After 4 straight weekends when I couldn’t visit the property, I finally went up twice this past weekend. I hope I’m not too late to the party, but this was the best I could do this year. I couldn’t stop myself, ideally I would have been planting the brassicas 2-3 weeks ago, but sometimes you gotta do the best you can do.
According to Farmlogs.com (which is AWESOME, BTW, for keeping track of your property, what you plant, the weather, etc), I got over 5 inches of rain last week on Wednesday. And oh boy did the situation on the ground match that estimate! My little 4 foot wide creek had a roaring Class 3 rapids section! I tried to get a picture, but the river was flowing out of its banks and I couldn’t get close. My plots were damp as far down as I could see–at least 12 inches–the soil was soft and wet, so we certainly got replenished with that rain.
But the whole point of my visits was to see if I could do a full court press, pick more rock on one of my new plots, and get my brassicas blend in the ground. I put together a custom blend of forage radish, rapeseed, and turnips and unlike all the commercial blends out there, I did not add grass seed or other “green-up” filler. I wanted to see how the deer would respond to pure brassicas.
Luckily, a neighbor joined me, so I had some help. We started picking rock because everything on my property starts with picking rock these days. I should have seen it coming as the name of the neighboring cattle ranch is the Rocky C. No, I’m not joking. All the signs were there that rock would be an issue.
Unfortunately, I could NOT use my new toy. I picked up a 1965 John Deere 2010 on Friday and the key feature, the loader, would have been awesome, but I tried to drive it in my rain soaked plot and got about 10 feet in before the front wheels sunk out of sight. Luckily, the back tires were still on compacted ground when I slammed on the clutch and brakes, and I was able to back out and put the tractor away before I got it stuck and created another problem. Yes, yes, I know. I should upgrade to a a Steiger with dualies…
So we went old school and hooked up the rock trailer to the ATV. It took us 4 hours, but we picked rock on a strip down the middle of the plot about 25 feet wide and 200 feet long. We would have kept going, but it started to sprinkle, so I hooked up the disc to the ATV and started disc work before things got to wet to pull the disc.
Then I did a couple of passes over with the Drag Queen (my 8 foot wide field drag) to level things out. At this point I was stunned by my good fortune as the rain had actually quit before it got things too muddy. We were still working like a NASCAR pit crew and we hooked up the seeder and it was go-go-go.
I’ll confirm here that yes, it does freak me out when planting brassicas because they are spread soooooooo thin! I’ve been constantly warned by experienced plotters not to overseed because these plants have big leaf mass and need room to grow or they won’t get large turnips and radish below ground if they’re over-crowded. It is very hard to resist and follow this advice, but I managed to stick to the program as last year all I got was small radish and tiny turnips and I didn’t feel the deer really figured out what they were. Size matters! That’s my theory, anyway.
We’ll see how things look in a week or two. Here’s hoping for fast germination and a late frost so I can get lucky and catch up. It would be really fun to see what the deer do to some decent sized turnips.
Who’s up for a rock picking party at the Grouse’s property? I’ll supply the beer, burgers, etc? How about it guys? Guys??? Anybody there???
Grouse
