# Looking for an innovative way to sprig



## purplewg (Nov 4, 2009)

So, here's the deal. I did some experimenting with Jiggs last year. After attending a "hay day" with the university here I discovered Jiggs seems to like my clay based soil. I purchased a few round rolls green and planted in an small area (about 3 acres) just to see how it did. Well, after I planted I got absolutely no rain for over 2 months. To my surprise when the rain finally came it started to grow is has done very well.

Not having access to any type of sprigger what I did was roll the bales out with the loader as best I could and then used a fluffer to back into this mess to try and spread it out. I guess it worked ok but my soil was so dry it was one big dust bowl.

So, I am looking for ideas on how to better deal with the actual spreading of the sprigs. Any ideas other than using my fluffer? I actually tired to hire some Mexicans from the row crop guys but at that time they could not spare any.


----------



## reede (May 17, 2010)

I've heard of folks using a manure spreader to scatter the sprigs/tops, and then discing in. For me, it has been better to hire someone to do my sprigging.

What size area are you wanting to plant. Here in SC, there usually is about a 10 acre minimum for them to come and sprig. It also depends on what equipment you have available. If you have to buy equipment, it gets expensive in a hurry.

One note on starting with bermuda. Tifton 85 and Coastcross II seem to be much less suscepitble to stem maggots than other varieties.


----------



## Vol (Jul 5, 2009)

purplewg said:


> So, I am looking for ideas on how to better deal with the actual spreading of the sprigs. Any ideas other than using my fluffer? I actually tired to hire some Mexicans from the row crop guys but at that time they could not spare any.


I would see if I could get someone to bale some green bermuda small squares and then rent a straw blower from a rental store. There are also round bale straw blowers and that would probably work fine but they may not be as easy to locate.

Regards, Mike


----------



## purplewg (Nov 4, 2009)

reede said:


> I've heard of folks using a manure spreader to scatter the sprigs/tops, and then discing in. For me, it has been better to hire someone to do my sprigging.
> 
> What size area are you wanting to plant. Here in SC, there usually is about a 10 acre minimum for them to come and sprig. It also depends on what equipment you have available. If you have to buy equipment, it gets expensive in a hurry.
> 
> One note on starting with bermuda. Tifton 85 and Coastcross II seem to be much less suscepitble to stem maggots than other varieties.


I have one field that is 40 acres I would like to plant. I think I was quoted around $300/per acre if I prepare it. I can do 5-10 acres at a time if I can find some cheap labor to do the sprigging. I have a couple smaller fields I can do also.


----------



## purplewg (Nov 4, 2009)

Vol said:


> I would see if I could get someone to bale some green bermuda small squares and then rent a straw blower from a rental store. There are also round bale straw blowers and that would probably work fine but they may not be as easy to locate.
> 
> Regards, Mike


Thanks Mike, I think finding a straw blower in Florida might be tough. I was just hoping that someone had some great ******* way of doing it. As a kid me, my brother, and my dad did it all by hand but I am no longer a youngster. lol


----------



## nhbaler282 (Oct 5, 2009)

For small acres you can run your disc if it is a small one back and forth and make the little furrows from the back of the disc about 3 ft wide pulling a small trailer and some body riding the trailer and dropping the sprigs into the trench and come back and pack it down to cover it about a inch deep maybe hook a roller or something behind the trailer basically about the same as a planter. Sometimes you can buy a planter at a auction and plant your fields and then later sell the planter and get your money back ,I do custom planting here in east texas but you are a little to far away


----------



## luke strawwalker (Jul 31, 2014)

nhbaler282 said:


> For small acres you can run your disc if it is a small one back and forth and make the little furrows from the back of the disc about 3 ft wide pulling a small trailer and some body riding the trailer and dropping the sprigs into the trench and come back and pack it down to cover it about a inch deep maybe hook a roller or something behind the trailer basically about the same as a planter. Sometimes you can buy a planter at a auction and plant your fields and then later sell the planter and get your money back ,I do custom planting here in east texas but you are a little to far away


Yeah you're best bet would be to find an old sprigger at auction and buy it... I actually got an ANCIENT one row sprigger that fit on a 3 point hitch... Basically it's a "backwards" running mini-manure spreader (spiked slat chains to drag the sprigs forward to the spreader machinery) and a spiked roller that takes the place of the beater, which fluffs and separates the sprigs (or tops) and meters them out down a chute, which drops them into a trough created by a winged sweep (like a mini-middlebuster) which moves the dry soil aside and creates a trench down into moist soil, into which the sprigs drop, which is then closed back over by a pair of covering disks and pressed down by a 8x12 "snowmobile trailer" type pneumatic tire that firms the soil over the sprigs (tops) while also driving the ratcheting mechanism that moves the spreader chain forward (again, just like a ground-driven manure spreader apron chain). Basically, identical to a Bermuda King sprigger, but on a smaller scale (one row versus 2-4).

I was kicking myself after an auction about 15 years ago, because someone had brought in an older Bermuda King sprigger that had obviously been sitting in the back of the barn at "Grandpa's" for years (if not decades). The paint was in poor shape and it had a coat of dust an inch thick on it complete with stray bird droppings, and a layer of scaly surface rust (not deep rust) that would have easily been brushed off with a wire wheel, but the machine was intact and looked like it was ready to go with just a little grease and oiling the chains. I figured for sure the thing would end up going for $4,000-5,000 dollars, so I didn't even bother bidding on it. Imagine my surprise when it went for about $1,500. Went about 3 bids and BANG! "Sold!". I couldn't believe it! I was sick because I COULD have bought the thing, busted the rust and give her a grease job, sprigged my farms to my heart's content, done some custom work for a few years, and then turned around and sold the thing for at least what I'd paid for it, probably more, considering the price of new Bermuda King spriggers... But oh well... can't win them all...

We actually planted from tops, not sprigs. "Sprigs" are technically root stock with some jointed stems thrown in... sprigs have to be dug by a sprig digger (basically a pair of coulter blades that cut the runners and then a powered spiked roller running backwards to the direction of travel that digs the roots out and elevates them up a potato chain that shakes off the excess dirt to a collection hopper). "Tops" are the cut off jointed stems and leaves. When covered with moist soil, the joints in the stems will sprout new roots and the plant will basically grow back up and form new plants. Tops are usually a LOT cheaper than sprigs (since they can basically be harvested with nothing more than a hay mower and a front end loader equipped with "manure forks" to rake them up and dump them on a trailer (there was a guy about 35 miles from here that would in fact sell you a 16 foot lowboy trailer loaded with tops for $150 per load, which was our source).

Now, you COULD just get a couple guys with pitchforks to dump them off the back of the trailer onto freshly disked loose moist soil, disk them in again, and pull a roller or cultimulcher over the ground to firm it up and "pack them in", hopefully right before a good rain. If a guy had a manure spreader (or bought an old yet "functional" one cheap) you could dump them into said manure spreader and pull it over the worked ground to spread the tops, then disk them in and pack the ground, again before a good rain is ideal.

Another idea I've seen (and that was used to "sprig" a lot of acres around here back before sprigging machinery and custom operators were fairly available. Basically, it's a spinning turntable with angle iron paddles into which flakes of small square bales of fresh-cut tops are pushed, which are then slung apart and spread onto the ground behind the trailer (usually) which is hauling the small square bales of tops. Basically these tops are cut with a hay mower and then IMMEDIATELY baled with a small square baler (slowly and with a SHARP plunger knife to handle the wet material without overloading or damaging the baler) and only enough bales are made that can be sprigged basically that day or at most the next day (to prevent rapid heating and spoilage/spontaneous combustion!). The "spreader" is basically a car or truck axle (the higher the gear ratio the better) with an A-frame tongue that can be hitched to the back of the trailer, with the driveshaft yoke pointing straight up, to which the spinning turntable is attached (usually with some sort of riser shaft so it's up higher off the ground) and a form-fitting "feed table" upon which the square bales are placed one by one, the strings cut, and the flakes fed slowly into the turntable by hand... Basically 3 guys are required-- one to drive the tractor or truck, one to bring bales from the stack on the trailer to be placed on the feed table, and one to flake the bales apart and feed the flakes into the spinning turntable so they can be slung out the back. Again, once the tops are spread onto moist well disked soil, then are then disked in and then packed down with a roller or cultipacker or whatever, and again preferably before a good rain.

I'll have to see if I can locate pictures or the extension service stuff on it...

Later! OL J R


----------



## luke strawwalker (Jul 31, 2014)

Try this...

http://georgiaforages.caes.uga.edu/questions/CSS-FS053.pdf

That should get you started. There's a similar version put out by the TX Ag Extension agency as well... A Google search should turn it up.

Personally if I didn't have a sprigger and couldn't get one at auction, I'd go with the manure spreader option. It doesn't have to be a very good manure spreader, merely functional. Basically any old junk spreader pulled out of the fence row that could be gotten working (the floor chains to move and the spreader flails to spin) would suffice... the floor doesn't even need to be in very good shape, as the bermuda tops will ride on the chains to the beater. The beater will then fluff and pull the tops and sling them out the back onto the ground as you go. You can get cut tops from the bermuda grass stand you already have; you don't even have to buy tops. Just take a bush-hog shredder and chop the stuff up, rake it up, and either using a front end loader with "forks" added onto the bucket (basically the guy I bought my tops from used a bucket that he'd bolted sharpened 2x4's about 4-6 inches apart all the way across the bucket width, sticking straight out the front-- he'd drive along with these sharpened 2x4's skimming the ground, and the tops would push themselves up onto the boards as he drove forward. Now, granted, he used a hay mower, which I would NOT recommend-- you'll get longer runners and more "live runners" (more joints per runner means a higher chance of them "taking root", BUT longer runners are a LOT harder to feed through a sprigger or manure spreader without wrapping and creating a big mess-- I learned that from experience!) A bush-hog will chop the stems up a little more and make it easier to feed through a sprigger or manure spreader. If you don't have a "buck rake" (spikes on a front end loader bucket) you could always just square bale the cut tops IMMEDIATELY after cutting (no drying, or as little as possible) and then it doesn't really matter-- use the hay cutter if you want, because the small square baler plunger knife will cut the runners into manageable "flakes" as the hay is baled. Lacking that, a good old fashioned pitchfork can be used to load freshly cut tops into a manure spreader or onto a trailer for hand spreading (with pitchfork or literally by hand) or however you want to do it...

Hiring sprigging done is like taking $300 bucks an acre to Vegas... it may work, it may not. A lot of it is luck and the weather. From my experience, hiring sprigging is pretty much like hiring any other custom farm work-- the guy wants a fortune, wants to show up on HIS schedule (whether it's a good time to sprig or NOT (USUALLY NOT!) and then they want everything to do it RIGHT THEN and any delays or holdups and they're whining and crying and raising h3ll... and of course "NO GUARANTEES" and you're out a fortune regardless of whether it works or not... I've seen guys around here be "on the schedule" for sprigging, and the guy they hired keeps them waiting for months and then shows up when it's powder-keg dry and hotter than h3ll with little or NO prospect of rain (which is almost essential to success of sprigging bermudagrass) and do the job, collect the big money, and then it's a COMPLETE roll of the dice if it will actually work or not... if it doesn't, they're not out a thing-- in fact they'll be ready and waiting to come back AGAIN when it fails and collect MORE money from you! That's why I hunted around til I found an old one row sprigger (made to run off the belt pulley attachment on an 8N Ford tractor on the 3 point hitch, but I adapted it to a lawnmower motor and put it on my 5610 Ford).

While I'm thinking about it, I'll tell you about an experiment a friend of my Dad's did a long time ago before he died. He was planning to eventually put his entire place into bermuda, and he was building up a 'nursery plot' behind the house to grow his sprigs and tops in... basically a garden-size plot that he could harvest the planting stock from. He had made a "plugger" out of an old post-hole digger or something-- basically it looked like a pogo-stick with a T-handle at the top, and a slightly tapered round cutting edge on the bottom, which would cut out about a 3-4 inch diameter hockey-puck like "plug" of soil, roots, and stems when the foot peg was stepped on (like a shovel) to push the round cutting blade into the ground about an inch or so deep. When the thing was lifted up, more often than not, the "plug" of soil, ROOTS, and stems came up with it... He had rigged a little hand-operated lever that worked a rod and plunger that then pushed the plug out of the cutting blade once it was pulled out of the hole. Basically he could cut out dozens of these plugs like a biscuit cutter cutting out biscuits (or a cookie cutter cutting cookies out of a sheet of dough) and then pick these "plugs" up by hand (or have someone picking them up as he cut them) and then he could simply walk or ride around on freshly-worked ground spreading these plugs onto the soil by hand... then they could easily be rolled down (firmed into the soil) by driving a tractor tire or whatever over them, or with a roller or cultipacker. He even had plans to build a "plug cutter machine" that would consist of a piece of fairly-large diameter heavy wall steel pipe (say about 12-24 inches in diameter) onto which rows of "plug cutters" would be welded (basically say 2-4 inch steel pipe pieces, about 2-3 inches long, preferably tapered (maybe make 4 torch cuts in a "+" pattern and then hammer the pipe in on the cuts, closing them up, and welding them back solid, to make a SLIGHT taper to the pipe). These plug cutters would then have their edges sharpened with a grinder to make them sharp enough to cut through the tops, stems, soil, and roots to cut the plug. The wall of the larger pipe that these cutters were welded to would be cut out inside the cutters once they were welded on, so that the cutters could dump their contents into the center of the pipe through the holes. As the pipe "roller" was pulled over the ground, the round "cookie cutters" would be pushed into the ground by the weight of the roller pipe to which they were welded, which would then cut out the plugs. The plugs would be pulled up out of the ground as the pipe rolled forward (some inevitably would pull back out of the cutter and stay put, but enough would be cut for the process to work) and would "stick" in the cutters. As the pipe turned, either the plug would fall down the hole into the center of the drum roller, or if it remained stuck in the cutter, the next time the cutter was pressed against the ground, the next cut plug would force the previous one up through the hole and into the center of the drum roller. To keep the cut plugs moving out of the center roller drum, it would have auger flighting welded to the inside of the drum, so that as the drum turned, the plugs sliding around inside it would gradually be shoved to one end, where they would be collected by an elevator (old potato chain or old paddle grain elevator chain from a combine or a collection wheel or a conveyor belt or whatever) that would then elevate the cut plugs up into a hopper. These cut plugs could then immediately be spread or slung by hand, or mechanically by means of a spinner (like the tops bale flake spinner) or something of that sort onto freshly worked ground and then immediately rolled in to firm the soil up around them to maintain the moisture to them. The plugs would have a much higher survival rate, because the roots inside the plug of soil they were growing in would remain INTACT in their own little 'capsule' of soil, with the entire thing merely transplanted into a different area of the field and on a wider scale. The moisture in the plug would help sustain the roots and cut stems until rain arrived (still sooner the better, but better than relying on bare root stock (sprigs) or cut tops relying on joints in close contact with moist soil putting out new roots) and even plugs that were planted "upside down" would have a pretty good chance of surviving, because the joints on the stems that were pressed down into the soil (crowns) would then root out and send out a new shoot out the bottom of the plug or round the edge of the plug once the roots took hold. He had started with his "nursery plot" by hand but had expanded it considerably using the hand plugger I mentioned... he planned to eventually "sprig" his entire farm using the "plug method" and then go commercial, but an ugly divorce and failing health put an end to that before he got started...

Anyway, there's more than one way to skin a cat... best of luck!

OL J R


----------



## somedevildawg (Jun 20, 2011)

Are you sprigging or planting tops......I'm a bit confused, doesn't take much


----------



## cjsr8595 (Jul 7, 2014)

luke strawwalker said:


> Try this...
> 
> http://georgiaforages.caes.uga.edu/questions/CSS-FS053.pdf
> 
> ...


That thing looks really safe! sorry had to, amazing we all don't die on a daily basis.


----------



## luke strawwalker (Jul 31, 2014)

cjsr8595 said:


> That thing looks really safe! sorry had to, amazing we all don't die on a daily basis.


LOL... Quite true...

Like Daddy used to say, "Po' folks has po' ways!"

Later! OL J R


----------



## Greasy30 (Mar 15, 2010)

Purple,

In your first post you said University so I am guessing you are near the Gainesville/Alachua area. Don't know who you talked to but I would try to get into contact with Scott Hay Farms as he sprigs all his fields I believe and is a wealth of knowledge.


----------



## purplewg (Nov 4, 2009)

somedevildawg said:


> Are you sprigging or planting tops......I'm a bit confused, doesn't take much


Tops, we always called it sprigging though.


----------



## somedevildawg (Jun 20, 2011)

purplewg said:


> Tops, we always called it sprigging though.


Thanks, perhaps....ifn you can get your hands on one.....roll tops and place into a bale buster in the field. Let the bale buster do its thing and move it accordingly....Then roll over with coulters and roller? 
Would probably be effective if you had access to one....that's a big if tho


----------

