Grouse's 2016 Food Plots

Thought it was time for a little show and tell of my 2016 food plots and hunting property.

A quick recap of my property first. I have 80 acres in Pine County, about 12 miles east of I 35. My ground was 100% wooded when I purchased it, I am only the second recorded owner in history, the first was an Ole Johnson who owned the property from circa 1900, but there is no evidence that Mr. Johnson ever lived on it or developed it. It was foreclosed on in 1914 and has been county owned as tax forfeit property until I bought it in 2013. Before that, I had been hunting the property as public land for about 10 years, so I knew it well.

In the winter of 2014, I had a dozer come in and clear 2 food plots, a north and a south plot. Each plot is about 5-6 acres in size. The plots are connected with a short road.

Both plots are/will be planted in strips or sections, so each plot has a variety of different crops and will have more. My goal is to offer deer and other wildlife food for as much of the year as I can.

Here’s the midsummer 2016 update.

South Plot – The biggest single strip of brassicas I’ve ever planted in one plot has been planted in my south plot. And luck was on my side! This is a blend I call Brassicas Bender, it consists of turnips, radish, peas, and rape.

My father planted 1.2 acres of this blend in the South Plot on July 6. 1 week after he planted, we got 7.2 inches of rain! I was very worried that the whole plot would be washed away, but as you can see, that is not the case.

Pictures from yesterday:

More updates to follow.

Grouse

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Looks great grouse, my brother and I have been planting quite a few this summer as well. We planted a few acre been plot this spring but it didn’t do all that great for some reason. It definitely was getting over browsed so a fence might be in order for next year. We did however, overseed it with a brassica blend similar to your recipe. Frigid forage Big n Beasty. looking forward to seeing how that looks this weekend when I head over there. I’ll take some pictures to share as well!

Fingers are crossed for moisture and warm weather!

Looking great Grouse!! I like the spacing on the plants so they can grow big and strong. A lot of people put way too much seed in a brassica plot, which causes overcrowding and then none of the plants get big. You should have some righteous bulbs in that by first frost. Great winter food here in MN.

Looks awesome!

Learned the hard way over seeding brassicas is a terrible idea. Those look about as perfect as a guy could ever hope for.

I agree with the above, it’s VERY difficult to slap my own hands and keep from seeding brassicas too heavily!

With my Brassicas Bender mix, I’m seeing at 18 lbs per acre. In the pics above, my father is standing in the middle of the strip, looking south, so you’re seeing only about half of a 1.1 acre plot strip.

When seeding it, you see almost nothing coming out of the broadcaster! It drives me crazy compared to a grain mix or clover where the seed is a flyin’ like mad! I have to slap my own hand to keep it off the “little more” lever.

Luckily, rainfall has been on my side the whole season this year. It dried up when I needed to work ground and rained when I had new seed in that ground. Since planting that brassicas strip on July 6, I’ve had almost a foot of rain fall on that plot! Wow.

As far as fertilizer, a thanks to Sticker for putting me on the right track with the fact that I was under-fertilizing. I looked up some of the up the single species requirements and based my estimations on that in years past. As it turned out, the whole blend was way more fertilizer intensive than I had estimated in years past. I spread 150 pounds of 20-10-10 on that plot at planting and I may still have undershot the mark. We’ll see how maturity goes.

Next, it’s on to the grain blends for fall! This weekend, I’m prepping ground for my All Fall Blend of oats, rye, MRC, and giant rape. I’m really looking forward to getting All Fall Blend in the plots at scale, last year was only a test plot year for this variety and the real performance was hard to judge due to overgrazing of the .25 acre test plot.

This year, I’ll have about 3 acres of it planted. I’m using it as a cover crop in my North Plot because I only just this year got some of it worked up into planting shape.

Grouse

TheFamousGrouse wrote:

I agree with the above, it’s VERY difficult to slap my own hands and keep from seeding brassicas too heavily!

It’s like painting, less is more and that’s very difficult to comprehend, when more “seems” like it “should” be more and better. I over seeded brassicas my second year planting and they got to a whopping 6-8″es tall vs the first year where they were gigantic. It is very irritating and not at all satisfying spreading those tiny little poppy seeds vs letting the bigger seeds fly like salting an icy driveway or road in December. You can visually see the seed flying vs hoping it is.

Update. Was up yesterday to prep a strip next to the brassicas mentioned earlier.

There is a parade of deer visiting the brassicas to browse the leaves. I was picking rock and the deer just kept coming and coming. Interesting as the common wisdom is deer dont like young brassicas because the leaves are starchy.

Grouse

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Sorry the pics aren’t very good. I snapped these with my cell from the other side of the plot.

I’m excited as heck that I have a doe and twins plus another doe and single fawn this year. They appear to be living on the property almost full time and eating about 7 meals a day in the food plots. That’s what we’re doing this for, right?

Grouse

Always cool to see the fruits of your labor.

I can’t believe you’re still picking rock, how many rocks do you have

sticker wrote:

Always cool to see the fruits of your labor.

I can’t believe you’re still picking rock, how many rocks do you have

Well, let me put it this way… With the benefit of hindsight, it probably would have been more efficient to pick the dirt.

But the thing is, these days, if the ground is good crop ground, then somebody’s probably cropping it. I started looking to buy land during the last ag boom when any dry, even marginal ground and pasture, was going for $3000 to $5000 an acre. Anything with crop fields was even more and of course most of the habitat had been stripped.

I knew what I was getting into basically. There is very little rock free ground in Pine County. The plus to my property is that it’s not far from town, but I’m tucked back away where nobody knows my farm is even there.

I also have all 3 of the habitat elements, I have a little creek to provide water, I have food now, I have good cover. The little creek was a major deal, without water on my property, the deer would be traveling a considerable distance to the next best water source.

Here’s a picture of my little creek, it’s about 6-8 feet wide in most places and it’s cut down in the ground so it’s 1-4 feet deep almost everywhere.

Grouse

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Update from today. My brassicas plot is looking pretty good. See above for some pictures from weeks past.

Got a picture from dad of the turnip size today.

I have 1.1 acres of a brassicas blend of my own creation. This is turnips, rape, forage radish, and the new Lynx high-sugar peas. I finally got the plot planted on time this year, which was July 6. I thought that might be a little early, but no. Even with a log of great rain, the plot still has benefitted from the early July planting in my area of MN.

The deer have been defying the conventional wisdom with this plot. Deer are not generally supposed to like brassicas leaves, the thinking is they don’t like the high starch content. Well, my deer must be the most well starched deer in MN because they LOVE the leaves. Dad was working today on another part of the plot and the deer stood in the brassicas and watched him while eating.

Oh please let these turnips get a little bigger in the remaining growing season. This is going to be one terrific plot.

Grouse

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That looks about perfect size for this time of year. You probably have a full month of growth yet for brassica, so I’d say you are right on schedule!!

How are the peas in the mix? Are there any left or have the deer wiped them out already?

Looks like you have it pretty well dialed in Grouse! How’s your tractor running? I sold my 37 JD to help fund and old car.

The peas have done well in this blend, I think the brassicas have given them “cover” to allow them to mature a little more, so I’ve even seen a few pods which is fairly unusual for my farm where the grazing pressure is pretty intense. I’ll snap a picture next time I’m up if there are any peas left then.

I was hoping dad would snap a picture of a forage radish as well. Last time I was up, they were about the size of a small sharpie marker. I’m hoping that 2-3 weeks later they are about twice that size.

Belletaine, the Deere 2010 is running great. It’s an old tractor, but it still runs well and having a full-size utility tractor with a loader is a game changer. I’ve replaced one hydraulic hose on it and now I’ve owned it for a full year.

I know it’s heresy but I’m glad I got a gas tractor as it makes life easy on the fuel front without having to transport and store a separate fuel supply just for the tractor. It’s also easy on the winter storage aspect, I just shut off the gas, run it dry, and in the spring it started right up again.

The other game changer was Orange Crush, my new 8-foot disc. First piece of new equipment I bought and totally worth it. Orange Crush is heavy and really gets the job done on rough ground, which is all I have.

Here’s hoping the deer keep showing up to the party.

Grouse

Side note on Sticker’s question about the forage peas.

I have had a report of very good results from a customer who grew the new Lynx high-sugar forage peas this year. He did his own blend with just oats and Lynx peas. The peas climbed the oats very well and everything was looking super. The peas really liked being in a grain blend so they could get up off the ground. This customer has about a 1.5 acre plot and he spring planted this mix as his own experiment.

Until… The deer found out about 2 weeks ago that green Lynx peas were really, really, really sweet. I’ll see if he has a picture, but the plot is about 200 yards from his house. The Lynx peas were growing great, nice little pods forming, everything was good in July.

He tries to stay away from it and not disturb the deer, but he checked it one weekend at noon and it was gone. The deer had moved in and ate every pea in the plot, pod, plant, and all. They had been bedding right in the plot, they must have held an eat-in buffet session and just pigged out for 4-5 days and then left. The peas were just gone.

So anyway Lynx peas appear to be living up to the hype. But to have huntable plots it seems that they need to be treated like soybeans and planted in larger plots that can withstand grazing pressure. I would think for most deer densities in the midwest, pure peas should be in a 3-5 acre field minimum.

Grouse

Update from 8/31. After a week away fishing in Canada, my dad was the first to visit the property yesterday. 2 pieces of news.

1. The Brassicas Bender blend continues to grow like crazy. Here are the latest pictures of the turnips and the forage radish.

I can only hope the deer figure out that these are some damn tasty snacks once the corn gets harvested, because if they do, this 1.1 acre strip will have deer in it 24/7.

My learning about brassicas this year is that in MN, you have to get it in on time and with good fertilizer. Brassicas is N hungry. This plot went in on July 6 and even with almost IDEAL growing conditions, that was NOT too early for central MN. We have had above average rain and temps and still most species in the blend will mature, but I certainly didn’t plant too early.

2. Trail cam down! Trail cam down! I have, or rather HAD, a trail cam mounted to a steel fence post in my clover plot. It’s gone!

But the perp left clues. The area near the cam is clawed up and there was broken plastic left where it was town from the mount. Hmmmm. I have a suspect in mind and his name is Big Pappi. It was the bears what done it.

This is the first trail cam I’ve lost to bears in 8 years of running cams. So what I’ve learned is you can’t be too freaking careful. Time to get those cams up higher and I may lay down some bear boards near the cams that are on fence posts to keep bears at bay.

Grouse

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The turnips and radish look awesome Grouse. I couldn’t agree more about planting time!

One tip about bears and cams. Spray your cam with scent killer every time you touch it. They are attracted to smell so when you eat a sweet roll on the way out to check cams, then touch the cam, guess what, they smell like sweet rolls. Even human odor on the cam will draw in a curious bear. A scent free cam is the safest bet IMHO

sticker wrote:

One tip about bears and cams. Spray your cam with scent killer every time you touch it. They are attracted to smell so when you eat a sweet roll on the way out to check cams, then touch the cam, guess what, they smell like sweet rolls. Even human odor on the cam will draw in a curious bear. A scent free cam is the safest bet IMHO

Yes, good tip on the scent killer.

I’ve noticed in many past pictures of bears that they can hear the camera. It’s quite obvious because in the first picture, they are looking away from the cam. In the second picture, they are almost always looking around FOR the cam. If there are other pictures, the bear is usually looking at the cam.

The bears in my area are not too educated when it comes to humans so they tend to check EVERYTHING out just to see if it tastes good. So far the bears have consumed a gas can, a full bottle of 2 stroke motor oil, 1 can of wasp/hornet spray, and several 5 gallon buckets. So the bears in my area can be identified by the blue smoke coming out of their @sses and the fact that they have breath that smells somewhere between Raid and non-ox gas.

Grouse

Everything continues to progress nicely at my property. Here are the pictures from Sunday, 9/18.

The Brassicas plot (1.1 acres) was planted on July 6 and looks very good. This is a blend of my own creation, it’s turnips, forage radish, peas, and rape.

I would expect a little more growth out of the radish and turnip, but they are standing proud and just ready to be plucked out by the deer. There is no sign the deer have eaten anything except the green tops of the turnips and radish, and of course, they ate the pea plants to the ground.

I hope things get pretty exciting in this plot when the other food disappears and the frost sweetens the radish and turnip. The corn silage was harvested over the past 2 weeks in my area, so other than some standing corn, the food is already disappearing from the ag fields.

The other pic is a rye plot planted about 2 weeks ago. Everything’s looking very good in this plot and it should be standinsg about 6-8 inches tall by the time cool weather slows the growth. Right now, the turkeys are loving the young rye, they are in there every day.

My big learning for this season was that I have to up the fertilizer applications even more. In the brassicas strip I spread 20-10-10, which was fine except that the 150 pounds was probably 50 pounds or more short of what was needed. With the huge amounts of rainfall I’ve had this year at my property, I may have lost some fertilizer to runoff, but it looks to me like the brassicas has run out of gas.

Since all my plots are new and carved out of softwood forest that has never been farmed, I have to think my soil is exhausted and needs lots more TLC to build it up.

Grouse

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Looking great!! I put a minimum of 100lbs per acre of urea on my brassica and sometimes I even top dress another 50lbs per acre after a couple weeks. Actually wish I had done that this year. They love N for sure.

Here’s a picture of the rye plot planted 2 weeks ago.

The turkeys are digging it as much as the deer. Which is fine by me, I want lots and lots of turkeys running around because with my calling skills, I need to maximize the odds.

Grouse

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Sweet!!!, but I think you missed a rock or two

sticker wrote:

Sweet!!!, but I think you missed a rock or two

,
Damn. You weren’t supposed to see those. That’s your Christmas present. You’re getting a really, really big present this year.

Grouse

Update 10/8/16: The brassicas plot looks very, very good. I can only hope that the deer really get into this plot after the frost comes.

For the attached picture, I think this is very close to the average size for both turnips and radish. These are by no means the biggest in the plot.

This brassicas plot contains my own seed blend that I call Brassicas Bender. This blend contains both forage peas and rape, but in looking over the plot, I’ve been unable to find any full rape leaves or peas. The deer have targeted these two plants and have pretty much wiped them out of the plot. Next year’s blend will include a new variety of giant rape and I’ll up the seed count, so we’ll see what more raped does for this blend.

Peas, in my experience, never last no matter what you do. The deer just love peas and will find them no matter what.

Overall, all the strips in my plots are now being used heavily, including:

– Rye – My father thought the rye plot was slow growing so we installed a cage. He was right, it’s slow growing because the deer have been mowing the plot every night to keep it looking nice and short. Lesson learned, use a cage in every plot or you’ll never know what the deer are really doing.

– New clover seeding – We put my Megaclover Plus blend of 5 clover species plus chicory in a new strip in one plot and then sowed oats as a nurse crop. Like the rye, the deer have shown an amazing ability to keep the oats from getting more than 2 inches high. The clover is coming in nicely, this was an ideal fall to plant clover.

Clearly the deer are refocusing their feeding and using my plots more and more. The ag crops in our area are all but done now, there is just a little dry corn in some fields, but everything else is now gone or picked over.

Grouse

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Update from my visit to the farm yesterday, 10/23/16.

1. Rye is a big draw in cooler weather.

The deer won’t leave the rye in the north plot alone. I have a camera on time lapse for 2 hours morning and evening and there are rarely pictures without deer in the frame.

The downside is the rye in this plot is shorter than my front lawn at home. I probably should have fertilized more heavily and next year I will expand this plot so there’s more rye planted.

2. In my south plot, it’s the same story with the deer grazing heavily on the oats that I added as a nurse crop for the new clover seeding. I couldn’t find a single oat plant taller than 2 inches, the deer have kept everything mowed, but the nurse crop is doing its job as the clover is coming in very well. I could have easily added more oats to this plot.

3. The brassicas are ready and waiting. We have still not had a hard-hard frost on my farm. I think the low reading has been 29 officially. The deer seem to show a casual interest in the brassicas, but I can’t see any evidence of them really going after them full tilt yet. Which is a good thing! I want my plot to last into the late fall so it provides good forage to keep the deer in good shape going into winter.

Grouse

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That’s great news Grouse. I am seeing the exact same as you. The 20 50lb bags of rye I planted are all getting a work out. Some more than others.

Brassica I am also seeing the same, a little browsing of the leaves but the bulbs are still in tact in the ground.

Holy Mackerel! Do you have rocks!

Those aren’t rocks. They’re Christmas presents for Sticker. He’s getting a lot of Christmas presents this year.

Yes, we’ve got rock. That north plot is the worst and it hasn’t been rock picked at all since it was carved out of the woods 2 years ago, I just ran a bobcat and a skeleton bucket over it this summer for the first time to pick up all the wood and root junk left over. Then we rolled the disc over it and seeded that rye.

My problem was that I wanted at least 80 acres and less than a 90 minute drive from my home in the NE metro. Unfortunately, there is very little good ground available for the price I was willing to pay, that close to the metro area.

I’ll run the rock bucket over it next year and pick it cleaner, but we’re never going to have prime corn ground. Luckily, for food plot crops you don’t need to plow, just surface disc and plant, so it doesn’t have to be totally clean.

But if you need lots of free landscaping material, just let me know.

Grouse

TheFamousGrouse wrote:

But if you need lots of free landscaping material, just let me know.

Pick your own? Like those ever generous apple orchards and pumpkin patches that are so popular now?!?! I see a new trend, organic, free range, self harvested landscaping rock, you pay more but you know where they came from!

Mrs. Grouse is English-English, as in she actually comes from England and has an English accent and everything. It’s key to understanding that for this next part.

Yesterday she was walking with me up the field road from the south plot and we walked past the biggest rock pile on the property. She looks over at it and says, “We could have the prettiest dry stone walls here. You should build one. It would just like the farms in England.”

I said something about returning her to the mail order bride company where I got her…

On the plus side, I had no problem sourcing material to fix that low spot in my driveway up there. Needed to raise it about a foot, so that was nothing 10 buckets full of rock couldn’t fix. All for free!

Grouse