So what’s the (food plot) plan?

It’s finally go time in most of the northern tier states. Time to start food plot work.

So what’s your plan for this year? Anyone trying something new and/or different this year? Trying to figure out how to do something better than last year?

My plan this year is totally different from anything I’ve done in the past. I’m really shaking things up by…well, for the first time ever, I’m doing the same exact thing I did last year.

Honestly, after years of experiments, planting different things in different places at different times, I finally got to a point last year where I was really, really happy with everything. Because this is an “off” year in terms of none of my perennial clover plots are in need of a re-do, I only have to think about the annuals like Eagle and Real World soybeans, and where to put my Brassicas Bender blend come mid-summer. Since I liked everything where it was last year, I’m putting it all right back in the same plots.

I am aware that, of course, you never can get the same growing conditions twice. Every year is different. But I had no specific reason to swap everything around, so I’m not going to rotate anything this year.

There are a few new things, however:

1. I’m trying spring triticale this year as my cover crop for the brassicas plot instead of the usual oat/pea mix. Triticale is a grain that is a cross between wheat and rye. It has excellent protein and durable growth characteristics, so I wanted to see how it works.

2. One of our fellow IDO members is growing the new Enlist variety of Real World Soybeans. This variety is resistant to glyphosate (Roundup), glufosinate (Liberty), and 2,4,D resistant, so weed control options are greatly enhanced for those growers who have resistant weed problems. I am eager to see how this test works and how the soybeans look. Hopefully, they will be every bit as good as the Real World Gen2 Northern soybeans.

3. I’m going to expand my use of annual high-protein ryegrass on areas of plots that are either too low to spring plant or on a few low spots I have that tend to drown out if we have heavy rains and long-standing water. This ryegrass is an annual and it is specifically bred to provide fast growth and high nutrition content for cattle forage. Last year it was an excellent performer in a limited test plot, it was easy to plant, grew thick and fast, and the deer loved it in the late season.

So what’s your plan and what are you doing differently in 2021?

We are essentially doubling our clover plots. I have daily visitors to my small clover plot numbering between 5 and 7 deer. In my expended clover plot I’m planting 3 chestnut trees…I’ll get to see them grow, but wonder if I’ll live long enough to see any real nut production.

My fruit orchard is getting both deer fencing and electric fence (damn bears).

I need to fertilize my brassica plots better and plant earlier.

I had very poor performance on my corn and soybean plots. Corn would get raped as soon as ears started to develop and beans would get eaten as soon as they emerged, way to small of plots. I wish we had more tillable land, but the bedding on our property seems to hold deer quite nicely.

castle-rock-clown wrote:

My fruit orchard is getting both deer fencing and electric fence (damn bears).

I remember seeing your pictures of those beautiful peaches and thinking to myself, “Man, he must not have any bears or raccoons around there. Lucky guy.” About 2 days later…

Corn, IME, is a total waste of time and space for the vast majority of food plotters. I talk to literally dozens of property owners every year who have tried corn and had it flop. To grow really quality corn requires good seed, lots of fertilizer, good weed control and then you’ll only get something out of it if you can keep the bears, raccoons, and other critters out of it. Which most owners can’t do. The only growers that I know of who are successful with corn, have minimal bear populations AND they grow big plots of corn, usually 5 acres and often more.

Also, I look it everything in terms of how much tonnage of deer-edible food does a crop production per acre. Corn is appallingly low. If you baled all the clover that grew on a 1-acre clover plot every year, you’d have at least a ton and as much as several tons over the course of a growing season. With corn, if you combined your plot at the end of the season, you’d be lucky to yield 500 pounds. And that’s if you grew it really well. Most food plotters can’t grow corn to anywhere near the 150+++ bu/ac yield that farmers get.

Corn is also difficult because, unlike soybeans, the leaf mass of corn gives the deer nothing of use. Food plot soybeans may not yield high grain quantities, but they have much higher protein per bushel and they have the added benefit of producing tons of high-quality green forage per acre that the deer benefit from. Combine the green forage plus the grain and soybeans are way, way ahead of corn in terms of food tonnage production per acre.

Brassicas is also a way better ton-per-acre yield.

Yesterday I started braking ground on my food plots and trees. I have a new crp contract that allows me to plant 3 acers of plots. My plan is sorghum and turnups also planting 100 cranberry, crabapple and hackberry bushes in the first row. The second and third rows will have scotch spruce and black hills spruce.
This ground has not worked for many years I plowed some of it yesterday and disked it today. I’m hoping I can get the sod clumps broken up I’m pulling a 8tf disk with a chain link fence behind it. I do have it so I don’t thrown off the tractor seat now. I’m going to try the field cultivator next.

I feel like you are attacking me with this post Grouse. I don’t see myself getting up to the hunting land before June.
DT

deertracker wrote:

I feel like you are attacking me with this post Grouse. I don’t see myself getting up to the hunting land before June.

I’m doing a lot of Food Plot Crisis Counseling sessions with customers right now, DT. Lots of tears. Pain. Frustration. Agony. The way things are going right now with rain and snow every 20 minutes for 6 days out of every week, a lot of us might be in the June boat. Mrs Grouse has coined this month “Hatepril”.

I was going to go to the farm Saturday. Called it off because it was snowing up there. Was going to go tomorrow. Now the forecast says rain most of the day… On and on, the forecast is just a cold, wet mess.

I was able to broadcast some clover seed back in late March up north of Brainerd. Interested to see what comes of it. Some areas of the plots I was able to blow the leaves off, but some areas were too wet yet. What are your guys thoughts on this?

My weekend will be planting at least 3 fruit trees and 8 berry bushes. I’m also assembling a 12×20 grow cage over the berry plantings. The cage will be inside the electric fence perimeter. I have higher, well drained sandy loam and if it drys out I’ll be expanding my existing clover plots.

We had good carryover from last year, lots of mouths to feed

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castle-rock-clown wrote:

We had good carryover from last year, lots of mouths to feed.

Yeah. You might have to consider taking up deer hunting.

Post a picture of your double layer tree defense when you get it up.

we have a spot in our main shooting plot that holds water so were going to lay in some 150′ of drain tile than regrade the whole plot, the problem is we had a guy re do our main road going in last dec and was supposed to come back out in the spring to pack and grade/crown but our weather has been holding us back, our other 3 plots seem to be going well with the clover.

Tom

tominblaine wrote:

we have a spot in our main shooting plot that holds water so were going to lay in some 150′ of drain tile than regrade the whole plot, the problem is we had a guy re do our main road going in last dec and was supposed to come back out in the spring to pack and grade/crown but our weather has been holding us back, our other 3 plots seem to be going well with the clover.

Tom

Man, I would die for a small pond on my plot. The availability of water really holds deer. Our property is dry as a bone over summer and into fall. We are very well drained so a pond would require a pond liner, but without rain would still dry up. The couple puddles we have are pounded with hoof prints.

castle-rock-clown wrote:

<div class=”d4p-bbt-quote-title”>tominblaine wrote:</div>
we have a spot in our main shooting plot that holds water so were going to lay in some 150′ of drain tile than regrade the whole plot, the problem is we had a guy re do our main road going in last dec and was supposed to come back out in the spring to pack and grade/crown but our weather has been holding us back, our other 3 plots seem to be going well with the clover.

Tom

Man, I would die for a small pond on my plot. The availability of water really holds deer. Our property is dry as a bone over summer and into fall. We are very well drained so a pond would require a pond liner, but without rain would still dry up. The couple puddles we have are pounded with hoof prints.

Get a couple kiddy pools and dig them in and keep filled, deer love it.

What a day, allergies were killing me, got sick from heat stroke, it was a rough day. We managed to get 1100 trees planted….so much more to do but I am resting now. We have 12-1500 shrubs to put in yet also….ugh. wouldn’t be so bad but we plant them in a grid in a certain pattern for windbreak. Shrubs follow the same pattern so that will be slow as well.

Spent the last week tilling seeding and cultipacking the plots…dang deer won’t even give the seeds a chance to sprout!!!

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I think they’re curious to see what you’ve stocked in the pantry!

Sometimes I think they follow the tractor around like little lost puppies.

I have one more plot to till. It is about 3/4 acre and was planted in corn and soybean with poor results. Beans were eaten as soon as they appeared and corn cobs were eaten as soon as they began to develop. I had my seed in a heavy duty bear proof container, but a bear still rolled it around and spilled various seeds all over inside. Basically, I have about 2 gallons of mixed seeds…those are going into that plot, it will be amusing to see what happens.
On my main plot I expanded it an additional 1 acre. I couldn’t get it limed properly for ph, so instead of wasting my clover seed, I seeded it with brassicas and triticale. Next year it will get alfalfa max. Fun, fun, fun, experimenting and seeing what the deer like.

Appears to me Grouse is the food plot expert, so I have a question. 3 years ago we put up a big shed at the cabin in Itasca county.

Around it in the extra cleared out area I planted a $50.00 bag of this clover and chickory, but it seems to be thinning out??

I did this all by hand. Is there anything I can put down without a lot of dirt work to loosen the soil. I planted it for deer and grouse.

glenn57 wrote:

Around it in the extra cleared out area I planted a $50.00 bag of this clover and chickory, but it seems to be thinning out??

I did this all by hand. Is there anything I can put down without a lot of dirt work to loosen the soil. I planted it for deer and grouse.

The clover blend you used probably contained a lot of annual clover species. Now the annuals have died out.

A little info about clover might be helpful here.

Not all clover is created equal. There are both annual (grows only for 1 complete growing cycle, must be replanted every year) and perennial (comes back every year) clover species.

Annual clover species are cheaper and faster growing. Perrenial clover species are somewhat slower growing, the seed is more expensive, but when grown in their preferred climate, they last and keep coming back for years. I have a plot of our Mega Clover Plus perennial blend that is 6 years old.

A lot of the food plot industry is based in the south. In the south, annual clover species are the go-to because clover is not heat tollerant so most clover will burn up in the southern climate. So if you’re going to have to replant it every year anyway, you may as well use cheaper and faster-growing annuals.

In the north, we want the opposite. We want to establish a clover plot and then reap the benefits for years to come. So perennial clover is the way to go up here.

So what can you do about our thinning clover?

Just top it up with some variety of perennial clover seed. Medium red clover (MRC), and white clover are the most popular. and probably the easiest to find. Gently overseed the area with about the equivalent of4 4 pounds per acre.

The challenge in the summer is keeping newly seeded clover wet enough. Ideally, you would plant before a good rain or be able to water the news seed in with a garden sprinkler. Young clover has a shallow root system so it can burn up in the heat and dry out easily in the mid-summer. So if you’re going to top up the clover, do it soon or wait until late summer.

If you were closer, I’d happily give you a top-up dose. There’s a bucket of clover from floor sweepings in the seed shed that I keep for just this purpose. But any feed store should have white or red clover. You can also use alsike or ladino which are also common perennials. Crimson is an annual, so don’t buy crimson.

Grouse

awesome info sir!!!!!!!! we have a country store affiliated with a farm coop here intown….i’ll check with them. maybe wait till mid summer to plant.

so i understand you correctly…….i shouldnt have to rake this seed in at all???? i guess if i put my mine to it, shouldnt really take all that long to do.

it is to far away from the faucet to water though??

glenn57 wrote:

so i understand you correctly…….i shouldnt have to rake this seed in at all???? i guess if i put my mine to it, shouldnt really take all that long to do.

You can just spread it, but if raking in is possible, that is always better. Especially on spots that are really bare.

Ideally, you spread seed with rain on the radar and heading for you fast.

This is going to be a tough year for clover. I can see it coming. We have had ideal clover growing years going back almost a decade. Wet, wet summers. Young clover can deal with anything but hard drought.

If you have a wheeler, after planting run the wheeler over it a bunch of times to push the seed in. Otherwise if you can drive there use your vehicle. Helps with send to soil contact.
DT

Gave up on clover deer by me dont seem to eat it. If deer like it so much why at my house in town do they eat my strawberries peppers tomatoes apple trees tulips hostas and everything else but they dont tuouch the clover growing all over the back yard.

JEREMY wrote:

Gave up on clover deer by me dont seem to eat it. If deer like it so much why at my house in town do they eat my strawberries peppers tomatoes apple trees tulips hostas and everything else but they dont tuouch the clover growing all over the back yard.

Ever put a browse exclusion cage over an area of clover in your yard? Then you’ll really be able to see they are eating it, it’s just when you spread the browsing pressure over an entire yard plus every other yard in the area, it’s hard to see the browsing impact between mowings.

I assure you if there is clover, the deer are eating it or will eat it later. Their eating habits change depending on what’s available to them at a given time, but they will always return to eat clover if it’s available and in a safe place for them.

I didn’t think deer ate clover a lot on my farm when we first started growing it. I just thought it just grew really slowly. Then I put out a browse exclusion cage and it showed the deer were keeping the clover mowed to a uniform height.

I finally got my electric fence up around my fruit trees and garden adjacent to my main food plot. It appears the deer are quite curious already. The deer travel to neighbors yards and raid their gardens, so this is nothing new, but none of the neighbors I’ve talked to have electric fencing. It should prove an interesting experiment.

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Still have not been to the hunting land. Probably will just wait until we get decent and consistent rain at this point.
DT