If you time your mowing right, you can kill most annual food plot varieties. I believe the downside is the non-uniformity of thatch if used with a rotary (in lieu of a finish mower).
Taken from Penn St and U of W (Madison) Research on cover crops:
- Cereal Rye – Terminate thru mowing at head emergent / flowering stage. If mowed too early, plant plant re-grows or stands back up readily. Allow the green debris to decompose in place for three to four weeks before you begin planting.
- Winter Wheat, Barley - Terminate thru mowing at head emergent stage. If mowed too early, plant plant re-grows or stands back up readily.
- Oats – Typically winter kill, depending on variety. Also see above. Good scavengers of phosphorus in the soil, oat plantlets capture additional soil nutrients, helping to restore soil fertility.
- Oil Seed Radish – Typically winter kill when temps fall below 20 F. Useful as a biological alternative to deep ripping (chisel plowing) and other mechanical methods of alleviating soil compaction. Weed suppression from fall planted radishes typically lasts into April, but does not extend much into the summer cropping season. (U of Maryland). Rapid and competitive fall growth, rather than allelopathy, is the primary mechanism of weed suppression by radishes. Because of their deep root system, rapid root extension, and heavy N feeding, radishes are excellent scavengers of residual N following summer crops (Fig. 6). Radishes take up N from both the topsoil and from deeper soil layers, storing the N in their shoot and root biomass.
- Crimson Clover - Easy to kill by mowing at full bloom and self-seeds readily if allowed to stand past peak bloom. Smart choice for weed suppression, erosion control, and attracting pollinators. Plan to mow it after it begins to show early budding. It may be hard to get rid of such a pretty planting; you can wait to mow until full bloom, but after a couple of days it will self-sow readily. If planted in fall, crimson clover will succumb to cold winter temperatures in Zone 5 and colder.
- Austrian Winter / Field Peas - If peas are grown as a fall cover crop, their soft, succulent stems will die in winter (sustained temperatures below 18 F) and be decomposed by spring. Peas prefer well-limed, well-drained clay or heavy loam soils, near-neutral pH or above and moderate fertility. They also do well on loamy sands in North Carolina. Field peas usually are drilled 1 to 3 inches deep to ensure contact with moist soil and good anchoring for plants. Peas are easily killed any time by disking or mowing after full bloom, the stage of maturity that provides the optimum N contribution. Disk lightly to preserve the tender residue for some short-term erosion control.
I've been kicking around trying to do a mow / no till planter (soybeans) rotation as I can get a no til planter fairly cheap compared to a NT drill. Only have access to a rotary (Bush hog) so results might be mixed. But I'm food plotting, not farming
