What's your habitat plans for next year?

[salty]

When you all are pulling water off late in the summer; are you pulling it off all at once or are you doing a slow draw down over several weeks? The slower draw down should help keep your sesbania from dominating your moist-soil fields and promote a diversity of beneficial moist-soil plants. When it comes to growing "good" moist-soil plants with a late season draw down "wetter is better" in terms of soil moisture.

Also, if you pull your water off and get good germination from your grasses and then notice sesbania or cocklebur coming up, a shallow reflooding will sometimes stunt sesbania and cocklebur enough to give your more water tolerant grasses a fighting chance. Keep your eye on your desirable plants when doing this. If they turn a yellowish or light green color, you need to either lower or remove the water you put on them. This is just another option if you can't spray or get equipment into a field.

Each site is different, so be prepared for Mother Nature’s curve ball when things don’t go by the book.

Let see some pictures of your management efforts before next season with a brief description of what you did and when you did it.

[bm-tn]

Any ideas on how to kill or knock back cockleburs. Got a problem started this past spring/summer and would like to head it off before they become 8-10' tall.
Thanks,
Bryan

[Wingman]

2,4-D over the top or long-handled hoe.

[HappyHunter]

Our two best planted crops last year were Japanese Millet and Rice. We planted rice for the first time and it held ducks throughout the entire season. We wanted to try Chiwapa last year but it was unavailable and have just learned it is again unavailable, so we decided to scratch it off the list. We are going to try the seed variety of Pearl Millet. We are also going to try to deep plow and see if we cannot stimulate more growth of smartweed. Our main goal this year is to plant as much in the late Spring (Rice and Pearl Millet) so we do not have to rely on the Japanese millet for the late summer crop. Since Jap Millet was so successful, we will plant it anyway.

[eastwoods]

Pearl millet gets too high and army worms tear up the single cigar shaped head in my experience. Not good duck food. Its used more for forage.

[HappyHunter]

There appears to be two or more types of Pearl Millet. There is a forage hybrid which grows to about 7 ft tall and produces very little seed. There is also a seed version which grows to about 4 ft with irrigation and it is suppose to produce a large head of seed. We are going to try, since if it fails we have time to plant Jap Millet later.

[eastwoods]

I grew that forage one once and it was one of the many experimental failures I have tried.

Hopefully, I'll figure this all out one of these days.

If dry enough I really prefer brown top over jap

[crow]

I made and set two nest boxes this weekend. I have a great little marsh that runs up into the woods near my house on Lake Sinclair.

[Double R 2]

Leave water on late (with a few exceptions, and then will hold low water in those holes); not pull it off at all on many.

Vine control - chisel plow and dicamba.

Pump some water onto disced soils in July/August, with and without having planted some millet.

[Tgrindlay]

Im trying poco barley this year in 10 foot strips. It's a 60 day crop I'll mow a couple times between the stips and mow to the water line.

I wasn't able to hunt this season. I was fighting Lyme disease and the IV port I was using to take antibiotics got infected. I caught a septic fungus that spread to my lungs. I'm still on a trachea and ventilator. I hope be off them by May.

I'm hittting the exercise bike and treadmill hard to get over this thing. In my x-ray yesterday my lungs were clear.

[okieguide]

what do you usually see after putting that water on in July and August after discing?? How much water in inches do you put on the area??

[jebster]

We are planning to plant 2 out-of-service catfish ponds this coming season. What is the best food to attract and hold ducks? Corn ? Millet? Milo? Rice?, soybeans? Sunflowers???

Thanks for your opinions.

[SWAG]

How long have the ponds been out of service? How early in the season can you get it dry enough to get a tractor in it? Rice, millet, corn, or milo are all good choices. If all of the pond can not be dried up enough to work up, may want to think about millet on mud or rice as the water draws down. The areas that will hold equipment up, may can get some corn or milo in there. Rice can be planted in shallow water (less than 4 inches). The millet will do best when mud is freshly exposed. Check on maturity dates and plant accordingly/as conditions present themselves. I am sure there are some guys on here who have planted ponds in all sorts of conditions that can lend some advice.

[SB]

SWAG's points are all right on the mark. Do the ponds drain well? When was the last time they have dried up? Will they support a tractor? Can you just open up the valve to let the water go? Is the ditch the water draining into open and free of obstructions (i.e., beaver dams)? No two sets of ponds are alike on how they were constructed. I've managed the ponds that were built with no expense spared and ponds that used every shortcut there is to get them to hold water. They can be a challenge, but fun to work with. All the infrastructure is in place: wells, levees and pumps. All you need is time, patience and luck.....money doesn't hurt either.

[jebster]

The ponds "out-of-service", meaning no catfish production, were cropped and harvested in soy beans last year. The ponds are clean and have been drained, but there are some small puddles from recent rains. Since they have been in crops, I would assume that we will have minimal obstacles and impediments to overcome. One plan is to plant several rows of corn around the perimeter/edges of the pond for cover and food. In the main body, we would plant more corn or whatever food is deemed best.

I would appreciate your thoughts and recommendations now that you have more information. Thanks again for your response and assistance.