Soft Edges/Buffer Strips

[birdog]

I am clearing my field edges including my food plots and was wondering what I should plant to create soft edges between timber and crop. I have three separate crop fields along with about 5 acres of food plots. My edges were overgrown with small saplings and other trash vegetation that was choking my outside edges.

 

[BenA]

You may not need to plant anything. This is what some of my edges looked like after spraying to kill cool season grasses and an early fall disking.
Perennials and NWSGs come in after, and then you can just reset it every so often or kill saplings that try to get started every couple of years.

 

[birdog]

That looks very good!

 

[Brian662]

I have a switchgrass edge of 20-40' between timber and food plot or field edge. After that is matured, I've started to feather the edge by dropping and/or hinging trees into the switchgrass. Here are a few areas we completed last summer in early June. You can see the switchgrass as well as the tree tops. The trees that were dropped will have switchgrass growing up through them, the hinges if they stay alive will provide a green wall.

Before

After

 

[birdog]

Great idea!