yoderjac
5 year old buck +
You might want to consider adding you location/usda zone to your profile. What works in one are may not work well in another. I'm in zone 7a. I had a problem with marestail after we had a controlled burn. It popped up in the seed bank in our pines and invaded our fields. I had been planting RR crops, but gly just encouraged the marestail by suppressing the competition. I ended up using multiple attack angles to control the marestail. I sprayed with the appropriate control chemicals and used a smother crop in the spring. I hit the field with 24D amine when the marestail was young in the spring and let other weeds grow. I used Sunn Hemp and Buckwheat in my area for the smother crop. I used a generic version of Liberty for burn down since it is effective on marestail. I waited until my soil was nice and warm to do it. I then broadcast the buckwehat and sunn hemp and cultipacked. Buckwehat and Sunn hemp germinate quickly in warm soil and out-compete most weeds. In the fall I did a T&M with my fall plant.
As for turkey, forget feeding the adults. They will eat anything that doesn't eat them. The keep is having good brooding ground near good nesting cover. About 90% of a poult's diet consists of insects. You want good bugging fields like perennial clover that green up early and attract insects. You want to have them next to vertical cover with good bare ground underneath. Canopied soybes work, I use bicolor lespedeza to break up large fields and make them feel smaller to encourage daytime deer use. I need to warn that Bicolor can be invasive under some conditions so study it before using it. It has worked well for me. It produces millions of tiny seeds for birds but grows about 8' tall and has good bare ground underneath. The idea is to protect poults from avian predators. Having it next to bugging makes for quick escape cover.
One last thought. A "weed" is a plant growing someplace you don't want it. For farmers, any plant other than their crop is a weed. They need to maximize yield to profit. It is high input/high output farming. Things are quite different for deer managers. We plant food plots either to attract deer for hunting or to supplement native foods. By far, most of a deer's diet is native foods. When we plant to supplement food, we target periods when native foods are scarce. We are trying to even out the dips that occur in nature. Yield typically is not important to a deer manager. Any food left after the stress period is excess from a deer management perspective. When planting for attraction, if deer use it during the time you are targeting, it was successful. Many of what farmers call "weeds" are better native deer food than what we plant. They are clearly some weeds that are problematic and don't benefit deer, and at times they need to be addressed.
A focus on soil health, reduces our input cost and can be just as effective from a deer management standpoint. You seem to be headed in a good direction getting away from tillage. I have not used commercial fertilizer for quite a few years now and my crops are as good or better than before. It took a long time to build OM and undo the damage I caused with a plow.
As for ag lime vs pelletized lime, I've seen soil science guys argue back and forth over speed vs duration. There really are a large number of factors that influence how quickly the chemical reactions take place. I would not get too wrapped around the axel over it. Lime will be slow and long-lasting in clay soils. I would focus on getting the pH in the right ball park and plant crops that do well in soil with low fertility and low pH in the mean time.
The reason I asked about the exclusion cage is the lost of folks think fields are not getting much deer use. After putting up and exclusion cage, they realize deer were using the field more than they thought. It is often a pressure issue and the fields are used after dark.
Thanks,
Jack
