Food Plots ’10

I have been meaning to get some stuff up for a while now, but only so many hours in the day. So here is a quick ”Jist” of what we have going this year.

Turns out the long winter probably left us with a few too many extra hours of planning. But, a few long days of quality time on the tractors got it all done. We ended up doing right around 27 acres this year. I know alot of you are thinking were nuts, but, 10 or so years ago we started with it all with just a 150ft, by 25ft plot.

The first picture is where it all started years ago. We have expanded ALOT and planted some extra acreage of corn that we will harvest to help pay some fertilizer costs. We have about 4 acres in plots, and will leave 3 acres of standing corn. There is another 7 acres of corn here ( not pictured ) that we will be harvesting.

Pictures 2, 3, 4, 5 are the plots we have going down on our new river bottom land. Picture 2 is about 5 acres, Picture 3 is about 4 acres, Picture 4 is about 3 acres. Picture 5 is about an acre.

We select all of our species and varieties our selves in order to save the extra costs of buying brand name blends. The seed we buy is all purchased in singular form from a very reputable dealer, and hand mixed to our likes and needs. These blends are selected for palatability, nutrient content, nutrient needs, and soil type for each of our plots.

The list of species and varieties we ordered for this year are as follows:
50# Alfalfa WL 353LH
250# Spring Wheat, Steele ND
150# Buckforage Oats
50# Midas Field Peas
50# Spring Triticale
100# Forage Sorghum
10# New Zealand White Clover
10# White Dutch Clover
10# Medium Red Clover
20# Berseem Clover
3# Spandona Chicory
3# Barnapoli Rapeseed
3# Kale
4# Purple Top Turnips
6# Wildlife Sugar Beets
6# Tillage Radishes
50# Eagle Seed Forage Soybeans
50# rr Soybean variety
1 Palette of rr Corn

We plant our plots at different times of during each planting season, as well as different times of the year so that we always have something the deer what from week to week. All of our spring planting has been done for about 2 weeks now, and we will begin our fall plantings the first week of August. I will get pictures up as I can. I need to borrow cameras, as mine is at the bottom of the Sydney harbor and Id rather spend that cash on hunting or fishing stuff. Keep you posted, and good luck with your ‘plotting’ endevours.

All that work will be rewarded

Borrow that camera we would like some pics

Nice set up! I noticed you have sugar beets on your list… are they rr ready? if not how have you handled your weed control?

What are you guys using for equipment? That looks awsome, I would hate to be your neighbors

Very Cool! Congrats on so many plots and acres!

We planted RR Sugar Beets up in ND for the first time this year. By far once it freezes a few solid times it seems Sugar Beets is the #1 food choice of deer up there. They walk right through everything and anything else to hit the beets!

I’m sure all your hardwork will be rewarded this Fall!

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Nice set up! I noticed you have sugar beets on your list… are they rr ready? if not how have you handled your weed control?

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This is our first year with sugar beets. I have heard nothing but good things. These are not roundup ready sugar beets because the RR variety has only been on the market for two years and is currently facing scrutiny by federal law. Being it is our first year with them I have decided to add them into our mix of purple top turnips and tillage radishes. We have had great luck in the past in regards to weed control with our turnips and radishes. What we have done is till the soil with the rest of our plots in the early spring, then leave the soil bare until our fall planting. We spray the plot we intend on being our turnip/radish plot with a good dose of glyphosate (RoundUp), three to four times throughout the summer. In the past, when the foliage has been tall, we have gone in and mowed it down after letting the glyhphosate burn it up. When it comes time to plant we have nearly bare ground to work with. Glyphosate has a short half life and is a contact spray, which means it will not impede future plantings. We then drag the soil, broad cast seed, then lightly drag. In most years the foliage from the turnips and radishes, along with the shortened growing season, quickly choke out the weed growth. The requirements to grow sugar beets are a bit more extensive than the other two species. However, we have noticed better results with smaller bulb sizes (also lighter seeding has proven better plots for turnips and radishes). Right now, being our first season with beets, we are expecting some-to-alright production of sugar beet bulbs. This will most likely result in a different composition of the sugar beet bulb themselves, due to imaturity. However observation in the stand will show which the deer are preferring. Testimony all over says sugar beets are awesome for deer, its just a matter of how we use them and how we implement them into our plot system.

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What are you guys using for equipment?

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Our equipment is pretty marginal at best. Granted it is more than a garden tiller and hand spreader, but I am guessing you are expecting more than what we have.
-6 row international air seeder (cant believe we own something red) that has been converted into a 4 row 30″ planter. (Im guessing late 70s or early 80s)
-8′ disk with no hydraulics, need an extra loader tractor to lift up and down for pin settings. (ancient, has fungus growing on the iron oxidation)
-8′ three point digger
-12′ rotary hoe that we split into two and loaded with cinder blocks for weight (probably 60s’)
-3 bottom mow board plow (probably late 60s’)
-2 row stock chopper (guessing 50s’?)
-4′ rigid gravel yard rake
-4′ floating gravel yard rake
-1 Bushel broadcast seeder for back of 4-wheeler
-2 Hand broadcast seeders of various size for our real small stuff

Borrowed 4 Wheelers (700s due to rotary hoe)
Borrowed Tractors (we got one too small and one way way way too big)

We purchased all of the items which we didn’t have for a very affordable price (PM if you are in the market for any of this stuff and want to know expected prices).

We do hand seed alot of our real fine seed with our small broad cast seeders. And we do alot of hand and spot spraying with pump sprayers.

For us its all apart of the game…. Take joy in the journey, and not just the destination…..

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For us its all apart of the game…. Take joy in the journey, and not just the destination…..

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Amen!

I’m not half as knowledgable as FlatlandFowler or Bobbs, but the pure enjoyment and satisfaction I get from completing even the smallest or simplest plot is worth every drop of sweat and sore muscle 10 X over.

Watching a plot grow and deer eating out of it knowing that you did it yourself and get to watch the fruit of your hard work and sweat. Just hoping you get the chance to do or watch someone else give the ultimate reward of harvesting a deer, any deer off of it, is just icing on the cake!

Was able to snap a few quick pics the other night. Food Plots are coming along well considering all the water and storms lately. Got out for one good spraying before they all started but the wet soils have been leaving me with alot of hand spraying.

Pic 1: Looking out towards our alfalfa that was seeded in with wheat as a cover crop. Bottom left corner shows our strip of sorghum that travels around the edge of out plots for a visual barrier.

Pic 2: Dense Alfalfa stand underneath our wheat cover crop.

Pic 3: Chicory, Forage Rape, and Kale strip. Can kind of see our corn strips on the side out in the distance that dissect the plot to make it a more secluded area for the plot.

Pic 4: Another plot that shows our corn strips splitting out plots apart. Bottom to top is wheat, Chic/Rape/Kale, weeds that will be turnips/beets/radishs later in year, then triticale and peas, followed by clover that is not really in picture.

Pic 5: is looking down one of the corn strips with chic/rape/kale on one side and triciale and peas on the other. Corn strip along tree line in distance for visual barrier.

Ill try and keep the pics coming. Ill get more close ups and better quality for all of them. Hope you all are having good luck with your plots

Thanks for the update. Looking good man!

The month of July is amazing in regards to change. Every year it seems we are laughing about the old farmers ‘knee high by the fourth of July’ phrase (regarding corn) because its nearly waist deep. As August approaches its expected that corn is tasseling and beans are filling in the row gaps, and this is no different for the food plots.

Pic #1: Eagle Seed Beans; silver piece is a 4′ stanley level because a yard stick just wasn’t going to cut it!

Pic #2: More beans with cut Alfalfa behind, and visual barrier corn up against trees.

Pic #3: Alfalfa-to-Wheat-to-Corn (same corn as pics 4 & 5 above; wow, what 3 weeks makes).

Pic #4: Chicory, Forage Rape, & Kale. Different plot than pictured above, all three are doing very well!

Pic #5: Corn is pushing ears!!

Pic #6: 3rd Brassica plot running into Triticale and Canadian Field Pea mix.

Pic #7: Mature peas on a less than average plant (they will produce even if the little feelers dont reach somthing)

I know farmers that would be jealous

Snapped a few quick pics on the walk out the other night. I apologize for not posting pics of the spring/summer-to-fall plot turn around, but I have just been dumb busy since the 3rd week in July. Sooo, here are a few pics of some of our fall plots. I will try to keep getting pics of different plots on my walk to different sets as time progresses here. (All our fall plots were planted from the first to second weekend in August)

Pic 1: Buck Forage Oats surrounded by corn. Oats are 4-7″ so hopefully they don’t get much larger

Pic 2: Purple Top Turnips/Tillage Radishes/Sugar Beets. This plot is off to the right from pic/plot 1, and separated by 3/4 acre corn.

Pic 3: Quick pick of a Purple Top and a Radish on the short walk from trail cam to Double Bull.

Pic 4: The view we all waited to see our plots from!! The two black markings are paths originating at differing places(left) and ending at the same(right). The markings (several yards wide) are just pure browsing pressure.

nice job

Good work Brady those look awesome

Got a few more today when I went out to pull another card.

#1 Alfalfa (backround is our sorhgum visual barrier 7-11′ stalks)

#2 Spring planted Brassicas- Chicory, Rape, Kale. Mostly just Chicory now.

#3 Oats- Little too big, half to three quarters getting hollow stems

#4 Fall planted Purple Top Turnips, Tillage Radishes, and Sugar Beets

#5 A Purple Top closing in on softball size and a Radish. (Deer have been hammering the radish foliage bigtime!)

#6 Deer taking an early taste test of several Purple Tops, If they only knew now how good they get

One more set of plots for pics and that will be it for the year. Hopefully the last string to this thread will be a photo op with “Sticker” layin on his grocery store!

LadyLuck likes the turnips too

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LadyLuck likes the turnips too

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Sooo…. The question is: Just how many bushels of turnips does a guy have to FedEx to Sparta in order for LadyLuck to invite a guy over to let the air out of one of your big spring tom turkeys??? Seriously got Turnips coming out of my ears

On a serious note: I feel that one key to developing a turnip plot from just foliage browse into a late season nutrient source is seed depth. As most of us ‘plotters’ know, turnips need minimal seed depth but maximal seed contact. Simplified this means that you hardly need to set the seed below the surface, however, a good compaction implement can make all the difference. In years past we have drug our turnips into a worked over seed bed and then packed the plot with 4-wheeler tires. This year we bought a cheap water holding roll packer. This allowed us minimal dragging with maximal seed to soil contact. Our plots are loaded with turnips and radishes that are emerging from the soil surface. This ‘bulb’ exposure, in my opinion, is crucial for the late season use of your turnip bulbs. We have had years where we had decent growth, but planted too deep. This left us with marginal foliage and little to no use of the bulbs by the deer in late season. In contrast years that we have had too little depth and soil contact, deer simply just ate the bulbs in late season and never got onto the foliage. When there is good foliage growth and quarter to third exposure of the ‘bulb’ is when I feel that the turnip/radish plot is best utilized by the deer as a multi-season food source.

Brady it’s no charge ( for a select few ) to kill a spring tom over here

I don’t drag small seed at all I till then spread the seed then let the sprinklers press it down. Works great for me

Just ribbing you a bit. Im not much of a turkey hunter, just lets me get out hunting another weekend out of the year.

From what I hear those tillers are awesome. Beats the soil up pretty good or are you left with chunks of dirt when your done? Most all the land in our area is real thick black dirt. This leaves us with clumping after we dig. Clumps are any thing from marble to baseball size and we use just a standard Ag digger (not chisel or any thing like that). We use a floating drag with the teeth layed back at a pretty good speed to break these clumps up. This leaves us with a soil that is finer or more fluffy if you will. On our one plot that is very sandy, where we dont get clumping, we have spread and let the rain set the seed in. This too worked well for us However, on our other black soil plots, this technique left us with much less germination than we if we drag and roll pack.

Any ways, Im sure there are many more practices that work well for people on their plots. This is what seems to work the best for us and it took many tries to get it down to the consistent lush plots that we have today. Shows the worth of this forumn to learn what works for people all over the area, and I think all of the contributions from the ido members here this year could definately help cut down the time on a new food plotters learning curve

Man they look great!!!!! I will agree with you 100% on the planting depth you talked about, the bulb must be exposed for late season usage!! Again thanks for sharing!!

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On a serious note: I feel that one key to developing a turnip plot from just foliage browse into a late season nutrient source is seed depth. As most of us ‘plotters’ know, turnips need minimal seed depth but maximal seed contact. Simplified this means that you hardly need to set the seed below the surface, however, a good compaction implement can make all the difference. In years past we have drug our turnips into a worked over seed bed and then packed the plot with 4-wheeler tires. This year we bought a cheap water holding roll packer. This allowed us minimal dragging with maximal seed to soil contact. Our plots are loaded with turnips and radishes that are emerging from the soil surface. This ‘bulb’ exposure, in my opinion, is crucial for the late season use of your turnip bulbs. We have had years where we had decent growth, but planted too deep. This left us with marginal foliage and little to no use of the bulbs by the deer in late season. In contrast years that we have had too little depth and soil contact, deer simply just ate the bulbs in late season and never got onto the foliage. When there is good foliage growth and quarter to third exposure of the ‘bulb’ is when I feel that the turnip/radish plot is best utilized by the deer as a multi-season food source

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Great info and what I have found to be true! I had dragged a few plots this year and did not like the way it turned out. Past years I “ROLLED” it with the 4 wheeler tires and it turned out great!

I dub you the “mad scientist” of food plots. Simply amazing!

Finally got the last of the pics for this years plots. This is the property in the first pic of the first post. Frosted pretty hard here a week ago yesterday, and a week ago today; pics were taken this past Friday.

#1: Alfalfa with Buck forage Oats up by the corn on the left and wheat up by the corn on the right. Wheat was planted in spring and matured, then mowed and dug under for re-growth the first weekend in Aug.

#2: Eagle Seed Beans. Frost a week ago finally got them turning. They have been browsed heavily and I watched bucks using them as late as last Sunday. These produced a pile of tonnage. Im 6’6″ and these plants are as tall as my shoulders.

#3: Eagle Seed bean pods. Definitely pods, but not much for beans in them. They were flowing during opening weekend of MN bow. I will definitely be adding an Ag production variety in with these next year. Hopefully with a plate planter to get some form of row structure where each row has only one variety. This is due the the height of the Eagle Seed variety that could cause growth issues with the shorter variety (sunlight issues).

#4: Forage Sorhgum visual barrier. If you can pic out the Big Game Vertex blind under the tree on left, that stands platform is 7′. Sorhgum is in 11-12′ range and working great to block the neighboring property’s line of sight, as well as adding the feeling of ‘small secure plot’ feeling to the deer.

#5: Spring planted brassicas. Chicory, Forage Rape, and Kale. Mostly Chicory with some Kale left. Got too mature before we had time to mow, really put a hurt on this plot except for the Chicory. Corn strips on either side for ‘small plot’ feeling.

#6: Right-to-Left, Sugar Beet, Tillage Radish, Purple Top Turnip, size 16 New Balance (took pics while pulling cards). I was expecting some, to alright bulb production of the sugar beets. This was not the case. They are few and far between. They did not grow on our other property. Will definitely be planting these in the spring next year, as they just did not work out how I wanted in this mix. Deer are hitting the foliage hard however.

#7: Spring Brassica plot from one of the stands. You can really tell how the mowing too late took a toll. The 10″ of rain two weeks ago with flooding didnt help.

#8: Alot to take in, so here it goes. Bottom-to-Right corn is up against trees for a visual barrier, this way deer must stage up understand to look into plots. Right-to-left corn, T-ing with other strip, is for visual barrier to add a small plot security sense for deer. Left side of corn T is spring Brassicas. Just on the far side of the right-to-left corn is a long strip of wheat. Just beyond the wheat (moving right-to-left) is Buck Forage Oats (planted 1st weekend in Aug), then Alfalfa, then Eagle Seed beans, then way out is rest of corn (+/- 11 acres or so that will be left till spring). Further beyond the Oats, Alfalfa, and Beans is the Forage Sorhgum strip (just beneath trees) that provides the visual barrier from other property. The trees are a bull ditch that runs through most of our plot acres, then veers off and runs behind the wooded part of the property.