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Thanks everyone!

I am taking 15 acres of field out of production to play with in 2021. I already started planting trees and direct seeding acorns earlier this fall after the beans were removed. I want to put some clover plots in here and there and a few pockets of switch grass. I will do more tree/shrub...

I am considering taking 3 or 4 acres of open ground and trying to find someone close by to plant alfalfa. I would let them hay it for free but all input costs are on them. I really like alfalfa for a deer plot but want the expense and the hassle to be someone else's responsibility. Any...

I've had about 2" since mid July in west central Illinois. I put brassicas in August 2 and they are maybe 3 inches tall now and everything is yellow. I overseeded with rye and wheat 3 weeks ago before our last rain and it germinated and stalled out. Everything is yellow and dying or dead. I...

I got 3/10" out of that whole 2 day weather system in west central Illinois. Some places close to here didn't even get that. It has been brutal here since about mid-July. We just keep missing everything. Oh well, at least it looks like a good acorn year around me.

Thanks for the reply here. Nothing to do now but watch and see what happens I guess. I definitely pushed my luck with trees larger than 6 inches. I sprayed some locust and hedge that were 12 to maybe 14 inches because they were very close to oaks I wanted to save. The oaks were 5 or 6 feet...

I have always killed big honey locust and hedge by girdling and using tordon. It is brutal work on nasty trees that are often copiced bad and in nasty tangles. I have had decent success with tordon but have had to deal with some resprouting. Biggest issue for me is the difficulty with girdling...

I do have my goals figured out with this effort. I am not a board-foot guy so long-term timber harvests are not what I'm thinking about. But I don't want overgrown pasture timber either. I want good habitat (primarily for whitetails, but other animals as well) but I also want that habitat to...

Will do. Hoping to get a lot done after the beans are cut later this year. Thanks all.

Leaving it go back on it's own is an option I've considered too. I would have to stay on top of the hedge, locust, and honeysuckle that would come from one neighbor because I do not want 20 acres of that in 20 years. But I would have to work to keep all that out of any tree planting that I may...

You guys aren't exactly instilling me with a lot of hope here! :) Fencing the whole area off isn't an option. It's too big of a field and would be cost prohibitive. Plus it screws up the deer hunting big time. I have probably planted 3000 or more seedlings in my lifetime and a couple thousand...

Yes, for trees I would plant mostly oaks - mainly, white, swamp white, burs, and red. This is an upland site with good oak timbers all around. The neighbor has 30 acres of overgrown pasture that is all osage, locust, and honeysuckle and I know if I don't do something and stay on top of it then...

So I have about 20 acres of tillable that I am planning to pull out of production after the 2020 growing season. I want a tree/shrub planting over about 10 or so acres, will leave a few acres along timber edges to naturally go to brush, and will keep 3 to 4 acres for food plots. About 5 acres...