Oats???

I've been watching this plot of oats for a few weeks waiting for it to head out. I've never planted oats before but have seen lots of fields. It seems these plants are much more stout than most oats I've seen. I'm beginning to wonder if the bag was marked wrong. I did plant them very heavy for forage.

Larry

Only thing that would look remotely like oats in the bag is barley.

Oats loves damp cool weather, if you are like here, its a great year for oats......

Paul

They look no different than ours, here in central NY. these should have been sprayed for weeds 2 weeks ago, but can't even get a break in the wet weather to spray. These were planted mid April.
Loren, the Acg.

I will try to be patient and let Mother do her thing. Yes, we have had cooler weather and rain--lots of rain. I can't get in the garden or my plots to cultivate.

Larry

I just cut oats for hay that was planted last October. It was well into milk stage. I have another field that looks like yours, planted about Apri1.

They'll head out, its early, you can feel the stalk and tell if where they are, might be a little longer yet etc. Its a very nice patch you have there, clean, no ragweed or other weeds like in Loren's photo, which has to be the darned weather and not being able to spray etc. It can be tough to get clean grain and straw with weeds, this year sucks for spraying, so much rain now its incredible.

This small patch, and or field always produced a nice crop of oats, been in alfalfa, corn, and wheat, as I remember back to when I was a kid, its my favorite field here.

The deer will stay on those oats from mid-late August til December around here, hopefully the shade the weeds out in your patch, you do want to keep them growing, so I am not sure if and when to cut, then hope for a regrowth, with timely rain. I often plant them mid summer and its perfect as a fall crop for the deer. Cheap too, plus from stomach contents I have examined, in a year we had 50+ acres of oats in the vicinity, they all had grasses inside, and the meat was pretty good, not sure if grass finish is best, but it sure seems to be, and they did feed on this under the snow. High protein also seemed to build up a thick fat layer, they seem to benefit from planting oats.

I have, in this field, after a harvest seen a crop come back, and head out again, plenty of rain though, you could have cut it for hay on the 2nd crop, it was a light crop, but we even had a dry enough window to get it dry, other years the weeds sort of came back, but the deer really went after the remaining oat grass. I think it was '09's crop when I first got the single bottom plow, few weeks or so after harvest, there was regrowth, but I plowed some strips and disc'd them down, planted nothing and the oat grass came right back, thick and because of the grazing it looked like a mower was used on it, the deer just like something about oat grass, later season it seems to be towards the base of the plant from what I have seen here. The crops here were sprayed with a weed killer, that may have helped with the weed control, I could not believe the oats came back after just plowing and using the disc, on strip I just plowed and not much came back.