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Flaccid GFR's

BriarwoodBottoms

Active Member
I have a plot that consists of forage peas, groundhog forage radishes and winter rye. The plot was fertilized proper, seed bed prepared well, and I followed the proper timing/planting techniques. The plot looked so good in September I thought about grabbing a bowl and some western dressing. The GFR's tubers became very soft, weak, and sort of pungent come november. I know we had above normal temperatures that continued into December but I guess I thought the GFR's became hardened and rigid as they matured. I am just trying to figure out if they beacame root rotted or did the warmer weather prevent them from hardening properly? I dont know if it was something I can do differently next year or just blame it on the weather. The deer hit the plot early and I waited all season for the sugars to move down so they would hit it late and it never happened. Any thoughts?
 
Sounds like they started to rot, those gfr's mature pretty quick. I planted some purple top turnips in June a few years back just to see how big they would get... They were soggy rotton by the first freeze.
 
I know you said you did properly BUT- can you say WHEN you planted it? WHAT seed rates per acre? WHAT fertilizer type and quantity per acre?
 
Plot size is an acre and I went with 5 to 5.5 lbs of the GFR's, I used one bag of the forage peas (pretty sure it was a 50 lb bag). They were planted in mid August. Plot was tilled first, broadcasted the peas second, cultipacked third, broadcasted the gfr's fourth and then cultipacked again. Roughly 2 and a half to 3 weeks later I broadcasted the rye. I work a golf course and had some partial bags of mixed fertilizers that I used. They were all pretty balanced and did not add up to over 60 pounds total. Everything grew awesome and looked exactly how I had imagined it. Like I said previously the deer definitely used it early but I was hoping to get more of a late season attractive out of it. I plan to rotate the same mix or something close to that to a different plot on the same farm next year. After following all of Paul's successes with some of the plants I used I am definitely interested in keeping them on the farm.
 
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