I’m telling you this mix will work.
@Baker has a video on here showing his plots of it and we know his deer. It cannot be overwhelmed if you give it success.
@TreeDaddy i planted I in late April before I did my other fields. That way they would have plenty to eat until this mix gets established.
Way I did it. I planted 10/10 of Alyce clover and aeschynomene. That’s exact mix baker uses. I cut the plot short a week or two before planting. I used 2 quarts/acre of gly and 4oz/acre of imox. This year I will roller crimp at planting instead of cut before, which should protect growing plants. I will also use pursuit 4oz/acre and pendimethalin 1quart/acre. I had no problems last year, but this gives a longer effect, about double of imox. I will still use gly, but don’t know that I have to with crimping rye. Long term I want a lot of reseeding and plant to try without herbicides when I get fields in great shape.
I do rotate my fields like grant woods. baker just does dedicated fields of this stuff. It stays green well into November, and he uses for bow hunting. You could easily let it stay palatable until late, then just broadcast rye and clover over the top. I drilled into it at planting time my normal fall mix in mid October. It knocked it way down, but kept growing into November. Next year I will leave some strips I drilled to break plot up and almost act like a plot screen. My mix got 6-7 feet tall.
Where I think I made it a bit better is I added 3lbs of igrowth sorghum and 2lbs of Clearfield sunflowers. Both are tolerant of imi herbicides. They grew early almost like a nurse crop, looked beautiful, and added a grass. Once the deer vetch/alyce gets thick (takes 2 months or so) it fills in so thick very few weeds would have a chance. I will add sun hemp this year for more height. Long term I want to add teosinte but can’t use the imi herbicides. Could still crimp and or use gly.
My goal is for all these to reseed. Baker doesn’t add new seed for 5 years, making this mix about as cheap as you can get. I’m not sure planting a fall crop into it will allow this so still playing with it. Mowing and or light discing in spring should make it all pop back up. Might use the Firminator for that, and long term just add a few pounds of the sorghum, hemp, and sunflowers yearly.
In fall the sorghum heads turn red and are beautiful. I’ve never seen so many doves. And, right now every single head has been eaten off, I assume by deer. I don’t think sorghum would reseed because the seeds are so dang palatable to everything.
