Habitat out loud

We’re getting somewhere now. This was planted Labor Day weekend.

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The deers are already trimming this too.

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I think I’ve got a jumpstart on my fungi pop for next season.


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We’re getting somewhere now. This was planted Labor Day weekend.

68d885fca7f2878df57e228416bfcf0b.jpg


404b272a207876d547da160ecac8f6cf.jpg


The deers are already trimming this too.

ab24e68d7fd74c7a0b93994b8cd58be6.jpg


I think I’ve got a jumpstart on my fungi pop for next season.


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Do you do anything with it before planting in the spring?
 
Do you do anything with it before planting in the spring?
Not really. Most of that will winterkill, and then I'll just plant right into it. I may have to weed whack down my winter cereals if they come in really thick. They were planted late, and thin.
 
I had some urgent work needing to be done on a trail and one of my blinds, so I took the opportunity to slip a few feet closer and check my exclusion cage. Didn’t know chicory was this prevalent and browsed so hard in early October. There’s even some green cover plantain in there. I'm going to be pushing harder on the chicory after having seen this. I'm always in the market to bombard my clover with controlled collaborators.

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Chicory is by far my favorite food plot planting


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Camp is shut down now for the winter. My instincts were right. This weekend marks the kickoff of me vs the weather. It looks like winter is gonna pitch a shutout and make travel impossible week 1 in the eastern Dakotas.

Anyway, a little lesson before I left. This is my clover/chicory/millet plot hidden way back in the woods.

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This is my rye plot 30 yards from the road.

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^. I rest my case.
 
My experience as well. This is why all of my plots have winter rye, clover, and every 2-3 years I will put PTT, or GHR. I just started trying chicory this year. The plot was busy until gun season.
 
Up north like that turnips or pumpkins will get hit in the snow although I believe it takes a herd a while to learn to eat them.
 
Camp is shut down now for the winter. My instincts were right. This weekend marks the kickoff of me vs the weather. It looks like winter is gonna pitch a shutout and make travel impossible week 1 in the eastern Dakotas.

Wait, you spend all this time hunting deer in nothern MN and you live in the dakotas?
 
Wait, you spend all this time hunting deer in nothern MN and you live in the dakotas?
I can't afford Dakota quality hunting land. Before the great reset, you could pay cash for a 40 in the northern half of zone 1.
 
Chicory is by far my favorite food plot planting


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Just curious on your soil and what brand… Thanks


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Camp is shut down now for the winter. My instincts were right. This weekend marks the kickoff of me vs the weather. It looks like winter is gonna pitch a shutout and make travel impossible week 1 in the eastern Dakotas.

Anyway, a little lesson before I left. This is my clover/chicory/millet plot hidden way back in the woods.

b1f442606ddbc9e3d4c283d79f38c8a0.jpg


This is my rye plot 30 yards from the road.

55a39453b782d1dbea8dbbd3db0cede2.jpg



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So the lesson is your deer like to play in traffic?
















;)
 
Hoog III has come to life.

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Barley, flax, collards, and some annual clover I don’t think took hold.

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Starting to ponder what I'm going to stuff into Hoog III this spring. Me being me, I'm going to try to cram an alarming amount of biomass and an alarming amount of diversity into this little wonder. So far I'm thinking: tomatoes, onion, dill, potato, beans, peas, sweet corn, green pepper, jalapeno pepper, flax, collards, and anything else i can think of. The big stuff is gonna go out in the food plots like cucumber and squash and zuchinni.
 
I'm contemplating hiring out my seed starting this year. My cat will eat anything at home, and I don't get to both of my locations enough to mind them. I may pay some kids for successful plants.
 
Starting to ponder what I'm going to stuff into Hoog III this spring. Me being me, I'm going to try to cram an alarming amount of biomass and an alarming amount of diversity into this little wonder. So far I'm thinking: tomatoes, onion, dill, potato, beans, peas, sweet corn, green pepper, jalapeno pepper, flax, collards, and anything else i can think of. The big stuff is gonna go out in the food plots like cucumber and squash and zuchinni.

You should look at time to maturity and extend your season with multiple crops. Peppers take a long time, but radishes and lettuce can go in early and be done before your summer vegetables go in. I do a lot of beans and beets in the summer. Then I can usually get another crop of radishes in the fall, before a winter crop of mache lettuce. Otherwise, I put in kale after my summer crops and overwinter the kale, which I harvest when it bolts in May.

I would not plant dill near vegetables. It is a prolific reseeder, and it tends to bolt early, drop a lot of seed, and take over the entire bed.

Potatoes also need their own space. They will make a huge amount of green growth and crowd out everything else.

Corn won't do well in a space that small. It should be planted in a block, and far enough away from anything it could shade out.
 
You should look at time to maturity and extend your season with multiple crops. Peppers take a long time, but radishes and lettuce can go in early and be done before your summer vegetables go in. I do a lot of beans and beets in the summer. Then I can usually get another crop of radishes in the fall, before a winter crop of mache lettuce. Otherwise, I put in kale after my summer crops and overwinter the kale, which I harvest when it bolts in May.

I would not plant dill near vegetables. It is a prolific reseeder, and it tends to bolt early, drop a lot of seed, and take over the entire bed.

Potatoes also need their own space. They will make a huge amount of green growth and crowd out everything else.

Corn won't do well in a space that small. It should be planted in a block, and far enough away from anything it could shade out.
Appreciate the intel fella. I can move the dill out someplace else. I could also move the taters out to the nursery plot. I may still try to mix a few corn plants in there among the shorter stuff just to see what happens. I don't want a can-able amount of corn, but a couple dozen ears might be nice just to see if I can get them to polyculture with the likes of beans and collards.
 
Now that I knocked down the jungle in my yard plot, it was time to pull the potatoes I had growing in that plot. I was ruth stout-ing these in between my spruce trees. It worked fairly well with a couple exceptions. I had heavy losses to slugs, and it seemed the spot was too wet. I probably left 2/3 of the potatoes there because of slug damage. The straw was wet and snotty when I pulled it back. I think next year I move to higher ground and use more coarse rotted wood chips mixed with the straw to maintain airflow. I'm also going to move them to where I know I've got a good amount of snakes looking for slugs.

Huge plus though, the deer never bothered the tater greens. I'll drop a much larger potato patch on my problem sedge grass area on one of my food plots. I've got some trees to knock down out there that I'll use for borders so I can find where the edge is. I already hit that spot with a hot dose of calcium in June.

Mixing in some coffee grounds with compost or sprinkling it will deter slugs but you want to make sure you don't go too heavy or it'll bother what you are trying to protect.
 
Mixing in some coffee grounds with compost or sprinkling it will deter slugs but you want to make sure you don't go too heavy or it'll bother what you are trying to protect.
I lost 2/3 of my potatoes to slugs last year. That was frustrating. You suppose some diatomaceous earth at planting would also help?
 
I lost 2/3 of my potatoes to slugs last year. That was frustrating. You suppose some diatomaceous earth at planting would also help?
Probably just sprinkle the ground around the plants with diatomaceous earth might work
 
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