# Planting Jiggs Tops



## TXMike (Apr 5, 2014)

I ended up working out a deal with a guy on some jiggs tops. I was going to go with Tifton 9 Bahia until I found out how much the seed costs.... The cheapest I could find was $245 for a 40lb bag. The guy I'm gonna get my tops from is gonna sell me more than enough to do 2 acres for $100. He said early to mid may he would start cutting and bailing tops and that whenever he got a big order he'd let me know so he could do mine with it. I had my soil tested and strangely enough it said my PH was good. It came back 5.9. I may still put down a ton of lime when I work the ground up again.

One acre of it I sprayed, disced, and planted rye grass on. The other acre I didn't plan on planting so I didn't do anything to it last fall. Should I only do the 1 acre I prepped this year or can I do a couple round up passes before may to kill everything enough to plant it?

After I spread the tops how deep should I disc them in? I use a 6' adjustable disc and when I'm trying to get everything churned up I offset it and have a 55 gallon drum full of water on it and drop it as deep as it'll go. When I disc the tops should I move the discs straight and take the water off and drop it all the way down? how many passes should I make over the tops with the disc?

Is there any herbicide I could put down to keep the seed bank in the soil from germinating after I spread the and pack in the tops? Or will any of the herbicides that do this interfere with the tops rooting?

My overall plan is to use these two acres that have irrigation to use as a nursery and over time plant the 13 acres in the back with no irrigation instead of spending a lot of money and rolling the dice on getting rain.


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## hog987 (Apr 5, 2011)

What is a jiggs top??


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## TXMike (Apr 5, 2014)

A jiggs top is the stem of the jiggs grass with nodes that will root when they get planted. Some people plant sprigs which is the roots and some people plant fresh cut tops.


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## eam77 (Aug 4, 2013)

I am not familiar with Jiggs----- but in the past I have done some top growth planting with "Alicia". You need a clean seedbed, well disked, limed if needed, and fertilized at a fairly low rate with mixed fertilizer. Soil test preferred, but if not available, 200#/ acre of 19-19-19-- or something like that. You could spread 1 to a few acres by hand, but I used a manure spreader to do bigger acreage. The sprigs need to be fresh, put out same day as cut if possible, and should be immediately disked in with low angle disk --- the effect you want is where the individual tops are partially exposed and partially burried. Then, the ground needs to be rolled really well. The rolling gives better soil-to-sprig contact plus smoothing up the field surface. Then, in my case, hope for rain.

This process is not precision. Therefore, the succes rate will not be high for individual sprigs (really, "top growth"). That means the application rate of the top growth has to be pretty high to still get a stand with only a 10% or less survival rate. [On a small scale, you could hand apply the top growth, like hand doing sprigs---the survival rate would go way up--but very labor intensive.]

My experience, without irrigation, is that when I got rain, it did well, otherwise, spotty with just the low places surviving.

Then, as soon as the sprigs start taking hold---- nitrogen fertilize. You can also do low rates of 2-4-D to suppress undesired weeds.

Your state agri university has extensive publications on fertilization and weed control, perhaps not so much on "top-growth-planting".


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## clowers (Feb 11, 2011)

We used 15 bales of Alecia tops to sprig one acre of ground here in east texas year befor last. You are on the right track as far as fertilizer , lime and so forth..
Make sure to roll yor ground after planting.. But most importantly pray for rain


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