Food Plots Leave in natural grass or ?

[lafn96]

Just got a 50 acre property; 40 acres in the back is about 37 acres of natural grass with a little white and red clover in it. There's two separate blocks of trees totaling about 3 acres; and the property backs up to a hill that's solid trees for hundreds of acres.

Got a guy that wants to lease it and bale it; there's a big section at the back boundary that he can't get to, so I figured that would be a good spot to put a food plot in. It's about 200 yards long and 30 yards wide. Have zero experience with food plots. I've only seen a couple of deer in the week I've been here, but a bunch of turkeys. I'm a lot more interested in deer than turkeys. So my questions are -

- should I spray to kill off the grasses now or when should I spray?
- What should I plant and when? (I'd be doing no-till)
- For equipment, I have a side by side, sprayer; pull behind spreader and will get a cultipacker.
- Location is south Meigs county

 

[deerhunter10]

If it's in decent shape not any little trees or anything. I would cut it first of August then spray end of August. Plant in September. We plant late September or early October. So our time line is later then that. We plant manly Oats and wheat and sometimes put clover in with it. We no til pretty much everything nowadays. You said no til but you didn't list a tractor and said you were going to get a cultipacker un needed for no til so a little confusion there.

 

[DoubleRidge]

Agree with deerhunter10 ....spray late August or early September.....wait couple weeks then sow your fall blend into dead thatch...then mow thatch to cover seed. Try to time it out with a good rain in the forecast....also agree..with no-till you don't need a cultipacker.....but how do you plan to mow the areas? If you have a pull behind mower for your side by side or if you are using a regular lawn mower don't let the plot area get away from you this summer.....plenty of videos on line to watch about throw and mow no-till methods....good luck.

 

[Creek bottoms]

Clip it low end of July. Spray first week of August. Disc it around first week of September. Plant Durana clover and wheat. Cultipack. Have it all done around 9/10. Pray for rain.

 

[BSK]

With the "throw and mow" method, all that's needed are a mower, seed spreader and sprayer.

When the plants I'm going to mow down onto the seed are grasses, I spray first, wait a week, then spread seed and mow the dead grass down on top of the seed. If what I'm going to mow is more herbaceous weeds (big leafy weeds), I prefer spreading seed, mowing, then IMMEDIATELY spraying. The reason I spray after mowing with herbaceous weeds is because those big leafy weeds block the spray from reaching low-growing weeds down near the ground, hence you don't get a complete kill. But make sure you spray immediately after mowing. You don't want your seed to have germinated before spraying.

If the soil in the area is good, I prefer a mixture of wheat and oats, plus an annual clover, like Crimson. If soil is poor, just use wheat and clover.

Picture below is how I used to create my "throw and mow" plots, which I did for years in old log-loading decks.

 

[lafn96]

Thanks everyone. Have a zero turn mower I'll be using.

 

[BSK]

The benefit to throw and mow is soil improvement. The areas I used this technique in started as almost bare chert gravel. But after years of mowing grasses and weeds down, all of that biological material eventually broke down into a couple of inches of fairly rich brow humus, and that eventually grew some decent food plot crops.