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Got the clover plot all raked out and the wedkiller down. Have had it for 3 years now and the clover got over taken by the weeds and grasses. Stepson wants to do the youth hunt this year with a bow so I figure it's time to get started on it.
Mark, do you do anything special to yours or just let it grow?? What do you have down for types of browse for them
Looks like a great little killing hole. Is that an apple tree in the middle?
Very nice!! I think my inlaws are going to let me put one in this year. Thinking 50x100.. which is small but enough.
Don't do it, food plots are on the same page as Maple syrup. You won't know when to stop !
Xi. So true 3 years ago it was half the size and drew deer in early season like a magnet. It was a favorite stop of mama and her twins. Lots of videos of them. When the beginning of September came around it was visited a lot by a couple bucks. Once October hit though they were gone on the acorns till the rut came along. Then I would get random visits during the day by different bucks. We will see what happens for the youth hunt back here. Hopefully it will draw more than the resident doe who is a baby machine. She is off limits no matter what !!!
funny xi, deer hunters do love hobbys. Dfa how were your last 3 seasons with clover? did plot last till nov? Did Deer come in during daylight hours? I bought a pound of ladino clover seed for my micro plot but thinking about maybe adding soybean or oats ? Just getting my feet wet in my new addiction....
Deer hit it hard from mid summer till the end of September at all times of the day and night. Once the acorns dropped the deer were gone for a bit but the bucks knew the does liked the clover so the always made appearances at any given time. I think the clover becomes less palatable as it gets colder. I made the mistake of cutting it one year and that pretty much killed the deer coming in. Let it grow!!! The bucks stopped eating it late October early November, but the does keep chowing down. Soybeans are tough because you really need to know the soil PH. Oats aren't a draw unless it's a real big plot. Stick with clover or something different for a cold weather draw. If you can get soybeans to grow that will draw deer for miles around once the weather gets cold.
most local garden centers will send a sample of your soil test out for you. 15 bucks or so. yours is acidic i would guess.you would have to amend it and add lime, some compost and a light tilling... worth the work maybe?
lot of town landfills have free compost in the spring.
Bigsevig. Yup acidic as can be and some of it is very shady also. Although the latest rash of nor'easter storms dropped a bunch of trees for me. Will get a healthy dose of lime,fertilizer and then seed in the next 2 weeks.
I threw it down a few years ago just as a joke. I brought the riding mower out there and mowed it down then just fertilized and seeded. Damn thing grew !!! Now I am determined to actually try and make this work and see what type of results I can get
Take a soil sample to send off for analysis. While you're waiting for that to come back, put down like 10 bags of lime. When you get the results back you'll probably still have to throw down some more lime. The Lime takes a while to break down and get into the soil, so do it early and often! For the beets and radishes I try to kill everything off in early July, last round of lime, fertilizer that the co-op recommends then a couple weeks later I run a cheap little harrow on the back of my mower to roughen things up, then I broadcast the seed - a little thicker than they recommend. Being behind the house I then run 200' of hose from the garden and start running a sprinkler.
Last year I also added some wood ash from the wood stove to help correct the ph. I haven't done clover yet, about to clean up and burn in the way back and was thinking of putting clover down back there. It's starting to get pretty thick back there and I think that helps a lot having cover.
Regardless of what you're planting or how big your plot is, the more effort you put into it, the better your results will be. And if you do radishes and beets, don't be surprised if the deer ignore it until after a couple of good frosts.
Thanks. Sounds like a lot of work to do it right...... a friend of mine has a disc attachment for his 4 wheeler. I am going to have him come over this week and take care of it for me. This should be a big improvement over cutting it down to dirt with the old movwer and just throwing the seed down like before
We will see how it comes out and how much time I can dedicate to it this week. It was nice having 2 days off from work but I have to get back at it again tomorrow and after 10 hr days I really don't feel like doing much
SOIL TEST!! Last year I did the cheap do it yourself kit from lowes and spread Whitetail Institute Fusion (clover and chicory). Never really came in nice. July I did a real soil test, and the soil was way off. After lime and fert.....it went crazy! Had Mamma and her baby all day everyday. Once November hit, it was a ghost town. This year I'm going to try harrowing up half the plot in August and try Big and Beasty, something for more late season. Either way I love it. Its become my zen garden hahahah
Good Luck!
I wouldn't waste your time on beans. It's just too small, and would get murdered. I'm actually gonna try buck wheat this spring. Then throw out maybe a brassica mix, or winter wheat for the fall.
Agree with to small for beans, I did a 50'x150' plot of Real World forage beans last year. Here in 4s where we don't have the deer population that you guys do, they destroyed it. The plants were about 30" tall when they started hitting it. I would go with clover and alfalfa, look up grandpa rays seeds on the food plot forum here or Google it. Definitely lime the hell out of it, then lime it some more, also remember that it takes a long time to start to work. Also go with a quality seed mix, don't go with a throw and grow, alot of useless seed in it, read the percentages on the bag. Again, it's an addiction be careful.
I agree with the Throw and Gro, a lot of lawn grass seed, not the grains or brassica's you expect. It will come up, but it's not the deer magnet you would hope for.
I still love the brassica's for fall plots, but be aware that at first the deer will ignore it. At my house they would lightly browse it but it wasn't until late November or December that they started eating it. And they're still hitting it, although there's not much left.
I am a novice on food plots but as an avid gardener and hunter I know this,..
Brassica's are bitter until the first frosts,.. then they sweeten up and become appealing to us and deer,.. that is sorta nice as they end up getting held off from getting browsed/demolished before hunting season. Once all the other stuff is killed by frost,.. hey there is your food plot! and it is yummy now.
On the negative side small food plots of brassica's can be decimated in one or two nights by a few deer as they destroy the entire plant by pulling it up to get to the beat/rutabega/tunip underground part. So rather than munching on the green tops and having it regrow the browse kills the entire plant when they sweeten up.
In order to have a good brassica plot you would need a lot of land and not a 30 foot by 30 foot plot.
If you have a small plot and want to do Brassica's maybe mix it in with something else maybe like winter rye?
Just my 2 cents
I like planting blends, they attract all through the year vs just going clover which tends to draw early season. Grandpa Rays has a few nice blends that work well, I have used his Frosty Delight, Inner Sanctum and Greens/Grains. Or just mix your own, get a bag of Red Clover and Winter Wheat/Oats at the co-op and have at it. If you can make the plot bigger, it will help the hunting. My small plots the deer pound it so darn fast, that it dies off quick and then its like why the heck did I do all this for nothing :) LOL
yup, when I was doing food plots I have my first 'success' with mossy oak biologic....then I figured out it was mostly brassicas, so the next year I bought rapeseed and turnips from a online seed store and planted that...all by hand...the deer hammered it. oats they didn't touch until mid january I think. the turnips were still growing a couple years later.
then I got tired of putting in all this 'sweat equity' to feed deer that were getting killed on all the neighboring properties....so I quit them all together. I will say that I saw way more deer when the farm owner planted corn in one of his fields. the deer were everywhere.
I am so tempted to get a tractor to do an acre of corn behind my house. Just seems like a lot of work. But I'd have an excuse to get a tractor!
This is my first spring with clover returning, planted last year. When does it really start to grow again. I always here its the first thing green, deer hit in the spring....and so on. What I frost seeded hasn't done anything yet. Just wondering, I realize this "Spring" sucks so far! hahah Thanks
I know a guy who has a tractor. Not sure he really needs it, but he sure loves it. Among other things, he uses it for snow management and it does a pretty good job. So that’s a practical benefit.
As a happy tractor owner myself I will say that once you get one you'll wonder how you got along without it. Very useful, "work smarter, not harder".
Different angle
Different angle
Did a little seat time today, expanded it a bit.
After working on mine and now having some experience,.. this is a monster plot Xi. It is hard to understand how much work it is until you actually do one!
Nice job!
Thanks BB, PM sent to you
