Had an interesting discussion with an ex farmer's daughter

I have a neighbor 10 miles down the road who is the only farmer in my county that im aware of who does row crop farming. He tried corn 1 or 2 yrs and quit it. I imagine lack of yield He now runs milo, but in both cases, he went with fall wheat after the corn or milo. He has an excess of 70 000 chickens, and so he does much of the fertilizing with CS. There is no anhydrous to be bought here so we cannot use it. I Intend to plant corn, which I did this year the 14th and 15th April. I should have gotten the corn out around the middle of August, but I was a month late. I intend next year to follow the corn with Hay Grazer. Everybody down here it seems grows wheat and then turns their cows onto it, dont harvest it. Hay grazer would be much more heavy a grass than wheat. I have pararie hay that I cut also, as I know or have heard that you cannot feed cows soley on hay grazer, but you can make it the bulk of their hay. I should get at least 2 cuttings. between the middle of Aug till whenever it hits 35, which should be around now, the middle of Oct. Thats 8 acres of corn, and 12 of haygrazer with the addition of 4 acres that are in to small a configurations to use as corn also.

Pragmatically speaking, northern flint corn IS a cool season grass. It's far more cold tolerant (& germinates better at lower & damper conditions) than even the best of the corn belt dent hybrids.

(1 & 2 were connected, same authors.... one an abstract, the other a presentation set of slides).

As I've mentioned, sod can be killed WITHOUT chemicals as well. Steam does it, it's used in places like orchards where herbicides are a risk to perennial crops.

I WAS speaking of "mow the grass & plant corn" (& variations thereof)..... as I thought I'd made clear, the cites were merely what I'd quickly located online (dealing with at least "variations thereof"), showing that the concept was possible. Straight "mow & plant" HAS been done successfully (like I said, I've a paper on it somewhere), it's just been less researched (in part because of funding sources...) & on short notice it was easier to locate cites involving more conventional (chemical) "suppression" methods.

Northern flints have thousands of years of adaptation to northern conditions.... they are famous for germinating at low temps, for their seeds not succumbing to fungus & mold under cool wet conditions, etc.

What it sounds like.... is that nobody up north has TRIED doing this. I suspect that by using northern flints, or corn belt hybrids with an especial degree of northern flint genes, would do it.... that either mowing or sod treatment with live steam would easily give it any head start needed.

Changing breeding focus would also be a major assist.... if the Hopi were able to select corn strains with root growth many times that of other SW corns, and in light of vigor differences between various strains of corn, it should be rather easy to produce strains with fast enough shoot growth to outcompete even cool season grasses.

Just mowing would not work here in the northern climates. We plant corn be4 grass comes to and would ever get mowed. Just not a practical way. There is nothing to mow. Both crops would be coming up at the same time.

Other options you mention sound promising. I'm not disagreeing with you in principle. These types of experiments/ research are way cool. Good things. I'm all for it.

Steam - never heard of it for weed control/ surpession. Have heard of propane flamers a lot, but not steam. Would sound expensive/ energy intensive for thousands of acres - but very interesting to learn about.

Breeding research indeed would go a long way providing traits that work with many different techniques. A very good point. What could be. Neither of us has the pockets to do it I guess!

--->Paul