sun hemp vs milo

[S.T.Fanatic]

As many of you know I like to plant a variety of stuff in the same plot. It is yet to be determined but my milo has seen no use at all for deer food. I am going to add it again to next years plot just at a lower rate. I am also throwing around the idea of making up the decreased poundage of milo with sun hemp. The reasons I have for planting these crops is for my field and cowpeas to climb first and foremost. However I also dont want to take up to much space with something that the deer aren't going to eat. The milo and sunflowers I planted this year were pretty thick and I think the beans and peas suffered because of it.

In a diverse mix what would you say are the desired amounts of milo, sun flowers, and sun hemp are to add to a planting of beans, field peas, cow peas, and a long season brassica?

What can you see the pros and cons for milo and sun hemp in my situation?

 

[Catscratch]

Watch a couple of Baker's videos on YouTube. I think he covers this pretty well in one of them.

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[yoderjac]

I did a bit of experimenting with sunn hemp a few years back and my results were mixed. Last year, I decided to give it a try in earnest. I did a 50/50 mix with buckwheat. My seeding rates were too low in the first few fields 10lbs/10lbs. In other fields I used 20lbs/20lbs and it did much better. Also, I planted in higher and lower deer density locations. I left one field standing. Deer used my sunn hemp heavily in the summer, especially in the high deer density areas. The sunn hemp has stood up well through the season so far but we have not yet had snow. I have not yet gone out to check that field for fall/winter use. If ever deer will use it in the fall/winter, it would be this year as we had a mast crop failure. The rest of my plots look like a putting green. I don't think the sunn hemp is getting much use just based on the number of pictures I'm getting in that field verses other fields with my cover crop. I'm also considering adding milo to the buckwheat/sunn hemp mix next summer. So far, I consider sunn hemp a summer food and milo a fall food. I like mixing a high N fixing legume like sunn hemp with a grass like milo. I did drill sunflowers in to these fields. In the high deer density area, they were nipped off as soon as they germinated. They did OK in the low deer density area, but did not seem to add much as they were dwarfed by the sunn hemp.

The reason I left the sunn hemp field stand this year was to see what happens. We got a drought this fall. I got one good rain after planting in the fall and then no rain for many weeks. Things germinated, but with a mast crop failure, deer hammered everything. I like having vertical cover in my plots. My thinking right now for next fall is to mow but leave strips of sunn hemp standing in the fields before planting my cover crop. If I add milo to the mix it would be in the strips as well. I would then broadcast my cover crop around the strips.

Thanks,

Jack

 

[TreeDaddy]

Watch a couple of Baker's videos on YouTube. I think he covers this pretty well in one of them.

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He has a cocktail,I believe , for this combo

bill

 

[DIY]

In a diverse mix what would you say are the desired amounts of milo, sun flowers, and sun hemp are to add to a planting of beans, field peas, cow peas, and a long season brassica?

Whitetail Institute Power Plant - soybeans, cowpeas, sunn hemp and sunflowers. They switched from milo to sunn hemp a few years ago. A great combination and a fantastic food plot product.

 

[S.T.Fanatic]

Thanks DIY


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[IkemanTx]

In a diverse mix what would you say are the desired amounts of milo, sun flowers, and sun hemp are to add to a planting of beans, field peas, cow peas, and a long season brassica?

Whitetail Institute Power Plant - soybeans, cowpeas, sunn hemp and sunflowers. They switched from milo to sunn hemp a few years ago. A great combination and a fantastic food plot product.

Don’t ask old “Don Mealey’s hunting channel” about powerplant. He swears it’s got water hemp in it, not sunn hemp. No matter how many times I tried to explain that sunn hemp is an entirely different plant... nope, whitetail institute is just spreading “weeds” lol


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[yoderjac]

Whitetail Institute Power Plant is pretty expensive but convenient if you are planting small acreage with traditional tillage. One of the things I like about combinations like Buckwheat/Sunn Hemp/Milo is that they all have small seeds that can be used with a no-till or min-till technique. The combination of C and N work well for soil building and you don't destroy the OM you already have by traditional tillage. I have not been successful with a mix containing soybeans with no-till. I have been successful surfacing small seed components and then drilling soybeans over top with a no-till drill, but this requires buying he seed individually, not in a mix.

One technique I tried last year that worked well was to put seed in my drill and disconnect the seed tubes from the planting shoes. This just lets the tubes bounce around and drop seed on the ground. My drill has a cultipacker to cover seed rather than individual row closers so the seed is just dropped on the ground and pressed in by the cultipacker. I was using Buckwheat and Sunn Hemp, but I think Milo would do well added to this mix.

Thanks,

Jack

 

[DIY]

Don’t ask old “Don Mealey’s hunting channel” about powerplant. He swears it’s got water hemp in it, not sunn hemp. No matter how many times I tried to explain that sunn hemp is an entirely different plant... nope, whitetail institute is just spreading “weeds” lol


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That’s funny. Don is an outspoken Whitetail Institute fan, but when he convinces himself of something, I don’t think anybody is going to change his mind.

I expect he wouldn’t be able to coexist with a forum like this and maintain his sanity, but I could be wrong....

 

[DIY]

Whitetail Institute Power Plant is pretty expensive but convenient if you are planting small acreage with traditional tillage. One of the things I like about combinations like Buckwheat/Sunn Hemp/Milo is that they all have small seeds that can be used with a no-till or min-till technique. The combination of C and N work well for soil building and you don't destroy the OM you already have by traditional tillage. I have not been successful with a mix containing soybeans with no-till. I have been successful surfacing small seed components and then drilling soybeans over top with a no-till drill, but this requires buying he seed individually, not in a mix.

One technique I tried last year that worked well was to put seed in my drill and disconnect the seed tubes from the planting shoes. This just lets the tubes bounce around and drop seed on the ground. My drill has a cultipacker to cover seed rather than individual row closers so the seed is just dropped on the ground and pressed in by the cultipacker. I was using Buckwheat and Sunn Hemp, but I think Milo would do well added to this mix.

Thanks,

Jack

I think it’s relative. If you’re planting GMO beans like Eagle or Real World, then Power Plant isn’t much more expensive. I’ve found that I can’t get an acre of Eagle beans to outgrow the deer pressure, but an acre of Power Plant thrives until the deer slam it during bow season. Next year I’m going to mix my own Power Plant style blend.

I tried to no-till Power Plant this year and it was pretty much a total failure.

The ability to no-till a summer blend of sunn hemp and buckwheat is definitely appealing.

 

[yoderjac]

I stopped planting GMO beans. They worked great for a while but I needed 5+ acres to get ahead of our deer density. Beans were so attractive that non-eagle beans got nipped off and never grew when we first started with the very high deer densities. Deer would keep eagle beans naked but could not seem to kill them like ag beans. Over time as heavy doe harvests helped, I was able to use ag beans when planting 5+ acres. The problem with non-GMO beans is that they are just as attractive but with the combination of browse pressure and weed competition they would never canopy. The GMO beans worked great with gly keeping weeds in check...for a while. After a pine thinning and controlled burn, Marestail (naturally resistant to gly) came up in the pines and infiltrated our food plots.

It has taken me several years to get the Marestail under control and minimizing gly has been part of the equation.

So, for the last couple years, I've been working on a non-gmo mix that will cover our summer stress period well and not get wiped out by deer. The one warm season annual that gets used here by deer but generally not abused is buckwheat. It comes up so fast and competes well with out weeds without herbicide. Most warm season annuals don't handle the mix of browse pressure and weed competition. I started with buckwheat. The first year it was intended to be a smother crop for the marestail as well as deer food. Last year I mixed in sunn hemp and sunflowers. I played with rates to find out what works best for me. I drilled sunflowers heavy but they did not last. Deer nipped them off and killed them but the buckwheat and sunn hemp thrived. They were weedy in the lower rate fields but not in the higher rate fields. They both come up quick here and out compete weeds. I'm looking to add Milo instead of sunflowers this year as deer don't bother it during establishment.

The cost of all the BOB seed mixes, especially WTI are much more expensive on a per acre basis than GMO beans here. Folks only planting small plots for attraction don't really care about seed cost, but those of us attempting QDM and planting on scale have to deal with cost issues. Money spent on one aspect of QDM is money not available for another aspect. BOB seed mixes may even be less expensive than mixing your own if you are buying seed in small quantities. When buying seed in 50lb bags in bulk you can get discounts and folks often pay a premium when buying seed by the pound.

Power plant would be a real flop here when I started as 90% of the bag would not have survived establishment. It may do better now that our place has been under management for over 10 years and deer densities are now in better balance with our BCC.

Thanks,

Jack

 

[Baker]

Holidays have brought me home from the ranch and offered a little time between the chaos of a Baker Family Christmas. Best of the holidays to all.

I've used milo several different years as part of a mix and like it for its soil properties though I have always found it to be the least important plant for the deer. This past summer on a lark I threw some okra in a mix and was pleasantly surprised that the deer readily consumed both the plant and pods even thought they had never seen it. I thought the leaf structure, root structure, and plant fiber made a nice compliment to everything else in the blend with the grazing preference a nice bonus. So this coming summer I think my blend will look like this:

sunn hemp---5 lbs/acre { I have found that to be about right . Enough to provide good trellising with out chocking everything else out}
soybeans-----15 lbs /acre { non GMO...I don't use any GMO's}
cowpeas------35-50 lbs/acre.....most important part for me
sunflower----5 lbs/acre...maybe a bit more
buckwheat----10 lbs /acre....I think thats what I used last year??
okra--------not sure yet but maybe 1 lb/acre....Seems didn't take much poundage to grow a lot of plants

All this drilled into roller crimped rye, wheat, radishes, crimson and turnips. Do appreciate I may jiggle the amounts a little as time gets closer but this should be close. I am a BIG fan of sunn hemp for many reasons and have found everything else in the mix compliments each other nicely.
Good luck

 

[Catscratch]

I did okra this yr also. Someone sent me a pound or so and it went into my bean/pumpkin/clover/ragweed plot. It's still standing and actually pretty good cover.

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[swat1018]

I did okra this yr also. Someone sent me a pound or so and it went into my bean/pumpkin/clover/ragweed plot. It's still standing and actually pretty good cover.

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Did they use your okra?

 

[Catscratch]

Did they use your okra?

Not like they did for Baker. I found no signs of browsing and pods are still intact, never eaten. But they were planted in beans and clover, they had other pretty high preference plants to choose from. I do have plenty of pics of deer standing in okra, they seem to like it for cover. It gets strong and woody so it doesn't seem to fall over.

 

[swat1018]

I use to grow it in the garden. If you didn't pick it every day, it would get pretty rank in a hurry.