June grass(I see some dogbane in there too)

Fescue

Fescue, Oxeye Daisy, Timothy

Very typical for Washington, Beaver, Greene, Allegheny… 

Is that in western PA?

The purple headed stuff is fescue. It’s most likely Kentucky 31 fescue. It grows good around here and it is most common in seed mixes. Handles the dry weather nicely. Have you seen the prices on small squares of alfalfa at the Rogers hay and grain auction? It peaked a few weeks back at $14.00 a bale! I have had good luck with the FS forage round up ready alfalfa seed, and a hay grass mix from Growmark in 84 called “hay buster”. Nothing beats the good old Timothy/alfalfa mix around here. Seed it down in the fall with a wheat nurse crop, or in the spring with an oats nurse crop. If you do go with the oats nurse crop, I would buy all of the oats you take off the fields. 

How are your fields on lime? 

It’s positively not a fescue we plant fescue for hay on sandy ground.   There is an app ( not free) where you take a pic of a plant and it identifies what you got.    

YOU DO NOT WANT TO PLANT WHEAT OR OATS DIRECTLY AFTER A HAY CROP.  Google “take all” its a disease that will pretty much kill/stunt all the wheat.   Run a year of corn clean or beans in between.   No till wheat works decent after beans then you can no till alfalfa into the wheat stubble.   

Another option would be to get a Agtalk logon and post your grass pics their very smart group of guys most active farmers.  

I don’t think he has to worry much about take all. He is perched on the top of a hill, has plenty of slope, temperatures stay a lot warmer in the early fall/late summer, and he has low ph soils. This is not a common problem for this area. 

Are you saying that the purple hued grass heads are not fescue? Maybe I misunderstood. 

Lime is pretty easy to get here. It’s available for free in Dunningsville. You just have to have a triaxle or hire a trucking company. You can call Yost Trucking in Canonsburg and have them haul it from the Dunningsville exit of I-70. They do it all the time. 

After seeing some other pictures of your farm in another post, I am fairly certain that I know where your farm is. Your neighbor Tim Kelly rents the lime spreaders to spread the lime. So for a fairly small amount of money you can get a good dose of lime out there. And if you’re where I think you are (farm was owned by a family who went to mill creek and his wife was the organist) then you are literally a few hundred feet away from rental lime spreaders. Much better to have the ground tilled and work the lime in.

Hope this helps

John

So, I wouldn’t exactly do that. I mean, if you want to pick a few strips, or a single strip of maybe 5 acres and burn it down in late July, then wait until everything is brown and down for at least two weeks (no green bridge). Then hit it with a couple tons of lime, and finally sow it in tillage radishes with 100 lbs of potash in august to set it up for a spring seeding of hay with an oat nurse crop; that will work. The ground will be fairly mellow and clean to sow. 

I think it would be better to just pick a strip or a few strips and moldboard plow, disc, and then lime, then disc in the lime for fall planting of wheat nurse crop over hay. Or, if you want to fall plow it and then lime and disc(or harrow, digger, field cultivator) in the spring for a spring planting of the oats and hay that would work also.

If you are retired and just want to play and get paid for the hobby, then try all three methods! I’d be curious to see how it all goes in a side by side comparison. It would be interesting to see how it all turns out.

 Some people retire and play golf. Then there are those who retire and farm and end up working harder at farming and are happier and healthier and get paid money back instead of paying for the golf! 

Let me know if you have any questions 

John

The last lime I got, having had it trucked to the farm, came out to $7.83 per ton, and I can’t remember what I paid to Kelly’s for renting the spreader but it was reasonable. I have to get more delivered this year for a couple fields so I’ll be able to let you know what the updated price will be. Probably still close to $8 per ton. I usually just do a few fields every year and then it’s not too much work all at once. 

Fertilizer is a bit expensive now, but it looks like you are off to a good start with getting the farm built back up. Have you done any spraying for the weeds? It’s a nice farm in a nice area, definitely a beautiful retirement plan!

John