Who cares about the methods. People have been farming for 2,000 years tilling the soil. Miraculously we're all still alive here..
Looks like a great plot in the making to me!
If you recall, we started with slash and burn farming techniques. Folks would farm and area, deplete the soil (before commercial fertilizer was available), and slash and burn some more to get fertile ground. After commercial fertilizer became available the same land could be used longer. In our best, most fertile farming soils, abuse can take place for generations and the soil can rebound. Many of us managing for deer are not commercially farming and thus are on less expensive more marginal ground that can become unproductive quite quickly when abused by deep tillage.
Now, lets add to that the fact that we are not farming. Maximizing yield by high fertilization and planting monocultures so our harvest equipment can take food (along with nutrients) out of the ground to sell for our livelihoods is farming, not planting food plots for deer. Deer management takes a different mindset. We don't have the same issues that farmers have. And today, even farmers have recognized the benefits of soil health. Most have switch to large no-till drills and are planting cover crops. We can do things much less expensively and benefit deer more at a lower cost by being smart:
1) Minimize depth and frequency of tillage.
2) Plant mixes of grasses and legumes (all good deer food) with low fertility requirement that produce good OM over time and complement each other.
3) Rotate mixes as need, with soil health in mind, to cover major stress periods for your region.
4) Become weed tolerant. Many broadleaf weeds are as good or better for deer than what you plant. The can help with diversity and nutrient cycling.
Crimson n' Camo has a great T&M thread going that takes good soil health principles advocated by guys like "Ray the soil Guy" from NRCS for farmers, and shows how they can be applied with small equipment by food plotters.
Save money, manage deer better, and leave the soil producing better than you found it when you stop food plotting. Hard to beat for a long-term approach.
Thanks,
Jack