I think so. My Land Pride dealer wanted it bad as a trade in on the NTS2507; it would have durn near cut the purchase price in half. What I'm getting ready to use it for today was why I held on to it.




Thanks! I received a total of .85" over the 24 hour period ending yesterday morning. Two worries; that I would get too much as my friend's places saw more than 3" early on, and then none, as I had not received any as of 3 was yesterday! Everything was slitting as it approached me. Last fall, I received 3"+ immediately after planting and all my food plots where an acre or two downslope! I figured the good Lord took care of his land right.

I still have a pretty good stock of the Pogue Spring Buck Buffet and thought I might replant my irrigated plots again if the deer hit them hard. You're probably a Pogue guy, you fertilizer or go with their no fertilizer thoughts?

With this new seeder, I've been thinking of having them blend two mixes for me for both fall and spring rather than their current blends. Each season use both the small and large seedboxes, pondering the blends to use this fall.

I rent a buggy from H Brand every year and it works fine since it is only a food plot for deer. After I spread the seed & fertilizer I either lightly disc roll it in or drag a chain and bar behind it. I think their buggy rental is $25.00, if you buy ton or more of seed & fertilizer it is free.

The best looking crops I had came when I used a grain drill

I would have thought you got more than I did since it split me. Sure was a lot of thunder and lightening to my NW and N as it moved around me that direction. I priced fertilizer this morning and 18-46-0 was not as bad as it was 10 yrs ago when it was around $1000 per ton. I was quoted little over $17/50# sack and did not ask about bulk since I won't need enough to warrant buggy. Still need to check a couple of more locations to see what price they have. With the rain and warmer temps I am really having a hard time waiting to plant today but going to stick with my plans to wait for about 2-3 more weeks. I have a 50% chance of rain tomorrow night and 30% during the day with a slight chance end of the week.

Man, I was thinking maybe getting my power plant in the ground soon, but this week has me waiting for sure...was up there today to drop off some gear I needed to move from my prior lease, and it was a balmy 38 degrees. Temps all week supposed to be pretty low. Not freezing, but lows in the 30's and highs only stretching to 60 until friday when it starts raining again and temps climb next week. Will probably at this point spray my plots with some glyphosphate and then plant last week of april or first week of may. Hate to wait that long but temps are not helping.

I did see some good growth from my chicory plot. I hope it stays moist, until the plants get established at least. Will have to see how drought tolerant the WI chicory is. I am beginning to wonder if turkeys might have plucked up my extreme plot. Not seeing much growth in that plot. Going to shoot it with some arrest to get rid of some of the native grasses and then may reseed if nothing is growing after a bit. Time will tell.

Definitely a different climate in southern oklahoma than southern texas.

I never planted in the Hill Country north of SA till late April or into early May due to cool nights and the ground temps not being warm enough.

Looking good, Ranch dog.

How are you plots and grass seedings doing now?

The plots came up and kind of fizzled from lack of moisture and temperatures (?). On the irrigated plots, I no-tilled the spring/summer seed over the winter plots, but the agitation, irrigation, and the temperatures seem to have reinvigorated the winter plants. This week, the winter plants took a nose dive and the spring/summer plants are about 2", so what happens remains to be seen. Part of the nose dive on the winter plants is aphids, I was pondering what to do with them and a fellow rancher/farmer came out yesterday to advise, but nature, as it is, has stepped up. The plots are full of ladybugs, solid, they are taking care of business so I will forgo any chemicals or further soil manipulation. Every single plant is dotted with a ladybugs, 1 per 2 to 2 1/2" area.

The natives were no-tilled over the cover crop of oats that had been mowed down to about 4 to 5", the oats are up a foot and still going but only bare soil below. I suspect they are sucking the moisture that grass needed. I was following a recipe from DK Seeds so plan on talking to them about it this coming week.

Since planting, I've only received 2.64" of rain and 3.9" this year. Our average total at this point should be 9.8". Looking at my records, over the last five years I've averaged 13.9" at this point in the year. I suspect my area is in trouble.

Always something...

Like my Dad used to say..."nothing a good 5" rain wouldn't cure". This had been a very different year with cool night temps and spotty rainfall. I have had 5.31" at the house and 5.42" on the north side of my place this year so far, but no really big rains. Those rain totals were from 12 rains. So we are about the same on rains this year. I have not planted yet with the cooler temps and the lack of rains. I had prepared the plots in early March and got a decent rain on them but not much since. So I decided to wait till first of May this year. I am going to plant on Sunday and take a chance. I have some deep moisture and a little bit of shallow moisture so I am hoping to get some rain within a week or so after planting. My plots have been sitting there and started to get a few weeds in them with the last few small showers. So on Thursday I spot sprayed them with Round-up. I am afraid this year when we get into mid May we are going to go from pleasant spring like temps to August like temps and dry hot air in a week time frame.

I think you are right and I agree with your dad! Plus, there is always protein.

Maybe we will get a tropical storm, early. Waters are warmer than average.

Sorry to hear it Ranch Dawg. Was hoping to get on here and see lots of little soybean and sunn hemp and sunflower sprouts.

I finished my planting this saturday. Did 4 plots with power plant and added some extreme into the middle of two due to lack of seed (I always forget to double the recommended amount when I hand seed). Anyway, expecting some rains this wednesday into thursday. I did two of the plots a week and a half ago and they got about an inch of rain on them after a couple days, so I saw some sprouts coming up but nothing spectacular yet. I think after this round of rain they should grow better and get the new stuff I spread this weekend start. Still had some decent moisture in the ground despite some warmer weather.

I did a fifth plot in WI Chic Magnet, and it is coming along really well. Did that one back about a month now. Did another plot in extreme at the same time and thought it was gone due to bird eating the seed, but this weekend I did see quite a bit of the persist forb coming in, so all isn't lost on that plot yet. I do need to spray some grass herbicide on that one at some point. Maybe next time I am out.

I also topped off my protein feeders, two 1000# free choice, and also filled a second 350# free choice at one of the locations after reading STX recommendation to add multiple feeders to each site to allow non-dominant deer to feed as well. We will see how it all goes. Rain, all we need is rain. Just enough but not too much...thats the key.

Great stuff

Finally received some rain, .4" and .2", Sunday & Monday. Kind of dustbowl like here in DeWitt County. 5" total for the year, 10" behind. Personally, hoping for a tropical storm in June.

Not good on rainfall this year so far. I lucked out to get 1.3" to 1.5" on Sunday evening out of this in Goliad County. Nothing yesterday. I was sitting on 5.3" to 5.44" year to date also here. Bad things is the heat got hear like I thought it would....97 on Thursday and 98 on Friday and it really dried up last week. Brush was starting to show stress. Going to hit close to 100 by Friday this week is what they are calling for. Live Oak county is worse than here with only 4" total thru Sat. Had another .80"(Farm logs) on Sunday and yesterday but it has already hit 100 last week on a couple of days. Going to have to start feeding hay if it does not rain soon there.
What is really bad in all this is the crazy people riding around lighting pastures on fire. Happened in Feb when they started 5 fires in Live Oak county then 3 more in Karnes and 2 or 3 in Bee County. One Bee County fire burned up 320 round bales of hay. They lit 3 in Karnes and 5 more in Wilson 2 weeks ago and 3 in Bee County last Wed. The 3 in Bee burned up just over 800 acres. They did get some rain on those fires to help green back up. Still need to catch whoever is lighting them and make them pay for repairs and damages.

It's been a rough one, this year. All efforts previously reported have been lost. Native grasses and non-irrigated food plots failed. Irrigated plots made an initial success, but were overrun with activity. That's how it goes sometimes. About $4K in the food plot and native grass seed plus fertilizer.

So sorry to hear about the plot failure.

I was wondering how your grass seeding and plots had done with the really dry year. My plots that came up finally in May lasted 2 weeks with the deer chasing anything green. To many deer for 10+ acres was the big issue and timing. I gambled on a little later planting and it did not pan out this. With the great chance of rain I did drill some milo back over 6.5 acres of those plots last weekend. I got almost 9" of rain and it was coming out of the ground really well as of Friday. Even a few of the cowpea stalks have put on new leaf growth after the rains this week. That will give them something green to chase in the next few weeks once it starts to dry back out.

I only got 3.5" out of all the activity last week, everything was splitting and going east and west of me. Figures. I wanted to wait for the rain to see what came up over the next week or so. I'm going to talk to DK Seeds in the morning and The Nature Conservancy guy to see what the next plan for the natives are. About all that has come up from the native seed mix is Zapata Clammyweed. A funny little flowering plant with heavy seed ponds on it. Everything else seems to be volunteer growth. My alternative to all of this is a run to Pouge for milo providing I see some rain in the long-range forecast.

You mentioned FarmLogs, I've been using it for a couple of years but I'm switching over to Agrible, I like their weather product better especially the formatting of the morning email. I'm using their free account.

I'll have to look at that site. Farmlogs is still pretty accurate for my place. But I have not gotten a good even rain across my place in a long time. This last rain I had about .65" more on the north side than I did at the house. I mapped my whole place on Farmlogs so I do not see how it could accurately give me a rainfall based on that much difference. I guess if I just mapped the food plots it might do a better job.

In Farmlogs I had my whole place mapped, I think they have some type of average for rainfall across the acreage. When I set up Agrible, I divided my natives and food plots into two groups, and then within each group defined the individual plots and pastures (fields). The morning report reflects totals for each field with each group and rainfalls are different. Here is a screenshot from the morning email report.



I haven't added all my fields, just enough to see if it would deliver some differences in fields located about 2500' apart north and south. I started after the rain last week so not much has been captured but the north and south was different.

I also found an effort in their coding when special characters are used (the # in my screenshot). Once added these fields could not be edited or deleted. I contacted them via chat, they were very responsive and are working on the programming fix.

Under Agribles paid services they have some tillage tools that look nice, tells you when and when not to work a specific field. It seems to be geared to moisture content and temperature, the latter being the low side of temperature. I would pay the money for a tool that looked at the hot side of temperature, heat units, against upcoming weather and evaporation rates and tells me if it is worth tilling or if it will do more damage than good.

I found Agrible through their Pocket Rain Gauge app. I was looking for something a bit more mobile friendly than the FarmLogs presentation. This alone is worth the switch to the free account. Within in the presentation, there are some tools that you can "rate" the rainfall report, and I suspect that intelligence behind the app is learning from user reports.