What do you use to disc food plot?

[BSK]

When do you plant them? Also, do you just blow or rake the leaves back?

At the time, I was using throw-and-mow techniques. I would mow the tall weeds/grasses, then spray with glysophate. After waiting a week for burn-down, I would broadcast the seed just before a rain. This technique, on hardpan ground, limits you to very small-seeded plants, like brassicas, clover and cereal grains. Large-seeded plants don't germinate well when broadcast onto hard ground.

Later I went to dragging an old pull-style disk over the plots to create some bare dirt. That worked OK, except for the damage to vehicles (long story that is famous on this site! ). Eventually, we acquired a tractor and PTO tiller.

 

[Ski]

Weird i can get great spray and throw plots anywhere, even in the middle of the woods with a leaf blower. Winter wheat will grow on concrete

I've tried several times and germination is just too sparse for me. I feel like I'm wasting money on seed that doesn't grow. When I till and/or disc I always get lush, full plots.

 

[muddyboots]

Muddyboots, so you're saying you don't need to disc? I did that last year and nothing came up. What do you spray it with?

That's how we do our lease. Saves a ton of time and money. We spray with roundup 2 oz per gallon water. The key is getting rain.

 

[muddyboots]

I've got a picture somewhere after we planted. Let me find it.

 

[muddyboots]

Blow up this picture up and you can see the rye growing. Now as bsk said we only do fall plots this way. Cereal grains. I didn't think it would work either but they showed me.

 

[tellico4x4]

Wished it worked for me but it's been marginal at best. Have already started disking this year. Going up tomorrow afternoon to knock 10 more plots out. Letting the sun & heat kill weeds, then we'll spray a mix of Gly & Glufosinate on whatever comes up right before planting.

 

[Boll Weevil]

That's wild. Got any pics of that? I've never seen them do that.

 

[BSK]

Turnips are the worst about growing up out of the ground in hard-soil situations.

 

[BSK]

The plots below were planted with the throw-and-mow technique. No ground breaking. Seed is just crimson clover and wheat. Adequate and see a lot of deer usage, but not great.

 

[BSK]

The plots below were planted after tilling the ground. Much better and allow more varieties of seed. These plots were planted in Buckwheat, Austrian Winter Peas, crimson clover and wheat.

 

[BSK]

My point above is that throw-and-mow without ground-breaking WILL work - I used this technique for years - but you're a little more limited on what you can plant.

 

[backyardtndeer]

I either use my disc or my tiller behind my tractor. I haven't had to use atv or utv implements.

 

[Planking]

You got a neighbor with a tractor/disk close by that can cut it up for you?

Every neighbor that's ask me I've always tried to do it free of charge but they have always insisted on paying.

 

[BSK]

Every neighbor that's ask me I've always tried to do it free of charge but they have always insisted on paying.

Neighboring farmers took one look at my plots and just laughed. Not a chance they wanted to destroy their equipment on my rockpile food plots.

 

[Dr2kill]

I've got my plots on old roads on my place, I'll take my garden tiller and make 4-5 passes over it, rake it down, seed it, then take my homemade cultipacker and make passes over it to get good seed to soil contact, then hope for rain. My plots are at least 100' long, with a few side parts that are 30-50 feet wide. This method takes me a couple of hours to get finished, forced to do it this way since I don't have farming equipment.

 

[Planking]

Neighboring farmers took one look at my plots and just laughed. Not a chance they wanted to destroy their equipment on my rockpile food plots.

Gotta pick those rocks up or rent a skid steer with a rock roller attachment. I pick up every one i see. Not much will grow on top of a rock.

 

[BSK]

Gotta pick those rocks up or rent a skid steer with a rock roller attachment. I pick up every one i see. Not much will grow on top of a rock.

Directly below all the fist-sized rocks are grapefruit and watermelon sized rocks! The field of fist-sized rocks is my only "soil."

 

[Planking]

Directly below all the fist-sized rocks are grapefruit and watermelon sized rocks! The field of fist-sized rocks is my only "soil."

Sounds like a good place for some bedding areas lol

 

[BSK]

Sounds like a good place for some bedding areas lol

Already have 100+ acres of those. Food plots are on my only flat ground - long narrow ridge-tops, that are ridgetops because they are rock! Actually, my entire property is geologically classified as chert rock (Bodine gravelly silt loam).

 

[Planking]

Yeah that high ground is tough. Pretty amazing that you can even have a food plot in something like that.