Help me decide what to plant for next season!!!

[Rit]

To the OP

It can be quite difficult to find that one size fits all planting. Deer in different areas may have entirely different preferences/nutritional needs. Are you plotting for harvest or stress period nutrition. Limitations in time, money, distance from property, soil, Food plot location/layout, and plotting equipment all need to be considered and are different for all plotters.

If year round attraction/patterning is your goal I would make sure that there is something attractive at all times of year in your plot and with a 2 acre plot I think you can easily achieve that goal and in your case 2X over.

This is where "strip or row planting" comes into play. For the sake of simple math divide the plot in four even strips. Plant 1/2 acre in a clover/chicory mix. 1/2 acre in soybeans, 1/2 acre in a winter pea/sunflower mix, and a 1/2 acre brassica mix.

On top of that be sure to mow your clover plot around Labor Day and over seed the entire 2 acre plot with a winter grain and crimson or berseem clover mix at the same time.

Something like this should get you a darn good start.

I am doing something similar to this only I have a smaller plot and are planting a great number of strips.

Mine consists of

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
sugar beets
----------------------------------------------------------------------
early maturing soy beans
----------------------------------------------------------------------
corn
---------------------------------------------------------------------- Over seed/cover crop entire plot with a cereal grain
early maturing soy beans like WW, WR, W triticale, W barley, or a mix of all of them
----------------------------------------------------------------------- I am also going to try Cover cropping with lentils which is a very small and inexpensive seed
tillage radishes and am also going to give white sweet lupin a shot
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
pea/sunflower/oat
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
clover/chicory
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

not sure if it was this thread or another might not even have been you ST but a couple times now I have seen winter peas and sunflowers mentioned. Have you planted that before and more so as a fall plot? I have converted solely to TNM. Have you or anyone else tried this AWP/Sunflower mix using TNM? I think somewhere in the TNM thread Catscratch said he did TNM sunflowers.

 

[S.T.Fanatic]

I have not tried a TNM sunflower plot but have observed them germinate and grow on top of bare tilled soil. I think a fall planted pea and sunflower plot is hard to beet for short term attraction.

I did edit my last post that is on the bottom of page one if it was hard to understand my makeshift diagram. It looked good on screen before i hit the post button but then it scrambled up.

 

[buckdeer1]

Dang ,please don't think everyone here is that harsh,It all boils down to planting something the deer will eat in your area.I plant brassicas where I don't want deer to walk in my plots,they don't eat them or turnips.They will eat wheat,daikon radish,corn,soybeans so these are what I plant.This year it will be soybeans with wheat broadcasted right before leaf drop.You want to plant something that will last through as much as the year as you can.

 

[eclipseman]

To the OP

It can be quite difficult to find that one size fits all planting. Deer in different areas may have entirely different preferences/nutritional needs. Are you plotting for harvest or stress period nutrition. Limitations in time, money, distance from property, soil, Food plot location/layout, and plotting equipment all need to be considered and are different for all plotters.

If year round attraction/patterning is your goal I would make sure that there is something attractive at all times of year in your plot and with a 2 acre plot I think you can easily achieve that goal and in your case 2X over.

This is where "strip or row planting" comes into play. For the sake of simple math divide the plot in four even strips. Plant 1/2 acre in a clover/chicory mix. 1/2 acre in soybeans, 1/2 acre in a winter pea/sunflower mix, and a 1/2 acre brassica mix.

On top of that be sure to mow your clover plot around Labor Day and over seed the entire 2 acre plot with a winter grain and crimson or berseem clover mix at the same time.

Something like this should get you a darn good start.

I am doing something similar to this only I have a smaller plot and are planting a great number of strips.

Mine consists of

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
sugar beets
----------------------------------------------------------------------
early maturing soy beans
----------------------------------------------------------------------
corn
---------------------------------------------------------------------- Over seed/cover crop entire plot with a cereal grain
early maturing soy beans like WW, WR, W triticale, W barley, or a mix of all of them
----------------------------------------------------------------------- I am also going to try Cover cropping with lentils which is a very small and inexpensive seed
tillage radishes and am also going to give white sweet lupin a shot
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
pea/sunflower/oat
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
clover/chicory
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Edited:

Over seed/cover crop entire plot with a cereal grain like Winter Wheat, Winter Rye, Winter Triticale, Winter Barley or a mix of them.
I am going to give lentils a shot. They are well under a buck a pound, are a tiny seed well suited for areal application, and are a legume.
I am also going to try out white sweet lupin as a cover

Thank you. Lots of good information here. Couple comments about my setup/situation and a couple questions.

First off here is my setup: I live on this property so access is easy. My father has a 50hp tractor with tiller, brush hog, cultipacker, and disk. My soils are pretty decent (More on the sandy side than clay but definitely not super sandy (close to being in the middle). I have decent organic matter. My pH was on the lowish side of 6.0-6.5 but I put out a few tons per acre of lime last year so hopefully should be much better this year. I have tried some TnM brassica and while it did not grow as well as my regular tillage brassica, it grew well enough that I am somewhat sold on TnM. Below is some pictures of my land. One picture is the topo map. Red boundary is our land. Here are explanations of the color codes on the other picture. Blue is water (These are areas where there is either a small stream or is swampish but not deep water area...maybe 3-6 inches deep in middle of summer). The green are areas where I have found or seen deer bedding. Honestly, they bed much more off our property during the hunting season (either due to our own hunting pressure or change in season/temperatures). I marked the food plots with a yellow 1 and 2. The plot designated 1 boarders our house (in purple) and also the street, however there is a hill between the plot and street so people cannot see the plot from the road. Plot 2 is about 400 yards away from plot one to give you some idea of distance. Everything on the east side is up hill which is why I think deer bed off of our property during cold temps. They would prefer to bed on eastern facing slopes...ours is western faces (bummer).

Ok now for my questions. I thought Sunflower seeds were harmful/poisonous to deer?!? If I only plant 1/2 acre of soybeans in each plot, wouldn't it be wiped out (I do believe I have a low deer number so maybe not) or are you suggesting I use a exclusion fence on these OR maybe the whole point is the deer eat them and wipe them out as a summer forage? When you say overseed with a cereal grain, what amount per acre? I would assume I would drastically cut the lbs per acre since other species are currently growing. For example, if it calls for 75lbs per acre of for a PURE stand of cereal grains, would I only throw out like 25? Thanks!

 

[scott44]

Sunflowers are a deer magnet here, I planted them with my cereal grains and they only 6-8" and are wipedout. I've also planted them in a sorghum mix and they get hit really hard there also.

 

[S.T.Fanatic]

Fall planted sunflowers will not produce a seed head. Depending on when you plant them and the deer pressure I doubt they'll ever get over 8" tall.

I have a good mix of ag and timber with moderate deer numbers. I am able to have 1/2 acre plots of beans make pods (without fencing) that may not be the case for you depending on surrounding ag and deer numbers. If they would wipe them out though it wouldn't be a big deal. Just plant something else in their place for a fall plot.

 

[eclipseman]

Fall planted sunflowers will not produce a seed head. Depending on when you plant them and the deer pressure I doubt they'll ever get over 8" tall.

I have a good mix of ag and timber with moderate deer numbers. I am able to have 1/2 acre plots of beans make pods (without fencing) that may not be the case for you depending on surrounding ag and deer numbers. If they would wipe them out though it wouldn't be a big deal. Just plant something else in their place for a fall plot.

thanks again. Can you give me some insight on planting dates? I know we are in different zones but I can tell you that for fall plots we would plant brassica around the end of august since our first hard frosts tend to average middle of October. Deer season bow opener starts October 1st, rifle season starts typically Middle of November. We see much more deer on our property in the earlier bow season though so I think targeting food which will be optimum for October and then December would be perfect. We plant cereal grains September 1st. Clover is best fall planted with rye but I have had some success frost seeding. What I would need help on would be planting dates for the soybeans, peas and sunflowers. Thanks!

 

[S.T.Fanatic]

Because of work restrictions I plant my spring plots Mem. Day weekend. This would include soy beans, corn, and sugar beets.

I'd say plant the winter pea, sun flower, and oat mix about August 15-20 (I planted Icicle winter peas this past year with sunflowers on 8/30 and they grew slow but we had a cool September)

plant on the later side if planting a regular forage field pea because they grow faster (will frost kill however)

 

[eclipseman]

Because of work restrictions I plant my spring plots Mem. Day weekend. This would include soy beans, corn, and sugar beets.

I'd say plant the winter pea, sun flower, and oat mix about August 15-20 (I planted Icicle winter peas this past year with sunflowers on 8/30 and they grew slow but we had a cool September)

plant on the later side if planting a regular forage field pea because they grow faster (will frost kill however)

Where do you buy your seeds or do you get them locally.

 

[H20fwler]

I would over seed some forage chicory into the clover. For me the deer treat chicory kind of like they do your brassicas going after it more in fall, after a couple good frosts they eat it to dirt within days.

 

[Bowsnbucks]

I've learned a lot from other guys on here about plotting. My camp's successes are due to their knowledge that they passed on to me and others here. Particular thanks to Wiscwhip, who schooled me in many facets of plotting.

No matter what we plant deer will sometimes favor one food over another. They may bypass rye to get to clover, but when cold weather hits, the clover will go dormant and shrivel. Then is when the winter cereal grains and brassicas will become favorites. Oats will die off when you get hard frosts in the fall, so they are marginal for duration. Winter wheat & winter rye last through winter and green up very early spring. Our deer dig through the snow to forage on the WW and WR and also our turnips & radishes.

Deer preferences are usually seasonal. What's great in warmer months fades / freezes out, and then the deer move to what's available and green / or bulbs in colder weather. The outdoors isn't a restaurant where deer can order up fresh green clover in winter. They WILL eat WW and WR, and brassicas if present after the clover, sunflowers, buckwheat, etc. have all croaked out.

For year-round attraction, it's best to plan on seasonally variable crops to cover all seasons. And rotate them. In the long run, you'll be better off for the health of your habitat and deer herd.

 

[S.T.Fanatic]

The local co-op just down the road from me sells seed through Albert Lea Seed Co. Which is about a 100 miles west of me.