Food Plots are Done !

Used the nice weather this weekend to get six plots totalling about 4 acres planted with purple top turnips. Need some rain now.

Sweet- good luck to you this season!

Finally getting some nice rain this morning, eight days after planting.

I put in a small turnip patch Saturday and it rained today. They should be up by the end of the week. h.h.

We got 1.6" of badly needed rain today. Should get the turnips sprouting. Another rain in a week or less would be ideal.

Happy for you Steiny. It sure is aggravating when you put in the work and the weather doesn't cooperate.

About 2.5" of rain in the last 36 hours and still coming down. It was needed, but can quit now for a while.
Turnips were all coming up good, this should give them a real boost.

Soon as it cools off I need to spot spray some broadleaf weeds in my clover.

Fire breaks and food plots planted between showers now see if I can get them sprayed One more time before they come up

I got a little over 5 inches of rain last night. Just south of me they got right at 9 and its still raining. This will flood part of my turnips but thats OK. If they die out I will disc them up and plant winter wheat. h.h.

Could probably get by scattering some fresh turnip seed right on the damp ground after water recedes? Doesn't take much to get them going and we still have some growing season.

I've never planted winter wheat in a food plot, but know the deer like it. These guys have gone corn and bean crazy around me last few years and not many local farmers are growing wheat.

Wheat is as easy as turnips. I had the seed growning in the back of my truck last year that got spilled. I just sprayed round up then spread the seed after the grass is dead.

Steiny... if you havent planted any winter wheat you should try a strip. If I could only plant one seed for a food plot it would be winter wheat.

My soybeans are doing better this year since I planted heavy and the deer didnt eat them to the ground as in the past, so I decided to leave them but I will disc a 8 ft wide strip in the middle of the beans and plant winter wheat. h.h.

HH you ever try just broadcast spreading some wheat while walking down soybeans. If the leaves are off or starting to fall it will come right up.

No but I might this year. Most of the time the deer eat up my beans so there is no pods. I mow them off, disc, then plant turnips and wheat. This year I speed up the planter and planted between the rows so I have 4 times the amount of beans as in previous years.

What Ive found with wheat is if you dont cover it you dont get a very good crop. Usually I drill it but if I do broadcast I run over it once with the culipacker. If you disc and get a good loose seed bed then broadcasting works good. h.h.

A lot cover crops are done from airplanes after the crops are harvested or right before so that the growth wont interfere with the harvesting
So IMO its not even close to being to late to plant and covering up with dirt is not really necessary
In some cases harmful because of the new seed bank exposed.. In flooded fields you will be fine by just getting the seed on the ground

Ive personally seen the difference between covering and not covering seeds in my food plots. The uncovered seeds dont grow as good as the covered seeds. The longer the seeds lay without rain the worse it is. If you disc the soil so there are cracks and a soft bed then covering will be done by a heavy rain.

Ive yet to see any farmers up here that dont prep ground before planting no matter what seed they are sowing. Since I have a choice which way to plant I choose to prep my ground first. h.h.

If we tilled down here like you do up there we wouldnt have any soil left we are around 70% no till in our county every things on a hill you have to use more seed to get the best results

No till is popular in some areas but a lot of farmers still till up here. State is paying farmers to leave 50 grass strips next to any ditches, streams or rivers trying to keep soil run off at a minimum.

Biggest problem up here is fertilizers polluting the water and causing algae blooms. Im hoping the state bans fertilizers with phosphates in them soon. h.h.

The BIG push now Is Cover Crops to capture all that stuff and prevent erosion there is LOTS of money out there for that

I can make my "food plots" as big as I want them by doing just this. I'll wait until the leaves on the beans just start to turn. I'll sow oats/wheat right down the rows. As the leave turn, and fall off, it mulches the seeds in and covers them. The seed germinates, and comes up very well this way. By the time the beans are ready to run, the oats are about 4" tall. The bean head gives it a little hair cut, but it comes right out of it, and goes to town.

I can make my "food plots" as big as I want them by doing just this. I'll wait until the leaves on the beans just start to turn. I'll sow oats/wheat right down the rows. As the leave turn, and fall off, it mulches the seeds in and covers them. The seed germinates, and comes up very well this way. By the time the beans are ready to run, the oats are about 4" tall. The bean head gives it a little hair cut, but it comes right out of it, and goes to town.

Sounds like a plan. This is the first year I have any beans left to do this. I have a spreader that goes on the back of my 4 wheeler that would work perfectly for this. h.h.

Good idea, just might try a little winter wheat. Probably can get some seed at the elevator.

I lightly broadcast some turnip and ground hog radish seed in the beans today. Didnt want too heavy of a seeding. Tomorrow Im going to the feed mill and get some winter wheat before they load it up and ship it out. Last year I waited until late Sept and almost didnt get any. h.h.

You'll be glad you did it! That has always worked well for me. For me, its a win/win. I don't have to take tillable ground out to plant food plots, what gets sown in good for the ground, and the deer use it late into the winter and early spring.

Just what I said last week.

We planted 7 plots for a total of about fine acres on the 15th in Switzerland county. Cover crop of winter wheat with a red clover alfalfa mix. Had rain on the 17th. looked at the fields on the 23rd and winter wheat is up as well as some Alfalfa. Been a crazy year down there with rain every few days hope the rain continues.

On our existing clover plots in June we sprayed them with Clethodim to kill grasses/Fescue. It took awhile but fields are GREAT! 1 pint per acre, per year is the rate. Much cheaper than 32.00 half pints sold by the seed guys, 54.00 per gallon and available at rural king. I can mow and keep the broad leafs down which are mostly annuals.

Keystone Pest Solutions is a great place to get stuff to spray grasses and broadleaf in ur plots. They are very help and stuff is cheaper than slay and arrest.

Thanks Parrot Head, Slay and Arrest were the brand names I was talking about.

Grasses are my problem, Fescue.......... I hate it! I can deal with broadleaf as it is an annual and mowing will control those except the thistle. I can spot spray thistle and manage that in clover.

In the spring I will need to hit my warm season grasses hard before they emerge johnson grass and thistle is becoming a problem.

And to Throbak.......... we need to plan a burn!

Hey Joe - if you need another hand while doing the burn let me know. I would like to help just to learn.

Fire scares the crap out of me but, Throbak knows how and when to do it. I need to learn also...

Sounds like a Plan we will do it no Problem

got one small plot done in a woods clearing with oats and rye my disc I built broke while doin a small corner of a field the farmer cannot get. Checked the big plot I had planted in buckwheat all summer and it got taken over with weeds, it was pure stand of buckwheat two weeks ago don't know what happened but idk if my little disc will till it up. Got a few more places to plant this coming weekend think if I don't get it done this will be the last weekend it needs to be planted. THROBAK you seem to know a lot about all this planting oats and rye first of September is about it?

You can plant oats and rye up until it frost but a good hard frost or freeze will kill most oats. If you dont get your oats in you can plant winter wheat up til mid-late Oct. Im planting my wheat in about 2 weeks. h.h.

Brad I have tried them all. Listen to hornharvester, the first hard freeze and the oats will be done. Get cheapest cover crop winter wheat you can buy, about 15.00 a 40# bag. It will grow all winter and can be planted like hh said till October.

I bought ben run wheat at the feed mill yesterday for $0.15 a pound. 300 lb for $45.00 which is plenty for my needs. h.h.

There are Spring oats Plant in march or so and there are fall oats planted in fall you probably planted spring oats Joe. I have seen wheat planted the last of OCT that did ok

Beans are doing OK, clover looks real good and most of the turnips I planted got flooded out but I did walk the bean field and broadcast more turnips.

In the feeder is corn and chicken feed in pellets. Im trying to help out the turkeys. I had trouble with coons and squirrels climbing the poles so I greased them. That stopped them. You can see where they try and slide off......LOL




My stand is at the end of the field just to the left of the picture. h.h.

A lot of the oats I planted last fall made it through, and actually headed out this spring/summer. I was surprised! I mowed them down about a month ago, and they have germinated and are up about 3" now. I sowed more oats in the tilled plots last week. The top leaves are just starting to turn on the beans. I will sow the rest in the beans this weekend, or next week before they start falling off.

Soybean plots turned out excellent, however my turnips look a little spotty. They came up and took off great, now some areas of the plots look weak.

I'm going to give them all a shot of spray applied fertilizer (nitrogen) this weekend to see if that perks them up a bit. From what I read, turnips need lots of nitrogen.

I broadcast wheat last thursday in the beans and looked at the plot yesterday. We had a good rain saturday and there are a lot of seeds that are not germinating, pretty much bare between the rows.

The beans are about 1/2 as tall as they should be because the deer kept them browsed down so not many leaves to mulch the seed in. I might mow off a 3-4 rows and run my 8' wheel disc through the edge and replant the wheat. h.h.

Don't get impatient HH!!! It took my oats to over 2 weeks to germinate just laying on the bare ground. And we had a butt load of rain on them. If they are in contact with the soil, they will go.

Hitting turnips with some spray applied nitrogen was a good move. A few days later they really greened up.

I broadcast another 50 lbs of wheat seed last Saturday on this plot. Got a nice mix of turnips, ground hog radish, wheat and soybeans. Deer are eating the beans off the stalks, found several bare stalks around the edges. I wont hunt this plot until the first day of gun season and this year Im hunting with my Ruger 454 Casull. h.h.

Looks good HH. Should be a cold weather smorgasbord! Here are the oats I broadcast in the beans. You can see where they have trampled the beans down right there feeding on the oats. This pic is from the stand. The strip closest (bottom of the pic) is a "buffer" about 10' wide along the entire woods that I keep in chicory and clover.

Looking good Yaz. All you need now is a big buck to corporate. h.h.