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Western Oregon | Have not had a chance to see what other people have been doing on here lately but I thought I'd throw out some photos for discussion.
I planted spring wheat the last couple days. We have had quite a lot of rain here in Western Oregon. The ground is fairly spongey yet. But, my neighbor wanted me to plant wheat, and he wouldn't take no for an answer. So I planted 95 acres and after looking at it in the sunshine and 58 degree weather yesterday, I say there is a good chance he did the right thing.
Have a whole pile of photos. I was planting into prennial ryegrass sod. Using Great Plains 1500 no-till drill. Not sure of the soil type, felt fairly silty. The ground was solid, no real soft places. I had to set the press wheels up a notch to plant into my wheel tracks. You could almost make a mud ball but dirt would not quite hold together. Was too wet to disk.
Dirt was sticking to v-openers pretty bad. Didn't stick to the press wheels. Where there was bare ground it looked like I was pulling a disk and not a drill.
Customer wanted wheat planted 1/2" deep. My photo didn't turn out but when you would walk around behind the drill you could see the wheat in a little groove behind the press wheels. There was some dirt over it but not much. I have the 2" press wheels which seem to fit right into the v-opener groove. The press wheels had the wheat seed pushed hard into the soft, well, I hate to call it mud... The spring harrow then pulled the loose dirt over the top of the seed. So if you walk through the field there is very little seed visible. The loose dirt is kind of I guess you would say "fluffy." If you drive over it it packs hard but otherwise not so.
After a couple hours the mud chunks and the "fluffy" dirt dry out and the seed bed looks pretty good. Like a light disking.
Now this is where the Pokey-O-vator (see pervious discusions of Old Pokey inventions) would really work. You follow a couple hours later with a drill and the ground would be pretty nice. I would still be worried about compaction but the wheat would be in!!!
Note: Photos are of the worst field of course!
Also-I think it will work because according to Accu-weather we are headed for light showers and warm weather. If we get a huge downpour it will wash all the light dirt off of the seed. It should jump right out of the ground. I'm trying to be more positive. (Have been listening to the Dale Carnegie course "how to stop worrying and Start living" on my Farmer GPS computer)
Edited by unifarmor 3/20/2009 11:14
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 (wheat_into_mud_2_gp_disk.jpg)
 (wheat_into_mud_3_openers.jpg)
 (wheat_into_mud_good_field_.jpg)
Attachments
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 wheat_into_mud_1.jpg (80KB - 279 downloads)
wheat_into_mud_2_gp_disk.jpg (73KB - 271 downloads)
wheat_into_mud_3_openers.jpg (75KB - 277 downloads)
wheat_into_mud_good_field_.jpg (67KB - 288 downloads)
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No-tilling into mud need pokey-o-vator
