Brassica/Clover Rotation Question

[yoderjac]

I think what your saying is you know planting brassicas year over year in the same food plot can be disastrous disease wise? For instance club root and other brassica related diseases can present themselves if brassicas are planted back to back for more than 3 years. I think on QDMA someone mentioned that disease isn't as big of an issue with food plotters, but I don't really understand why they said this. Maybe someone could explain if disease is an issue if you plant buckwheat in the spring and then plant 2 months later brassica. I wish I knew this also, because I am always nervous about disease.

The general recommendation is for farmers. Think about what we do that is different from farmers. If you plant like a farmer, a high density monoculture of brassica you may want to take that advise. However, many of us use brassica differently. First, we don't plant high density monocultures. For example, I use a cover crop of GHR, CC, and Winter Rye broadcast into my standing beans each year. The plant density of brassica is much lower than a farmer planting turnips for harvest. This significantly reduces the chance of disease spread. Secondly, a farmer lives and dies on his crop success. We do not. If we would have a brassica failure due to disease, we could simply till it under and plant WR or Buckwheat, or whatever depending on the season and location. The cost is a bit of seed, not my farm.

When I first started, I viewed food plotting and mini-farming. The more I've learned over the years, the more it has changed my approach. We can learn a lot from farmers, but what we do is different enough that we can't follow that approach blindly.

Maybe this is part of the discussion you remember from the other site.

Thanks,

Jack

 

[phil@thesidehill]

I like it. That's a great idea! So maybe instead of planting clover at the same time as the brassicas, wait a month and plant winter rye throughout the brassica stand. Then overseed in the spring with more winter rye on any bare ground. Let the winter rye grow until mid July before tilling in the ground and replanting brassica? Has this been tried? Being that it's total only 1/3 of an acre I would prefer to have it all covered in brassica for the fall.

Our deer densities are very low, but handful of deer I have on camera can do some serious damage from my little experience. So yes, I do expect them to decimate the brassicas unfortunately

hey man,

I'm in NE PA and I have a 1/3 acre plot as well. i went to strip plotting it a couple of years ago because i was having some of the same concerns/questions that you are having. there has been alot of top notch advice given to you here already. I would say, that you should try a number of different approaches/plantings/methods over the next couple of seasons and see what works for you and your deer. That is pretty much how i got to the point where i am now...and i have learned a lot in the process....along with having access to resources like this website to help shorten the learning curve and get new ideas and perspectives.

i plant two main types of plantings in my 1/3 acre plot, so both plantings are roughly 1/6 acre. One planting is my favorite, brassicas. I plant PTT, GHFR, and DER. I have occasionally mixed in other brassicas like Brakant rape, Appin turnips, etc. the other component is a cereal grain legume mix of winter rye, oats, medium red clover, crimson clover and occasionally some sort of pea and/or soybeans. I rotate the two plantings each season. I always try to frost seed some med red clover into the spent brassicas, then once the threat of frost has passed i over seed some crimson clover and maybe some oats too. I basically modified Paul Knox's Lickcreek rotation to work best for me, my methods, and the deer.

i was concerned with not having enough brassicas to attract and feed the deer very far into the season/winter by cutting my offering basically in half. However what happened was that the clover that was frost seeded/over seeded into last seasons brassica strips kept deer off the brassicas early on allowing them to get a great start, and then the cereal grain/legume mix planted into those strips of frost seeded clover in september kept the deer's attention well into october...allowing for the brassicas to really continue to put on the tonnage into the early fall. My deer definitely would still eat in the brassica strips, but the browse pressure was spread out to the cereal/grain legume mix which allowed for the brassica strips to produce more and essentially last longer.

before i strip plotted, my brassicas would be pretty much spent by the time december rolled through. now with the strip plots and essentially half the space dedicated to brassicas, they are lasting well into the winter. the past couple of years i still had deer digging in the snow in the brassica strips well into march....they were also diggin through the snow to get to the winter rye.

 

[Jer]

All,

Thank you for the great advice and knowledge! I am taking some really good points away from this conversation:

1. I will get a true soil sample test done. That will be very interesting to compare to the simple tests I've been doing.
2. The more I've read about it after all of your comments the more the winter rye makes a lot of sense. I plan on incorporating that in the future.
3. I also wondered if splitting the plot, leaving clover would reduce the pressure on the brassicas as Phil@thesidehill suggests. This weekend I went to check cameras on my 1/3 acre plot that is split with half brassica and half clover. From the previous seven days there were 258 pictures of the same 4 deer, (3 bucks and one lone doe) along with 2 bears, which were all taken in the clover section. I looked very closely at the brassicas for browse. There was some, but nothing like the stems sticking up in the clover plot. Time will tell if the brassicas last into the colder months. The clover seems to take the pounding.