Plot rotation...what next?

[animal1x]

I currently only have room for two small food plots, aprox. 1/2 acre each, one of which gets quite a bit of shade. The shady spot did not get planted this past fall but the other plot got a mix of oats and crimson clover

The shady spot that wasn't planted this past year will be left until this fall, then probably seeded with a mix of the oats/clover or maybe a mix of something with subterranean clover. The other plot that already has the oats/clover mix I would like to do something with for the warm season and then transition back to a cool season mix for this fall/winter.

I would like to try the tnm or tnr method on both plots.

So, my question is what to plant next after the oats/clover that will be alright to overseed for this coming fall?
(Just a side note, any corn will get riddled by coons and squirrels long before it would do any good for the deer)

 

[swat1018]

Where I'm at, a .5 acre plot would only be good for a couple things. Clover or brassica.

 

[S.T.Fanatic]

Where is the property and are you planning on the plot for harvest purposes?


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[yoderjac]

I currently only have room for two small food plots, aprox. 1/2 acre each, one of which gets quite a bit of shade. The shady spot did not get planted this past fall but the other plot got a mix of oats and crimson clover

The shady spot that wasn't planted this past year will be left until this fall, then probably seeded with a mix of the oats/clover or maybe a mix of something with subterranean clover. The other plot that already has the oats/clover mix I would like to do something with for the warm season and then transition back to a cool season mix for this fall/winter.

I would like to try the tnm or tnr method on both plots.

So, my question is what to plant next after the oats/clover that will be alright to overseed for this coming fall?
(Just a side note, any corn will get riddled by coons and squirrels long before it would do any good for the deer)

My first question would be why do you want to plant something for summer with such small acreage? One reason might be soil improvement. Buckwheat is a good warm season crop to follow a legume like clover.

 

[Peplin Creek]

One more vote for Buckwheat. Followed up with brassicas in late summer or clover/oats/rye/peas. Probably not worth planting brassica’s in the shady spot. They won’t mount to much.

 

[animal1x]

Where is the property and are you planning on the plot for harvest purposes?


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S.T.Fanatic, the property is in Neshoba County in east central Mississippi. I do sit on it once in a while but mainly just wanted to put something there for whatever little bit of supplemental feeding a small plot would have. I have blinds set in a couple of other places as well as a popup set on one of the plots.

My first question would be why do you want to plant something for summer with such small acreage? One reason might be soil improvement. Buckwheat is a good warm season crop to follow a legume like clover.

Yoderjac, I know 1/2 acre plots ain't much and soil improvement is indeed one reason. Another is because there is nothing else around here other than pine trees. Around us here there are a couple of horse pastures of the neighbors that I have never seen a deer in but mainly right around here it's in pine trees. Hard for a deer to find anything to eat when most of the ground is covered in pine straw. So I figure that anything I can plant even if it gets eaten down as soon as it sprouts is better than nothing.

There is a small patch of hardwood bottoms, maybe 20 or 30 acres or so, on the east side of the property but when Katrina came through and devastated the coast we also felt the effects up here. All told we probably lost somewhere around 30 thousand dollars worth of hardwood timber, mainly all oaks. We salvaged what we could but most of it laid there and rotted on the ground because it was such a tangled mess you couldn't get in there to do anything. Still a mess in there in places and you really don't want to be wandering around in there at night. Be easy to break a leg or an ankle. There's a few oaks left down in there and there is greenbriar, honeysuckle, beautyberry, pokeweed and blackberry brambles growing in spots and in places around the edges of the pine timber stand. With a little work there would probably even be, and may be already, a few bedding areas down in the bottoms there, and in a few places where we lost pine trees to Katrina that have grown up in some scrub and thicker cover. Habitat improvement is very high on the list at the moment, and I know the potential is there just from observing what is already growing. But until I can get someone in to thin out these pine trees about all I can do is some hack and squirt on the more worthless stuff like the sweetgum and privet hedge, do a little hinge cutting here and there, and work on what few open areas I have and try to provide a little supplemental food.

On top of that, I really do want to learn how to be successful with the TNM/TNR method and with two or three small patches if it fails I won't have a whole lot of money wrapped up in it. If it does fail we are in a zone here where I have a chance to reseed or replant either with another go round of the TNM or a more traditional tillage type of approach with a disk and still won't have a lot of money wrapped up. If it is successful and grows, then good for me, I learned something, the deer and turkeys get a little bit of supplemental feed, and my soil gets improved.

Would that buckwheat do alright with the throw and mow?

 

[yoderjac]

S.T.Fanatic, the property is in Neshoba County in east central Mississippi. I do sit on it once in a while but mainly just wanted to put something there for whatever little bit of supplemental feeding a small plot would have. I have blinds set in a couple of other places as well as a popup set on one of the plots.




Yoderjac, I know 1/2 acre plots ain't much and soil improvement is indeed one reason. Another is because there is nothing else around here other than pine trees. Around us here there are a couple of horse pastures of the neighbors that I have never seen a deer in but mainly right around here it's in pine trees. Hard for a deer to find anything to eat when most of the ground is covered in pine straw. So I figure that anything I can plant even if it gets eaten down as soon as it sprouts is better than nothing.

There is a small patch of hardwood bottoms, maybe 20 or 30 acres or so, on the east side of the property but when Katrina came through and devastated the coast we also felt the effects up here. All told we probably lost somewhere around 30 thousand dollars worth of hardwood timber, mainly all oaks. We salvaged what we could but most of it laid there and rotted on the ground because it was such a tangled mess you couldn't get in there to do anything. Still a mess in there in places and you really don't want to be wandering around in there at night. Be easy to break a leg or an ankle. There's a few oaks left down in there and there is greenbriar, honeysuckle, beautyberry, pokeweed and blackberry brambles growing in spots and in places around the edges of the pine timber stand. With a little work there would probably even be, and may be already, a few bedding areas down in the bottoms there, and in a few places where we lost pine trees to Katrina that have grown up in some scrub and thicker cover. Habitat improvement is very high on the list at the moment, and I know the potential is there just from observing what is already growing. But until I can get someone in to thin out these pine trees about all I can do is some hack and squirt on the more worthless stuff like the sweetgum and privet hedge, do a little hinge cutting here and there, and work on what few open areas I have and try to provide a little supplemental food.

On top of that, I really do want to learn how to be successful with the TNM/TNR method and with two or three small patches if it fails I won't have a whole lot of money wrapped up in it. If it does fail we are in a zone here where I have a chance to reseed or replant either with another go round of the TNM or a more traditional tillage type of approach with a disk and still won't have a lot of money wrapped up. If it is successful and grows, then good for me, I learned something, the deer and turkeys get a little bit of supplemental feed, and my soil gets improved.

Would that buckwheat do alright with the throw and mow?

Half acre plots won't do anything to help the herd. I'm in a similar situation on a pine farm with pasture as the only ag within a couple miles. In zone 7A, I'm far enough south that summer is the major stress period here. We do try to plant warm season annuals but on a much larger scale. I'm planting about 7 acres of warm season crops and that is marginal for impacting the herd. We are doing that in conjunction with timber management, thinnings, controlled burns, and such to improve native foods on a much larger scale then my plots.

I used to plant RR soybeans and corn but ended up with a noxious weed issue, Marestail that is naturally resistant to glyphosate. I'm not planting a mix of buckwheat and sunn hemp. A year ago I planted buckwheat instead. Last year I started experimenting with mixing it with Sunn Hemp. There are other threads that describe it in more detail. This year, I'll be shooting for a 20-25 lb/ac of each in the mix. Most of my experimental mixes were too light.

I have a no-till drill but prefer not to plant these kind of crops in rows. I surface broadcast the buckwheat and sunn hemp and then took my no-till drill and drilled sunflowers over top of them. The deer wiped out the sunflowers as soon as they emerged so they were not a factor. The no-till drill I have has a cultipacker rather than row closers to close the rows. So drilling sunflowers over top the buckwheat and sunn hemp is equivalent to broadcasting and cultipacking. I got good germination this way.

Some guys have success just surface broadcasting buckwheat. For some reason, with my heavy clay soils, I get much better germination rates with buckwheat if I cultipack.

Thanks,

Jack

 

[yoderjac]

One more thing about buckwheat is that deer tend to use it but not abuse it unless they have nothing else or your field is very small. If you have issues with deer wiping out buckwheat, don't even consider planting more attractive summer crops.

Thanks,

Jack

 

[animal1x]

Thank you for the replies Jack.

Our zone here in the east central part of Mississippi is 8a I do believe. I really wish I had a little more room to plant a plot or two here but I only have 86 acres, give or take, and most of it in 18-19 year old loblolly pines. So my main projects are going to have to be focused on some habitat improvement and I can't really do much of that right now either until I can get someone in here to do some logging and thinning. Would really like to get around 60% of the pines taken out, or even maybe closer to 70%, but gettin' somebody in here to cut timber is gonna' be contingent on timber prices and whether or not a logger can make any money at the mill with a small stand of timber and pines logs right now...and that's a whole 'nother story, LOL.

As far as habitat goes, it's gonna take some work but the potential is here. Even though it got hit hard when Katrina came through we do have the hardwood bottom, it does have some oaks left, and there's water along the bottom in the form of a spring fed branch on the east side. There are also a couple of spring seeps that could be dug out if need be. On the western side of the property we have two old stock ponds. One dries up to almost nothing if it gets real hot and dry but the other one holds water even through the hot weather.

The seed bank is here in the soil and I named a few things that I have seen growing around in different places in the post up above. Just got to get some of these pines out of here and let the sunshine in.

As far as plots go, I eventually would like to put one main 3 or 4 acre food plot somewhere in the center of the place and maybe a couple of smaller satellite kill plots placed around. And again, that's gonna' be contingent on getting someone in here to do some logging.

I know the potential is here to make a halfway decent little hunting property but there's lots of work to be done and lots of improvements to be made.

Thanks again for the replies.

 

[S.T.Fanatic]

If I was in the Deep South and had small plots I’d stick with clover and chicory. Heavier on the chicory than the clover.

Like others mentioned buckwheat this spring followed up with a TNM style clover/chicory planting.

As mentioned in other recent posts be sure to put a change out to monitor use. It will tell a story that trail cameras and first hand observations can not accurately depict.


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[yoderjac]

Thank you for the replies Jack.

Our zone here in the east central part of Mississippi is 8a I do believe. I really wish I had a little more room to plant a plot or two here but I only have 86 acres, give or take, and most of it in 18-19 year old loblolly pines. So my main projects are going to have to be focused on some habitat improvement and I can't really do much of that right now either until I can get someone in here to do some logging and thinning. Would really like to get around 60% of the pines taken out, or even maybe closer to 70%, but gettin' somebody in here to cut timber is gonna' be contingent on timber prices and whether or not a logger can make any money at the mill with a small stand of timber and pines logs right now...and that's a whole 'nother story, LOL.

As far as habitat goes, it's gonna take some work but the potential is here. Even though it got hit hard when Katrina came through we do have the hardwood bottom, it does have some oaks left, and there's water along the bottom in the form of a spring fed branch on the east side. There are also a couple of spring seeps that could be dug out if need be. On the western side of the property we have two old stock ponds. One dries up to almost nothing if it gets real hot and dry but the other one holds water even through the hot weather.

The seed bank is here in the soil and I named a few things that I have seen growing around in different places in the post up above. Just got to get some of these pines out of here and let the sunshine in.

As far as plots go, I eventually would like to put one main 3 or 4 acre food plot somewhere in the center of the place and maybe a couple of smaller satellite kill plots placed around. And again, that's gonna' be contingent on getting someone in here to do some logging.

I know the potential is here to make a halfway decent little hunting property but there's lots of work to be done and lots of improvements to be made.

Thanks again for the replies.

In my opinion one needs to have influence over about 1000 acres to be successful at QDM. By successful, I mean that you positively impact the heard health in a measurable way typically measured by body weight or antler size. You don't need to own the full thousand (but it helps), you just need cooperation. We only own about 378. With neighboring lands that have some level of cooperation we are only at about 800 acres. I've been working this property for over 10 years now. We may just be starting to see some small measurable improvements but it is hard to say if the measurements are statistically significant.

So, if I owned a property your size, I would focus on techniques that improve the huntability of the property rather than trying to improve the health of the local herd.

Thanks,

Jack

 

[animal1x]

I know I'll never have the options that someone with 1000 or more acres does but thick cover, water, and food is what it takes to have animals on the property and that's my aim. If I can make it attractive enough for deer to want to come here, for whatever reason, bedding, water, or even a bite of clover as they travel on through to somewhere else, then the biggest battle is already won.

 

[yoderjac]

I know I'll never have the options that someone with 1000 or more acres does but thick cover, water, and food is what it takes to have animals on the property and that's my aim. If I can make it attractive enough for deer to want to come here, for whatever reason, bedding, water, or even a bite of clover as they travel on through to somewhere else, then the biggest battle is already won.

Actually, you are in a better position than me as your focus is more clear. We are close enough that we are trying to do QDM and it is dubious as to whether we will really be successful at that. When you are doing QDM, you often make decisions that benefit deer but make hunting more difficult. For example, our controlled burns create large areas with quality native food in cover. This is great for the health of the herd, but can make deer much more difficult to hunt than deer that need to travel from bedding cover to quality food.

In a case like yours, you can be much more focused. The key is manipulating your property in the context of the surrounding properties in such a way that deer want to use it during the hunting season. I've seen many places were deer abound in the summer and vacate during the season. By smart selection of foods, cover, stands, pressure controls, and such, once can improve the hunting on a small property.

It may or may not make sense for you to plant summer foods. I'm suggesting that you think about that in the context of a larger plan that is focused on improving your hunting.

Thanks,

Jack

 

[animal1x]

I don't think a summer plot will hurt anything in the long run, it will give me something to do, and will help keep the weeds down during the summer before I put the fall plots in. Like I posted up above, if it works out and grows well then good, and if it doesn't I'm not gonna' be out a whole lot of money and I'm gonna have a cool weather kill plot or two anyway no matter what.

On the subject of learning, I've already been taught a lesson about white tail unpredictability and stand placement, LOL. Put my popup blind watching an overgrown two track leading to a feeder in totally the wrong place. Instead of it being tucked up and out of the way I ended up putting it right in their travel way and they pass right by it. That WILL be changed around for next season.

Elbert

 

[Someday isle]

I too am a small scale plotter. No, we can’t influence the herd. But we can influence deer movement and use of our small properties. Over the last four years I’ve learned to trust the cereal grain mix that you’ll find all over this site. The mix of rye and red clover then provides that spring time feeding and early summer until the hot weather cause the clover to go dormant. I’ve had good success with buckwheat for a summer crop on a couple occasions too. It does need some moisture to get going but it’s a pretty easy plot. I’d say put something in to at least keep something there year round and to help control weeds. Every plot is different. Some require less maintenance. My best fall plot is also my worst one for weeds in the summer. If nothing else plotting provides opportunities to go out and enjoy your land while still thinking about hunting.

 

[Someday isle]

One more thought. Keep your goals and expectations realistic and have fun!

 

[animal1x]

I too am a small scale plotter. No, we can’t influence the herd. But we can influence deer movement and use of our small properties. Over the last four years I’ve learned to trust the cereal grain mix that you’ll find all over this site. The mix of rye and red clover then provides that spring time feeding and early summer until the hot weather cause the clover to go dormant. I’ve had good success with buckwheat for a summer crop on a couple occasions too. It does need some moisture to get going but it’s a pretty easy plot. I’d say put something in to at least keep something there year round and to help control weeds. Every plot is different. Some require less maintenance. My best fall plot is also my worst one for weeds in the summer. If nothing else plotting provides opportunities to go out and enjoy your land while still thinking about hunting.

One more thought. Keep your goals and expectations realistic and have fun!

Someday, that's really all I want to do is influence the way the deer herd use and utilize the property here. I want to make it more attractive to 'em than what's across the fence. Don't care if it's mostly does either because come the rut wherever the does are the bucks will show up there eventually.

On the subject of food plots as per the suggestions I got in this thread I think I'll end up trying the buckwheat this summer.

And hey, I'm already having fun. Changing out the cards on the game cameras and looking at the pics is almost like opening up a Christmas present each time!! The pics I posted in the December trail camera thread were taken in the little 1/2 acre food plot.

 

[Peplin Creek]

Those small tucked away plots can become social hot spots. On of my most productive plots for pictures this last year was a clover/oats/peas plot that I bet is probably between 1/8th to 1/16th an acre. Not very big. Can turn a truck around in it but that’s about it. Tucked into cover... seems like a lot of deer check it out before leaving the property.

 

[jsasker007]

Chicory and clover and the best bet for a smaller spot. They feed each other and take a lot of abuse. I'd add some winter rye or winter wheat in the fall simply throwing it on the existing plot by hand or broadcast seeder.

 

[swat1018]

Half acre plots won't do anything to help the herd. I'm in a similar situation on a pine farm with pasture as the only ag within a couple miles. In zone 7A, I'm far enough south that summer is the major stress period here. We do try to plant warm season annuals but on a much larger scale. I'm planting about 7 acres of warm season crops and that is marginal for impacting the herd. We are doing that in conjunction with timber management, thinnings, controlled burns, and such to improve native foods on a much larger scale then my plots.

I used to plant RR soybeans and corn but ended up with a noxious weed issue, Marestail that is naturally resistant to glyphosate. I'm not planting a mix of buckwheat and sunn hemp. A year ago I planted buckwheat instead. Last year I started experimenting with mixing it with Sunn Hemp. There are other threads that describe it in more detail. This year, I'll be shooting for a 20-25 lb/ac of each in the mix. Most of my experimental mixes were too light.

I have a no-till drill but prefer not to plant these kind of crops in rows. I surface broadcast the buckwheat and sunn hemp and then took my no-till drill and drilled sunflowers over top of them. The deer wiped out the sunflowers as soon as they emerged so they were not a factor. The no-till drill I have has a cultipacker rather than row closers to close the rows. So drilling sunflowers over top the buckwheat and sunn hemp is equivalent to broadcasting and cultipacking. I got good germination this way.

Some guys have success just surface broadcasting buckwheat. For some reason, with my heavy clay soils, I get much better germination rates with buckwheat if I cultipack.

Thanks,

Jack

I love how you always say, "Marestail that is naturally resistant to glyphosate." How is that possible? Academia says it's from overuse / misuse of glyphosate, such as using a half rate to "supress clover."