Hows your moisture?

[coppertop]

We only had a small shower late yesterday afternoon, there was a light breeze all day so things started to dry up. Nobody is in the fields, too wet, so people are trying to get cows out to pasture, turn bulls out etc.

[grassfarmer]

Hey Cowman, I got my potatoes frosted a couple of nights ago - is it still safe to plant tomatos out? Do frosted potatoes recover?

[coppertop]

Tomatoes can't stand much frost. If you plant them, it is a good idea to put some sort of container over each plant at night just as a precaution.

We had frost here two mornings, ice on the vehicle windows but none of the plants were damaged.

My Dad always used to wait to plant tomatoes until after the first new moon in June, he felt that the danger of frost was past by that time.

[cowman]

Not sure about potatoes. I would think they would probably bounce back unless frost was severe.
I always plant tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers with a coffee can(both ends cut out) around them...then simply put a board on top of can if it looks frosty. Most acclimatized plants can survive a light frost if you spray with water pre-dawn and don't let the sun get at them right away.

[NeilS]

Here in the Red River valley near Winnipeg, we have been generally dry this spring, with only 3/4 inch inch each of the last two months.

Last year there was over a half million acres unseeded around here due to rain, and about as much again seeded but not harvested due to total drownout failure. After last years excessive rain, I won't complain about a bit of dry.

Last year also set us up for some good soil moisture reserves, so we are seeing good growth in the crops so far.

AS for potatoes freezing (I am refering to garden potatoes only), three weeks ago we had some up with about two to four leaves and had a frost burn it all off. They have recovered nicely. About ten years ago, a 6 inch snow dump on potatoe plants did the same thing, and that year gave us one of our better potatoe yields. They seem to handle frost OK.

[SASKFARMER3]

Its just wierd since the last 3 inches of rain.
the ground moves when your seeding and you dont dare go on ground you already seeded or you will sink.
shift to 8.9 miles a hour and go then when you start to slow down shift down then shift up and give it again.
thank god only two more quarters and its all in.still better than drought

[grassfarmer]

I'm convinced that on my place heat is currently the limiting factor not moisture. The few days of cool weather last week really stalled the grass but now the heat has returned the grass is really bouncing again. I can monitor the growth really easy as the field the yearlings are in is on a 1.5 day move. They are in "field" 12 now and when you looked back at the regrowth on fields 7-10 a couple of days ago it was doing very little. Tonight it has jumped up and caught up on the earlier fields. This is another advantage of having a planned grazing system - you can monitor the results daily and really see what is going on. The guy that drives around a quarter of permanent graze pasture a couple of times a week would have a tougher job assessing growth and moisture.
We could still use half to an inch a week of moisture though this time of year to maximise potential.

[nicolaas]

grassfarmer, I am curious about the size of your paddocks and how they are fenced? Is it temporary or pernament? how many cows do you put in each paddock? Do you move the water troughs each time you move, or is the water in a central area? Sorry about all the questions, but I like to learn from people with experience in things I'm interested in. It seems you have an good system going.

[food4u]

We finished seeding this pm and now for some warm weather to get thing out of the ground before too much rain comes. Am taking the helper(wife) out for supper to celebrate.

[dalek]

We got the rain AND the heat this week, our soybeans took less than 5 days from planting to emergence.

[coppertop]

good for you food4u for taking your 'better half' out for dinner. All too often the 'lead hand' ends up doing the work of the hired hand plus the cooking and cleaning too !!


BEEN THERE DONE THAT !!!, but I will say there were lots of dinners out too.

[grassfarmer]

nicolaas, we have divided the good land up into "permanent" fields of 8-20 acres using single strand high tensile but some of the fields were existing barb fenced at this size so we just run an offset wire around them.
We further subdivide these with step in posts and polywire, depends on the time of year - now we have typically 100-120 cows in a group so they get maybe 8-10 acres for 2 days as we don't want to graze too severe. When growth slows down in early July we split them into smaller lots, maybe 40 plus a bull and then they get fenced tighter, typically 1 or 1.5 acres which they graze into the ground in a couple of days or so. As soon as the bulls are pulled they go back in a big group. We always try to keep as big a group as possible to get maximum herd impact but when the bulls are out we need to split them down as we run some purebreds that need different bulls. We have pasture pipeline over much of the place, 1 inch plastic mainly on the surface unter the fenceline. Troughs are 140 gallon mounted on a wooden sledge made of railway ties. We have mineral feeders on sledges too so you can just hook up the water and minerals behind the truck and move to the next field.
We just added a water wagon this year - a 1250 gallon tank with a 30 gallon tank mounted on it which we can fill from the river with a honda gas pump. This is not so much conventional water hauling which is very expensive, but more pumping up into a holding tank as the river is very close by. This is for use on a quarter that we can't get pipeline water to. It also serves in areas where the cows used to drink in the river.
I can push the cows fairly hard on this system - much of the year they graze grass that is over mature or poorer quality late in the season when their requirements are lower and it saves me needing to cut hay.
On the other hand we run a group of yearling steers for grass fattening. They get better grass, typically a three or four pass rotation on one field which gives them higher quality, less mature grass but it is also tougher on that pasture as they select the better grasses and overgraze slightly. We pick a field that is in good shape and has a lot of legumes for this and use it one year - the next year it gets cows grazing with long recovery periods to allow it to recover.