Bowsite.com

Late Season Food Plots

I live in Southern Door County. I currently plant forage oats for my early season food plot. Usually by late season they are heavily grazed. I’m wondering type of small plot works for you in the late season of December into January . Thanks Wink

Buddy of mine swears by a mixture of turnip, beets and rape. I've tried it and the deer hardly touch it even though we are maybe 15 miles apart. I went all out this July and bought a seed mix with 7 different plants in it. Then I bought another bag of 8 others, mixed them both together and threw it down. It looks incredible this year and the deer were hitting it pretty well that first week of Nov but I haven't been back to check my cameras since then. As soon as I do I'll let you know. One thing I will definitely recommend is a blend of some kind. You want several different plants growing at the same time. When one is no longer desirable the deer can start picking at another and so on.

I do Brassicas… turnips and radish specifically. The are generally avoided until freeze making them perfect for late season. The previous post suggested mixing lots and lots of seeds however I would caution this is against the recommendations of the experts I follow. It sounds like it worked for the poster so more power to him but it’s not the recommended approach from what I have seen. Crops need to be compatible and just throwing a bunch of seeds together usually means one or two will dominate or all will stagnate.

1. Sugarbeets, and a distant second.... 2. Rutabagas

In areas where turnips, rape, brassicas my go untouched. As soon as there is any snow cover, deer will hit the sugarbeets.

Sag, do they eat the greens on the sugarbeets earlier or are they not an attractant at all until snow?

Not to sound vague, but it really does depend on the area. Up north away from any Agriculture, deer may not let sprouts get over 4" tall. The better the habitat and/or lower deer density the later in the year deer may hit them. Deer will eat the greens when they need to, depending on preference, availability, deer density, time of year, ect. The deer know its there, they watched it grow, smelled it, and tasted it already. As to when the deer really start pounded it, that depends on need and preference at that time of year. If your deer don't like turnips, try sugar beets or Rutabagas.

Sounds like the answer is yes they eat the beet greens too. I like how they eat the greens on the turnips and radish too since that serves to bring them in before they freeze too, but they seemed to eat too much of them this year and didn’t let them grow enough. Although I think that might have been more attributed to the lack of rain at about the same time. At this point the turnips and radish are all half eaten down to the frozen part in the ground but they are still in there kicking at them trying to loosen them up.

Turnips/rape, winter rye, for early spring. Sagittarius, nice shower, what does that have to do with this tgread.?

BTW sag, I would charge 18k for the shower alone.

You could at least have put the shower pic cockeyed Ike the rest of us

HA! I had a pic of a herd of deer eating sugar beets through the snow ... did not realize I clicked on the shower pic. I'm having a similar shower door installed Monday. ;-)

Just an FYI Dakota..... most seed companies have a variety of seeds mixed together. It's usually a custom mix of different varieties they have come up with over time. I wouldn't waste my time on a plot only dropping one or two different types of seeds. It doesn't take much to wipe out an entire plot, dry conditions, insects, over browsing too soon, etc. I'd rather have too many then not enough seed hitting the ground. It's a waste of a year of time if your plot doesn't do well....

Turnips and radishes work well for us in our small plots as there is a lot of tonnage with those crops. Our deer are hammering the radishes right now.

NovMM, as I said, it seems to work for you so more power to you. However I have not seen any advice from the professionals I listen to that suggest 7-15 different seeds together is a good approach. That’s not to say the seed companies aren’t successful at selling those high dollar mixes though. I’m glad that’s been successful for you. I used to do that to before I started researching and never had much success.

Chainsaw and dropping small trees as browse. Then going back the next day is a good way to put food in the woods where you want it once the snow is down and covering everything it is a big draw.

I will have deer digging up beets all through the winter.

Register here to reply to this topic