We are nearly to the brown season when even kudzu and Johnsongrass fade out for the year. Pretty soon about the only green at ground level will be a few wheat fields, a very few winter pastures and numerous deer camp food plots. Plus there’ll be scattered mustard and turnip green garden spots and possibly a few turf areas lightly seeded with ryegrass to give a green hue from mid-winter until the permanent grass takes over in spring.
Wheat, oats and ryegrass are all true grasses that will grow in our mild winter weather when planted in the fall. All three are used for wildlife food plots and wheat is a farm grain crop planted hereabouts in November and harvested in May and June. A few decades back, a lot of ryegrass winter pastures were planted. There was a thriving winter grazing stocker calf business across the southern half of Mississippi and the corresponding areas to the east and west.
On paper, it was a surefire money making enterprise. Just plant ryegrass seed where soybeans had been fall harvested, buy a bunch of 400 pound calves, turn them in the ryegrass to graze and get fat until the first of May and divvy up the profits with the banker. I should know; I was a fully committed participant in the ryegrass grazing business and learned a valuable lesson.
Never risk anything on fall rain. Three meagerly profitable years of cattleman fun were obliterated by one extra dry fall and winter. The grass did not grow until too late to get in enough grazing days to pay all the expenses.
Wheat-for-grain has been a serious southern crop for about forty years now. Creation of varieties that work in this climate was the breakthrough that made wheat possible for us. The other thing that came into play was falling soybean prices beginning in the 1970s. Wheat was double-cropped behind soybeans on the same acreage to better the odds for a profit.
I’m sure there are plans to plant some local fields in wheat this month. The standard is to plant wheat here anytime in November, but not earlier or later. Even if the ground is ready for planting wheat in early October, the warmer weather means the potential for insects and disease that can be avoided at no cost merely by waiting for lower temperatures. December planting has a different risk; the possibility of severe cold before the wheat plants are old enough to be freeze-proof.
Oats are just not important as a farm crop in the South anymore. Back when great-grandpa et al raised everything needed but sugar and new shoes, oats were harvested for horse feed. And oats are still the mainstay of horse diets. But southern oat yields and especially quality were erratic due to our weather and thus unprofitable. It is much more feasible to bring in horse oats from elsewhere and reciprocate by supplying those oat farmers with cotton denim britches and chicken wings.
•
Terry Rector writes for the Warren County Soil and Water Conservation District, 601-636-7679 ext. 3.