Food plot

[Bigshooter19]

Hello live in south central Wisconsin. Jefferson county to be specific. Picked up a new woods and was trying to decide on what type of food plot to put in to get the most bang for my buck. I do have equipment to use so that's not a problem. I know its getting kinda late but just wondering what people thought. I sprayed the food plot last week with round up.

 

[wiscwhip]

Pretty much still time to get in a full LC cereal mix if you so choose. Cereal rye/daikon radish/med red clover would be a good simple mix to start with. Have you done a soil test yet?

 

[JFK52]

Dwarf Essex rape seed or buckwheat would still give you some results this season.

 

[yoderjac]

Hello live in south central Wisconsin. Jefferson county to be specific. Picked up a new woods and was trying to decide on what type of food plot to put in to get the most bang for my buck. I do have equipment to use so that's not a problem. I know its getting kinda late but just wondering what people thought. I sprayed the food plot last week with round up.

I see questions like this a lot. There are no "magic beans". So much depends on your objectives. Stating your location helps a lot, but your objectives are the key. For example someone working at scale trying to improve the local deer herd may plant something very different than someone trying to attract deer for an early archery season. Someone with ag nearby may want something still different.

The suggestions above probably work for those who provided them but their objectives may be very different from yours. I notice one creative suggest is Buckwheat. I say creative because Buckwheat is a warm season annual that is normally planted in the spring. It will germinate and grow in the fall but is very sensitive to frost. In my area (far from you in zone 7A), it can be added to a fall mix as an early archery season attractant. If germinates and comes up quickly. Deer hit the young plants while cereal and other things in the mix are getting started. It dies at the first frost making room for other crops in the mix. I'm not sure when your season start or if you are looking for archery season support or firearm season support.

Not knowing you objective and being so far from the north, I think others may be able to give you better advice, but stating your objectives would be a starting point for asking more questions.

Thanks,

Jack

 

[wiscwhip]

IMO, in his area, buckwheat will be a total waste of time and money. If we get a couple early frosts, it could be dead before archery season even really gets rolling. Average first frost dates for my area of Juneau Co WI(the OP is around 2 hours south) are around Sept 17th-20th. That would mean in most years, a plot is likely to be completely toast by Oct 1st, right when max attraction is needed most to get the does using your plots heavily before the pre-rut phase starts. And right when that BW is dying, it will be too late to get something else established in that plot for the November rifle and late archery seasons.

 

[yoderjac]

IMO, in his area, buckwheat will be a total waste of time and money. If we get a couple early frosts, it could be dead before archery season even really gets rolling. Average first frost dates for my area of Juneau Co WI(the OP is around 2 hours south) are around Sept 17th-20th. That would mean in most years, a plot is likely to be completely toast by Oct 1st, right when max attraction is needed most to get the does using your plots heavily before the pre-rut phase starts. And right when that BW is dying, it will be too late to get something else established in that plot for the November rifle and late archery seasons.

Thanks. That is what I was trying to hint at but I didn't know enough about your season timing up north. I was hoping someone from up there would comment on that.

 

[kabic]

In 2012 I planted a mixture of winter rye and buckwheat on labor day. Looking back at my notes it survived to about Oct 20th when the low dipped into the low 20s at night. I did survive a few nights that got below 32, but this plot is on a hill slope so maybe the colder air pooled at the bottom.

I think this from around 9/26/2012


10/5/2012 - not too much growth, but that could have been my soil

 

[wiscwhip]

Once those soil temps start to dip in Sept, the normally fantastic BW growth rate will start to taper off as well. BW likes warm soils.

 

[jsasker007]

Maybe some winter rye with some winter peas and throw in some red clover. Rye and peas will draw deer soon and the clover should come in strong in the spring with the rye acting as a cover crop for the clover. Just a thought.