The Throw n’ Mow Method

[BrushyPines]

I have read this whole thread (Yes, all 85 pages). It took a while, but I wanted to understand the process and see how others succeeded or failed. Man am I glad I did! I am in North Mississippi and my property has sandy soil, so I think it would benefit from the TnM method. I just have 2 plots, 1 that is 5 acres give or take and the other that is .4 acre. The 5 acre plot is 1/3 durana/wheat and 2/3 wheat/buckoats/AWP. The .4 acre plot is radish/turnip/AWP. My herd has absolutely hammered the brassicas and the plot looks like bare dirt now. Going to give the TnM a try on the .4 acre plot, but will have to disc this coming spring due to no thatch. My question is, what should I plant this coming spring that will build the soil, supply enough thatch for the fall planting and also feed the herd? MS summers are hot, humid and sometimes dry. I was thinking Lab Lab would be a good option, but didn't know what I should plant with it or if Lab Lab would even be a good 'soil builder'.

 

[S.T.Fanatic]

If you have a cultipacker Id try to establish a plot without tillage. If it is eaten to the dirt your seed to soil contact will not be an issue. I would think that planting an annual clover and cultipacking would work just fine and can be done early to take advantage of spring rains.

Buckwheat is another option but you may have some issues with it re seeding in your area. That could be a good thing and you may be able to double crop it. If not, they do make herbicide.

 

[Catscratch]

I have read this whole thread (Yes, all 85 pages). It took a while, but I wanted to understand the process and see how others succeeded or failed. Man am I glad I did! I am in North Mississippi and my property has sandy soil, so I think it would benefit from the TnM method. I just have 2 plots, 1 that is 5 acres give or take and the other that is .4 acre. The 5 acre plot is 1/3 durana/wheat and 2/3 wheat/buckoats/AWP. The .4 acre plot is radish/turnip/AWP. My herd has absolutely hammered the brassicas and the plot looks like bare dirt now. Going to give the TnM a try on the .4 acre plot, but will have to disc this coming spring due to no thatch. My question is, what should I plant this coming spring that will build the soil, supply enough thatch for the fall planting and also feed the herd? MS summers are hot, humid and sometimes dry. I was thinking Lab Lab would be a good option, but didn't know what I should plant with it or if Lab Lab would even be a good 'soil builder'.

Buckwheat is a good soil builder but I'm not sure how well it will work in sand, and I'm not sure it will give you good thatch as it's residue goes away fairly quickly. I'm pretty comfortable with cereal grains for thatch, and also native weeds for thatch. Natives are free, often preferred by deer, and very likely to grow in your conditions.

 

[scott44]

If you have a cultipacker Id try to establish a plot without tillage. If it is eaten to the dirt your seed to soil contact will not be an issue. I would think that planting an annual clover and cultipacking would work just fine and can be done early to take advantage of spring rains.

Buckwheat is another option but you may have some issues with it re seeding in your area. That could be a good thing and you may be able to double crop it. If not, they do make herbicide.

I've done this after brassicas with decent success, broadcast clover and oats then cultipack it. Buckwheat would be a good addition too, maybe there's something else from your area that would be good.

 

[BrushyPines]

I'll add that the PH for that specific plot is a 5.5. Test was done back in June 2020. Limed accordingly. I was expecting worse, so I was happy to see a 5.5.

 

[SwampCat]

My experience with TnM has not been good. But, my best luck has come with nothing but weeds in the plot. I dont want deer grazing much - if any, in the plot. Deer will graze heavily on clover. They will annihilate buckwheat. Any type of peas or bean will be grazed hard. Weeds are your best bet. My trouble comes primarily from two areas - lack of standing vegetation to plant into - and feral hogs eating the seed. I primarily use this method when success in that plot is not overly important or there is no other choice.

 

[yoderjac]

My experience with TnM has not been good. But, my best luck has come with nothing but weeds in the plot. I dont want deer grazing much - if any, in the plot. Deer will graze heavily on clover. They will annihilate buckwheat. Any type of peas or bean will be grazed hard. Weeds are your best bet. My trouble comes primarily from two areas - lack of standing vegetation to plant into - and feral hogs eating the seed. I primarily use this method when success in that plot is not overly important or there is no other choice.

I have no idea how to deal with feral hogs except trap and kill them as you are probably doing. Regardless of the planting style, when deer are abusing buckwheat, the plot is tiny or they are really hurting for food. Back when our deer numbers were very high, buckwheat was one of the few warm season annuals I could plant that would mature. When most warm season annuals would be eaten in the early stage before they could establish, buckwheat would mature. Deer would use it but they would not abuse it. Back then, there was little quality food in our area during summer.

With years of habitat improvement, food plot establishment, and heavy doe harvest, our deer now have plenty to eat and buckwheat will grow even in tiny plots. Even with this better balance, I still have to plant significant acreage of ice cream crops like soybeans and cow peas and the like to get them to canopy.

I wonder if deer are behaving differently with respect to buckwheat in your area? Different plants extract different minerals and such from the soil. I wonder if buckwheat happens to be extracting something in particular that your deer crave.

Thanks,

Jack

 

[SwampCat]

I have no idea how to deal with feral hogs except trap and kill them as you are probably doing. Regardless of the planting style, when deer are abusing buckwheat, the plot is tiny or they are really hurting for food. Back when our deer numbers were very high, buckwheat was one of the few warm season annuals I could plant that would mature. When most warm season annuals would be eaten in the early stage before they could establish, buckwheat would mature. Deer would use it but they would not abuse it. Back then, there was little quality food in our area during summer.

With years of habitat improvement, food plot establishment, and heavy doe harvest, our deer now have plenty to eat and buckwheat will grow even in tiny plots. Even with this better balance, I still have to plant significant acreage of ice cream crops like soybeans and cow peas and the like to get them to canopy.

I wonder if deer are behaving differently with respect to buckwheat in your area? Different plants extract different minerals and such from the soil. I wonder if buckwheat happens to be extracting something in particular that your deer crave.

Thanks,

Jack

I think it is a result of the lack of easy summer food source in my area. No one else plants food plots and there is no row crop. So even though the area average is twenty dpsm, the population is much higher on my place because I plant for them and it attracts them in numbers higher than the surrounding area. We dont shoot does on my place, because twelve of my fifteen adjacent landowners do shoot them. Buckwheat is problematic in my area to tnm into because if you plant it in June to maybe catch some rainfall, the plant has withered and wasted away by late september/october fall planting time. If you wait until mid July to plant Buckwheat, then it is very likely you wont get much of a rain in Aug and Sep to produce much of a stand to tnm into. In my area, My best luck has come from allowing weeds to grow in a fallow food plot.

 

[S.T.Fanatic]

What do you mean by "withered and wasted away"? Is it laying flat on the ground? If not that seems to me to be the ideal situation to plant your fall cereals into.

 

[yoderjac]

I think it is a result of the lack of easy summer food source in my area. No one else plants food plots and there is no row crop. So even though the area average is twenty dpsm, the population is much higher on my place because I plant for them and it attracts them in numbers higher than the surrounding area. We dont shoot does on my place, because twelve of my fifteen adjacent landowners do shoot them. Buckwheat is problematic in my area to tnm into because if you plant it in June to maybe catch some rainfall, the plant has withered and wasted away by late september/october fall planting time. If you wait until mid July to plant Buckwheat, then it is very likely you wont get much of a rain in Aug and Sep to produce much of a stand to tnm into. In my area, My best luck has come from allowing weeds to grow in a fallow food plot.

Other than the rainfall, your situation sounds very similar to ours when we started. I'm on a pine farm and there are no row crops within 3 miles. Our deer numbers were very high. The biologist had us shoot every doe we saw. He said that while the deer density in the general area was high, once we established a food plot program with warm season annuals, each time we shot a doe and it left a "hole" in the social structure, when food gets scarce in the summer, deer from the general area would range into our property for food and stay.

After quite a few years of shooting every doe we saw, nature finally helped out. One year, we planted enough that the deer could not keep up and got great plots. We had a mast crop failure that fall, so even with heavy hunting pressure, deer would still visit our plots during daylight hours. We doubled the average number of female deer killed that year. We then had ice storms that winter so the surviving does were not in great shape. While there had been coyotes in the general area for years, they started using our farm regularly that winter. It may have been our fault as we did not burry carcasses. The next year, EHD hit the general area. We had no evidence of it on our farm, but the populations in the general area went down. We had to back off doe harvests the next year.

Over the years we were shooting every doe we saw, we are also doing large scale habitat improvement that increased native foods and increased the BCC.

Buckwheat is a 60 to 90 day crop in terms of food value for deer. We leave it stand until we are ready to do a fall plant and T&M into it. Timing is critical. I'm far enough south in 7a that I'm on the ratty edge of being able to double crop it. I tried for several years. I had to plant the first crop quite early (very late April or early May). Rain was not an issue then, but cold soil was. It would germinate and grow, but the first crop was always lethargic compared to the second. When planting a single crop, late June works well here. We are still getting good rain then, but I always wait for rain in the forecast to plant. The latest we can plant and have buckwheat mature by the fall plant is about the 4th of July here. While buckwheat can germinate with soil temps as low as 45 degrees, the optimal soil temp (not air temp for new folks) is 80 degrees. It really takes off fast in warm soils.

Thanks,

Jack

 

[BrushyPines]

I've done this after brassicas with decent success, broadcast clover and oats then cultipack it. Buckwheat would be a good addition too, maybe there's something else from your area that would be good.

For my type of soil, what annual clover would you guys recommend? What type oat would you recommend for my soil type and for the spring?

 

[Bassattackr]

My experience with Buckwheat has been similar to Jack's. Makes a pretty field but the deer in my area never touched it.

 

[yoderjac]

My experience with Buckwheat has been similar to Jack's. Makes a pretty field but the deer in my area never touched it.

My deer use it, but don't abuse it. If deer are not using it, it is because they have found something they like better.

 

[Catscratch]

What do you mean by "withered and wasted away"? Is it laying flat on the ground? If not that seems to me to be the ideal situation to plant your fall cereals into.

Buckwheat decomposes quickly. Kind of like if you tried to use lettuce for thatch, it just lays flat and goes away quickly. That's my experience anyway. Other plants hold stiff a little so that you can get multiple inches of thatch with some airflow, moisture retention, ground armor, etc.

 

[S.T.Fanatic]

For my type of soil, what annual clover would you guys recommend? What type oat would you recommend for my soil type and for the spring?

https://extension.msstate.edu/sites/default/files/newsletter/forage-news/2017/forage_newsletter_jan2017.pdf

 

[S.T.Fanatic]

Buckwheat decomposes quickly. Kind of like if you tried to use lettuce for thatch, it just lays flat and goes away quickly. That's my experience anyway. Other plants hold stiff a little so that you can get multiple inches of thatch with some airflow, moisture retention, ground armor, etc.

spread the clover in the dry months before the buckwheat withers? It SHOULD germinate after the buckwheat withers and fall rains enter the picture. I have never done it so take it with a grain of salt. Just thinking out loud.

 

[yoderjac]

spread the clover in the dry months before the buckwheat withers? It SHOULD germinate after the buckwheat withers and fall rains enter the picture. I have never done it so take it with a grain of salt. Just thinking out loud.

I would broadcast your fall plant into the standing buckwheat with rain in the forecast and then mow it. Microbes from contact with the soil surface helps the buckwheat decompose releasing the nutrients it scavenged for you fall crop. You don't need heavy thatch. The mowed crop is acting like a light mulch. It just needs to hold enough moisture under it to let the broadcast crop germinate. It is fine that the buckwheat decomposes quickly. Even better than mowing is cultipacking for planting into buckwheat. Thatch needs to be dense enough to help retain moisture but thin enough that seed fall through it and makes good seed soil contact. Cultipacking does a few things beyond mowing. First, it knocks seed hanging in the thatch to the ground and presses it into the ground. This improves seed/soil contact. It knocks down the buckwheat like mowing but makes even better contact with the soil. The other thing a cultipacker does is to create an irregular surface on the soil that helps retain water and prevent run-off and crusting (in clay soils) that can occur.

Leaving the buckwheat standing will work if the stand is thin and old enough for good sunlight penetration. It will take a bit longer for it to decompose and release nutrients and you don't get the mulch effect retaining moisture like when it is on the ground, but it will still work with many fall seeds. Things like clover and WR that surface broadcast and germinate easily will usually germinate under these conditions, but the germination rates will be lower than mowing or cultipacking. You can often compensate for this by upping the fall seeding rate.

Thanks,

Jack

 

[SwampCat]

Other than the rainfall, your situation sounds very similar to ours when we started. I'm on a pine farm and there are no row crops within 3 miles. Our deer numbers were very high. The biologist had us shoot every doe we saw. He said that while the deer density in the general area was high, once we established a food plot program with warm season annuals, each time we shot a doe and it left a "hole" in the social structure, when food gets scarce in the summer, deer from the general area would range into our property for food and stay.

After quite a few years of shooting every doe we saw, nature finally helped out. One year, we planted enough that the deer could not keep up and got great plots. We had a mast crop failure that fall, so even with heavy hunting pressure, deer would still visit our plots during daylight hours. We doubled the average number of female deer killed that year. We then had ice storms that winter so the surviving does were not in great shape. While there had been coyotes in the general area for years, they started using our farm regularly that winter. It may have been our fault as we did not burry carcasses. The next year, EHD hit the general area. We had no evidence of it on our farm, but the populations in the general area went down. We had to back off doe harvests the next year.

Over the years we were shooting every doe we saw, we are also doing large scale habitat improvement that increased native foods and increased the BCC.

Buckwheat is a 60 to 90 day crop in terms of food value for deer. We leave it stand until we are ready to do a fall plant and T&M into it. Timing is critical. I'm far enough south in 7a that I'm on the ratty edge of being able to double crop it. I tried for several years. I had to plant the first crop quite early (very late April or early May). Rain was not an issue then, but cold soil was. It would germinate and grow, but the first crop was always lethargic compared to the second. When planting a single crop, late June works well here. We are still getting good rain then, but I always wait for rain in the forecast to plant. The latest we can plant and have buckwheat mature by the fall plant is about the 4th of July here. While buckwheat can germinate with soil temps as low as 45 degrees, the optimal soil temp (not air temp for new folks) is 80 degrees. It really takes off fast in warm soils.

Thanks,

Jack

My situation as far as the deer go is really nothing like yours. In 2012, we had four does and one fawn on camera surveys on 300 acres. That was three survey locations scattered around 300 acres with ten days prebaiting and ten days of camera surveys on shelled corn for bait. We have finally built our population to where last year we had 26 does and eight fawns on 300 acres. You could drive a mile away from mile place and hunt for a week and might not see a doe. We are not going to do anything to reduce our deer density. My property, along with two adjacent properties - are islands of deer density in a sea of intense harvest. Our fawn recruitment is horrible. I cant double crop buckwheat because of wet planting conditions in spring - not because of sufficient warm weather. If I planted in July, most years it would burn up. If I plant in Mid May, it is mature in August and pretty much beat down by end of Sept from grazing deer and roaming hogs. If I plant cereal grains early Sept, if there is enough rain, the army worms are likely to eat it before Oct. Clover will be brown, crunchy, and laying flat on the ground by Sept - perennial or annual. And then the problem is, if I do plant cereal grains and clover in a fall food plot, the clover and grazing will suppress the weed growth to the point their is not enough vegetation left to tnm into.

I know folks have great luck with tnm. I don't. It is a struggle for me and typically a waste of time. I have not had enough success to depend on the tnm system for the majority of my food plot plantings. But, my best luck has come when planting into a good crop of standing weeds. I have not had good luck at all when planting into standing summer crops. Hopefully, the OP has great success with this system.

 

[Catscratch]

I always find it interesting how many approaches to TnM work for different people in different areas. I've been doing different experiments with TnM since the mid to late 90's. I've done many side by side comparisons between standing, mowed, and packed thatch. I've had the best germination (almost every time) with mowing, then standing, and lastly rolling. To be honest I haven't used a roller or packer for a couple of year and likely won't again, but you never know.

Jack mentions that the thatch just needs to be thick enough to get germination, then the thatch is free to decompose. Where I'm at a fall planting may germinate with a rain event, then have a month of hot 90+ degree's dry days. Thin thatch is a death sentence for that planting.

Kind of a general comment here; I know it can be confusing for newbies, but understand that what works for one area isn't the greatest for another. That's why there is some conflicting info on this thread. Follow some basic principles and make it work for you. Once you sit back and study things a little an approach will stick out to you and make sense.

 

[TreeDaddy]

I always find it interesting how many approaches to TnM work for different people in different areas. I've been doing different experiments with TnM since the mid to late 90's. I've done many side by side comparisons between standing, mowed, and packed thatch. I've had the best germination (almost every time) with mowing, then standing, and lastly rolling. To be honest I haven't used a roller or packer for a couple of year and likely won't again, but you never know.

Jack mentions that the thatch just needs to be thick enough to get germination, then the thatch is free to decompose. Where I'm at a fall planting may germinate with a rain event, then have a month of hot 90+ degree's dry days. Thin thatch is a death sentence for that planting.

Kind of a general comment here; I know it can be confusing for newbies, but understand that what works for one area isn't the greatest for another. That's why there is some conflicting info on this thread. Follow some basic principles and make it work for you. Once you sit back and study things a little an approach will stick out to you and make sense.

The local county extension and co-ops can be a wealth of information re: "what works,etc"

Cat's last paragraph is more a universal truth than general comment......ask me how i know.......

bill