Farm Friday - Planting Milo

It's planting time here in Kansas for fall crops.  Some people plant corn, some soybeans, and some, like us, plant milo.  Milo is the common name for grain sorghum.  Its used for feed for cattle and pigs, although I have heard stories down at the elevator of families eating it like popcorn many years ago.  Tyler has spent the last few days planing our acres.  I have to admit that in order to right this blog, I had to learn about how we plant our milo.  It is one of those things that I always kinda knew how it was done but not exactly how and I enjoy that I am learning new farm things too in this blog.

     The planter implement is attached to the back of our tractor.   There are eight boxes to hold the seed for the eight rows it plants at each time.  We plant 30,000 seeds/acre which is two and a half pounds/acres.  That's an amazing 12,600 seeds/pound.  There are two disks in the front that cut a slot in the ground that the seed will drop into.  Our seed is planted using no tillage which means the seed is planted directing in the previous crops stubble.  Plates spin and drop the seed at a determined rate.  Then two closing wheels follow and close up the slot so that the seed is planted around an inch deep.  We plant at a speed of about twelve acres/hour but it takes longer, as the planter boxes have to be reloaded with the seed.

   While the planter is planting the seed, it is also applying liquid fertilizer.  The liquid fertilizer is applied two inches to the one side of the seed.  We use a mixture of nitrogen and phosphorus which feed the seeds and helps them grow.  This makes our milo not organic because all fertilizers, like miracle grow are not considered organic.

    So now we have to wait around 105 days until it is time to harvest our milo.