It has been a couple of weeks since I posted an update on my cover crops here at home.

There have been a few changes. I have grazed and mown and reseeded the little paddock in front of my front yard. The horses and the donkeys grazed in it for nearly two weeks. I took down the division fence and mowed it on Friday and yesterday I broadcast more cover crop seed and then ran over it with my spike tooth aerator…..We had a nice little shower last night…..

I did something different with this one…. Because it is almost too late for summer cover crops and a bit early for fall cover crops…..I planted both…… I broadcast half summer cover crop seed and half fall cover crop seed from a bucket of fall mix I had left over from last year…… Too early for any photos. Should have some buckwheat up soon.

Since I last posted, I have seeded two grazing paddocks after grazing. Both were with the summer mix. The first is nearly a foot tall and it is probably four weeks since seeding. The other is right out front near the road and it is up and just becoming noticeable.

Okay….here are this weeks photos with comment.

below is the most recent shot of the test row in my garden….recall that I just scratched a row in the grass in the garden and distributed some seed and covered it up. My garden maintenance is to mow between the rows…Dee Dee inspecting….

below is one of a series of shots of the cover crop in the bull field….this one highlights a sunflower…they have just begun to make themselves evident….the sorghum sudan has been dominanting lately,

below is a shot of buckwheat, soybean, fescue and rape

My assistants have become camera hogs and showmen and are now showing off in front of the cover crop

The fence post in the photo is five feet tall….some of the sorghum must be nearly eight feet tall….

front and center is a pearl millet head….could not distinguish sorghum from millet until it headed….the sorghum sudan is the taller more open heads.

all in all I would call this field a sucess…mowed, seed broadcast and aerated with a spike tooth aerator.

this is an attempt at a shot of the whole field….I can no longer hold the camera high enough to get a shot beyond the first phalanx of plants

I planted this crape myrtle five or six years ago after losing a dogwood tree in the same spot….it has been slow growing but it gets prettier every year….really enjoying it this year. does not smell as sweet as the magnolia in the back yard in the early summer but it is even prettier.

This is a shot of the cover crop buckets…they have pretty much stopped growing….I have to water them daily…the stuff is so thick in the buckets that I am sure they are really pot bound….there is a corn plant in one of them that is only two feet tall…and tasseling.

center of this photo is an ear of corn in the cover crop….now that it is tasseling and silking I can find the corn in all the sorghum sudan….

This is just my weekly post of cover crops at the farm and other shots becasue I had a camera in my hand.

this first one is in a neighbors corn field….what this shows is depression of the corn crop in a low area by too much water….at least it was not flooded out and drowned as has been the case in many low spots….both corn and beans

The multispecies cover crop in buckets….getting crowed in those buckets and even with all the rain we have had it is hot between rains and I am haivng to water these buckets….the buckets do have drain holes in the bottom so they do not hold water….

This is the cover crop in the bull field….the white fence spacer in the photo is five feet tall…so the cover is jumping….this spot is near where we fed hay two winter ago so there are probably some residual nutrients there but the rest of the field isn early as tall.

Day Lillies planted last year at Po Devils Grave….Po Devil was a blind old hound that Marie took in a few years ago…someone had dropped her because she was blind and old….she had a couple of good years in the house with us….

This is a shot of a small area near the cow barn….for years it was part of the yard and was mown weekly…finally I got smart enough to put up a little hot wire and let the livestock mow it…There never was much in grass…and I had to mow it after they grazed it….this winter I broadcast a clover mix over it…about five or six kinds of clover….the horse have grazed it twice this year and it has been mown once….it has not been touched in about a month and now there is bermuda and clover about 18 inches tall….

another shot of the bermuda and clover patch.

planted galdiolas around the dog graves last year and everyone told me they would not over winter…most of them have come back this year and Monte has the first ones to bloom.

I planted some zinna seed in the flower border in front of the stable

this is another shot form th ewet area in my neighbors corn field….the corn stair steps up form two feet to six feet.

just a shot of the sweet yellow clover in the bucket….I have a good bit blooming in another field where I had planted some cover last fall….hopefully it seeds easily.

this is the standard weekly shot of the summer multi specis cover crop swon in two parts in the bull field….about 4 feet tall and some sunflowers are beginning to show up….soybeans and cowpeas cannot be seen for the buckwheat….

this is the MSCC row planted in the garden…did not have time to mow the garden this weekend because I worked Friday and went riding Saturday…

another shot of the zinnias

Hopefully I am going to make a visit to some of our producers summer cover crops and get some photos this week.