Plant or not to plant?

After a fight with drainage and other stuff I am finally dry enough to do something. I have the seed for millet but light on time now for teal. I can live with that.

The TPWD and another biologist have both told me that simply discing down to dust will stimulate the seed bank and be a better option than planting a crop.
Then I can roll chop
The new vegetation once flooded.

What's the best?

My spot was to wet to disc or rip. I threw out millet in the muddy areas and then rolled it. Hopefully will get something coming up. Better in my opinion to try than let the seed waste.

depends on exactly what you are wanting/trying to do. Casually shoot a few ducks here and there without as much effort being put in...go with a moist soil attempt. Disking and getting it wet this late will probably result in wild/native millets and grasses anyway. If you don't mind sinking in a little more money and effort, a great stand of millet will out perform and produces 2-5 times the amount duck food than a moist soil unit depending on the quality of either. you are not late at all to plant millet, Japanese will easily make seeds in 60 days and often much faster than that. average first frost is early to mid November in most places, but the days shortening and temps getting cooler in October will hinder it some. What size pond we talking about? What part of state? chance of it getting rained on? Can you irrigate it in any way?

Eagle lake area. I can irrigate to some extent. Probably 10 to 15 acres in one unit and 7 to 10,in the other

didn't catch the millet in time for teal part, you are right that youd be pushing it for that. If the ponds are old rice fields they should be somewhat graded and pretty easy to flush irrigate if you can get the water. in that area, id look at simply paying a local farmer to plant rice thin in there for you. when planted thin, you should get a good mix of moist soil plants from flushing the rice, as well as grain. as far as teal in that area, personally I would just make sure I had a decent water hole to hunt over and save the load of groceries for the big ducks.

but as for this year, I would disk good, broadcast and lightly disk or drill the jap millet seed, and flush(or time it with a rain). when millet gets about 6" put a good flushing through the field and hold some of it if you can without drowning any plants out and itll make.

In your situation I'd still plant the millet. You're on the prairie and teal season doesn't really matter too much. Usually if you got some skim water you can get a decent shoot on teal anyway. Prep the ground, plant, flush and rock on. You may not get your seed heads up in time for teal but they will be ready for big ducks. Don't fertilizer either, let the plant struggle.

Sent you a PM as well

You should plant and also rely on moist soil plants. I've had some of the best hunting over flooded flats of sprangletop. Teal especially

Read this

https://www.fws.gov/columbiawildlife/moistsoilreport.pdf

https://www.mdwfp.com/media/8829/moist-soilmanagementl.pdf

Anything else to plant besides millet?
Or maybe with Millett?

as far as ease of planting, ease of growing, cost, and the number of duck days per acre it gets my vote. id say rice and corn tie for first, followed by millet, then milo. There is a good article somewhere on various duck habitats and farmland on the amount of ducks days per acre each has...pretty interesting.

Habitat type DUD/acre
Moist-soil 1,386
Harvested crop
Riceb 131
Soybean 121
Milo 849
Corn 970
Unharvested crop
Rice 29,364
Soybean 3,246
Milo 16,269
Corn 25,669
Millet 3,292

Those numbers are duck use days per acre found in studies done by USFWS. Something else important to look at is how long the seeds of the plant will last once submerged. beans, buckwheat, milo, and corn do not last nearly as long as millet or rice. although corn and milo won't completely be flooded and the stalks will keep the majority of the grain out of the water. the actual plant of the beans and buckwheat will deteriorate pretty fast and put the seeds in the water. millet and rice will easily last and entire duck season and even well into the time ducks start heading back north.

You can also use Milo in addition to millet. It isn't as water tolerate but is more 'dry' tolerant so you need to plant in a different area than your millet depending on your drainage situation.

^^^

moist soil is very diverse in the food that it provides and is cheaper than planting grains, but they don't compare to grain. especially with mallards and pinnies. extremely well managed moist soil by someone who knows the area as well as what and when to spray and or disk with adequate rainfall MIGHT have an impoundment that will have 1500lbs per acre. But most of what people call moist soil would probably not even bust the 500lb per acre mark