Rotating plots

I spent last weekend getting a new plot ready at my parents house. My Dad is getting bees this year, and is planting a little over an acre of wild flowers and clover mix. He was nice enough to give me about .75 acres to do what ever I wanted with. This is in a fairly residential area so this will be the largest food source other than a corn field about a mile away.

I will be planting rye and clover mix shortly with a no till drill we are lucky enough to have access to. My questions are, what is the best way to plant a brassica mix come July? Will I need to go grab the planter again, which is kind of a pain, or can I drag it and use a broadcast seeder?

On a side note I dragged up a big water tank a couple weeks ago and set it next to the mineral. Man are the deer hitting those hard already!

The tank and mineral are tucked back into the little finger of trees. That pocket will stay grass and the rest will get planted.

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It sounds like you are not going to work the dirt at all before the rye/clover. Is that correct? How are planning to kill the rye/clover before you plant brassica? Most brassica seed needs to be covered with dirt to germinate, not planted deep, but covered. I am not sure how you would do that if you aren’t going to work the dirt first, other than using the no till planter.

Is your intention to try to preserve the clover/rye mix by planting brassicas into the existing and still-growing plot? Or are you going kill off or till under the rye/clover and then replant brassicas?

The problem is that .75 acre is a really small plot.

Brassicas need space and soil contact to grow and if you really want to maximize the size and nutrition value. I know guys interseed turnips or radish with clover/grain, but to really get the size and nutrition out of brassicas it needs enough space for each plant to develop.

I plant my brassicas blend at 9.5 pounds per acre. That seems to be about right in my relatively poor soil, that may be even too heavy in better soil.

So my concern is after getting used to your delicious rye/clover mix and probably keeping it mowed like a putting green, if your replant brassicas, the deer may eat all the greens in that small of a plot and really stunt the growth of the brassicas, preventing it from maturing.

Have you thought about just going with a blend of red and white clovers and then a nurse crop of rye or oats and then just leave it grow all year?

I think one thing that gets a little distorted is that guys think of clover as a “boring” crop that doesn’t have the glam of the money crops like soybeans, corn, or brassicas.

The reality is that the deer don’t share this view. There is never a time when deer WON’T eat clover. I have a plot that is 5+ acres split in half with 2+ acres of clover/oats and the rest is in summer planted brassicas. Even in November when the brassicas is prime and the deer are going crazy for it, they still go over and eat clover every day. My clover/grain plot looks like a golf fairway pretty much year round.

Deer will never ignore good clover and tender grain, no matter what else might be on offer. They may split their time between food sources, but they don’t roll back their use very much regardless. Clover is not second class food to deer.

Grouse

TheFamousGrouse wrote:

Have you thought about just going with a blend of red and white clovers and then a nurse crop of rye or oats and then just leave it grow all year?

I think one thing that gets a little distorted is that guys think of clover as a “boring” crop that doesn’t have the glam of the money crops like soybeans, corn, or brassicas.

The reality is that the deer don’t share this view. There is never a time when deer WON’T eat clover. I have a plot that is 5+ acres split in half with 2+ acres of clover/oats and the rest is in summer planted brassicas. Even in November when the brassicas is prime and the deer are going crazy for it, they still go over and eat clover every day. My clover/grain plot looks like a golf fairway pretty much year round.

Deer will never ignore good clover and tender grain, no matter what else might be on offer. They may split their time between food sources, but they don’t roll back their use very much regardless. Clover is not second class food to deer.

Grouse

Great point Grouse. Case and point, here is a clover plot at our farm. You can see even in December the deer are hammering it.

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I will start off by saying I know the plot is really small, but for the relatively low deer density in the neighborhood I’m thinking it should hold up alright. The one thing that will be interesting to see is if we start holding a lot more deer than we are used to seeing. Out side of this plot and peoples landscaping this will be the only food source outside of the corn field almost 2 miles away.

I don’t plan on working the soil at all. Everyone I’ve talked to said if we have the drill to plant with we are better off leaving the grass stubble to hold some moisture in the extremely sandy soil we have to deal with. The only reason I was considering trying to plant Brassica into the clover/Rye was to give a better late season food option for the deer. The only time I hunt at my parents is during gun season and late December. Per Stickers photos it looks like that may not be needed! That is totally fine with me. We have planted some very small patches of clover in years past that were probably less than a 1/8 acre, and the deer seemed to abandon it by late November. However this could have been because it was eaten right down to the dirt and wasn’t worth their time. We also struggled to get the small patches of clover to really take hold because of the weeds, but we have done a lot more prep this year to try and get the weeds under control. Hopefully having the rye mixed in will help with the weed control also.

All that being said if I were to give the Brassicas a try it sounds like going and getting the drill to plant would probably be the only option? Regardless of how this turns out it’s been a fun project.

That plan certainly works, with a drill you don’t need to work the soil. Spray to kill weeds and plant, good luck!

hillhiker wrote:

We have planted some very small patches of clover in years past that were probably less than a 1/8 acre, and the deer seemed to abandon it by late November. However this could have been because it was eaten right down to the dirt and wasn’t worth their time.

This is the almost universal problem with small plots. Deer will only eat where there is actually food to eat. Once the crop is mowed down, there’s no reason to come around.

As sticker said, get a total kill on that plot with gly (Roundup) before drilling in seed and you should be good.

IMO clover and grain is one of the best choices for small plots because it has the best chance of standing up to the grazing pressure.

Grouse

I sprayed it all again yesterday even though there isn’t hardly a blade of green grass coming up in the areas we spayed last fall, but better safe than sorry! If everything goes as planned and the weather cooperates we will be planting next weekend.