They do crowd them out well, but from my experience more so if broadcast and planted with an increased population vs the drill given the rows and spacing. Obviously increased population may not be desirable for a grain crop, but I plant them like that just for deer plots and inexpensive forage. They sure can crowd weeds out, but once they start to turn, weeds can come back up quickly as the shade is gone, and I saw that in fields that were sprayed. I've seen and helped during harvest time, fields that were planted early or on time, sprayed for weeds, and those that either were not sprayed or planted later, the latter resulted in no straw and lots of grain contamination with weed seed. Our fields for the most part really produced, some better than others, clean straw, good yield. I enjoyed the work from planting to harvest.
Like you I don't particularly care for chemicals, but for good yields and clean straw its hard to get around using weed killer. Maybe you have other seed in there, the oats are a cover crop or I think you mentioned this field is year to year as you don't own it, so you are actually going for a grain crop. It will be interesting to see how it goes for you in your area.
Regardless, hopefully the conditions cooperate more than not, you can control the weeds alternatively, and you enjoy what you are doing, it will be good experience. You'll definitely have some fun and its really unique to see someone your age doing this on a small scale with the old era equipment you have acquired. If I had the means I'd enjoy doing it just the same, as well as putting up a little hay, but without any issues if the results were not so good. That in itself makes it fun, not so much if you have a bunch invested and need that return to be good.
The farmer I used to help, did well with oats here, I believe he made a paycheck on the grain, but the straw was all profit, and it sold fast in round bales and small bales, one guy was buying all the wagon loads for a local feed store and marking it up heavily. I ran the tandem sileage/grain body truck,hauled all of it to the buyer and the gravity wagons. Also delivered all the round bales of straw, as well as any loose or damaged bales, they wanted all of it, was sold before it was harvested actually.
In any event I suspect we shall see how it goes via your posts and I wish you the best of luck with it !
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