Weird Crops to Plant
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Printed Date: 20 Aug 2025 at 6:46pm
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Topic: Weird Crops to Plant
Posted By: Dale-OH
Subject: Weird Crops to Plant
Date Posted: 11 Apr 2025 at 9:18am
| I have a 6 Acre field for a front yard because i refuse to mow it. The past few years we have planted it to Wheat and harvest with our old combines. Problem is the weeds are getting stronger than the wheat. Brother and I have decided we want to plant some decorative corn, Popcorn and maybe some sweet corn. What other crops can we try? Sunflowers and Sorghum have been discussed, not worried about making money on it as a crop have a friend with a farmers market who said they can sell some if I want. More interested in making the neighbors ask questions and not have to mow. Looking for ideas i would like to have several different things growing, dont really need 6 acres of any of these at once. |
Replies:
Posted By: SteveM C/IL
Date Posted: 11 Apr 2025 at 9:28am
| Mix it up with a variety of things? A row of giant sunflowers looks pretty cool. |
Posted By: FloydKS
Date Posted: 11 Apr 2025 at 11:30am
|
maybe buy a packet or two of the 'mixed flowers' and add some color to the front... ------------- Holding a grudge is like taking poison and expecting the other person to die |
Posted By: im4racin
Date Posted: 11 Apr 2025 at 12:15pm
| Safflower should get them talking. Looks like angry dandelions |
Posted By: jaybmiller
Date Posted: 11 Apr 2025 at 12:24pm
|
How about buckwheat ? It'll kill the weeds ,bees LOVE it ! let a local bee keeper put 2-3 hives and get free honey. ------------- 3 D-14s,A-C forklift, B-112 Kubota BX23S lil' TOOT( The Other Orange Tractor) Never burn your bridges, unless you can walk on water |
Posted By: Dale-OH
Date Posted: 11 Apr 2025 at 12:33pm
| Some good ideas here, never heard of a Safflower till now. We had thought of Buckwheat and hairy vetch as a cover crop to buffer between the different kinds of corn. Not sure if I can get any more hives, have a couple next door at the parents and may be too close. |
Posted By: JW in MO
Date Posted: 11 Apr 2025 at 6:59pm
|
The trouble with planting popcorn, sweet corn and ornamental corn is, they are all open pollinators and will cross pollinate. If you can time the germination periods and stagger planting accordingly you could be ok. I planted some white and yellow popcorn one year, just chose an early variety of one and a late one of the other, still had a little crossover but it was all popcorn. I plant some Jimmy Red ornamental corn, coons got last years crop but still have enough seed for this year. Ornamental corn seed is expensive, I think I paid 10 cents a kernel for my original Jimmy Red, but saved the first harvest for next years seed and so on. ------------- Maximum use of available resources! |
Posted By: Dale-OH
Date Posted: 12 Apr 2025 at 6:47am
| The field is long and narrow, maybe 300ft deep at the widest part in and around my house and old farm house. Planned to do corn on either end and middle and fill it with others to keep the corn as far apart as possible. We are most likely going to hand harvest so wont be planting a lot of any of the corns just trying to do something different and get some of the weeds under control. Will be back to wheat next year so we can play with the old combines and Roto Baler |
Posted By: dr p
Date Posted: 12 Apr 2025 at 7:45am
| Zinnias would be fun. Can get seed in bulk and all crop will combine it |
Posted By: jaybmiller
Date Posted: 12 Apr 2025 at 7:50am
|
Bamboo ? Wonder if it'd grow where you are ? be kinda neat and 'weird' !!!! ------------- 3 D-14s,A-C forklift, B-112 Kubota BX23S lil' TOOT( The Other Orange Tractor) Never burn your bridges, unless you can walk on water |
Posted By: PaulB
Date Posted: 12 Apr 2025 at 9:50am
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Many localities are passing laws against Bamboo with fines for new planting or just having it. As it is an invasive non-native species. Once you have it, it is nearly impossible to get rid of it. ------------- If it was fun to pull in LOW gear, I could have a John Deere. Real pullers don't have speed limits. If you can't make it GO... make it SHINY |
Posted By: Ray54
Date Posted: 12 Apr 2025 at 12:49pm
What kind of dandelions do you have.  I have raised a lot of safflower, and harvested even more acres of it. Very profitable at times.You need a dry fall to harvest it for the best oil. But you are looking for a fun crop. If you would mow with rotary or flail mower at harvest time all seed eating birds would love you. It would keep trespassing down. But good blue jeans do a fair job of keeping thorns out of you.  But those in shorts.We always grew it with limited water so never over waste high. But did harvest some well over 6 feet. The only thing I ever cut with a Gleaner MH 2 and wished there was more header lift to cut less stem/stock. I sent a bit of time cleaning a spot of crop to crawl under the throat and close trap door.  A very careful process to clean feeder house out before closing the door. Never without good leather gloves.I even have safflower harvest picture in the file manger here
 if I only remembered how to get them here. |
im4racin wrote:Posted By: Dirt Farmer
Date Posted: 15 Apr 2025 at 2:19pm
| Sunflowers are fun and easy to grow. We get a 50 pound bag of straight Sunflower bird seed dump it from one bucket to another to fan out the fines then put it in the planter with corn units and plant the area then in a week or so come back and plant again to get a longer flowering season. We sell sunflowers along with our sweetcorn and the flowers go fastest on Sundays as folks leaving church get the flowers to share with their loved ones who they may be visiting. They do brighten up the day and bring alot of attention to our stand. |
Posted By: sho-man1
Date Posted: 16 Apr 2025 at 7:00am
| Plant some HEMP, then see who shows up when it blooms. |
Posted By: Joe(OH)
Date Posted: 16 Apr 2025 at 7:28am
|
Pumpkins can be fun for your kids. ------------- Life is simpler when you plow around the stump. |
Posted By: Dale-OH
Date Posted: 16 Apr 2025 at 8:41am
| Thanks for all the ideas. Will try to post pictures once we get things growing |
Posted By: AC7060IL
Date Posted: 16 Apr 2025 at 2:18pm
|
Maybe buy a couple of goats(ram & ewe)?? Try the latest invisible fence system( perimeter gps & shock collars?). When their offspring happens, sell them off for money. No mowing. No fence, Probably buy some crappy hay for pasture’s off season. About Labor Day, pull goats out of current grazing & plant (no-till) a mix of cereal rye, wheat, turnips. Hay goats to allow rye/wheat/turnips mix to vegetate til after Thanksgiving, then let goats graze it thru snow. When it’s cleaned up, take goats off & hay them until July. Then let goats graze it off & Start again Sept 1? Or something similar to that?? |
Posted By: AC7060IL
Date Posted: 16 Apr 2025 at 2:54pm
Woah! We had an Uncle who planted some bamboo around his house deck. Guess he thought it would look cool, shade well, & offer privacy. He should have listened to his now ex-wife who tried to talk him out of it back when. It’s roots are very prolific(stolons, rhizomes, whatever?). It is difficult to eradicate. |
Posted By: BillinAlberta
Date Posted: 16 Apr 2025 at 5:47pm
| Well ......a field of hemp will get the neighbours asking questions lol. I have grown Industrial hemp since it is legal here.Does a good job of choking out weeds.Huge amount of biomass. |
Posted By: darrel in ND
Date Posted: 18 Apr 2025 at 5:56am
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If you have a weed problem, I would second the notion to put in buckwheat. It chokes out everything else. It blooms white as snow, looks beautiful. Darrel |
Posted By: Dale-OH
Date Posted: 18 Apr 2025 at 6:47am
| I have been doing a lot of reading on Buckwheat and Hairyvetch. Planning to plant one of those into the worst weed areas. Can work as a buffer between my different corn crops as well. |
Posted By: Lars(wi)
Date Posted: 18 Apr 2025 at 7:50am
What do you do with the hemp ‘crop’? Burn off? Plow under? Harvest & market/feed? Smoke it?(LOL) ------------- I tried to follow the science, but it was not there. I then followed the money, and that’s where I found the science. |
Posted By: wjohn
Date Posted: 18 Apr 2025 at 8:10am
|
Buckwheat should do really well where you are. I remember it growing thick and tall back in IL, but out here in KS it is generally too hot and dry and mine only ever grows about a foot or so tall. Sunn hemp (not actually a "hemp") grows tall and fast and has pretty yellow flowers. It's a fun cover crop. ------------- 1939 B, 1940 B, 1941 WC, 1951 WD, 1952 CA, 1956 WD-45 |