Discing to kill weeds

srmtrap

Member
Hey all…so I have read that one can avoid spraying to kill weeds and grass by discing and doing it again 2 weeks later. In fact it is in the QDMA book on plots. Well I did that with stunning unsuccess and failure. Plowed it up and did so again two weeks later and have barely made a dent. Fields look almost the same. What am I missing? I burned all that time and money and have a bunch of seed sitting here and I have no clue now what to do? Any help would be appreciated and thank you


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Thank you. Clearly not deep enough. Probably just a few inches. It is the lowest I can go with my disc. I have my 3 point on the lowest setting. But your point is interesting. I just hate to spray. Just worry about what it does to the soil and animals etc long term. But clearly this doesn’t work


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Has this ground been tilled before? If it hasn’t and it’s very hard ground and a lot of sod, discing won’t do you much good. You need to do some deep tillage with a plow or chisel. Flipping all that sod down under so it doesn’t grow back. Then plant a weed suppressing crop like buckwheat or cereal Rye. After that and the ground has been loosened and “worked” then discing will work to break the ground up enough for plantings. I know all the pros of no till but, I think deep tillage once in a while is ok if needed. Gets that organic material a foot under and you get a foot of nice loose soil. Sure you kill a few earth worms but certainly not all of them.
 
Discing to me just churned up the seed bank. I’m a spray, throw and mower and get good plots with as little effort as I can muster. A rye/clover mix is my best weed suppressant. I have not tried big seeds like soybeans or sunflowers this way though. Did get some field peas to grow.


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It also depends on what you're discing. If it's a grass that spreads via rhizome, tillage alone probably isn't gonna do it.
 
Discing just fires up a seed bank full of lambsquarter, quick weed and grass for me….I’m stuck with for corn and beans (I broadcast). I’m working hard on trying to convert other planting the throw and mow but with only limited success….
 
I'll never understand how exposing the seed bank once or twice will kill weeds. Maybe if you do it weekly for a summer, you'll put a dent in it. There are thousands of years worth of seed in the ground, and mother nature sure is stubborn.
 
My next door neighbor has 600 acres of row crop. It is spray several time a year with who knows what and disked several time - there has been a year or two it has layer fallow because of wet weather - it grows a jungle of weeds. Not sure you can get rid of plants by disking - you can set them back or change the composition.

i have not had great success with tnm. If I had ground I absolutely wanted to be a successful food plot, I would mow as low as I could right now, and then spray gly a few weeks later after growth resumed. Let that die back and disk to prepare a nice seed bed, and then plant winter rye and a perennial clover mix in the fall. Change the composition from “weeds” to what you want.
 
I’m another that can’t throw and mow, but it’s because of hogs. Tiny seeds like clover are the only kinds I can spread on top of the ground. I disc every spring and fall but it’s not to kill weeds, I take care of that with gly if necessary. I also don’t disc very deep at all, just deep enough to get my seeds in a groove and covered up. I plant my fall crop, which is wheat and sometimes MRC or Daikon radish, thick enough that a weed doesn’t have a chance. :) I try to do the same with spring crops but I’m not always successful. The rainfall and heat both have a bearing on what I can successfully grow in the spring. Our summers get hot quickly most years and the rain stops like turning off the spigot. That’s what happened this year just about the time I got stuff planted. I looked at my buckwheat plots last week though, and not much grass or weeds in them. If you are starting a new plot then kill it with gly is my advice. The longer you plant it the less gly you’ll have to use, at least that’s my experience. Good luck !
 
You probably don't know all the good you did by doing this. Disturbance promotes weeds and forbes most of which like ragweed are 21+% protein. Higher then anything you can plant. Listen too some podcasts with Dr Craig Harper and it'll change your mind on having to have clean nice looking food plots.
 
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