# Can teff be planted no till



## FarmerCline (Oct 12, 2011)

I was wanting to maybe try a few acres of teff this year but I decided not to as I did not have a good way to plant it and I also have not found a cultipacker for sale that suited me. I got to thinking I wonder if I could no till teff with the small seed box on my JD 1590 no till drill? I would be planting it into oat stubble which I mowed for hay two weeks ago, that ground was worked last fall before planting the oats. I was going to plant soybeans in that field but I already am going to have about 70 acres of beans and since this is going to be my first year harvesting grain I think that should be plenty. Do you think teff would work being no tilled? Thanks, Hayden


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## endrow (Dec 15, 2011)

Yes it can be notilled we have a 1590 also that is the perfect drill . FIRST teff cannot take weed competition during its fist 2 inches of growth and you just cut the field your and weeds are dormant. you must wait till the weeds and oats are all actively growing again from being cut and then spray with a fairly high rate of round up. Wait a day or 2 then plant .... plant 6# per acre mix a little talcum powder with the seed in the small box .. they recommend not to plant deeper than .25 inches . I set the gauge wheels so the opener disc is cutting in 3/8" then the seed will fall in that trench @ 3/8" and the press wheel will push the ground in the trench down another 1/8" your seed will have .25" coverage.... With the new drill you will learn to pay attention to gauge wheel setting and opener down pressure .... They say the biggest teff failure is ground not firm enough so we think notill is better than tillage If you get compete kill of weeds prior to planting


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## FarmerCline (Oct 12, 2011)

Thanks for the help. It has actually been 3 weeks now since I cut the oats instead of 2, time is flying by. The field is actually very clean have not noticed any weed growth yet but the oats have about 6 inches of regrowth but it is very thin, I was hoping I would be able to get by without having to spray the field before planting. The 6 pounds of seed you recommend is that coated or uncoated seed? I am assuming the opener down pressure is dependent on field conditions but where is a good starting point? I have heard that teff is hard to get to dry down is that true? Thanks, Hayden


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## SVFHAY (Dec 5, 2008)

I notilled teff into precut rye stubble. Weather conditions were borderline cool for teff. Stand was decent, foxtail was better. Don't skimp on weed control.


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## Hayman1 (Jul 6, 2013)

I planted 7ac of Dessie teff with conventional till and rolled with a brillion roller harrow-teeth up on May 15 and got a really good stand. I planted 13 ac for a friend in millet stubble from last year no till and did not get a good stand-very spotty. I am using a Brillion till and seed which is ideal for tilled ground that has been pounded with the roller harrow. In several spots in my friends field that were disked or hammered by the power company installing a new line the germanation was really good. That said, the no till drills with spring loaded units probably adjust to the different ground conditions better than the till and seed. The nice thing about that unit is it does not hurt existing seedlings if you have to over seed for wash outs, etc.


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## FarmerCline (Oct 12, 2011)

Well it has been two weeks since I no tilled my teff and I don't have much of a stand. I dont know exactly why I didnt get a good stand, there was no weed competition, I feel I got good seed to soil contact. Maybe I planted too deep but I set the opener gauge wheels to their shallowest setting so I don't know how I could have planted any shallower. The other thing is we got a very hard downpour of rain 3 days after I planted so maybe it washed the seed out of the ground? What is really strange is everywhere I overlapped with the drill such as the corners I have a pretty good looking stand that is about 3 to 4 inches tall. The rest of the field I would say less than 25 percent of it came up and it looks kind of stunted and not but about an inch or two tall, some places didnt come up at all. I did have a bit of trouble getting started drilling the teff....3 of the seed tubes were apparently stopped up and I didn't realize it until the tube filled up and started spilling out the top, and I also discovered that when going downhill the seed would stay in the tube and not flow down to the openers due to the seed tubes aging a bit too much slack, and I had to experiment a bit to get the desired seed rate close to what I wanted but I got all that figured out in the first acre or two so that shouldn't affect the way the rest of the field came up. I decided to use the Timothy setting as the size of the coated teff seemed similar to Timothy but it was putting the seed out a couple pounds too heavy so I had to cut it back a bit, I ended up getting most of the field drilled at 10 pounds of coated seed per acre.

Now I'm trying to decide what I should do, some places in the field I have a stand I could maybe get by with but their are quite a few places that are absolutely too thin to amount to anything and I'm afraid I will have a weed problem if I leave it as is. Could I get some more seed and try to drill it again or will that not work? I really hate to have to burn it down again and start over. I really wanted to try this teff out as I liked the sound of it but I don't want to keep planting it if it isn't going to work out and I don't want to do conventional tillage on this particular field right now and it seems the teff came up alright where the drill worked the ground twice and loosed it more so maybe it is better for conventional tillage. I planted a field of sorghum sudangrass the same day as I did the teff and got an excellent stand and it is really growing....maybe I should just forget the teff and plant more of that. Any thoughts?


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## Teslan (Aug 20, 2011)

I drilled mine in using my drills alfalfa settings. Mine is a Great Plains Solid stand drill. I'm not sure what Timothy settings are like as I've never planted it and never even looked to see what the settings are for it vs. alfalfa. I got a great stand. Except for where dummy me didn't pay attention to the drill and the setting bolt got loose and it closed to 1/4 of the seeding rate on half the length of the drill. I never had any problems with the hoses plugging up. I did do conventional tillage though. Which included ripping, 2 diskings, and 2 cultimulthching first with teeth down, 2nd just rolled over to pack the soil. Also my drill has good packer wheels. I doubt that your drill settings have much to do with it besides your hoses getting plugged up. I bet it is more the depth it was drilled into the soil. And your 3 inch rain didn't probably help either.


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## FarmerCline (Oct 12, 2011)

Teslan, about how deep do you think the openers on your drill were placing the seed? I had my opener gauge wheels set at the shallowest setting so I don't know what I could do to get it shallower except back the down pressure completely off to where the openers would barely scratch the surface. I think the reason a few of the seed tubes plugged was because they seemed to have some spider webs when I cleaned them out. I'm thinking I might give it one more go and try to no till the field again.


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## endrow (Dec 15, 2011)

Yes it was probalty the spider webs AND I agree Lowests gauge wheel setting And pressure gauge setting lowest part of green on indicator. ALSO I said in an early post MIX TALCUM POWDER with the seed the problem you had on the hills is common with these drills . We use Kinze Planter Talc in the grass seed box always if not just plain baby powder The first time we planted on hills same thing happened to us


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## Teslan (Aug 20, 2011)

Spider webs are an issue here in my drill as well. We always blow the hoses out even if we think we don't need to. I had the openers just scratching the surface. I'd say they for sure didn't go below 1/4 inch. I even toyed with setting them so they didn't even touch the ground and kind of broadcast. Earlier this year I toyed with the idea of finding a Brillion. Glad I didn't. Brillion planters are all way to small for my liking and the ones that are big enough for me are towed. I like 3 point drills.


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## FarmerCline (Oct 12, 2011)

endrow said:


> Yes it was probalty the spider webs AND I agree Lowests gauge wheel setting And pressure gauge setting lowest part of green on indicator. ALSO I said in an early post MIX TALCUM POWDER with the seed the problem you had on the hills is common with these drills . We use Kinze Planter Talc in the grass seed box always if not just plain baby powder The first time we planted on hills same thing happened to us


 I am thinking now where I went wrong was I had the pressure in the middle of the green on the gauge and I should have turned it all the way down. I was just thinking that the openers would not go any deeper than what the gauge wheel was set at regardless of what the pressure was but I think the idea might be by turning the pressure down so as not to go as deep as the shallowest setting on the gauge wheel....or maybe I am thinking wrong? I will Definately use talcum powder from now on, the reason I didn't when I drilled the teff before is I was using coated seed and I thought that the coating might take the place of the talcum powder. Just curious but how does the talcum powder help the drill on the hills? Thanks for the help.


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