Episode #7 planting brown top millet dove food plot! John deere 4066r

Well good morning everyone. On today's agenda it's finally time to get that millet food plot planted for the dove. Weather has been crazy here lately. It's kind of got me behind. Been getting rain every day and severe thunderstorms on top of that. Had trees blow down as you've seen in some of the episodes that I've already made. So I'm kind of getting a little behind. I'm probably a week or two behind how I'd like to plant. However, millet typically germinates and seeds out really well within about 60 days here. So that still gives me a couple weeks before the season opens which gives me time to mow it and put it on the ground. So that's the main thing on the agenda this morning. Got to go out there and level the plot. Then put the seed down. Pack it all in. Fertilize it. So today is going to kind of be some track to work and planting a millet food plot. Thanks for watching. I don't know if y'all are very familiar with browntop millet seed, but you can just see how small this seed is. It's a 150 pound bag. Just has a tremendous amount of seed in it. And I have found because this stuff is so small, so hard to see, I can't use my big old tractor spreader. I just can't see how much I'm putting on the ground. So a fuller spreader works great for putting out this tiny seed. Most people online, most places recommend, oh you see it all over the place. 15 pounds an acre up to 30 pounds an acre. I tend to go a bit overboard and I found this out by accident. I put almost 40 to 50 pounds out per acre. I do find that my millet has a little bit of a stunted growth because it's grown so thick like that and does require a little more fertilizer. But the weed competition is almost non-existent. This will come up so thick that it shades all the weeds out. And that part I do like. And I have yet to ever have a problem planting this thick that it doesn't put a tremendous amount of seed on. So there's always plenty on the ground. So I just tend to go about twice as thick as what most places recommend. Then in the back of the truck this morning I went and bought a thousand pounds of triple 10 fertilizer. You'll see crazy numbers for that too. Some places say 150 pounds an acre. Some places say 600 pounds an acre. It's all based on your soil. You really should get a soil test. But I have found two to 300 pounds per acre of just some old basic triple 10 fertilizer tends to work pretty well for this. And a few weeks after this comes up if I start seeing the grass or the millet yellowing up, I'll hit it again with another 100-200 pounds per acre of fertilizer. And that's the last time I'll touch it. And anywhere from 40 to 60 days from now they'll start having a good stand of seed on them. Start turning brown, wilting over. Then I can mow it down and put all that seed on the ground for the dove. So I'm gonna head out in the field go ahead and spread this. Then we're gonna come back and hook up to this packer that I built. This is yet another homemade piece of equipment I made. Kind of teaching myself to weld. Took a couple of propane cylinders, welded them together, made the frame. So it's been working real well. So after I put that seed down out there in that fluffy soil, I'll just pack it straight in a couple times. Broadcast fertilizer over the top of it. And it typically comes up very well every year. Has been thus far doing it that way. So head out over the folder, put a little seed down. I'll meet you back at the tractor and we're gonna pack it in. All right, well I got the seed out. Got my packer hooked up. Because the field is somewhat fluffy, this is nowhere near as good as I would like to have it. But it's been raining every day. The next five day forecast has a lot of rain. There's actually rain on the radar coming. So I just have time to let this field dry out and get it perfectly smooth and fluffy. But I'll show you the dirt is still fluffy enough. And because this seed is so tiny, I don't ever have to go back over it and cover it with say, you know, the disc or cultivator. It's fluffy enough right here that when I run it with a packer a time or two, it'll smush it right down in there. I don't know if y'all can see these little seeds or not. They are so hard to see because they're just falling in all the grooves out here. But you can see a wad of them right here. It's about how thick I throw them out and plant them. You know, there's seven, eight seeds right there in that wad. And that's thicker than they recommend planting. But hopefully, I don't jinx myself here and you'll see a little bit later in the season, it comes up so thick that it just eliminates all the weeds. It just shades them out. And I prefer that. And you can look at this volunteer stuff that's coming up since last year and it's done a pretty good job of keeping the weeds down. And I didn't do anything with that. Actually, I've been running over and smashing it with the tractor constantly and it's still trying to come up. So this stuff grows like a weed. Literally grows very well. Only thing is it just likes fertilizer and does not like to be covered up too deep just because it's such a tiny seed. And like I said, usually I have the field much more smooth than this, but I'm trying to beat a rainstorm that's coming. Go ahead and get this seed packed in and get fertilizer on it. And as well as it grows, I don't think I'm going to have a problem. Well, it should look a whole lot different now. Got the seed down, got the field packed in, and as y'all should be able to see, plenty of fertilizer on the ground as well. So I'll keep y'all updated. With that said, I appreciate y'all watching the channel. If you want to see how this plot's going, how the shooting house is going, just how we're developing this place, just hit the subscribe button. I'm trying to have a couple videos out a week. No set schedule just yet. We're in the process of potentially selling our home and moving over, so that's going to make videos a little sporadic and hard to just hit on a daily basis or every other day basis. But I will keep providing updates on things I'm doing here around the farm. If you want some tractor reviews, tractor equipment reviews, things like that, just let me know. If you see something throughout the video, drop me a comment down there and say, hey, tell me more about something I seen in the background there. With that said, thank y'all for watching.