The Feed Crop, Grain, Forage and Soil Health Thread

[Southside]

There must be some significant variety with sunnies. When we planted them for seed I used a high oleic variety and any the deer ate came back with multiple, smaller heads to compensate for the loss.

T Raptor are a very aggressive tillage raddish, the grazing varieties have less off flavor to them along with a lot less impact on milk flavor. Definitely have to be careful with that.

[Firewoodjoe]

I'm still waiting for it to freeze hard so I can put cows on sorghum pasture. There's still a lot of juice in the stalks and it's not worth the poison risk. It was 28 here a few times. I can't believe it's still that green down low. 

[moodnacreek]

Whatever these are theyre frost hardy.  29 last nght.

Same here, same night, I thought you would be warmer. We where frost free through Oct. , same last year.

[newoodguy78]

I'm still waiting for it to freeze hard so I can put cows on sorghum pasture. There's still a lot of juice in the stalks and it's not worth the poison risk. It was 28 here a few times. I can't believe it's still that green down low.

Please correct me if I'm wrong but I thought risks of prussic acid and nitrate poisoning increased after a hard killing frost. It's my understanding the leaves carry the highest levels. Or is there a waiting period and then the risk is not there? I have zero first hand experience grazing sorghum and speak strictly from reading about it.
I am very interested in it though and trying to learn. 

[Southside]

You are correct that the prussic acid issue increases after a hard frost, and during drought stress, but in the case of frost it disappates a few days after and becomes safe to graze again.  In the case of drought stress the plant is safe after you can see the drought stress has passed and the plant looks healthy and vibrant again.  We got our first hard frost (28F) night before last, so what is left of my Johnson Grass will be go again by Monday at the latest.  

The sorguhums are also nitrate accumulators so you want to be careful about growing it on heavily fertilized ground.  

[mike_belben]

Whatever these are theyre frost hardy.  29 last nght.

Same here, same night, I thought you would be warmer. We where frost free through Oct. , same last year.

Though we are pretty far south, we are on the top of the plateau @2000ft in a little pocket of kentucky climate so just a bit to my east and west are more expected southern temp extremes in summer while ive got the cooler end of the spectrum in winter.   Just off the plateau spring leaves will be fully formed when mine are just baby leaves.  


We are on a rift sort of zone in terms of southern and northern weather clash, hence the tornados.  Wind from the south gives us abnormal warmth and vice versa. Once in a while the winds shift direction and the temp goes up and down quite a bit in a short span.  Jacket on off on off.

[mike_belben]

Shifting gears here i wanna share some results before i forget them.  In agriculture and the medical fields youve got conflicting sides.  Medical is eastern vs western, holistic vs pharmaceutical.  Agriculture is conventional vs regenerative i guess.  With so many credentialed experts that all sound legit you cant know who to believe until you try it and see for yourself.  


One of the small test plots im working on, call it bed 3, i quit mowing and let it get long then crimped it down to stimulate a high herd density.  Did this 2x a few months apart like a natural herd but i added no fertility or microbial life the way stock would.  my eyeball gauge said the soil quality did improve a bit.  Certainly crimping did not degrade anything and regrowth was fine. Elsewhere ive had crimping rough plants and briars allow finer grasses to come in.


Conventional ag says plow everything, regenerative ag leans toward dont plow anything.  So i plowed the entire bed to find out.  I was willing to cause a small setback to get the truth. a few days later i hand seeded a 3 way cover crop of winter wheat, austrian winter pea and crimson clover.  By then the surface had already crusted a bit and the seed just sat on top so i realize its my fault on the seeding delay, i shoulda done them back to back. But the soil crust (among many things) is still a huge detriment of tillage.

I ran the seed in with the 4 wheeler a bit the day i seeded but the winter pea was just too large to get incorporated.  Looked like a total loss a few days later so i ran an atv disc over it real fast trying to fling some dirt on the seed and salvage what i could by getting some soil contact. This is like a hand raking, very topical, it only scratches crusted dirt. The disc is a featherweight toy that doesnt sink in.

 A small corner that i couldnt effectively disc i lightly mulched with stump grindings by hand flinging from a wheelbarrow so it rained down on top like snow. Up to an inch thick at most in some spots.  

I guess its been a week and the disced up, bare soil side had almost zero germination. The seeds are sprouting, but taproots unable to break the crust to get rooted, and soon to die on the surface.  

The side that i mulched has a very good germination rate at a glance.  It appears to be comparable to the 2 other beds that i sowed the same day i tilled and raked up to a soft surface-  either mulched with grass and drove in to firm, or cultipacked with a full 15gallon smooth sided drum to firm without any mulching, just bare dirt.  I think that all 3 methods have shown to be acceptable so far based on pretty comparable germination.

Now to see which bed gets the highest growth before going dormant or which delays dormancy the longest.



Since the bare dirt portion of bed 3 seemed pretty doomed, i mixed up a small seed blend that is easy to incorporate, mostly brassica, hand raked a corner the size of a few queen matresses and raked that seed in.  Then i covered the entirety of bed 3 in stump grindings to see if the 3way seed mix could be salvaged from certain doom by woody mulchings more likely to encourage fungi than my regular compost which is probably bacterially dominated.

[Al_Smith]

Speaking of seeds .Usually I have a couple of bird feeders out in winter time .Come spring time I get some interesting types of stuff growing under them from the birds being sloppy .Maybe I could blame the squirrels . 

[mike_belben]

I made bird feeders for my old buddy up the road thats always bringing us food, i think hes 83.  I jacked his house up yesterday actually and forgot to bring home the sprouted greens from under the feeders for my chickens like i usually do.  Glad you reminded me.  The more i pick it the more it produces. 

[mike_belben]

Youve gotta see the "check strip" in this vid 2 minutes in and how many overwinter weeds no longer need to be sprayed down to plant spring soybean.  Also i keep hearing "the haney test" measures the value of organic matter and saves a ton on fertilizers compared to university soil analysis. Shown in this one.

Treating the Farm as an Ecosystem Part 2 with Russell Hedrick - YouTube



In this next video at minute 30 ray archiletta explains how tilling a cover crop in causes a bacterial decomposition (and crusting and heavy nitrogen losses) while rolling it over the top causes a fungal decomposition with no losses. 

Soil & Diverse Cover Crops Final Parts UNCUT - YouTube


I downloaded the soilweb app he recommends and it just changed my life.  I was gonna build a house on my best soil and try to clear and crop some of my worst.  I have about 1.5 acres at my back edge adjoining the pasture behind me, that is 85% lily loam with a bit less acid, more depth and double the average organic matter because of its flatness, it doesnt runoff.  classified as "all areas are prime farmland" by US geological maps, plus another big patch across the street thats been highgraded senseless. 

  Without this gps satelite viewer app there was no way id be able to find that patch of mine, ive read the static maps.  Theyre too broad.  In my area only little pockets fall into prime classes and theyre only about 5% of the region total.  Most is 1.4%om and this is 3% 

 What i cant find right now is the photo of growth rate differences in different F:B ratio soils i saw Last week, it was incredible.  Same day potted seedlings at different F:B ratios.  From runt to bumper crop. Microbes are what make soluble nutrients available. Purchasing fertilizer for a crop planted in the wrong ratio soils is just money down the drain.

[Southside]

Your bird feeder discovery is why 2/3rds of our birds ration is a whole seed product. The other 1/3 is a non GMO complete mash that is only fed under cover. 

[mike_belben]

Are you sprouting the seed? Or do you mean they pass it and plant it for you?

I have fed quite a bit of whole corn and wheat seed that gets wasted.  Every other day i go into my compost bins and get half a bucket of broken down sawdust/food scrap mix and a handful of soldier fly larvae and toss it in the coop in different areas.  They scratch it in and cover the waste seed.  I think were about 3" deep now and im eager to see what theyve planted for me when i move the coop. 

[Southside]

No we don't sprout it, when cleaning out a brooder the larger hens will dig through the litter to find what is sprouted in there.  Just feed it whole, what they don't eat gets scrached in and eventually sprouts up and something eats it.  Generally they aren't big on straight wheat I find.  Seems the best consumption is a mix of millett, wheat, safflower, sunflower, fine cracked corn, and some milo.  

[mike_belben]

Thats exactly whats in the local grown 7grain scratch i get from a mill in town.  I ferment that stuff and added in winter wheat since i had to buy a sack of it and wont live long enough to plant it all at this rate. 

[Firewoodjoe]

You are correct that the prussic acid issue increases after a hard frost, and during drought stress, but in the case of frost it disappates a few days after and becomes safe to graze again.  In the case of drought stress the plant is safe after you can see the drought stress has passed and the plant looks healthy and vibrant again.  We got our first hard frost (28F) night before last, so what is left of my Johnson Grass will be go again by Monday at the latest.  

The sorguhums are also nitrate accumulators so you want to be careful about growing it on heavily fertilized ground.  

So do you think it's safe now that it was frosted a few times and it's all paper brown this morning. Some was green yet towards the bottom yesterday but not now. It's old Christmas tree ground and I only put 40 pounds of 12-12-12 on it just because it was on sale so nitrogen should be no issues. 

[Southside]

My rule of thumb is 3 days after a killing frost. Always better to wait if unsure. 

[newoodguy78]

 

 Mike if this makes the ears on my corn so heavy I can't lift the bags I'm calling you :D
1/2 composted horse manure 1/2 sawdust and rotting bark. Spread right on top of my cover crop didn't till it in.

[mike_belben]

I hope it pulls the stalks over and you hafta grow them on pallets.  ;D


Dont forget to wizz on it.. Or spray something sugary. 

[newoodguy78]

How'd you know what I was doing behind the spreader tire from where you're at?  :D

[Southside]

Given any thought to just composting the horse and skipping several steps?  :D

[mike_belben]

Not to be a critic or anything but ya might wanna get a bungee or something to keep the remotes out of the driveshaft. 

[newoodguy78]

Given any thought to just composting the horse and skipping several steps?  :D

That's a question I will not answer in public  ;D

[moodnacreek]

I hope it pulls the stalks over and you hafta grow them on pallets.  ;D


Dont forget to wizz on it.. Or spray something sugary.

There is a difference.

[Tom King]

Monsanto is coming for you.

[newoodguy78]

Send em   ;D