Thumb of Michigan | widairyfarmer - 7/2/2015 21:39
I bought some sandy ground this year that is pretty compacted by looking at my drone footage. I am wondering if there would be enough time for the radishes to do any good if aerial seeded around the first week of Sept before silage comes off.
I'm a big fan of aerially seeding some covers, especially cereals- but I found aerially seeding Radish success to be elusive. Something along the lines of cereal rye may fit better this year.
I rented a farm for a number of years that had generally very good soils- but one end was a sand over gravel that had served as a headland/driveway sort of thing forever. To make it worse, municipal sludge to be applied a few years before we rented the farm and this area and was also where all the loading happened. We could establish a crop, get a great stand, but once the roots hit a depth of about a foot, everything stopped growing. The roots always showed a burning type issue on them that we never really did identify. Anyway: small grains weren't my favorite rotational crop, but we planted wheat in that field so we could work on the issue. After harvest, I ran an inline ripper 90 degrees to the normal planting direction, and then in the same direction as the rows. Then planted Oilseed Radish (variety was Addagio) at 12 to 15# per acre. I think we fixed the problem for at least a long time, if not permanently.
I did plant the entire field to Radish at the same time as the problem area, although we didn't rip the better (and lower) ground. That was the first time we had Radish plug tile to any degree. The low end of the farm has tile fairly shallow (under 30") and also it was a good loamy, deep (for us) soil.
So, long story short, you may want to consider a small grain in your rotation down the road to address the specific issue. Cereal rye may be a better choice for you this year after the silage comes off (or aerially before harvest) but you need to be careful that volunteer rye doesn't screw you up if you go to wheat next year. |
Radishes after Corn Silage in WI
