Your favorite cover crop
Contributors to this thread:General Topic
From: Shuteye
22-Nov-22
They love the wheat
They love the wheat
Over the years I have used all kinds of cover crops for my garden. My neighbor, a farmer gives me what he is planting. This year he gave me winter wheat and it only took four days to come up. The deer were on it right away. It is now a few days from shotgun season opening and I have five different bucks using it and a bunch of does. I shot a large doe and have all the deer meat I need. I have a ground blind about 50 yards from my house. Pictures taken from camera by my ground blind.
From: Shuteye
22-Nov-22
I let this one walk right by the blind.
I let this one walk right by the blind.
This one was eating the honeysuckle that grows around my garden and checking out the just planted wheat. That is bamboo behind the deer and there is a good trail right by it.
From: Buckdeer
22-Nov-22
I plant soybeans then overseed with winter wheat.Problem was with drought beans couldn't keep up and the wheat is already grazed down
From: Catscratch
22-Nov-22
My favorite is awnless winter wheat. Deer are more attracted to it on my place than rye and it is still good for the soil. The awnless heads are readily eaten for a nice protein boost in the summer.
From: Shuteye
22-Nov-22
Buckdeer, We had an inch of rain the afternoon I planted the wheat and have had several more rains since then. It now drops down into the 20's at night and up into the 40's during the day.
From: drycreek
22-Nov-22
I don’t call it a cover crop, but in the fall I plant winter wheat, medium red clover, and daikon radish. The radish isn’t gonna do too much this year because we had to plant late…..no moisture. The wheat is doing great, but there are so many acorns the deer aren’t using it much.
From: Shuteye
22-Nov-22
drycreek, my neighbor has close to 500 acres of radishes as a cover crop. They plant them with a plane and they come up great. It a couple of weeks they will be large enough to eat. They are long white radishes and they say it does the ground really good. It is get real cold in January they will die. They aren't tilled in at all, the plane just flys over, real low and sprays out the seeds. Lots of farmers here and in Delaware do the same thing.
From: timex
22-Nov-22
Been a long time ago. A farm I hunted in NW VA the farmer would plant about 5-7 acres of corn alone a creek bottom and leave it until the middle of December then beat it down with a bush hog. Normal farming practices or baiting ?????? I don't know. What I do know is that the entire food chain was there to feed on it. Doves, quail, grouse,turkeys, ducks, geese, rabbits, squirrels, deer,bears, predators, Etc
From: Shuteye
22-Nov-22
I used to work in a lot of states during my career. I was surprised that in December, in Kentucky, There was a lot of standing corn. Where I lived the corn was all cut before October. The plant I was visiting had a lot of hunters. One woman told me she loved to hunt in standing corn with bow and arrow. She said she would go on a real windy day with the wind in her face. She said she could get to within two or three rows of bedded deer and with the wind blowing they didn't hear her coming. She killed some nice bucks. Only had to be able to hit them at real close range. Tried it at home a couple times and it worked but hard to find standing corn now days early in the season.
From: t-roy
22-Nov-22
I planted clover and rye in this new plot in mid August and timed the rain perfectly.
I planted clover and rye in this new plot in mid August and timed the rain perfectly.
Looks good, shuteye. I like to plant winter rye, here in Iowa. Most often, I overseed it into my standing corn and soybeans, around the first of September. If you get any moisture at all, it generally comes up pretty well. It’s very winter hardy vs oats, and it helps the following spring by suppressing weed growth, along with providing early spring nutrients.
Lots of farmers here also seed cover crops aerially in the fall. Both cereal grains and radishes. Radishes will help fix nitrogen and other nutrients near the surface, where the next crop can readily utilize them. They also help build organic matter, and also break up soil compaction. The deer around here love both the tops and the root itself. Unlike turnips, once radishes freeze hard, they turn to mush.
From: Shuteye
22-Nov-22
t-roy that looks great. The radishes are really good when they get some size to them. I pull some, scrape them and put them in cold water in the refrigerator. After doing that they are not hot and really good. I grab a bunch before a hard freeze because like you said, they will turn to mush. I use wheat because my neighbor always gives me plenty. He has a few acres that he grows corn and he plants wheat in that area. The rest of the farm is radishes. Have had good luck with barley also.
From: t-roy
22-Nov-22
Yeah, those radishes are pretty good eating, for sure. They’ve got a little bite to them, but still really good. I’ll have to try that cold water/scraping tip, next year. I grew some down on my river bottom plot, one year, and some of them were way over 2’ long and as big around as baseballs.
From: Shuteye
22-Nov-22
This is how they plant the radishes. I love to watch the pilot doing his thing. That is a power line he is just missing.
From: Shuteye
27-Nov-22
It is now gun season and I took this picture out of my bedroom window. There are more out there but they are behind the shed. it is raining and the middle of the day. They love the wheat. My ground blind is along the edge but I have lots of time left and will hunt on a nicer day since my freezer is full and will shoot a big one for a friend.
