learn me about sunflowers

thinking about planting 3-4 acres next spring for the wildlife,if we ever get any moisture.any particular stuff to do?can you drill them in maybe if you block off every second or third drop?i dont really care to make a crop,just trying to have a little something for the quail , turkey, and doves.got 500 acres in western okla,that i'm not using for anything else,so i though i would spend some time and money doing some wildlife habitat improvement on it,and scatter some food plots around.but ive never tried any sunflowers.planted about twenty acres of food plots last weekend just wheat oats ryegrass and couple kinds of clover.i will probably be most of the winter planting quail cover and cleaning up nesting cover.i would like to put out something for the ducks also since ponds are so low,but i dont have a clue as to what to do there,maybe some rice?

I have planted sunflowers for same reason for the last three years with the corn planter. I used the same plate as I did with the sweet corn. The first year I was given the seeds. They came up great. The second, I got seed from the amish man. They came up so so. This year since I was going through divorce and did want to spend moneys, I planted what was left of the bag I had to feed the bird with. It came up OK. They do bring in the yellow finches and doves which in turn bring in the hawks. Really cool to watch. Good luck
JRay

We planted this stretch just by dragging the box blade with the chisels at the deepest levels through the turf to create 4 furrows at a pass, and the kids pitched seed in from the previous years' flowers. They grew real well...

a good native planting for ducks and waterfowl is smartweed best ducking I ever had was a beaverswamp full of smartweed

I just took the black oils seeds from a bird seed bag and planted them with a corn planter. I got a real nice crop but I think the blue jays are going to get all them before I get any.

The County Extension Agent should be of good help!
He has the state ag stations as resource, as well.

Jack if you have area that gets a foot or so of water on it Japanisse nillet or brown millet. Just disk the ground lightly broadcst the seed and roll in with atv, or cultipacker. We do sunflowers ever way. Uses a hard land ac planter and corn plates but have better results just disking the ground and broadcast the seed. We have a hare time gettin mature sunflowers because deer just love the follage. They eat them from the time they break the ground to finish. How far are you from Elk City? Jerry

Sorry no one can learn you any thing but your self but some one can maybe teach you how to do what you want. Sorry I hate to see people ask things in such a way. Ya I do not do well with grammar either but hey I try

How can anyone afford to leave ground like that lay without raising some kind of crop on it? 500 acres here would be $50,000 to $150,000 loss per year. I know some ground cannot be farmed but if can be put in food plots than it can be farmed.

thanks guys!,this farm is 6 miles west of elk city,west of 34,rains the big problem of course. I pulled the cattle off this place for the first time since the late thirties in june and i dont think grass has grown a inch all summer. Mesquite and cactus is looking good though,LOL! Even the normal deer browse in the bottoms is about gone now,so i setup 3 more feeders last weekend.Maybe it will help them out before winter.I stalked upon about thirty turkeys and i dont ever remember them looking so poor,even with all the grass hoppers weve had.I"m headed down to the wildlife expo tommorrow,see if they have any info on putting in some bubblers.I sure dont look forward to hauling water though,only one well on this place so i would have to run water lines all over otherwise.even the big flood control lake on the place isnt going to last much longer.

Hope you get some rain soon.

Hope we all get some rain soon.

Got to have water to grow stuff!we havent had any.And i do grow stuff normally,99% of this place is in native pasture that grows beef.But there again if they cant eat they will starve.No rain = No grass,and you cant graze it down to the bare dirt,or it will take fifty years to come back.Its not going to waste,in any shape or form,it being managed the best way i know how.Thats simply to hold off grazing until the grass can stand it again without putting the grass under even more stress where it cant recover at all.Kind of a primitive way in todays thinking maybe,probably could drill some irrigation wells,plow it up and make more money.But its kind of nice knowing you can still walk accross it and see the buffalo wallows from 200 years ago,show your grandkids and great grandkids the difference in the native buffalo grass and the improved pastures folks like so much today.Showing them how you can take a five gallon bucket of water and pour on it and it will be solid green tommorrow while those improved pastures you water all summer still die back. And its kind of nice to know you and your family has not hurt he old place much in the last hundred years. Its not being wasted i ASSURE you. Its money in the bank,drawing intrest on every blade of grass that survives,that will be beef later.hopefully for another hundred years.