| Need a food plot game plan |
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By:
Buskill
Date:19-Jan-25
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I’ve barely dabbled with having plots in the past and never put in much effort. I would lime and fertilize a bit, score the ground some and cast out various shallow tolerant seeds like clovers. I’d like to get a little more involved for this coming fall. I have access to a tractor with disc and a tiller. I was gonna go ahead and lime basically now. My questions are more about timing of fertilizing and killing off unwanted vegetation. Do I kill the vegetation a week or or two before planting and fertilize in between ?? Or do I need to fertilize a while before to give it time to affect the soil? I wanna get all this on a calendar so I have a game plan. Otherwise I’ll wind up mid September having done nothing.
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By:
drycreek
Date:19-Jan-25
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This is what I do and I raise very good plots.
Spring: While I usually have fall/winter plots that are pretty tall by the time to plant I’ll deal with them as I would weeds. Spray gly, wait ten days, mow if I need to, then disc only deep enough to get rid of the debris. This will vary with how tall my winter plots are. I put out fertilizer, then seed, all in the same day. I drag the plot with a home made tire drag and wait for it to grow.
You need to get a soil test so that you know what type of amendments you need and in what quantities. Do not plant until the soil temp is 60* about two inches deep at mid morning. Do not plant if your soil is powder dry. Do not plant in moist soil if no rain is in sight. These are mistakes I made years ago because I was on call 24/7 and had limited time for play. Do some research about what you want to plant or save yourself some time and get the Green Cover Summer Release blend. I’ll include a picture of my home plot last summer. Believe or not, they ate it nearly to the dirt by summer’s end.
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By:
drycreek
Date:19-Jan-25
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Same plot
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By:
drycreek
Date:19-Jan-25
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Plot after discing, seed and fert applied, dragged with tire drag.
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By:
wisconsinteacher
Date:20-Jan-25
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I'm no expert in plots but I have learned that clover is great and deer love it. They also love young oats so don't plant them too early. I will plant oats mid August this year and then over seed with winter rye 2-3 weeks later.
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By:
drycreek
Date:20-Jan-25
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Deer do love clover, and depending on where you live, and how much room you have to plant, perennials can be a great crop. I used to grow lots of Whitetail Institute clover, and the deer loved it. In Texas, it stays dormant too much of the year, so my blends now feature annual clovers.
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By:
Buskill
Date:20-Jan-25
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Thanks guys !! Dry creek ….is your tire drag just a passenger tire with a rope tied thru it and dragged over the plot ?
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By:
Buskill
Date:20-Jan-25
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Is 10 days the typical wait time after killing off the area to plant ?
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By:
Shiloh
Date:21-Jan-25
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Drycreek….don’t I remember that you have a crimper? If so, why don’t you use it instead of spraying?
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By:
Buckdeer
Date:21-Jan-25
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If you are spraying gly you don't have to wait to plant.Remember every turn of the soil also turns weed seeds.This may be where you plant enlist ready soybeans and spray with Interline or another liberty herbicide.This works well if you have gly resistant weeds such as marestail or pigweed
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By:
SD
Date:21-Jan-25
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I think there's a lot of misconceptions related to crimpers. They aren't really all that great at killing plants/weeds. Their best use is to knock down cereal grains to form a thick thatch mat to suppress the next crop of weeds. If you have a no-till drill then it's a nice weed barrier for your next planting. But to use it just to kill weeds they aren't all that great.
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By:
Shiloh
Date:21-Jan-25
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I'm with you on that SD. I do have a no till drill, so that was the reason for the question. Maybe Drycreek doesn't have/want one, and if so, the crimper wouldn't be necessary.
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By:
Buckdeer
Date:22-Jan-25
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A crimper isn't necessary anyway and probably not much good unless you can use on the day that the stalks have just the right amount of moisture to break them.Main thing is to always kill the plant before it seeds if you don't want it to grow the next year.
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By:
Shiloh
Date:22-Jan-25
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I think a crimper is necessary if you want to get away from using chemical inputs. I am not convinced that there is a ton of benefits from not using gly, but some are definitely in that camp.
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By:
drycreek
Date:22-Jan-25
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Shiloh, there’s a lot to what SD said. I did use my crimper last spring to terminate my wheat. It worked great at that, but even though I planted about 150% of the required seed, I still didn’t get a thick stand by broadcasting into the standing wheat and crimping. When I planted my fall crop we were in a drought so there wasn’t anything to crimp. All the pics above are the same plot. It was 5/6 feet tall until it stopped raining. Between the deer and the hogs there was nothing left to crimp. I imagine I’ll be selling the crimper and just go back to the way I’ve always done it. This pic is another fall plot that I crimped last spring, as you can see, the crimper does what it is supposed to do.
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By:
Shiloh
Date:22-Jan-25
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That looks good. Wouldn’t a drill behind that crimper work better?? I’ve never had good luck broadcasting into a standing crop and mowing. Gotta have seed/soil contact
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By:
drycreek
Date:22-Jan-25
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Yessir, a drill would work but for a few small plots I can’t justify the expense. I’d love to have one but it ain’t in the cards.
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By:
KHNC
Date:23-Jan-25
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Not having enough left to mow or crimp in late spring is the problem i have as well. I cant do no till on my place either. I try to disk as little as possible when i plant. I did spray to kill grass this last fall though. Plots look good this season. Now they are lip high from the deer.
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By:
Shiloh
Date:23-Jan-25
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I was able to get the county drill for a couple hundred bucks over the last few years. I recently bought one of my own, but I'm still trying to learn a system that works for me that I can repeat year after year
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By:
Mark Watkins
Date:24-Jan-25
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No till drills work great….i love my Great Plains. However, I’ve found you need to be a bit flexible as to when you plant with it so that you have adequate soil moisture to allow the coultures to penetrate the soil. Additionally, a NTD needs to be heavy. I added 790 lbs to mine to get it to about 4K lbs.
Mark
