MarkDarvin
Well-Known Member
I go solid stand alfalfa with the oats. You'll end up with some bald spots, and it'll start to thin after a year or two and you'll have room to add clovers after.
Maybe add chicory.
Maybe add chicory.
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Keystone Krops
- Thread starter Mennoniteman
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Mennoniteman
Well-Known Member
Our normal late winter work, I'm out doing TSI this morning, targeting some small saplings, mostly beech, honeysuckle, ironwood, red maple, gum, paulownia, and a few other invasives, to improve our stand of tulip poplar, oak, cherry, and hickory. Tulip poplar pays the bills around here, so that's our number one tree to propagate. Battery saw and sprayer with 1/3 triclopyr & 2/3 diesel fuel, cut them off and small squirt of herbicide on the stump. Basal spray is easier but this is a 100% kill with less herbicide.
Native Hunter
Well-Known Member
Looks like you are doing a good job. Have you ever tried straight Gly on stumps?
George
Well-Known Member
You are killing the stump, why not just hack and squirt?
who's buying the tulips?
G
Mennoniteman
Well-Known Member
I've never used straight gly, I would think that it would be overkill, if I'd try gly I think I'd mix it with 50% water. I'm not sure if gly mixes well with diesel fuel, but the diesel fuel is a big factor in my mix, it mixes well, gives penetration, and won't wash off. Triclopyr is specific for woody brush, and is better than gly for basal spraying, when I'm out in the woods working I travel light, no extra battery or chainsaw gas, so I cut and stump spray bigger trees until my saw quits then I finish off the rest of my sprayer tank basal spraying smaller stuff.
Mennoniteman
Well-Known Member
I find that my battery chainsaw is easier to use than hacking, mostly because my reach is better. If I don't want to drop the trees because there's no room, before hacking with a machete of hatchet, I'll still use the battery chainsaw to hack the tree, to me it's just less effort.
As you can see in the back of the second picture above, most of my timberland is thick due to our regular timbering intervals, wading into that stuff with just a hatchet is being under armed, a chainsaw gives the ability to cut your way through some stuff.
Weaber Lumber in Lebanon PA makes a large amount of the paint grade house trim for the big box lumber yards, and all they use is poplar wood. You can take a tour of their facility, they have the fastest flying saw in the world, which is very interesting to watch. Poplar trees in this area are worth more than oak. But not as valuable as walnut.
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Mountain Man
New Member
I have a plot that is very thck Ladino, I have a 6ft flail mower and would like to spin winter wheat into it in August, I understand it is not very often sucessfull, any thoughts or recomendations. I am in Renfrew County Ont. so will be planting around Aug 10th due to the early frost in this neck of the woods.
Mennoniteman
Well-Known Member
I'm a bit further south than you, so maybe the same principles don't apply there, but planting small grain into clover is very successful here, and I also consider it very necessary to balance carbon and nitrogen in the soil.
First of all, the choice of grain, in the spring I prefer oats or barley, in the fall I prefer rye or winter wheat, but generally rye over the wheat since rye is easier to grow with less fertilizer, and I feel rye has a small edge in winter hardiness. Do people farm any rye in your area?
Now, to plant into thick ladino in late summer; the seed must be in contact with the soil to germinate, and after germination it must have some direct sunshine to start growing. The only way to achieve this is to broadcast the seeds into the clover first so the seeds shake down to the soil, then mow the clover on top of the seeds right away. Mowing the ladino at about 4" high lets nothing there but stems, allowing the sunlight to the ground for about 2 weeks until the clover grows leaves again, which is long enough for the grain to establish and outgrow the clover. In your area I think you could even do this as early as August 1st. I'd spin the grain at 200 lb to the acre and the next spring I'd let it grow to maturity, then mow the straw into the clover. The straw is what you want, it's organic matter and fertilizer for clover.
Just spinning seed into ladino isn't going to work well at all, it's the mowing after the seeding that makes this work. @MarkDarvin is the expert on growing grain in the north, so maybe he will chime in here. Of course, he will tell you to only plant barley
and like I said, he's the northern authority, so maybe do an experiment, half the plot in barley and half in wheat...
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Mountain Man
New Member
No one is growing rye in this area but winter wheat is a big crop in this area, the rotation here seams to be wheat, corn then beans, my plot is not near any ag area it is 300 acres surounded by crown land so deer in the area go wild for clover. I will spray Cleth in the spring for grass which is getting too thick for my liking and was hoping to TM winter wheat in early Aug.I'm a bit further south than you, so maybe the same principles don't apply there, but planting small grain into clover is very successful here, and I also consider it very necessary to balance carbon and nitrogen in the soil.
First of all, the choice of grain, in the spring I prefer oats or barley, in the fall I prefer rye or winter wheat, but generally rye over the wheat since rye is easier to grow with less fertilizer, and I feel rye has a small edge in winter hardiness. Do people farm any rye in your area?
Now, to plant into thick ladino in late summer; the seed must be in contact with the soil to germinate, and after germination it must have some direct sunshine to start growing. The only way to achieve this is to broadcast the seeds into the clover first so the seeds shake down to the soil, then mow the clover on top of the seeds right away. Mowing the ladino at about 4" high lets nothing there but stems, allowing the sunlight to the ground for about 2 weeks until the clover grows leaves again, which is long enough for the grain to establish and outgrow the clover. In your area I think you could even do this as early as August 1st. I'd spin the grain at 200 lb to the acre and the next spring I'd let it grow to maturity, then mow the straw into the clover. The straw is what you want, it's organic matter and fertilizer for clover.
Just spinning seed into ladino isn't going to work well at all, it's the mowing after the seeding that makes this work. @MarkDarvin is the expert on growing grain in the north, so maybe he will chime in here. Of course, he will tell you to only plant barley
MarkDarvin
Well-Known Member
Ladino is an awesome clover, but it's hard to get it to play well with others. @Mennoniteman is the guy that can get grains up in perennial clovers, and he's done it on the regular. I have struggled for years trying to get grains and established clover to play together after the establishment year. When I had ladino, it was often so thick, the seed never made it to the ground. It laid up in the air many inches above ground tangled in the green spaghetti that is healthy ladino.
I've since adapted my clover strategy to work with biennial clovers only (far as clovers go anyway). Realize, that is an equipment limitation on my part. I don't have a mower, drill, or tractor. I've found all the biennials (yellow sweet clover, balansa, and red) all finish up and dry off around August 1st. Then I just broadcast cereals (winter forage triticale) into them, and press flat with my cultipacker.
It worked so good this last year it caused a failure for me. 6" of heavy duff laid flat with all my grain under it, then 1.5" of rain the same day, I had what seemed like 125% germination on a seeding rate that was already way too high because I had drought concerns going into it.
I've since adapted my clover strategy to work with biennial clovers only (far as clovers go anyway). Realize, that is an equipment limitation on my part. I don't have a mower, drill, or tractor. I've found all the biennials (yellow sweet clover, balansa, and red) all finish up and dry off around August 1st. Then I just broadcast cereals (winter forage triticale) into them, and press flat with my cultipacker.
It worked so good this last year it caused a failure for me. 6" of heavy duff laid flat with all my grain under it, then 1.5" of rain the same day, I had what seemed like 125% germination on a seeding rate that was already way too high because I had drought concerns going into it.
Mennoniteman
Well-Known Member
Lovely pics, that's a nice looking plot! And yes, Clethodim is definitely key to growing nice ladino. Sometimes I alternate with Imazethapyr 2SL if I have persistent weeds that Clethodim doesn't kill. But Imazethapyr also kills grains, and has some toxicity carryover.
@MarkDarvin I think that my success rate in starting grains in established clover might hinge a lot on my species choices of rye and oats. Rye is almost a weed, and germinates like one, there's plenty of farmers who have grown rye on their pickup bed after neglecting to sweep off spilled seeds, and doing a rye throw n mow in August has rarely failed me.
Here's a trick that my friend does that also helps establish a throw n mow, he broadcasts the winter wheat, then uses his Ventrac tractor with a front mower to mow the plot, and at the same time drags a tractor supply chain and tooth tooth drag behind the Ventrac in the same pass, the teeth shake the seed down to the ground and rip up the thatch, exposing the soil. His germination rates go way up using this method, if you can figure out a similar procedure using the equipment you have?
As Mark knows, my favorite trick with clover is to drill oats into the plot in early spring just as the clover is starting to wake up. March 15 is my earliest target date for this, up to April 15, zone 6b. The spring oats are a cheap clover fertilizer (straw), a weed suppressor, and a soil balancer.
So, growing clover for deer is almost more fun than a hunter should be allowed to have, and cheaper and easier than any other plot crop, and if mixed with fall grain, a clover/grain plot becomes almost a year round food plot in zone 6b, totally unbeatable by anything except the expensive stuff like corn and beans, which are only great winter crops after there's a foot of snow when all else has disappeared, but do nothing in early summer when bucks are growing antlers and does are nursing future trophy deer that need a healthy start, and the entire herd needs protein.
I love to play around with planting corn, beans, radishes and brassicas, and this year I'm going to try alfalfa for the first time, and sometimes I interseed sorghum, buckwheat, millet, sugar beets etc as the spirit leads, but my smaller shooting plots always all have my goto staple of ladino and fall rye as the base, with the other stuff sometimes thrown in as candy.
Do you want to make a killer early archery spot? Take a 100 lb bag of oats from the feed mill and go 20 yards out from your hunting spot a month before the season opener and broadcast the seed around really heavy into the clover by hand in a 30 foot circle and see what happens!
Ok, I'm beginning to ramble, but did I remember to mention that ladino has 20-30% crude protein, and cereal rye and winter wheat both have 10-15% protein?
Mountain Man
New Member
I was thinking that the roller on the back of the mower might help press the seeds down, however looking at this picture from last year I'm not sure where the seeds will end up, thinking of turning around and mowing again immediatly in the opposit direction and if that don,t work I guess my little plan of winter wheat for deer in late fall will need some serious thought. I am in zone 4 so we get too much snow to consider winter plots for deer as they go to thier winter yards. however if the wheat takes I will not cut it till Aug next year so it will provide food and fawn cover.
Mennoniteman
Well-Known Member
I don't think mowing twice will help much. Am I seeing a lot of grass in that picture? The grass is going to be a major problem in establishing wheat in ladino. Plus the fact the deer have difficulty digesting grass.
If you could get rid of the grass most of the ladino you mow will be dried and shriveled up by the time the wheat is germinated.
Grass is a common enemy of all food plots and works against you with anything that you are trying to do with the plot.
Some habitat people say that you can have a combination plot with clover and grass, but I call bs on that idea, that's not habitat management, that's giving up and saying what grows, grows, and it's supposedly all deer food. But it's not. Saying that a clover plot can coexist with grass is like saying that one can coexist with a few mice in the house. It's going to be a miserable existence.
Number one, you've got to spray your plot with clethodim in the spring when the grass is exactly between 2 and 3" tall. 10-16 oz per acre, with 16 oz per acre of crop oil, and 48 oz per acre of ammonium sulfate in the tank mix. Most herbicide labels say they are only effective on weeds that are less than 3" tall. If weeds are taller than that, mow them to 3 inches, wait one week, then spray with herbicide.
Number two, if you have big established clumps of grass that didn't die, spot spray them again with a hand pump sprayer.
Number three, when you see a few blades of grass in the ladino it's high time to get to spraying, because a few blades one year means 25 percent grass cover the next year, but 3 times harder to kill.
So, to recap,, when I'm talking about successfully doing a throw n mow into ladino on a regular basis I'm talking 100% ladino, it can be 10" high and you mow the stuff and it disappears, there's hardly anything there you could bale. Good luck with that plot, it looks like the soil is just chomping at the bit to grow stuff!
Mennoniteman
Well-Known Member
Take a look at this 100% ladino plot that had a throw n mow rye planting the fall before.
Mennoniteman
Well-Known Member
Take a look at this plot where I'm trying to restore a stand of ladino, starting with grass control.
Mountain Man
New Member
I totaly agree on the too much grass issue, I was going to nuke the plot and start over not knowing about Clethodium until reading through on this forum. If when sprayed in the spring some grass is still present would it be advisable to spray a second time? What is the purpose of ammoniun sulfate I thought it would add nitrogen which would just feed the grass? I will be applying 5-23-32 or 0-20-20 in the spring depending which I can get as soon as the snow goes
Mennoniteman
Well-Known Member
I used to have 20/20 vision but at 57 years old I need reading glasses now and my phone screen isn't big enough for me to see well either, I thought your first pictures looked like a lush green ladino plot, it was only when I looked closer on that third picture that I saw the thick grass, now I'm pretty sure that grass thatch is the main problem with starting the August winter wheat. I'd say your August success will depend heavily on well your herbicde work goes this spring.
The ammonium sulfate (AMS) content isn't enough of lbs per acre to make any difference as far as working like nitrogen fertilizer in the soil, but it does work to make the spray mix hotter, enabling better weed kill while using less active ingredient, which saves money, and leads to less chemical carryover in the soil.
AMS is an adjuvant that binds up the minerals in the water that otherwise would bind up herbicide molecules, this is how it makes the spray mix work better, it also works by opening pores in the plant leaves, making plants take in more active ingredient. It should be put into the water first, before the herbicide is poured into the tank.
You should read the label on the clethodim jug, but I do think it allows for two applications per year. This application limit is why I sometimes switch products, also, clethodim tends to work slowly, and sometimes it seems like it doesn't really kill grass as much as it just keeps it from growing and allows the clover to smother the grass until it eventually just disappears. It can take weeks to a month to get a good kill with clethodim, while on the other hand, 4 oz to the acre of Imazethapyr 2SL would clean that field up in a hurry if the weeds were small and there was AMS and crop oil in the mix. I do think the clethodim will do the job for you though.
Crop oil is important too,, some weeds have wax on the leaves and it takes crop oil to burn through the wax.
12 oz of Glyphosate per acre can clean up weeds in clover as well, and is actually allowed on the Glyphosate label. This can be tricky business though, it can be difficult to get the strength just right to kill the weeds without killing the clover, I only use 12 oz. gly on ladino as a last ditch effort to try to save a really bad plot. Several years ago I lost my best clover plot by a miscalculation with Glyphosate. I guess I had it coming, I was getting too bold with my mix and not getting a timely rain I was counting on.
There's something important to growing clover that every plot manager should understand; a monoculture ladino plot is always very high in nitrogen, and interseeded wheat takes off like a rocket on that nitrogen, but if there's heavy grass in the plot that horse has left the barn already. #1. Clover feeds on carbon and fixes nitrogen. #2. Grass (and wheat) feeds on nitrogen and fixes carbon. #3. Carbon and nitrogen are on a seesaw, when the one goes up, the other tends to go down.
#4. Clover and grass are naturally found together, but are always fighting this constant battle over carbon and nitrogen. So when grass, the natural balancer of clover, is removed, it needs to be replaced with a similar small grain component grown in or with the clover on a regular basis to take up the extra nitrogen and to keep the clover fed with carbon (straw).
Like I said, growing clover is easy and fun (if you don't get leafhoppers in). You got my attention when you spoke of making a last ditch effort or having to give up on the idea of August wheat. Those are fighting words to a Dutchman, and I'd like to see you being sucessfull with that August wheat, and hopefully you can glean a few ideas somewhere to get you going in that direction. I'm open to any questions or ideas you might have.
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Mountain Man
New Member
I have never used AMS all I know is what I have read on our friend Google after you mentioned it. Are you talking liquid or powder? where can it be bought?
This plot has been quite the expirence so far. It hadn't been croped for 50 years. I nuked it with gly cut it 2 weeks later disced it up and sowed clover and cultipacted, it started to green up nice then the clover got overtaken with this darn weed (I guess 50 years of seed bank would do that) I had never seen this weed before it is called Spreading Dog Bane (pictured) in 3 weeks it was getting ready flower, it aparantly is toxic to cattle if they eat very much and the deer were certainly munching on it so it was nuked and replanted in clover and cultipacked 2 weeks later. By Oct. it was a very nice clover patch minus the Dog Bane. So now it is the grass to deal with, one way or another the problems will be solved (The Irish can be very stuborn sometimes)
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Mennoniteman
Well-Known Member
I love it. I'm rooting for the Irish on this one, and you did have some really nice ladino.
About the AMS, I recently had a fellow tell me that he finally figured out on his own that the only way to get glyphosate to kill weeds is to double the amount per acre that the manufacturer recommends, and sometimes he still wasn't getting great results. I asked what all he's putting in his tank mix and he said "only glyphosate, why would I put anything else in?" So I explained to him that half of his active ingredient was being neutralized by his water, that he needs to tank mix an adjuvant. Later he came back to me and said that now he's using the recommended amounts, saving money, and getting 100% weed kills.
Liquid AMS is the easiest to work with, but costs more money. Dry 50lb bags of AMS needs to say spray grade on the bag so that it fully dissolves in the tank. Dumping the dry granulated AMS into the tank too fast can clog things up, especially if the spray has a water jet agitator. I you are using an ATV sprayer, use a long stick and keep stirring the bottom as you dump it in. I take a 16oz cup and slowly dump it in, one cup at a time, as I keep stirring.
Remember, crop oil and AMS in the tank first, in any order, and pour the active ingredient (chemical) in the tank last.
Safety with the chemical is very important. Wear rubber gloves, pour very slowly to avoid splashes, and if using an ATV, don't spray unless it's windstill, otherwise you can't avoid running through windrift.
Mountain Man
New Member
Where might I find liquid AMS, being retired and not too many other interests besides food plots and hunting I would rather buy the liquid if I could (gave up golf a long time ago)
so spending a few extra bucks is ok.
Have you ever ran across that Spreading Dog Bane weed?
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