Food plots going in…….

Pretty quiet in here. Has anyone put their spring plots in the ground yet? Isee the farmers going to beat the band, so I am gonna try and get some Pro Graze planted before the rains come this afternoon. Forecast has a chance of rain nearly every day this week as well. Tis the season!

Nut

All but 3 acres done. Keeping it very simple this year. Corn, oats, wheat, clover. Will do a late plant of mix feed

I got mine in over the weekend. 7 acres of beans, 3 acres of corn and 2 acres of buckwheat that will be tilled down for brassica in July. Clover has been in for about a month. Really need some rain now!!!

I still have about 2 acres of beans to get in at home.

Plots got their first round of gly over the weekend. Corn is 4-8″ tall and was a little weedy, but that should be fixed now. Beans were spotty, I assume from the cold wet spring so far. Still got decent germination and with these warms temps now and the weeds dying off they should fill in nicely. Buckwheat survived the cold temps and is 8-12″ tall and doing quite well.

Clover was bad news, really bad! The lack of snow this winter and the cold temps destroyed all my clover plots. There was absolutely no clover growing in any of them despite me overseeding about 10 lbs of red clover and 6 lbs of ladino clover in them this spring. Nothing but weeds and thistle growing in them so I nuked all of them and will plant them in brassica in mid July.

Overall I was pretty happy with how things looked, except the clover. Even the new and existing apple trees looked very good, but the arm worms were out and I forgot my Sevin spray. Some good warm temps and continued timely rains and our deer should have plenty to eat.

I’ve been doing nothing but picking rock and working the new ground in my plots. I have two new larger plots this year that were dozed out of the woods, so this means lots of work to get to planning time. I’m hoping to be done with one plot in time for the brassicas to go in in July.

I’ll probably end up frost-seeding clover in the fall because I just don’t have any prepared ground ready for clover and won’t anytime soon.

I’ve had to call in the dozer again on the north plot because it was too rutted for my equipment to ever be able to level it. I knew that having land that wasn’t ag land before I bought it was going to require some time. It’s not a 1 year project to beat 9 acres into shape out for food plots when starting with nothing but woods.

I figure in 3-4 years I should have the plots in shape and fully producing. Takes time.

Grouse

Takes time for sure. I can remember the days of cutting trees, pulling stumps, picking rocks and leveling ground. It’s a hell of a lot of work, but when you get them established it sure is a great sense of accomplishment. A couple years and it will be just plant and spray and you will be living the easy life

Here is a pic of the last food plot I carved out of the woods. It’s a heck of a mess at this point and still a lot of stumps to pull, but ended up being a great plot.

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On the average year. How much money do you guys think you dump into your food plots? Always wanted to try my hand, but I know that I’ll have to outdo myself every year once I start. And I never take cheap route it seems on anything.

You guys got a ball park? No need for specifics if you don’t feel comfortable, but just some general numbers if you would?

You can put into it however much or little as you want and it can get expensive. Without counting equipment costs and being that I have established plots my costs per year now are definitely lower, plus I get seed a ridiculously lows costs through MDHA.

Fuel costs for me are about $100 in the spring for tilling and planting(30 gallons of diesel)

gly cost for the year are also around $100 (6 gallons of 41% gly)

Seed costs are roughly $200- $250 for corn, beans, clover and brassica for roughly 12-14 acres of plots.

sktrwx2200 wrote:

On the average year. How much money do you guys think you dump into your food plots? Always wanted to try my hand, but I know that I’ll have to outdo myself every year once I start. And I never take cheap route it seems on anything.

Well, it depends on what you count as part of the cost. Sticker has some awesome equipment. I spent nearly $4,000 in dozer work last year just clearing the food plots that I will now spend more money to plant.

The most valuable input is time. Because most of us have limited time, we make up for it with bigger/faster equipment. Which costs money.

It also heavily depends on what you plant and how much. Perennial clover plots are going to be far cheaper to run than annual ag crops like corn and beans.

Just year on year input costs, I did a little science experiment last year and here are the approximate costs that I came up with for a QUARTER ACRE test plot:

– Roundup x 2 applications – $15
– Lime X 1 application – $25
– Seed (Brassicas blend) – $30
– Fertilizer – $60

I figured about $100-$125 per quarter acre. Again, this does not include any equipment or land clearing costs.

Obviously, you will notice that my test plot cost per acre is dramatically higher than Sticker’s. The factor at work here is seed cost and volume. If you up-scale, you can cut prices.

But the tradeoff is you have to know where to source things at cheaper prices and you have to be able to handle goods like fertilizer, seed, and lime in bulk. Which I currently cannot.

I think the bottom line is you have to enjoy wildlife management for what it is, working the land and growing things, and enjoying the variety of wildlife that benefits from your efforts. I think if I just saw this as a means to an end as far as “producing” deer to hunt, I’d get frustrated pretty fast.

The fact of the matter is, very few of us have these 5000 acre Texas spreads like they show on the TV shows where we have a heard of trophy deer that never leave the property. It’s just not that way for most of us.

Grouse