Deer really tearing up your brassics?

I have a small food plot that contains a mix of turnips and radish.

The deer are still eating the greens a little, but they are basically eaten off to the ground. What they haven’t been doing is digging at the soil to get at the radish and turnips.

Now I have to say that my learning for this year was that in my area and with my plots in the woods I have to get the brassics in the ground WAY earlier than the general recommendation. I got them in August 7 which is in line with the recommendation, but the radishes are about a pencil thick and 2 inches long. The turnips are like big marbles. I thin next year the target date would be about July 15 or the first wet period after that date.

So far the deer have not been digging in the plot. Are my offerings just too small for them to bother with? Or will the go to town on them later on?

What have the deer been doing to your plots?

Grouse

It seems like every time I see a video of deer pawing at radishes and turnups it is when the ground is frozen and most times it is in the snow. Next year will be my first time planting them myself so no first hand experience.
DT

Grouse,
My experience over the last few years is the bulbs will be eaten later. My guess is the tops sugar earlier and they eat the “easy” forage. Even going into the early spring as the top few inches thaw, I see them still working the bulbs.

They just started digging at the bulbs at our place the end of last week. You need a hard freeze to get the sugar to drop to the bulb, then they will eat them all winter long.

I had the same issue the first time I planted brassica. Planted way too late, but got decent greens and they hit them hard, but no bulbs to speak of. The next year I tried a spring plant(mid may) and that was a complete bust. They ate the greens for a little while, but then everything got over mature and they never touched it again. This year has been my best results. I believe I planted them July 12th. The greens got about 2′ tall and the bulbs are large softballs.

Thanks for the feedback guys. Just wondering when they should really start going after the bulbs, hopefully that will produce more activity in the plot.

I have a cam on the plot right now, so if they start going after it, I’ll get pictures.

Sticker, that pretty much confirms my thinking that I got things planted too late using the “general recommendations” of August 1. Your Ottertail place is about the same latitude as my place so clearly I need to back up the planting. I had almost ideal growing weather this year as far as rain, so the only explanation for the size of things is just planting too late.

Next year, I’m going with the same mix, but planted in mid July. Hopefully we’re not in full-on drought then.

Grouse

@grouse

the forage turnips are one of the favorites where we are at. (HWY 8 WI). It’s always been my understanding that they should be in the ground approx 60 days before the first frost. We often have frost up there by the third wk of Sept so I try to get ours in mid-July. The tops get eaten first and then when food gets scarce they come back for the bulbs. just my experience – good luck.

Thinking about trying pumpkins next year as an alternative late season food source, anyone have any foodplot pumpkin info they could pass on?

TheFamousGrouse wrote:

Next year, I’m going with the same mix, but planted in mid July. Hopefully we’re not in full-on drought then.

Grouse

I wouldn’t worry too much about the “drought” for 2 reasons. #1 you can’t do anything about mother nature and her ways and #2 brassica is one of the most drought resistant food plot seeds you can plant. Just make sure you have plenty of Nitrogen in the soil for brassica.

Yes, I think I need to spread even more nitrogen and lime than I did this year. It’ll be interesting to see what this spring’s soil test tells me about the amendments I added last year.

I need a bigger spreader and an ATV trailer to truck things in to the plot as strapping 50 pound bags on the ATV makes for slow transport.

Grouse

The deer have eaten all the leaves off my brassica plot!! I noticed a few of the bulbs were starting to get eaten when I checked it last week. Hopefully with the colder weather they start hammering the bulbs.
Check out the plot pictures(one from Sept and another one from Nov 1st).
They’ve destroyed it(5,000 pictures from Sept 18th to Nov 1). I need to make this plot bigger next year as it’s only about 3/4 acre.

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My buddy down the road has a couple great plots. They just started hitting the bulbs lightly. Come Dec, the devour them.