space between bottoms so more trash can flow through. Older plows like to plug up with
cornstalks, sunflower stems, straw, etc. that is only big difference.

A plow will put a lot of seed too deep to regrow. Plows go 6-9 inches deep typically.

A disk would be better for that, a finishing disk is designed to go about 4-5 inches deep.

A harrow goes an inch or two deep, but can?t penetrate hard ground or work in plant trash at all, only in worked soil.

Most seeds want to be a 1/2 to 2 inches deep, some can stand being deeper.

So a plow will bury half the seeds too deep, a disk might bury 1/4 the seeds too deep, a harrow Wong do enough in hard ground to do anything.

Often a crop produces many more seeds than you would want to regrow, so the plow might not be a bad thing.

Paul
 
(quoted from post at 21:46:03 09/08/19) Oliver made some of the best plows. Newer plows have taller frames and more space between bottoms so more trash can flow through. Older plows like to plug up with
cornstalks, sunflower stems, straw, etc. that is only big difference.

A plow will put a lot of seed too deep to regrow. Plows go 6-9 inches deep typically.

A disk would be better for that, a finishing disk is designed to go about 4-5 inches deep.

A harrow goes an inch or two deep, but can?t penetrate hard ground or work in plant trash at all, only in worked soil.

Most seeds want to be a 1/2 to 2 inches deep, some can stand being deeper.

So a plow will bury half the seeds too deep, a disk might bury 1/4 the seeds too deep, a harrow Wong do enough in hard ground to do anything.

Often a crop produces many more seeds than you would want to regrow, so the plow might not be a bad thing.

Paul

I may only plow 1st year or if I change field layout orientation then. I will welcome all the reseeding I can get I imagine for the bees.
 
If buckwheat gets even the slightest bit of frost, it dies. Planting it any time before mid april would seem foolish, mid may would be better.

Buckwheat does make great feed for them though, but many find the honey too strong tasting, much like molasses. We plant it late summer for them to top off the deeps with food for winter.
 
We don't usually get that many windows of dry weather in the spring in Ohio to do that many rounds of planting generally the farmers are all waiting out the rain in early April then they gat a week or so of dry weather then it starts raining again. Just a thought.
 
Feel free to give me a call or shoot me an email. I have a wheel disc and cultipacker as well as 2 bottom plow that I'd part with pretty cheap. I'm in S.E. Ohio along the Ohio river so we're not too far apart. Phone 740 nine nine 2-2128. Keith
 
I am retired and plant hay crops kinda like you are proposing. We have a sprayer on a side by side. 60 gal tank 7.5 gal min. Pump. Single spray tip. 30 ft. Actually covers 27 ft. With a light bar gps. Thing is if you spray with Roundup and 2 4 D. Two weeks later a good wheel disk will, on the 2 nd pass cut it 4" plus deep. Then I cultipack it maybe 3 times with teeth down gradually every pass raising them. Then broadcasting seed with Fertilizer plus pellet lime. Then cultipacking it again with teeth just tickling. Have a 10ft JD cultipacker. With transport wheels. You are on the right track. Hope this helps.
 
The path forward??????

1. Patience one Buzzard said to the other. Other Buzzard replied: Patience Heel, I'm going to go out and keil something.

2. "Don't mess with mother nature"....big lightening bolt with a big boom appears on the TV screen.......oleo commercial on TV years ago.

You have to wait for the crop and you can't control the weather! That's what I learned in my 40 + years of attempting to learn how to farm!
 

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