Broadcasting Millet, Oats, Peas, Buckwheat and Milo, now with PICS!!!

J

jaytee

New member
What do you guys think the chances are of this working? It will be going into an old plot area that was mostly foxtail and weeds. I mowed it down to about 6 or 8 inches yesterday and thought I'd let 'er green back up a bit then hit it with RU, then broadcast the mix into the dead stubble/litter and then roll it with the culitpacker. Am I wasting my time? I thought I might save a little money and time if I can get by without working the ground. I know a friend of mine did this with beans and it worked great. What say you?
 
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Jaytee, it's always about ground prep and seed to soil contact. if you don't get good seed to soil contact it won't work. If you got a good kill on it and waited a couple weeks you could disk it or drag it to work up a little dirt to help that. If you had a lot of foxtail in there last year you may need to plant with a herbicide tolerant mix like milo, corn, etc.
 
I think you'll be fine with the millet, oats, and buckwheat. I've done it very similar to what you are describing and had success because those seeds don't need to get very deep.

I'm not so sure about the milo - I've always worked the ground before and after broadcasting to get the seed into the soil a bit.

I have no experience with peas, so I'll refrain from commenting on those. :)
 
I think that the guy's are on the right track, getting the soil/seed contact will be almost impossible on unworked ground. At a minimum, a good harrowing. Disking would be better. One of the 4-6 foot harrows behind the ATV will work. Don't have an ATV, garden tractor will do. Most farm stores sell the roll up kind of harrows. Almost any farm sale will have the old static sections.
 
It can work. I've done something simialr in a small patch of milo and sunflower, just as an experiment, and it worked a lot better than I ever imagined the milo actually grew like crazy surprisingly enough. I got a bit lucky with plenty of moisture right after I planted but nonetheless it worked quite well. As long as you aren't sinking a bunch of money into seed etc. give it a try and see what happens, not much harm in trying as long as you realize it may not work. If you want more predictable and reliable results or you are planting a large area and putting alot of $$ into seed then work the ground first.
 
Been about 10 days since I planted an acre of Buckwheat. I'm out of town, but my son say's it's up everywhere.

First I pulled my cultivator behind the tractor to tear it up - was bush hogging it last year.
Next I ran the disk over it - then a cultipacker roller, behind 4 wheeler, to get it leveled out.

Spread a 50lb bag of Buckwheat seed over it. Pulled the cultipacker back over it again. There was seed laying out on the ground, but it was all touching the dirt. Got a good rain a few days later. Oh and the horses walked all over it, until it started sprouting and I had him move them to another pasture. I think the horses might be the trick.

We're experimenting with my deer food plot early, before moving on to the Duck Ponds & etc.. I'm told the Buckwheat can compete with weeds, grass, and etc.
 
Well I went out today while it wasn't raining and got most of my seed on the ground. I broadcast the oats, millet, peas, and buckwheat. I left the milo out of this mix, I think I'm gonna plant it in a different area. I also found some older bags of foodplot seed and some more oats that I also broadcast into some other idle areas and if it comes up fine, if not no big loss. I'll post some pics here in a bit of the area.
 
Here's a few pics of the area I'm working with. This first pic is an area between two stands of NWSG that I left just for this purpose of planting different plots or to just let go fallow every few years. The NWSG stand is a little ragged, especially the area to the right but really for what I'm doing this for (quail and wabbits) its probably about perfect.
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This next pic is just a close up of the stubble/litter I'm broadcasting into. I wish I'd cut it higher but we'll see how it works.
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And finally the tools of the trade, sans the little agri-fab pull behind spreader I used to fling the seed. I ran the packer over the area once and I think what I'm gonna do is after we get all this rain were supposed to over the next 3 days or so is to run over it again while the ground is nice and soft and give the seed a final push into the ground. We'll see how it works.
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Maybe it's just the pictures, but your "dead" stubble and litter doesn't look dead to me. It's also a little more litter than I had anticipated. The buckwheat/oats/millet will probably do alright, but not as good as it could have. The peas and sorghum will probably be very sparse (just my guess).
 
The green stuff in the pic was just sprayed 3 days or so prior to this pic so it may not look it but it will be dead within a week or so. We had a pretty good round of hail and rain last night so I'm thinking that it should've knocked the seed down into the stubble even further.
 
Well I just got back in from running the cultipacker over the food plots for the last time. We've had 2 inches or so of rain so far and the ground is pretty soft, soft enough to see the grooves left by the cultipacker even in the stubble/litter. I think this is gonna work fine and I'll be sure to keep you all posted on how its coming along.
 
Well we've been battling the heat down here in Arkansas. Buckwheat burned up.
So we got the tractor out and reseeded. This is in a slough we'll flood in October.

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We've been watering the corn - by flooding a few inches once a week at this pond.

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Corn is doing real well at this pond as well.

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Ducks! The corn looks like it's around the pond, but it's actually in the pond. The corn just gets taller cause it's closer to the water pump. The deepest part of the pond was too wet to seed back in the spring. But that's the landing zone for the ducks anyway. We have 2 dozen duck holes - 1/2 of them we help the ducks by planting some kind of food sources. Oh don't get me wrong there are some nice buck tracks in that pond right now.

We hunt deer at these corn planted pond also, but we have more deer oriented food plots nearby. Next to the pond, last picture, is my dove field. Between the pond and field I had gravel dumped like a driveway. Then we put up a powerline - haha - the only mistake is my partner used real electrical lines, so the weight of the lines has bent the 4x4 poles and the lines are almost touching the ground. He wanted to run a water pump / sprinkler off it. I'm going to stretch a cable between two distant tree's (one on each side of the field / parallel to the gravel drive) for the doves to land on before they gravel. Got to help them doves as well, you know.
 
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Wow that is awesome. I suppose when you flood it the ducks are right at ear height and go nuts in there. I know the couple of times we have been able to hunt a flooded corn field we took home quite a few ducks.
 
Yes - exactly. It's pretty fun - during the season we have our pumps on auto timers so they kick on at certain times after dark. We don't won't them ducks getting too fat or eating all the corn. They need to be flying in for a carbohyrdate filled breakfast. Having pumps is a real advantage in several ways. When the water freezes on the surrounding duck leases - guess what we do one pond at a time... hahaha
 
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