Keystone Krops

[Mountain Man]

Yesterday I was out doing clover plot maintenance before the rain today, 6 oz per acre of Imazethapyr 2SL to clean up some weeds.View attachment 29722View attachment 29723

Yesterday I was out doing clover plot maintenance before the rain today, 6 oz per acre of Imazethapyr 2SL to clean up some weeds.View attachment 29722View attachment 29723

Just noticed the tractor, was wondering where you found the green paint. real nice paint job.

 

[Mennoniteman]

Just noticed the tractor, was wondering where you found the green paint. real nice paint job.

Yes, I painted the blue Ford green because we believed that the blue color was spooking our deer ha ha. No, last winter I found a deal on a used Deere that I couldn't resist, and traded my blue tractor, while the New Holland did me really well, I'm not going to miss the transmission with not quite enough gears and needing to come to a complete stop and do a double shift across ranges sometimes. Now the John Deere has power shift and almost too many gears. Some ppl will never be happy.
I started doing food plots with an ATV and if that's all I had I could be perfectly happy with that, the plots are just as nice and the 4-wheeler equipment is much easier to work with, but I'd only be doing a few acres. Bigger equipment is not necessarily better plots, but it allows way more volume in plots. I grew up on a farm so running this stuff is easier for me, but I confess that I miss the simpler days of doing 1 acre with an ATV. With bigger equipment once the piece of equipment is greased, tires filled, hitched up, adjusted and set up, filled with product and ready to go, it can cover a lot of acres very quickly, but then the whole process needs reversed to put it away again, it's way more complicated that ATV equipment. I keep adding more plots for friends and myself, and I'm currently managing 14 or 15 plots in several different counties with more than 20 acres total, but one of these years I may dial back a little bit again. Food plots are easy to turn into ESH plots, and if mowed in alternating strips, the deer attraction is almost as good as a cultivated field.

 

[Mountain Man]

Yes, I painted the blue Ford green because we believed that the blue color was spooking our deer ha ha. No, last winter I found a deal on a used Deere that I couldn't resist, and traded my blue tractor, while the New Holland did me really well, I'm not going to miss the transmission with not quite enough gears and needing to come to a complete stop and do a double shift across ranges sometimes. Now the John Deere has power shift and almost too many gears. Some ppl will never be happy.
I started doing food plots with an ATV and if that's all I had I could be perfectly happy with that, the plots are just as nice and the 4-wheeler equipment is much easier to work with, but I'd only be doing a few acres. Bigger equipment is not necessarily better plots, but it allows way more volume in plots. I grew up on a farm so running this stuff is easier for me, but I confess that I miss the simpler days of doing 1 acre with an ATV. With bigger equipment once the piece of equipment is greased, tires filled, hitched up, adjusted and set up, filled with product and ready to go, it can cover a lot of acres very quickly, but then the whole process needs reversed to put it away again, it's way more complicated that ATV equipment. I keep adding more plots for friends and myself, and I'm currently managing 14 or 15 plots in several different counties with more than 20 acres total, but one of these years I may dial back a little bit again. Food plots are easy to turn into ESH plots, and if mowed in alternating strips, the deer attraction is almost as good as a cultivated field.

I do know that a blue salt block will spook deer.

 

[MarkDarvin]

Did that plot blow up in canada thistle? Is that what i saw in front of the tractor?

 

[Mennoniteman]

Did that plot blow up in canada thistle? Is that what i saw in front of the tractor?

No, not that plot, but I do have another plot that did. this plot has a little bit of grass and pigweed. Most of what is seen in the picture besides clover is oats and rye left over from last fall's drought failed grain overseeding. I decided to sacrifice the grain to take care of the weeds, and then plant back with oats in late August.

 

[Mennoniteman]

This spring has been bad for wind storms. Among several woods closures a storm toppled a double chestnut oak across our access road.

 

[Flatiron75]

This spring has been bad for wind storms. Among several woods closures a storm toppled a double chestnut oak across our access road.
View attachment 29751

Great firewood - easy to split when green. Son and I just cut a batch of chestnut oak last week.

 

[Mennoniteman]

A rainy night, great time to service equipment, Kodiak 450 front diff in this case. 650 miles and the factory gear oil was a bit cloudy plus the gunk on the magnetic plug.

 

[Mennoniteman]

A rainy night, great time to service equipment, Kodiak 450 front diff in this case. 650 miles and the factory gear oil was a bit cloudy plus the gunk on the magnetic plug.
View attachment 29755View attachment 29756

I'm on a roll so might as well do the rear differential tonight too.

 

[Mennoniteman]

Your booming crop of dog bane is interesting. I tried to find that in my weed book and could not. Did I read that correctly, that your deer very much enjoyed eating it?

The fact that it was your response weed to glyphosate application is interesting. Most others get thistles, pigweeds, and other chem-resistant supers. Do you have a comprehensive soil test from those plots? Typically, weeds are the soil test, but yours isn't in my book, and it's the first I've ever heard of it.

Apocynum cannabinum (dogbane, amy root, hemp dogbane, prairie dogbane, Indian hemp, rheumatism root, or wild cotton) looks a lot like milkweed, has milky sap and silky seeds, and here in PA the two grow together in the same habitat. Dogbane has a purple stem and is slightly thinner stem than the adjacent milkweed in the picture. Dogbane is poisonous to cattle and contains toxins that are harmful to monarch caterpillars, which is why they cannot eat it, but monarch butterflies supposedly feed on the nectar. Here I have some pictures of some that I found beside my access road this week that show milkweed and dogbane right beside each other.

 

[MarkDarvin]

I did the front and rear diff fluid on my Outlander last year. I should do the rear again. It was pretty black last year.


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