Finally get to drill my Reed Canarygrass this weekend

[Steve Wilson]

Finally!!! All it's been doing for the past several weeks is raining every couple days. I picked up the county's Great Plains no till drill last friday on the way to the farm. Of course, that made it rain both days of the weekend. It was dry enough to drill for the first time in over a month. We've had sunshine all week and temps up in the 70's. No rain forecast until sunday afternoon. Whooohoooo! :banana:

This is the burned off portion of the pasture we call the Outback. It's up a good 4 inches now, would have been higher but the cow herd got through the fence and had been grazing it, Fence is repaired now.

I'm planning to use the front box on the drill and plant 10 pounds R.C, 7 pounds Cow Pro Forage Timothy and 4 to 5 pounds of red clover per acre. By using that box, the seed will be placed directly inside the opener discs, instead of the small seed box in the rear which dribbles the seed out on the ground in front of the press wheels. Adding the timothy instead of oats was the recommendation of the seed distributor....Missouri Southern Seed. He said it will increase the yield and the canarygrass will choke it out by the time it establishes a sod in three years. He also advised not to apply too much nitrogen at first, no more than is needed to get the grass growing. Not 50 units or more, which would kick the timothy and clover so much that they would out compete the canarygrass. Sounds good to me. I'll hit it with 30-20-20 and give more nitrogen later, based on how the canarygrass is doing. Next week, I will spray the pasture with RoundUp to kill the existing vegitation.

I've been trying to get this canarygrass planted since last summer. Wish me luck.

 

[bigbull338]

congrats on being able to get that grass planted.hope it grows good for you.

 

[Steve Wilson]

What a danged disasterous weekend that was. I decided to spread the fertilizer before drilling because the elevator was tight on available buggies, since every farmer in the bottoms was planting and fertilizing corn. They said I could have a buggy at 8:00 saturday morning but it had to be back by noon.

Please allow me to digress here a bit to catch you up on a tractor dilema I've been dealing with. A few weeks ago we hauled my big tractor, an Allis Chalmer 190XT off to the dealer to find and fix a fuel leak that allowed my fuel to leak out over the winter. I put 5 gallons of diesel in it so there was enough to drive it on and off the float. The dealer added 10 gallons so there was sufficient head pressure to find the leaks. Fair enough, I had told them to add all they needed. Also, to replace the gaskets on both settlling bowls and change the fuel filter while they had it in the shop. The leak turned out to be in the return line.

A week or so ago I used the tractor for some little thing, forget what. Anyway, about an hour into it, the tractor starts knocking and losing power. Uggggg. Changed the fuel filter last friday evening and it ran like a top. Ran over the hill saturday morning and hooked up to the fertilizer buggy. Everything great. Made one pass around a pasture and suddenly it loses all power and stops. Great; dead tractor, a full buggy of fertilizer and more work than I can manage in a day already. Unhooked the buggy and restarted the tractor. Running like a top again. Dunno, maybe it drank a sip of water and is OK now. The long and short of it, it kept dying every now and then. Let is set a minute and it would run fine. I was able to spread all of the fertilizer off and get it back to the shop but had no intention of attempting to drill or spray with it.

So, I hooked up to the ginormous 10 foot Great Plains no till drill with my little Massey Ferguson 165 diesel. I was only going to be drilling 1/4 inch deep and thought it could do it. Which it did great. 7:00 that evening I finished drilling the pasture. The next morning I tried to hook the sprayer up to the Massey. The pto pump hit on the drawbar and wouldn't slide onto the shaft. Wonderfull. I'm out of tractors now. LOL I commisioned a friends Allis Chalmer 185 to the spraying task. But first I had to switch the electronic spray valve control box from the 190Xt to this one and hook up the simple wiring to the tractor.

I had to change spray tips on the booms. No big deal. Lay out a calibration course and time it while driving. Everything checked out fine......10 1/2 gallons per acre for the RoundUp. Good enough. Except the wind was blowing like crazy. No way to spray the newly seeded pasture today and I just started the clock on germination ticking when I drilled the seed saturday. That reeds canarygrass isn't going to stand the pressure from the existing pasture grass, especially with the 30 units of 30-20-20 of Super Urea I applied on saturday. I might have just as well tossed it out on the county road. It rained yesterday and today but no rain forecast tomorrow until after 6:00 pm. So, I'm taking off work tomorrow and spraying the pasture. I surely have to catch a break in this somehow. LOL I'm sure many of you have been in similar circumstances and can relate.

 

[bigbull338]

man you are having it rough with your tractor.hope you can get it going soon.

 

[Steve Wilson]

Went to the farm this morning to spray the pasture with RoundUp. Too late, the clover and grasses had already sprouted. Who would have thought it could happen in so few days? But it surely did. The dealer also sent a mechanic over this morning to sort out what was wrong with the tractor. Turns out it isn't a water issue at all. The check valve on top of the injector pump had a few specks of debris in it, one was certainly rubber. An indication the liner of the injector pump is starting to fail and shed material. Only one particle though, the other few must have escaped the fuel filter somehow.

Either way, what I get now is what I get. We are planning an early hay mowing. To allow any struggling reeds canarygrass plants to have an easier time of it. There comes a point that you just have to make the best of what you have and deal with it later.

 

[1982vett]

steve something to check on a 200 there is a petcock on the bottom of the fuel tank remove the petcock and check the elbow for obstruction. that will happen with the 200 diesel i have every couple years it strarts acting just like you say clean that valve good to go again.

Or even blow the line back to the tank to clear any gunk.

 

[Steve Wilson]

There is some good news to report, at least. The 190XT is running fine after the mechanic cleaned out the relief valve on the injector pump. The problem is that the portion of the "Outback" that my chucklehead buddy burned off has become a weed field now. Nary a blade of original pasture grass survived, which was primarily fescue, with some orchard and timothy here and there. The 30-20-20 of Super Urea really kicked the unburned sections in high gear. It was a total train wreck. Existing vegitation now thick and tall. The weeds in the burned section (smartweed, ragweed, wild barley and some sort of warm season grass that has blades like crabgrass but the wrong color) were going nuts. The broadleaves were aproaching 8 inches tall, wild barley had formed seedheads but still green.

I could part the existing grass and weeds and see my little teeny canarygrass, timothy and clover plants struggling for space and light. Gonna have to do something here, something drastic to save as much as I can.....hopefully. So, I fired up the field sprayer and sprayed the entire mess with 1 quart Round Up per acre at 15 GPA. Hoping that the canopy would protect the underlying seedlings. What a disaster.

It might well all be killed. So I ordered enough hybrid pear millet to reseed it this weekend, since I have the county's no till drill reserved anyway to drill millet elsewhere around the farm. Guess I'll see what situation I have to deal with when I get to the farm Friday.

Uggggggg,

 

[Stocker Steve]

I'm planning to use the front box on the drill and plant 10 pounds R.C, 7 pounds Cow Pro Forage Timothy and 4 to 5 pounds of red clover per acre. By using that box, the seed will be placed directly inside the opener discs, instead of the small seed box in the rear which dribbles the seed out on the ground in front of the press wheels. Adding the timothy instead of oats was the recommendation of the seed distributor....Missouri Southern Seed. He said it will increase the yield and the canarygrass will choke it out by the time it establishes a sod in three years.

That is a lot of seeds per sq foot. Timothy is usually about 10% of the mix to green it up and keep it cheap - - providing something like 1,200,000 seeds per pound.

Seed salesmen sell seed...