Any tips on planting and growing?
CORN.
Corn is by far the best late season food source you can plant. You can even buy one of them cheap push row seeders for corn from tractor supply for $100. tHEY WORK LIKE A CHARM FOR PLOTS. You can plant 5000 plants in about an hour. Thats 10,000 ears of corn for them deer to eat , from the time the soy, clover, alfalfa turn brown, till the snow is flying full boar....you'll have the food they want, and will migrate to non-stop.
good luck, and good hunting.
Only problem is that the area that I am planting is not a "field". I have maple/oak wood land with old logging roads that I seed. Corn would never grow on these roads. I have a small opening with plenty of sunlight 20yds x 10yds that I was looking to plant. This is a crossing of a couple of old logging roads.
They consume a lot of water . If you go through a dry spell you'll need to hand water the plants .
They take a long time to mature so you need to plant early or start plants indoors in April .
One year the deer ate the pumpkin flowers , so no pumpkins . The following year they left them alone .
Through out the summer you'll see naw marks and hoof marks on the pumpkins but they can't penetrate them .
When they rippened the deer could only break open the small ones . I broke open the large ones in mid October and they pigged out until mid November .
Lot of work for a small gain, but I did supply lots of kids and friends with Holloween pumpkins amd the wife made a ton of baked pumpkin seeds .
Good luck brother. If it's your land...time to rent a bobcat, and get to clearing some forage area's. 10x20 yards is nothing to a deer herd, and far from sustainable for more then a few days if they choose to smack it.
pumpkins need water, full sun, and lots of space. Deer rarely touch the pumpkins. Ocassionally I find teeth marks, but that is all. End of October we bust up any remaining pumpkins. Between the coons and possums, not sure how much the deer are actually getting.
As a deer foodplot alone, I would not waste the time/space on pumpkins .... too many other, better, planting options.
If you are only planting logging roads and have an occassional 20x30 opening, you aren't really planting enough area.
I would be concerned with the limited space, the condition of the trail (compacted Soil and moisture, and enough sun exposure (at least 3-4 hours a days) on the trail.
If you are planting on well traveled trails, you use, you are wasting your time.
Are you doing enough soil prep to loosen the planting bed area for seed generation? Remember all these seed plot companies are now claiming "throw & grow" with no prep. That's bunk!
If it's your land and you can clear an area, I would try to claer severl small 100x100 to 200x200 plots to plant your food plot in. make sure you can give the plot the approprita southern exposure. Also make sure you place these plots as transitional plots from a bedding area to a major food source area.
Unfortnately you have given no description of your property, geography, biomass ratio, and local properties and what they contain to allow everyone a chance to access needs.
Silvrtip
Good luck.
Corn my friend, corn. Just clear some more area if you have the right to.
That is because the deer have too much other, better tasting, prefered browse/forage to eat.
Try RR sugarbeets .... they are as easy as RR soybeans ;-)
buckslayer735's Link
You will bump deer coming and going.
If you insist, try winter wheat.
