Getting Ready to Plant Sorghum

I started no-tilling about five years ago and about four years ago bought a little sprayer so I could do all my own spraying (there's a story behind that decision that I might share sometime).  After waiting and waiting for it to rain to make sure most of the weeds had sprouted, I finally decided to go ahead and spray the field where I plan on planting grain sorghum this year.  I'm only planting about 40 acres of grain sorghum "early" (although I'm also planning on double-cropping about 50 acres, and planting some sorghum-sudangrass for hay), so the spraying goes relatively quick. 

Today, I sprayed a pre-emergent herbicide to mainly control any crabgrass, and some glyphosate (RoundUp, etc.) to kill any weeds that were already growing.   

I don't know how anyone reading this feels about herbicides, but the pre-emergent is basically the same stuff that people spread on their lawns to control crabgrass, and depending on who you talk to, glyphosate is either a harmless herbicide used by a lot of people around their houses or it's a poison that's being used in some evil plot by Monsanto to control the world.  I tend to think that it's a useful herbicide that has pros and cons, and I'd rather spray a quart per acre of  glyphosate and kill most of the weeds instead of tilling the snot out of that field, burning through most of my organic matter to control the weeds, and losing what little water I had stored in the ground. 

The toughest part about spraying is trying to keep the tip of the boom from hitting the top of a terrace or fence, watching the speed and pressures, and following the GPS.  It's hard to get some decent photos while driving around and doing all that, but here's a few. 

Looking Back at the Boom

You can see part of the field where I drilled a mix of wheat, crimson clover, and canola into about 6 acres last fall because I had some leftover seed in the drill, I was experimenting with some cover crop mix ideas, and I was hoping that I might get enough rain to either cut it for hay or harvest it for grain. At this point, I'm not sure what I'll do with it, the cold killed the canola, the crimson clover didn't really grow that much, and the wheat is pretty short.   I might end up just drilling something like sorghum-sudangrass into it as another cover crop experiment.

Looking Forward to the Left

This picture might give you a little idea of what the rest of the field looks like (the glass needs cleaning, the field isn't usually blurry and smeared like that).  After I harvested it last fall, I waited until two weeks after we had a good hard freeze (early December?), then I let the cows onto it.  They went through and cleaned up some of the dropped sorghum heads, then ate most of the leaves and some of the stalks.  About six weeks later, I moved them off so they wouldn't tear up the field if it started raining like it usually does in late winter. 

Looking North Towards the Wheat

If you look hard enough at this picture, you'll see a wheat field (the green area) in the distance and some electric poles which are the same ones that were in some of the other pictures I've posted.  The line of trees running along the edge of the wheat field is the lane where I cut the trees and brush out of the fence line.  It's maybe a half mile to the edge of the wheat field from where I took this picture.  None of that has much to do with planting sorghum, but I always like to get a sense of place when I'm reading other people's blogs, so I'm trying to make it easier for anyone reading this.

The next step is spreading some fertilizer, planting the sorghum, and then hoping for some rain.