Summer food plots for you and the deer

[bigboreblr]

Kinda feel like making a food plot this summer for me and the deer. Done turnips many times. Any other good summer ones like maybe beets. Done daikon radish too. Not sure how much it like summer though. Wouldn't seem like a good one.

I can irrigate to some extent during drought tress if that matters.

Using the rototiller in a section to clean up drainage and to level out some stump holes. This is the home plot. Probably 1/3 acre area. Clay soil. Probably right at 6 pH now, good organic matter. Compaction is and issue. Flooding in real bad situations is short maybe a day vs almost a week before channeling. Most years not an issue at all.

LAnd was an old apple orchards so I got furrowed rows where the tractors squashed things down over the year. I break the rows up here n there to drain to the lowest one, then that goes downhill with a large channel I already made a few years back.

Picked up 300lbs of rye for the fall. Likely go back to that again with some oats and clovers in the fall. See how weedy it get, do some or some more brassicas based on how much nitrogen I need to use up.

 

[Catscratch]

Pumpkins. Little pumpkins, HUGE pumpkins, white pumpkins, bumpy pumpkins, etc. With some milo/millet.

 

[Newbie]

I put in a clover plot early this spring. Did a no till throw/roll application with mostly clover/chicory. One area I tossed in some rye for a nurse crop and a bag of sunflower seed & YSC in areas to (maybe) get some height, the other I mixed in some brassicas for early spring forage as a nurse crop to hopefully get the deer to lay off the young clover a bit.

It's not my primary plot so I've been playing around with a few ideas to see what works and what doesn't. Maybe more than anything, I just needed to scratch the itch of working outside early this spring when I got cabin fever. Either way, both plots seem to be doing pretty well and I'd anticipate will be a bit of a draw for deer throughout the summer and into the autumn months.

 

[bigboreblr]

Sunflower sounds interesting. With all this rain, the fall planted rye is 12-18 inches tall already.

Plantain and clover are doing good too.

 

[Newbie]

Sunflower sounds interesting. With all this rain, the fall planted rye is 12-18 inches tall already.

Plantain and clover are doing good too.

Yes, it is a bit of a experiment just to satisfy my own curiosity haha. I included areas of YSC and sunflowers to give areas of the plot some height to see if deer are more comfortable coming out into that during daylight as opposed to a 6-8in field of clover. My hope is the field develops almost "patchy," kind of like an abandoned field left for years but with better forage density. If it works, great, if not no biggie. In many ways my habitat work is just me playing around outside and trying random things my pea-sized brain comes up with.

 

[Buckhunter10]

Pumpkins. Little pumpkins, HUGE pumpkins, white pumpkins, bumpy pumpkins, etc. With some milo/millet.

I am gunna try some pumpkins on edge of my plots this year! I have some berms and I feel like they might do great, as it’s like a mound already.

Excited to see how this turns out. Make sure you plant summer time crops now - if you want them for you and deer and cool season annuals in fall - as summer planted turnip (for example) often don’t grow bulbs but bolt.

 

[bigboreblr]

I am gunna try some pumpkins on edge of my plots this year! I have some berms and I feel like they might do great, as it’s like a mound already.

Excited to see how this turns out. Make sure you plant summer time crops now - if you want them for you and deer and cool season annuals in fall - as summer planted turnip (for example) often don’t grow bulbs but bolt.

Probably won't do turnips for the summer. I did plant them in april and had a few monster ones at camp in the fall. Some even made it into next year growing too. Was just using up some older seeds for a so-so plot. Worked good though.

Need to do my hoemwork with beets. Never planted them before, unless it was in a mix from floot plot plantings past.