Soil improvement efforts.. Throw and mow or roll

[Chadjones06]

Is it possible to throw and mow/roll peas or beans next spring? I have a mix of wheat/cereal rye/winter peas/radish planted now, but am experiencing a problem with washing and erosion due to disking. The plot is in its 2nd year and was a pine plantation before I had it cut and stumps removed. I've amended the soil last year and this year per soil test requirements. I own the land and it will be a long term hunting spot. I'd like to improve the soil the best I can in the years to come, but I'm concerned that with the state it is in the weeds may overtake my plot during the summer leading to me feeling the need to bushog and disk them under again. I guess I'm looking for the best way to go about things without disking and causing more erosion or harming my young fruit trees with spray. It doesnt help that the plot is on a slow gradual hill. Thanks for any input or opinions!

 

[Catscratch]

Nothing wrong with weeds (as long as they aren't gly resistant). Lots of nutrition and erosion benefits even though they aren't what you planted. I tend to spray, broadcast, then mow. The mowing part is optional per my experience. Rolling never helped when I was experimenting with side by side tests. If weeds grow I let them, then they get sprayed when its time for then next crop. Year round vegetation with roots in the ground.

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[yoderjac]

Tillage destroys the soil tilth and introduces O2 into the soil causing OM to burn fast. Building soil takes time. We can do a lot for deer while restoring the damage from deep and frequent tillage. The key is to focus on what is best for the soil and make deer your secondary consideration for now. Choose crops that benefit the soil first and deer second. Forget trying to plant beans or peas in the spring.

T&M buckwheat in the spring and mixing it with a legume like sunn hemp is even better. Both can be surface broadcast and cultipacked. Both germinate quickly and compete well with weeds. Spray to kill weeds, don't try to turn them under with tillage. You can use gly , but don't rely on it. Use a combination of herbicides. Repeated use of the same herbicide will cause those weeds that are more resistant it to dominate. Both Sunn hemp, and especially buckwheat like warm soil for germination. That means you can plant them quite late in the spring. So, if you use a soil residual herbicide like 24D, you have plenty of time to wait for it to dissipate and then plant. Sunn help is a legume and will fix N.

In the fall, again don't till. Plant crops that T&M easily and benefit deer. A mix of WR, crimson clover, and GHR/PTT will benefit both soil and deer. Another approach is to plant a perennial clover with a WR nurse crop and then simply mow it as needed. As Cat says, a "weed" to a farmer may be a cash crop to a deer manager. Many broadleaf weeds like poke berry can be better for both attraction and nutrition than the crop you plant. Knowing and tolerating "weeds" is important. Know when a particular weed is a problem, when it is neutral, and when it is beneficial.

A food plot on a grade invites erosion. They are generally best managed by using a long-lived perennial clover like Durana. Durana is slow to establish and should be planted in the fall with a WR nurse crop. In the first spring after planting, you will need to mow the field back to 6"-8" each time it gets much over a foot. This will setback the WR and release the clover slowly to minimize summer weeds. Start with a clean clover field and then tolerate weeds. Durana should last 7 -10 years. Then rotate back into Buckwheat for a summer and the WR and Brassica mix for fall and buckwheat again the following summer. This should use enough of the fixed N so that you can rotate back into Durana for another 7 to 10 years.

Thanks,

Jack

 

[Chadjones06]

Nothing wrong with weeds (as long as they aren't gly resistant). Lots of nutrition and erosion benefits even though they aren't what you planted. I tend to spray, broadcast, then mow. The mowing part is optional per my experience. Rolling never helped when I was experimenting with side by side tests. If weeds grow I let them, then they get sprayed when its time for then next crop. Year round vegetation with roots in the ground.

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Some or most if these weeds are gly resistant. That's my problem. I dont know if there is anything I can spray on marestail, pigweed, or this other type "not sure of the name, but it gets tall and has a main stalk with small hair looking leaves all over it" that wont harm the fruit trees.

 

[Catscratch]

Nothing wrong with weeds (as long as they aren't gly resistant). Lots of nutrition and erosion benefits even though they aren't what you planted. I tend to spray, broadcast, then mow. The mowing part is optional per my experience. Rolling never helped when I was experimenting with side by side tests. If weeds grow I let them, then they get sprayed when its time for then next crop. Year round vegetation with roots in the ground.

Sent from my SM-N960U using Tapatalk

Some or most if these weeds are gly resistant. That's my problem. I dont know if there is anything I can spray on marestail, pigweed, or this other type "not sure of the name, but it gets tall and has a main stalk with small hair looking leaves all over it" that wont harm the fruit trees.

Yuck! My first response was Liberty beans (I've done TnM Liberty beans to get rid of Amaranth)... but with fruit trees nearby I would be afraid of drift. Might be a good time to consider a mix of clovers, a spot sprayer, and a mower?

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[yoderjac]

I had great success with interline (liberty generic) on marestail which is my problematic weed. Most herbicides will harm fruit trees, certainly gly. So, you need to pick very calm days and control your spray very well no matter what you use.

It gets back to balance. It makes no sense to focus on deer alone without considering what you have to work with. The combination of herbicide resistant weeds, fruit trees, erosion tendency, and probably more seem to make this location less than ideal for a food plot.

I've been converting some of my small harvest plots to something I'll call "Wildlife Openings". I start with a good perennial clover base. I then planted low maintenance fruit trees. After the first year or two, these trees will get zero maintenance. Then I just let them go. I'll mow to get the clover established and once or twice a year for the first 4 or 5 years. They work great as harvest plots with the mix of weeds and clover. Because of my marestail problem, I time my mowing so that the marestail and grown large but has not quite gone to seed. If I get the timing right, it won't have enough time left in the growing season to produce seed when it rebounds. Yes, a lot of it will grow back from the roots the next year but it is better than millions of seeds. This doesn't get rid of it, but it doesn't dominate.

After that first 4 or 5 years, the clover is diminishing but the trees are beginning to produce fruit and that becomes the long-term primary food source. At that point, I restrict my mowing to every 3 years or so. Nature will let the field revert back to a diverse mix of weeds and clover rather than having one noxious weed like marestail dominate. My only reason to mow is to keep it in herbaceous growth and not allow woody stuff to take it from early succession. Between the fruit and beneficial weeds, these remain great harvest plots and are often used more than a green field because of the mix of food and cover.

Thanks,

Jack

 

[Chadjones06]

I had great success with interline (liberty generic) on marestail which is my problematic weed. Most herbicides will harm fruit trees, certainly gly. So, you need to pick very calm days and control your spray very well no matter what you use.

It gets back to balance. It makes no sense to focus on deer alone without considering what you have to work with. The combination of herbicide resistant weeds, fruit trees, erosion tendency, and probably more seem to make this location less than ideal for a food plot.

I've been converting some of my small harvest plots to something I'll call "Wildlife Openings". I start with a good perennial clover base. I then planted low maintenance fruit trees. After the first year or two, these trees will get zero maintenance. Then I just let them go. I'll mow to get the clover established and once or twice a year for the first 4 or 5 years. They work great as harvest plots with the mix of weeds and clover. Because of my marestail problem, I time my mowing so that the marestail and grown large but has not quite gone to seed. If I get the timing right, it won't have enough time left in the growing season to produce seed when it rebounds. Yes, a lot of it will grow back from the roots the next year but it is better than millions of seeds. This doesn't get rid of it, but it doesn't dominate.

After that first 4 or 5 years, the clover is diminishing but the trees are beginning to produce fruit and that becomes the long-term primary food source. At that point, I restrict my mowing to every 3 years or so. Nature will let the field revert back to a diverse mix of weeds and clover rather than having one noxious weed like marestail dominate. My only reason to mow is to keep it in herbaceous growth and not allow woody stuff to take it from early succession. Between the fruit and beneficial weeds, these remain great harvest plots and are often used more than a green field because of the mix of food and cover.

Thanks,

Jack

I like this idea, I want to keep my plot but it seems easiest to slowly plant it with more trees with wildlife value. Maybe I'll plant a few trees each year to where it's more of a destination main food source and pick a place in the back that's more food plot oriented although it will have to be a hilltop. With more time I can choose more wisely on what to cut this time. I was in a hurry last spring when I had it cut, I just worry about putting a plot close to neighboring land. I like to hunt big deer for the area. They like to hunt a deer to shoot at, kill, hit, eat, dump in the creek in a trash bag, etc. I'm lucky to have all neighbors except 1, that 1 is a handfull.. to each their own.

 

[yoderjac]

I tend to think of destination plots in the context of QDM where you are working on scale (1,000 acre ball park). They tend to be large multi-acre plots that are easy to access with equipment. The idea is to feed deer during stress periods to improve herd health. Deer typically don't feed in them during shooting hours during the season because they don't feel secure.

I think of a harvest plot as a small sub-acre plot tied to quick escape cover. They tend to be distributed and hard to get equipment to. For example, you may spend more time driving the tractor between plots than you spend actually mowing each plot. These are often between bedding and a destination food source where I deer might feel comfortable to stop during shooting hours on the way to the destination plot. It is kind of like a staging area with an appetizer.

My harvest plots tend to be between 1/4 acre and 1/3 acre. I plant to convert a majority of these to the wildlife openings I described in the previous post. Because harvest plots are not very efficient to maintain, converting them to wildlife openings should reduce my maintenance time while retaining the same functionality.

Thanks,

Jack

 

[Chadjones06]

Thanks! I'd call this a destination plot only bc it's to the west of my property. It's the highway side and I put it there bc I am hoping to pull deer from the north and east. I've thinned about 1/3 of my land hoping to promote bedding. My stands are all around the exterior on the edge of my "access roads" for what I've been able to accomplish. I dont have many deer that live on my place year round, but it has seemed to work during the fall. I count about 8 deer being common, mostly does until late September last year and had over 30 different bucks by the end of December. Most were young, but 5 were mature and good deer for my area. I just want to do all I can to promote deer health and better my hunting success.

 

[Chadjones06]

Thanks to all for the help, it's been much appreciated!