chufa questions

[Palmetto Bug]

I have a couple little fields I am trying to plant chufa this year. One is about 3 acres. The other is 1 acre.

The three acre one was disced, sprayed with Treflan and the chufa was broadcast about 50 lbs/acre. I covered it by running over it with with the field cultivator. That was at the beginning of the long drought. The sandy soil got zero rain for about three weeks. Now that we got some water, very little of the chufa has germinated, yet the weeds have come back pretty strong. I suspect the chufa seed literally got cooked in the top inch of dry sandy soil as it tried to endure the 100+ degree temperatures for weeks. How should I proceed from here? I'd like to try to put more chufa seed but I need to knock down the weeds first. I think I can hit it with 2-4-DB and kill broadleaf weeds without killing the little bit of chufa that did sprout. I may try to run the chufa through my drill to get it in the dirt. I have no idea how well it will handle the peanut sized seeds. I guess I could also try to use the planter but I also don't know if the finger meter will pick up the bigger seeds. I may just give up on the chufa that did make it and start over completely; disc, cultivate, spray, re-broadcast and cultivate to cover. Any advice from experience?

The other one acre field was sprayed with Treflan but as I was doing it, I decided I had not prepped it well enough and it was way too weedy. I came back and hit it with a fairly strong dose of glyphosate. I intend to disc it, cultivate it and start over. I am considering just planting it in Sunn hemp this time just because I have a bag left but I don't know what lingering effect the Treflan will have on the hemp (crotalaria) seeds. I may just forge ahead with the chufa but I am concerned it will not be able to compete with the weeds. It's been an expensive experiment and I'm not sure I want to keep pouring money and time on it. Any suggestions?

On a good note, my corn and sunflowers are doing great.

[baldpate]

Spray it with a low rate of 2-4d or dicamba.

[dirtnap]

We always waited until July to plant chufa and as late as the first week of August. Never have sprayed a single field and always had clean patches. Weeds aren't as bad if you wait until later. At the time we were planting about 70 acres of chufa in a variety of field sizes.

I still plant one spot on a place I have and the earliest I have planted is about July 20. This is in the lowcountry and sandy soils.

[britton40]

The one time I planted it, I sprayed the plot with a heavy dose of round up, let it sit for three weeks, bush hogged, raked out most of the crap, and then tilled. It worked very well.

[HEAD]

You can spray chufa with POAST one time....cultivator May have covered some of the chufa too deep

[DJP]

20190606_111409.jpg

This is one we did. If you killed the weeds ahead of time then treflan works great. I know chufa plants in our JD finger pickup planter. This was broadcast. It takes a bit to germinate. I think it works at a variety of depths. Think about a chufa plant, the seeds are at different depths on the roots. My bet is more will germinate in your plot and you did bot do a good job killing the weeds before planting. Treflan is a preemergent, that means things like Johnson grass will still grow if it is not killed properly.

[DJP]

That photo is two weeks after planting. Chufa had not been rained on but some still germinated in the back.