General Hunting Discussion
food plots
sarona, not bad for the conditions. Anything will help when stuff gets brown. get a bag of pelletized lime for $7...or two and throw it down now or wait and put it down on the snow. pelletized is more of a rapid release. it would be better to till it in, but just putting it down will help. ag lime is cheaper but kinda hard to spread, doesn't spread well with a broadcast spreader from what i found and takes longer to work.
the heavy rain hurt you i'd imagine....
triple 10 or 19 could help matters. both lime and fert for that plot, you're talking $30 or less. triple 19 is $14 a bag at most coop's.
I don't know everything about food plots, but i do know how to do unsuccessful plots, did many of those in my days. I've done some pretty good ones in the last 5 years though.
2nd year I have had this 1/10th acre plot. Cut it into my 27 acres about as soon and we bought the house and moved in last year.
I would say its doing pretty decent for having not done a soil test or adding any lime or fertilizer. These pictures are taken about 23 days apart. I did get a 2.5" rain fall the day after I planted and that washed a bunch of seed. into low spots. I spread some more seed last week in the patchy areas to try and help them fill in.
Last year I did Whitetail Institute Extreme in it and that grew ok. Planted August 8th and got like 6" of rain that month with heavy clay soil so I think it stunted most of the plants.
Mad, it happens. your plan is solid. not sure on the rye, that will come back in spring and seed out. I would leave rye out of the picture. oats and brassicas would be perfect. I'd put down clover again this fall tho. I wouldn't not do this no earlier than sept 1st tho. you don't want those oats seeding out.
put down clover first, culitpack it. then do brassicas on top, just broadcast it but go light. less is more. give those roots room to get big.
If you have a grain drill, drill oats and clover this fall. Oats will die and the clover will out grow any weeds in spring. you'll have at nice plot next fall especially if you frost seed in april which i'd highly recommend. use half of the recommended. 10 pounds per acre on a clover mix, use 5 lbs to frost seed.
I have a feeling that pike just got his clover in early this year, great year to plant if you had higher ground. his clover looks fantastic. Wish i bought my house this year. if you had to grow a lawn it would have been perfect. when i grew my lawn i had sprinkers on non stop for a month.
Madlabs, by the way, i'm a huge fan of winter rye, just as a stand alone plot though. its nice to have a green plot in Dec if you don't have snow....or if we have little snow, you have every deer within 3 miles diggin in it. Problem is, if we get too much they won't dig. again, mother nature can be a, you know what.
Pike, agree with LB, that plot looks amazing! I put in two clover/chicory plots in late spring and my timing was horrible. Sat for 3 weeks without a drop of rain and then when the rain came, it was torrential. End result was a modest crop of chicory, very little clover and a ton of weeds. I nuked both plots early this week and will start over in the spring after doing brassicas/wheat/rye mixtures for the fall which I'll be planting soon.
Interested in the type of clover you planted and how you prepped, seeded ,etc. Did you cultipack after seeding? What was your timing for planting?
Thanks!!
that's great, it will work excellent. Id browse around Craigs List. People are ripping out garden ponds and all sort of goofy stuff. One friend uses those old tanks farmers get herbicide and liquid fertilizer in. He cut the top off and has like 3 of them. Lot's of options. those are water holes you could drowned in. LOL. you really don't want to be hand digging those holes, but if you do it will sure be pretty rewarding when you shoot your first doe come to drink at about 3:30 on opening night.
Or if you don't want 275 gallon water holes, take a saw to them and rather that having them 36 inches high, make them a foot deep. you can find them relatively cheap. I saw some the other day for $30.
water holes work, especially early season. Kiddie pools go the hell fast. i'd find something else that will last. They make plenty hard, thick plastic garden pools. sure, they are more but the time you invest on getting it back there, digging a hole to get it in and filling it up....you'll be pissed when you damage that pool before you get it in.
Welderguy, the pool in the plot will work for a water source. Just put it in a low spot in your plot so it is likely to stay full longer. I've seen various food plot/habitat things over the years that use that same idea. Never tried it myself, because as you know I've got plenty of water.
Going to try to sweeten up my food plot by adding a water hole. Was at at the family dollar and they had kiddie pools for $10 and my gears started turnin. I figure I'll bury it flush and hope the rain keeps it full. As much as it's been raining lately it shouldn't be a problem. I do have a 50 gallon water tank that I will fill it with initially and if it gets dry. Anyone else do this? If so, how did it work?
They do make Roto Tillers for compact tractors in the 20-30 MPH ranges. They do a great job, don't get the reverse till, not worth the extra money. rocks get stuck easier and the forward till does a GREAT job. Personally i''ve run a disc, but now that I have a 6 foot tiller, it's much easier.
CM, if you are planting on public, you'll want to plant something annual IMO. Unless you KNOW for a fact that no one is in the area and hunting. Last thing you want to do is have some scab reaping your reward.
I would not buy anything but something from Real World Wildlife products. Don Higgin's is one of biggest Whitetail food plot experts around. Wrote 100's of articles. he knows his stuff and will help you with everything. Call em. I'd plant his oats for annual stuff or if you want to just plant and maintain the clover mix is a good price.
$75 for 10 lbs is NOT expensive and RWWP is better than anything i used.
Or do a feed mill mix however 12lbs of clover, Ladino, alslike, dutch white and a medium Red (annual) will run you around that $75 mark as well and RWWP stuff will grow better. I've been there. I plant RWWP and frost seed in the spring with feed mill seed.
No matter what you go with and i've been ripped off by a lot of fleet farm bags of seeds with big bucks on them....you don't always get what you pay for. some of the stuff is bought from the same places, slap a buck on the bag and people pay double. I prefer RWWP for 3 reasons. more seed and less filler, cost less per pound and does better than anything else i've used. plain and simple. Mill seed is close, don't get sucked in to the other crap with bucks on the bag. Go to the mill or the people that started the whole game. Call Don Higgins and talk to him, you'll buy his seed.
I would not plant winter rye because you'll have to kill it in spring. Oats will just die. Clover will continue on. Personally i'd go in NOW and kill a big area. Sure someone may find it, but if they don't, you'll have a bad azz plot. most plots fail due to not taking the steps to eliminate weeds.
The sorghum is supposedly a hybrid that doesn't produce a seed head. Got it from Northwoods Whitetail inc. Reading it again says that if planted in June, it could get 12 ft.. We'll see I guess. The Brassicas I'm planting is from Deer Creek Seed called Autumn Buffet: Its got 20% Hunter Forage Brassica---20% Dwarf Essex Rapeseed---15% Purple Top Turnip---15% Winfred Forage Brassica---10% Ladino White Clover---
10% New Zealand White Clover---10% Medium Red Clover.....I planted this about 4 years ago and it did really well. The clover came in really well the following year.
