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Food Plots
Summer food plot quandary
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<blockquote data-quote="BigDave12" data-source="post: 5311310" data-attributes="member: 13595"><p>I fully concur with Mega. The idea of focusing on soil improvement is critical for those new areas and will pay big dividends years to come for the fall plots in those same areas. Sorghum, buckwheat, and millet are great suggestions for providing such nutrients. Lime and proper fertilizer will be just as critical. Of course clover speaks for itself and should be added to any plots you plan to keep around - annual or perennial. </p><p></p><p>In fact, after about year 2, you should see marked improvements in the soil quality. So much so, that you will find you can delay the summer plating in these areas by a couple months and actually plant certain fall plot mixtures with the sorghum at the same time. With good soil quality, the seeds you plant (and proper spacing of things like sorghum) will mature at different times allowing for staggered food plot usage by the deer. Slightly later planting of sorghum will lead to the deer rushing to eat the seed heads when they ripen. Sorghum would need to be spread out a little to allow light down into the seed bed (for the other seeds you mix in) as it grows. Sorghum can actually do pretty well with limited rainfall so delaying planting by about a month shouldn't hurt you too badly. Shortly after that, any fall grass seeds you included will begin to mature (winter rye, wheat, or oats) which will lead to an easily digestible food source for the deer as their palate changes for the fall/winter. Any brassicas mixed in will start showing up and ripening the colder it gets which will definitely assist them during the colder months.</p><p></p><p>We did this for years out in Dickson County and it worked pretty well. This was also a solid technique that is used in the land management aspect of hunting preserves. On occasion (rain and weed dependent) we would have to slightly overseed in the fall to freshen up some of the seeds that may have been slightly choked out. But, it's amazing what the mixtures like that will do and how well they will sustain themselves once the soil is right. The only reason we stopped doing it is because we lived too far away to keep investing like that in a place we didn't own. So, over time we just transitioned to letting them grow up (with mowing in late May and again just before fall planting) for fawning and turkey hatching cover during spring and summer and then stuck to traditional fall plots later.</p><p></p><p>Let us know what you end up doing and how it works out! Good luck!</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="BigDave12, post: 5311310, member: 13595"] I fully concur with Mega. The idea of focusing on soil improvement is critical for those new areas and will pay big dividends years to come for the fall plots in those same areas. Sorghum, buckwheat, and millet are great suggestions for providing such nutrients. Lime and proper fertilizer will be just as critical. Of course clover speaks for itself and should be added to any plots you plan to keep around - annual or perennial. In fact, after about year 2, you should see marked improvements in the soil quality. So much so, that you will find you can delay the summer plating in these areas by a couple months and actually plant certain fall plot mixtures with the sorghum at the same time. With good soil quality, the seeds you plant (and proper spacing of things like sorghum) will mature at different times allowing for staggered food plot usage by the deer. Slightly later planting of sorghum will lead to the deer rushing to eat the seed heads when they ripen. Sorghum would need to be spread out a little to allow light down into the seed bed (for the other seeds you mix in) as it grows. Sorghum can actually do pretty well with limited rainfall so delaying planting by about a month shouldn’t hurt you too badly. Shortly after that, any fall grass seeds you included will begin to mature (winter rye, wheat, or oats) which will lead to an easily digestible food source for the deer as their palate changes for the fall/winter. Any brassicas mixed in will start showing up and ripening the colder it gets which will definitely assist them during the colder months. We did this for years out in Dickson County and it worked pretty well. This was also a solid technique that is used in the land management aspect of hunting preserves. On occasion (rain and weed dependent) we would have to slightly overseed in the fall to freshen up some of the seeds that may have been slightly choked out. But, it’s amazing what the mixtures like that will do and how well they will sustain themselves once the soil is right. The only reason we stopped doing it is because we lived too far away to keep investing like that in a place we didn’t own. So, over time we just transitioned to letting them grow up (with mowing in late May and again just before fall planting) for fawning and turkey hatching cover during spring and summer and then stuck to traditional fall plots later. Let us know what you end up doing and how it works out! Good luck! [/QUOTE]
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