# Farming the Fringe With Alternative Crops



## Vol (Jul 5, 2009)

Sunflower sounds good....

Regards, Mike

http://www.agweb.com/article/farmers-in-fringe-areas-consider-alternative-crops-naa-fran-howard/


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## aawhite (Jan 16, 2012)

Still see a fair amount of flowers in my part of western Kansas,m but not as much as years past. TOugh part about flowers is the next crop rotation. Flowers set a deep tap root, good for breakign up compaction and pulling up deep nutrients, but they will suck up all the moisture from the whole profile. The follow-up crop can be really tough todo well.


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## mlappin (Jun 25, 2009)

We've grown sorghum in the past for bird seed, works very well on droughty soils. The grain platform takes some modifications to properly cut it with out losing too many heads.

A few people have grown sunflowers in the past here, and quite a few of them also burned up their dryers trying to dry the stuff.


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## IHCman (Aug 27, 2011)

Sunflowers look like a good crop to raise this year. I've heard of some pretty good contracts from local elevators from 18 to 21 bucks with an act of God clause. I like sunflowers in a rotation because it helps break the cycle of some of the disease and other things.

The negative side of sunflowers for us here in the prairie pothole region are blackbirds. Blackbirds move in a can do a lot of damage. They love having a slough or lowspot with water in it next to the field. Not uncommon to see 2000lb yield on one end of the field and have next to nothing on the end that has a slough next to it. Very hard to find a field that doesnt' have water near it around here.

Fires while drying flowers are common. Usually get a good hard frost to kill them and then they dry down quickly out in the field. Takes a really hard frost to get a uniform kill though. Fires while combining are also a negative. Almost every farmer that has grown flowers up here has a story of fire while combining. We never had a fire, but always worried about it. We'd blow the combine off every night and sometimes during the day too if it seemed dirty enough. The fine fuzz sticks to everything and plugs air filters and radiators pretty quickly.


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## aawhite (Jan 16, 2012)

For grain I currently do a wheat-wheat-fallow rotation, but would like to change things over to more continous crop. Looking at wheat-wheat-canola for some ground. Still need to find a legume or broadleaf crop to rotate with milo, so I can change up a herbicide program. This is dryland so we are way to hot/dry for beans/corn, need a crop that does well with less water. Been looking at millet, dry peas, edible beans. Just need a market. Been kicking around teff for the gluten free grain market. I would do barley or oats if I had livestock to feed.


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## deadmoose (Oct 30, 2011)

Here many commercials for these guys. I think they sponsor a "Made in Minnesota" show too.
http://smudeoil.com/


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## somedevildawg (Jun 20, 2011)

We plant a good bit of sunflowers down here, most are mowed down for dove shoots


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## Vol (Jul 5, 2009)

deadmoose said:


> Here many commercials for these guys. I think they sponsor a "Made in Minnesota" show too.
> http://smudeoil.com/


Really nice website.

Regards, Mike


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