How late is too late

I was going to plant my first food plot today but it ended up raining while i was driving to the location. I want to plant a winter/late season plot and decided on 7 card stud for late season in the hayward area. The last chance i have to plant is the weekend before opener, but wondering if that’s too late. Any ideas?

You’re way too late for that blend in the Hayward area. You’ll never get near maturity on an annual blend with most of the varieties that one contains.

Think about strategy for a minute. What is your goal with this plot? Is it to hunt over this year and you don’t care what comes up next spring? Or is this a long-term lease where you might consider a long-term plot when that comes up every year?

It’s not too late to plant food plot crops but before I recommend something it would help to know a little bit about what your goals are.

Grouse

My approach was twofold: to have a late season plot and to see how well the plot turns out for never planting one before.
I dont have a tiller or the necessary equipment to create a large plot. I was going to create a 1/4 acre plot with the season approaching, and depending on how well it turns out, i would make a plan for next season.

Protourbaits1 wrote:

My approach was twofold: to have a late season plot and to see how well the plot turns out for never planting one before.
I dont have a tiller or the necessary equipment to create a large plot. I was going to create a 1/4 acre plot with the season approaching, and depending on how well it turns out, i would make a plan for next season.

Given this, here are my suggestions.

First, a 1/4 acre plot is very small and even 1-2 deer making regular visits will keep it mowed to the nub. So just to set expectations, how well anything works or does not work has to be taken with a grain of salt. At a larger scale, everything will probably work better is what I’ll say.

Since we’re now into September, I think you want three things: Fast growth, seed that will grow with minimal soil prep, and maximum weed suppression to ease workload for next year. Given these, I’d suggest…

1. Rye (grain, not grass). It’ll grow with very little soil prep, even just hacking it up with a rake will probably be good enough. It comes in thick, and grows even after the first frost. Come late season it will be bright green even sticking out of the snow. It will also overwinter and come up strong in the spring to provide weed surpression.

2. Wheat. Same as above, but slightly higher protein and sweeter, which actually may make it less desirable in this situation because the deer will just hammer it all the harder.

3. You could plant a clover blend if you were interested in turning this plot into a perennial clover plot, but if that’s the case plot prep and weed control before planting is important. Did you roundup the plot already?

IMO there is no point in spending big money on buck on the bag southern seed blends to do what you need to do. We simply do not have the heat units and growing days left to make anything of them.

Wishing you good luck.

Grouse

I sprayed roundup last weekend. I’ll take a look at the area tomorrow and make a decision.

Thanks Grouse for the read. Good info!

I just disc up 1 acre and broadcast winter peas and winter wheat. I did this Thursday. I ran across it with the drag after I hand broadcast it.

I looked at it today and it looks like there is seed still laying on top of the soil. Is this something I need to be concerned about?

Will just ground contact work on this?

One thing to keep in mind, Hayward sits in a depression that makes the area very frost sensitive. Average first frost there according to the USDA is September 10.

I looked up the 7 card stud blend and 3 of the 7 (turnip, radish, and riticale) varieties in that blend will kill dead at the first frost. This is typical of blends from southern companies, they don’t worry about frosts because they don’t have to.

Of the remaining 4 seed types, the clover and chicory are very slow growing so you won’t get much from them this year.

So essentially, only the oats and winter peas will make it past mid September.

A good planting of rye or wheat would be cheaper and more successful.

Grose

riverruns wrote:

I looked at it today and it looks like there is seed still laying on top of the soil. Is this something I need to be concerned about?

No, you need to give it a little longer than 3 days.

Did you get any of the rain that we got in the Twin Cities this morning?

I planted rye a week ago this past Wednesday and it immediately got rained on the next day. It was JUST starting to germinate 7 days after planting and 6 days after it was first rained on, but that was barely visible when I picked up each seed. The edge of the seed had green signs of emergence on it. That’s all, but I’m sure by this week I’ll have green showing.

If it got rained on this morning, you should see some signs of germination by next weekend, but you may have to look closely. This is assuming we get some sun this week, of course.

Grouse

I would go rye or buck forage oats. Buck forage oats grow really late into the season.
DT