Category: Tall Fescue

Walking Fields

It was a chilly field walking morning, but this is an important job for our farm!

This time of year as things start to really grow and plants start to set the crop for the upcoming summer harvest, we have to take time to walk all our fields and look for issues.

“Issues” right now in this growing stage usually means weeds. We are currently spraying our final (hopefully) application of weed spray. We use chemicals that are selective so they only target weeds that we see out in the field. It’s a great way to save money for us and save on putting more chemical where it’s not needed. For example we have a few fields that have a lot of groundsel, we will add an additional weed herbicide in to manage that so it doesn’t show up as a weed in our seed tests at the final stages of getting clean crops to sell. Also hoping that it doesn’t show up again next year as a continual problem.

Our weed spray is mixed with a carrier of fertilizer and water; which in turn saves us an application across the field to get our final amount of nitrogen to feed the crop. This efficiency increase saves us time, money, and fuel. But in order to makes this all happen we do have to walk around every single field to see what is out there.

This is a nice clean area of a tall fescue field.

Our farm works alongside field men who work for companies where we buy our fertilizer and chemicals. More boots on the ground means that we have a very good chance of not missing something. And if we do our jobs well; setting ourselves up to have clean seed fields that create a valuable product for us to sell.

In Between the Last Crop & the Next

Fall is always busy, we are at the beginning of what looks a lot like triage everyday of what needs to be done. We have one more crop to harvest, filberts, and then we will be done with the 2023 crop and be able to fully focus on the 2024 crop. Planting, cultivating, spraying, fertilizing, working ground, etc.

Which means that while we aren’t harvesting at this very moment we have time (especially with 2023 seed harvest being so early) to go out and get some projects done. Mine earlier in the week (after dropping ALL THREE of my kids off at school! Woo hoo!!!) was spot spraying thistle patches that had come up in ground that we had already worked a few weeks ago.

These patches are easy to see this way without any other crop growing currently. They also allow us to spot treat instead of spraying the whole field to get control of these nasty weeds. Our plan for this field specifically is to plant tall fescue this spring. This will allow for a lot of weeds to sprout between now and then giving us a great opportunity to clean this soil up of weeds before planting.

Because we grow so many seed crops on our farm, keeping weeds controlled is of very large importance to what we do. This may seem like a small insignificant job, but in the long run, it’s important to stay on top of weeds at each opportunity.

I mentioned before that I dropped off our three of our kids at school for the first time ever, don’t worry about me being lonely though, I have another sidekick that was right with me the whole time.

Oregon Grass Seed Research Roundtable

I often think in the back of my head that as farmers we really are never doing things the way that we have always done them, mostly because I’m constantly reminded when I talk to non-farmers that is what they assume. I’ve written before about how farmers are always “Doing what we’ve always done – NOPE!”. Last week I had the privilege of attending a grass seed research roundtable at Oregon State University. This is the first year that one has been held here in Oregon specific to grass seed. The room was full with over 30 stakeholders and another dozen or so logged in through zoom. Another reminder to me about how forward thinking and solution oriented this industry here in Oregon continues to be; which I love!

If we’re honest I think we can agree that research isn’t the most riveting topic most time, but the set up of this roundtable allowed us all to hear a summary from the researchers, limited to 10 minutes; enough time to summarize but not get too deep in the weeds of research which can put even the most nerdy farmer asleep (no offense to those in research). Which was followed up by 5 minutes for questions from producers, seed dealers, field-men, and other researchers.

Topics included many of the pests that we are constantly battling in the field and other challenges that we face as producers and as an industry as a whole. Voles, billbugs, symphylans (research to help off set the gap in control that the Lorsban/chlorpyrifos ban left us with), DNA testing for seed, field residue and pre-emergent sprays, optical seed sorting, weed management and smart sprayers, crop stand longevity, straw management and what that means for our soil and carbon sequestration, nitrogen leaching potential, and on and on.

They say that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. It’s no different in the farming world. Sitting there last week was a continuous reminder that our industry is always changing, adapting and finding solutions. As a solution oriented person both in my personal life and in my farming life, this was all very exciting to me.

Now comes the tough part of ranking them all for funding; research doesn’t come free but the knowledge that we will gain from these trials will pay time and time again for this industry here in Oregon. Last week was just another reason I’m proud to be a grass seed producer here in Oregon.