My buddy has a field that is 3.3 acres. It is flat ( 1.7 acre then the other 1.6 is on a slope at about 17 per, pretty good slope. Also, he has very high deer density. My question is, has anyone have experience with slopes and what would you recommend and not recommend for planting on slopes. There won’t be any tillage. I’m already thinking that with a heavy rain , seed could be washed away. Any experiences would be great. I’d like to help him put prob an acre of a mix of clover and chicory with a cover crop in the Fall and leave the rest for possible brassicas and LC Mix. His soil sample came back at 6.2, which was not bad at all. We are going to bring it up to 7 shortly. Any advice would be great. Thx
Food plot for slopes?
- Thread starter BobinCt
- Start date
Native Hunter
5 year old buck +
Some of the answer depends on the type of soil. For instance, clay will hold on a slope better than loam. However, I suspect that over time you will run into a situation where erosion will eventually happen at 17 degrees. Last year I killed a spot and planted but went into a drought and got no growth at that particular spot during the whole fall, which left close to bare ground. During the winter the rains came and the erosion in one area was pretty bad. The slope was less than yours. If I had got rains and food plot coverage in the fall, everything would have been fine. It always was in the past. However, the timing of the planting and the drought caused a real problem on the slope. Good luck.
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35-acre
5 year old buck +
I never really thought about the degree of angle on my plot/field. It might be close in spots to 17 degrees. I had my field put in after some logging. So a dozer had to pop out stumps and push off other debris. Leaving me with not much topsoil exposing mostly clay and rocks.
This work was done in 2015. I mostly followed T&M to try and build soil (There are purists out there so I can't say that I did T&M only. There were times I had to scratch the soil a little but I don't have tillers and stuff like that and my field is in the middle of the woods so it's ATV access only). I loaded up my ATV with fertilizer bags and lime bags too many times to count. I use a hand/bag spreader for everything. I bought a harrow rake that I use to knock down things that I plant and a handheld pump sprayer to kill things off.
Mainly what I'm saying is that even with the slope that i have, I was able to plant just about anything. I would start off with something simple like Oats. They grow in almost anything. One they get established. Kill them off. That's like putting hay down (not really but simplistically speaking). You plant into that. The process repeats until you get good topsoil and can plant whatever you want without a lot of erosion and you'll always having some roots and something growing. The full thread has a TON of information. But I copied the below link that has some photos of my slope and how all of this works after a few years. Good luck! Have fun! I learned later in the process (now that I have soil) that I had too much browse on my field by having things that the deer would eat during spring and summer. This year I'm going to let things go until mid-summer and then get my fall plots in to see if they survive better (browsing pressure has been hampering my plots).
http://habitat-talk.com/index.php?threads/the-throw-n’-mow-method.5510/page-61
(Scroll down 1/2 way on the page to see the pics after I use the rake on the slope)
This work was done in 2015. I mostly followed T&M to try and build soil (There are purists out there so I can't say that I did T&M only. There were times I had to scratch the soil a little but I don't have tillers and stuff like that and my field is in the middle of the woods so it's ATV access only). I loaded up my ATV with fertilizer bags and lime bags too many times to count. I use a hand/bag spreader for everything. I bought a harrow rake that I use to knock down things that I plant and a handheld pump sprayer to kill things off.
Mainly what I'm saying is that even with the slope that i have, I was able to plant just about anything. I would start off with something simple like Oats. They grow in almost anything. One they get established. Kill them off. That's like putting hay down (not really but simplistically speaking). You plant into that. The process repeats until you get good topsoil and can plant whatever you want without a lot of erosion and you'll always having some roots and something growing. The full thread has a TON of information. But I copied the below link that has some photos of my slope and how all of this works after a few years. Good luck! Have fun! I learned later in the process (now that I have soil) that I had too much browse on my field by having things that the deer would eat during spring and summer. This year I'm going to let things go until mid-summer and then get my fall plots in to see if they survive better (browsing pressure has been hampering my plots).
http://habitat-talk.com/index.php?threads/the-throw-n’-mow-method.5510/page-61
(Scroll down 1/2 way on the page to see the pics after I use the rake on the slope)
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