Planting Oats and Clover

We were late getting this crop in, caused mainly by problems getting our State permit to spread turkey litter followed by untimely rains which made it impossible to do field work. The delay, while not ideal,  is not a fatal problem. Oats do best when they can set full heads of grain before the hottest part of the summer - meaning that they need to be planted early for optimum results. That said, all 145 acres (60 ha) that we are transitioning to organic production (a 36 month process) are now planted.

One of the three fields, seen below on the right hand side of a photo I took of the monitor screen in the cab, has a lot of wet spots.

(click on any picture to make it bigger) 

We would like to have drain tile installed to help dry up some of the wet (showing up in the above image as white places) spots. A topographical map (below) shows that the most likely route is south, crossing the neighbors property a short distance, before ending up in a drainage ditch that passes through a small cluster of trees on the neighbors land. 

The piece we own is the western most parcel, colored in blue.

 

In the meantime, the oats will be harvested then the red clover will continue growing, overwintering and then returning next year. The clover will be mowed with the residue remaining on top of the soil, feeding microbes. There is the chance that I will try to harvest some of the clover seed in the fall of 2025. The following year, 2026, will be organic corn.

To give you some idea about the scale of this, we planted about 14,000 lbs (6300 kg) of oats and 1400  lbs (630 kg) of medium red clover on 145 acres (60 ha) over 3 days.  The average historical yield for this variety of oats is 100 bushels, or 3200 lbs, per acre (3600 kg/ha).  If all goes well, by the end of July we'll harvest about 460,000 lbs (210,000 kg) of food grade conventional oats.  I'm still trying to find a buyer for food grade oats. I can always sell them as animal feed, but the price is about half.

While these numbers are big, the reality is that we are a smallish farm, at least by the standards in the midwestern US.

Cover Crop After the Wheat: How Does it Look?

After combining the hard red spring wheat in mid-August we drilled in a cover crop of daikon radish, purple top turnips, winter peas, sorghum sudan, wheat, and sunflowers. In addition there were a lot of viable seeds blown out the back of the combine.

When I drilled the wheat in the spring I also underseeded it with "Frosty" berseem clover, with the idea that the clover would grow under the wheat and then take off once the wheat was harvested. The clover would be my cover crop, smothering weeds, fixing nitrogen, and be winter killed, saving tillage ahead of next years soybeans. Unfortunately the weather didn't cooperate. We got a little bit of moisture right after the wheat and clover were drilled, enough to germinate the clover which was essentially dropped onto and then pressed into the soil. We didn't get any rain for about 3 weeks and so most of the clover died out, allowing the preexisting foxtail to take over. The wheat was drilled about 1.5" deep, into moisture, so it grew well without any more rain.

That led me to drill in a cover crop as detailed above. 

We have a lot of compaction on these particular fields. The turnip and radish in the cover crop will put down a large tap root which should help to break the hard pan up.  With the same goal in mind we hired a neighbor to disc-rip the ground about 24" deep. We're hoping that both of these things will help break up the hard pan, a problem that leads to a lot of foxtail, which likes "wet" compacted soils.

 It looks ok; while it's growing nicely, and should continue to do so well beyond the first hard frost, the stand is really uneven. I have some ideas on why that is -

The grain drill isn't meant to put in a low seeding rate through the main box without putting in half speed gears. With these gears the drive shaft turns at half its regular speed, this lets you double the width of the seed cups, allowing for better seed flow through the drill. I bought a set, used, but turns out they were for a slightly different serial number. By the time I got the right part there wasn't enough time to spend on making a tool that would let me install the gears. 

Short version - tough to put a small amount of differently sized seeds through a small slit. End result - ok. Next time will be better.

Taking out the smaller of these two gears is difficult because there is a roll pin that is driven through the gear and shaft. Trying to get a punch perpendicular to the shaft while leaving enough room to swing a hammer is a challenge. I'm going to try to use an air hammer with a 1/4" punch, that might be the way to get it done.

The more I think about it I'm pretty sure the air hammer will do the trick. It won't get worked on until next spring, something to look forward to I guess.