Northeast Nebraska and Candelaria Philippines | We have 400 acres of irrigated barley stubble. This is organic ground which will be going to organic corn in 2010. We just harvested organic barley off it this week.
Trying to figure out what to do with it yet this year. Here are some things i've thought of. Please give me any feed back or new ideas.
1. We could put it to sudan grass or oats to make hay out of yet this year. If we do this we will remove nutrients that have to be replaced with chicken litter which is not cheap. Oats hay is worth about $65 a ton in the field. We have to take the harvesting cost out of that as well.
2. We could put it to tillage radish or simular crop to grow some N.
3. We could put it to turnips and try to find someone to graze it. This would produce some N and we would produce some income as well. We only have 60 hd of cattle, so we would be needing to find a neighbor or someone else to help graze it for a fee. This is under pivot irrigation and we should be able to grow LOTS of feed.
4. Are there any crops that we could put it too and harvest as hay, yet would still grow some N? I would think that if we put it to oats and turnips and tried to put it up as hay, the turnip leaves would be pretty hard to dry and probably rot.
Remember this is organic ground. Our goal is to raise 250 bu corn on this ground in 2010. Out ultimate goal is to yield as much profit between 2009 and 2010 as possible.
Also, we are looking for a great deal on the seed for the cover crop. If you are a dealer, please email me at [email protected] please include your reconmendation and pricing. We are finding most dealers are used to dealing with customers on 40 acres or so, and don't have very good pricing for our volume. |
what to do with barley stubble?
