Holy radish

I was checking one of my plots at home last night that is planted in brassica. The kale is over 3′ tall and the radishes are also quite large. This plot is pretty impressive for growth, but as of now has zero draw power for deer. NOTHING has been browsed at all in this plot. This will be either my 4th or 5th year of planting brassica at home and the deer just plain ignore it. You would think I would learn, but I am insistent on making them eat it. Here is one of the largest radishes I found so far.

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I have heard lots of guys talk about deer loving brassica, wonder why yours don’t? Must be enough other things for them to find I guess.
I could see if it was something you first introduced this year and them not finding it yet, but you have given them plenty of time.
Considering other options next year? Buck forage oats I have heard good things about. How about turnips? I heard the deer just literally dig out the ground after them after the first snow. This from a guide up in the UP.

There are purple top turnips in this mix and they are doing quite well also. Not touched. At our farm near Fergus they hammer the brassica.

I am not sure if I’ll give up on brassica or not. I have 2 other plots, both in beans at home this year that they are enjoying quite a bit. We will see, when the corn next door comes down and they wipe out the beans I am hoping the brassica will be a great late season draw. It hasn’t in the past, but they usually don’t wipe out the beans until January. This year I’ll be surprised if the beans make it thru November. Time will tell and that may help me make my decision for next year.

Nice radish! I plant my own blend of Brassicas including radish, turnip, sugar beets, and rape (all are members of the brassicas plant family). My deer don’t seem to take them on in any order, they eat everything starting 7-10 days after the “killing frost”.

But it took the deer on my property 3 full years to figure out that brassicas are awesome to eat and these are deer in east central MN where there are no standing ag crops so the country gets hungry pretty fast in the fall. Down here in the well-fed metro area it’s not surprising that the deer might not be as motivated to try new food because there’s just so much other stuff to eat even in the dead of winter.

After the first killing frost, I’d go out there and pull a radish here and a turnip there and just stomp the s#!$ out of them. Release as much scent as possible. I’d basically do this daily. I can’t swear that that’s what did it for my deer, but I did exactly this right before they finally “figured it out”.

At the end of the day, it may not be the brassicas or you. Given your experience with having standing soybeans WITH pods left on them in the dead of winter last year, my guess is that some surburbanite in your square mile could have an absolutely massive feed bunk in their back yard and it probably looks like a cattle operation. They probably pull a feed wagon behind their little lawn tractor and fill the feed bunk every morning with 200 pounds of corn and then tuck the deer in under blankets every night under a patio heater. For whatever reason, the deer just don’t want to leave…

Grouse

My mom and husband have that Grouse, can go through 20# corn nightly easily at their house in the winter.
Pretty cool going out with the kids though and turning the flood lights on and seeing 30+ deer in their yard.

They seem to love my bell peppers…

Ralph Wiggum wrote:

They seem to love my bell peppers…

I’ll trade you for some radishes

sticker wrote:

I’ll trade you for some radishes

Just go put up a stand overlooking his garden. Wait for deer to come for the delicious peppers. Whack! It’s in the freezer.

It’s that easy, just ask River Rat Randy.

Grouse

May be a dumb ? but are the deer there later season or do they get pressured out? one thing you might try is plant something like clover next to it and hopefully they will pickup on it. I have one more year on a clover plot and next year I plan on broadcasting some tillage radishes in with the clover. From what I’ve seen sometime late before heavy snow deer will flock back to clover/alfalfa and leave the grains for some reason before it dies. Must be very intelligent to get the most out of the land before it dies knowing the grains will always be there late. Good luck

TheFamousGrouse wrote:

Nice radish! I plant my own blend of Brassicas including radish, turnip, sugar beets, and rape (all are members of the brassicas plant family). My deer don’t seem to take them on in any order, they eat everything starting 7-10 days after the “killing frost”.

Grouse

I have exactly the same results at my farm. Usually about a week after a snow or major killing frost, the plants sugar up and the deer go nuts for them. Before that, just a big garden

Funny how on some farms they really go after the greens once they get mature even before the really cold stuff comes in. Like in a few a grouse’s photos from last year, there wasnt a tiny bit of leaf matter anywhere… had her grazed down to the nubs.. then they dug up the root ball.
See on videos that the deer are slurping down the leaf tops even when they get to the stinky propane smelling yellow stage.
This is the 2nd year of brassicas at my home farm.. having root balls the size of cantaloupes… didnt get touched last year, So I switched to Biologic to see if that made any difference. So far nothing.. but it did get down to 23 degrees on Tuesday morning.. so we will see… But there is just food everywhere around me and on mine.. so its really tough to make a verdict until end of season in February.
The plot looks so good.. its frustrating that they wont try it.

abster71 wrote:

May be a dumb ? but are the deer there later season or do they get pressured out? one thing you might try is plant something like clover next to it and hopefully they will pickup on it. I have one more year on a clover plot and next year I plan on broadcasting some tillage radishes in with the clover. From what I’ve seen sometime late before heavy snow deer will flock back to clover/alfalfa and leave the grains for some reason before it dies. Must be very intelligent to get the most out of the land before it dies knowing the grains will always be there late. Good luck

They are there late season, in fact, prolly more than they are early season. It is just me hunting this so not a lot of pressure. When all the other food sources(except peoples feeders) are gone, they come to my place for the beans, corn, or whatever I have in the 3 plots. I have pics of them walking thru it, so they know it’s there, but never a pic of them eating it. I am hopeful that this winter with the 10″ radishes sticking up thru the snow they figure it out….we will see.