I was up to the Midwest Monster home farm near Hinckley, MN on Saturday (5/2) and I actually managed to get some planting done. This is the earliest I’ve been able to plant anything for the last 7 years.
We got over an inch of rain in the preceding week, so when I got to the farm and looked at the plots, I thought it was going to be a no-go. There were puddles on my access roads and the soil looked very damp in all plots.
My goal was to plant a cover crop of oats and peas on a 2-acre portion of one of my larger plots. This spot will host our Brassicas Bender mix later in the summer, but for now I just wanted cover crop the area with a disc-down crop of oats and Lynx forage peas to give some organics back to the soil. I was really eager to get this planted as this is the first time in years that it’s been possible to plant a cover crop that would have enough growing time to do any good.
Well, it didn’t look good, but I hooked up the 8 foot Howse HD disc to the ol’ Deere and decided to give it a go. To be honest, the only thing I expected was to get stuck, the Deere has good tires on her, but she’s not 4 wheel drive, so traction is limited.
It was right on the edge the whole time. I was slipping a little in low spots and going up hills, but not spinning. I had my hand on the 3 point “up” lever the whole time to make sure I could lift the disc if I started to lose traction. My luck held and by 11:00 I was able to disc the whole target area except for 1 small low spot without getting stuck.
With the wind gusting 15 to 20, the newly turned soil dried quickly and by 3:00 I was on the ATV with the broadcaster hooked up and I started spreading. I did 100 pounds of oats and 100 pounds of peas in this plot. Yes, this is a pretty heavy dose of seed, but it will not get to maturity so I wanted to go this heavy to achieve maximum plant density. No use planting a cover crop that does not cover, in other words.
At 4:30 it was all planted and I used a disc to bury the seed. Then my oldest son ran the roller over the whole plot until the dreaded “throttle thumb” made him throw in the towel about 4 rounds from the end, so I finished. He’s doing thumb exercises every day this week to get pumped for next time.
So a very good day! Nice to get some early planting done, next week I’m on to planting Eagle Forage Soybeans and Real World Gen 2 soybeans.
Grouse
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