seed bed prep

[Anonymous]

I'm getting ready to convert bean stubble to pasture. What would you guys recommend for seed bed preparation? Would simply dragging a harrow before and after broadcasting the seed do the trick?

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[Anonymous]

It really depends on the requirements of the seed. Dragging it will bury some/most of the seed. But if it requires a firm contact with the soil you might have to roll it after to compress the soil onto the seed.

dun

> I'm getting ready to convert bean
> stubble to pasture. What would you
> guys recommend for seed bed
> preparation? Would simply dragging
> a harrow before and after
> broadcasting the seed do the
> trick?

 

[Anonymous]

> It really depends on the
> requirements of the seed. Dragging
> it will bury some/most of the
> seed. But if it requires a firm
> contact with the soil you might
> have to roll it after to compress
> the soil onto the seed.

> dun If the beans were in 30" rows and especially if they had been cultivated I would do something to level the ground, otherwise you'll be fighting those ridges for years.

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[Anonymous]

> depends on the soil, might disc shallow and pull the harrow behind the disc set so it carrys just enough dirt to level. I broadcast seed and then rolled with a cultipacker just before a light rain, got a better stand than when I drilled the same piece of ground several years before.

 

[Anonymous]

First thing I would do is make sure you do not have a hard pan. The time to fix this problem is before you seed your pasture.

> I'm getting ready to convert bean
> stubble to pasture. What would you
> guys recommend for seed bed
> preparation? Would simply dragging
> a harrow before and after
> broadcasting the seed do the
> trick?

 

[Anonymous]

>NE ohio, plow ground is tiled here and I've worked a lot of old fields with bad pans. one field hadn't been turned for 20 + yrs and had been worked wet for years before that with a 8n ford about 4"deep. I plowed it 8" and you could see the soil change at the 4" level. Didn't really affect the planting one way or the other. Row crops are much more sensitive to soil profiles. alfalfa and some clovers root several feet deep and nobody can rip that deep. PH and fert balence are much more important.

 

[Anonymous]

if you have ridges, use this, and i dont know what it is called in english so i will describe it at my best.

i think it's called a cultivator. (framework with round hooks ranging from 30 to 90cm) use the one with only 30cm if you want to loose the ridges (drive against them, not with them) and loosen up the soil enough to get rid of the hard layers caused by tractors driving over it the previous crop. if the soil hasn't been seriously tilled for more then ten years, use pinnes of at least 65 cm to loose all hard layers.

the way to check where the layers are, is by manualy driving a metal pin into the ground, and if you get too much resistance, you have a winner.

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[Anonymous]

> if you have ridges, use this, and
> i dont know what it is called in
> english so i will describe it at
> my best.

> i think it's called a cultivator.
> (framework with round hooks
> ranging from 30 to 90cm) use the
> one with only 30cm if you want to
> loose the ridges (drive against
> them, not with them) and loosen up
> the soil enough to get rid of the
> hard layers caused by tractors
> driving over it the previous crop.
> if the soil hasn't been seriously
> tilled for more then ten years,
> use pinnes of at least 65 cm to
> loose all hard layers.

> the way to check where the layers
> are, is by manualy driving a metal
> pin into the ground, and if you
> get too much resistance, you have
> a winner. You're right Mike, its called a field cultivator. But it will only work the soil 2-4" (5-10cm)but would be fine for the ridges. If there is hard pan something that works deeper would be needed such as a ripper which could go as deep as 20" (50cm).

 

[Anonymous]

i've got a 'ripper' that goes 90cm deep, for those fields that get harvested when the weather was too wet, to eliminate tire tracks and stuff.

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