Winter Rye Questions?

[scott44]

That's what I was interested in was if anyone feels as if they prefer WR over brassica

Here in ohio we will get down to 0 degrees and even below that at the end of season and yes I have seen deer digging in the snow for WR and WW when there is nothing left to eat but having a few corn fields and beans around when it gets that cold the deer swarm to corn.. Their body naturally knows what they need nutrients wise that time of year when faced with that cold of temps

But to me like I said before I was really interested in the difference in Brassica vs WR attractiveness wise but doesn't seem like a big difference for a lot of people


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Rye and brassicas are a combo for me, rye feeds them fall till the snow gets too tall and then in the spring the rye will still be green under the snow. Brassicas feed them in the winter, they dig down through the snow for them. I think I will always have a combo for this reason.

 

[Reagan]

I don't live on my property so I don't keep tabs on things as closely as others.

I think it was knee high, maybe thigh high by the end of our turkey season in mid May. Most of my turkey hunting was out of state last year so I wasn't around the plots much.

Rye is about waist high when it goes to seed in the summer. Last year I looked at a plot around June or July. My dog jumped about 30 turkeys out of it. Most were young ones but they could fly into a tree. I though I was in SD with pheasants when they started taking off. My clover and rye was so deep and thick, I couldn't see a bird until we were on top of them.


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[Peeps]

Here are some past pics of one of my WR plots showing the growth from spring to July. If you look close you can see the clover I frost seeded into it.

 

[MojoRisin]

Hi, newbie to food plots here.

I planted WR as part of the LC mix on a new plot I created this year. Can I just let it grow next spring into summer and then mow/till it all under in July for my fall plot again? I was thinking of frost seeding some buckwheat and clover into there to give me more OM when I till it all under. Is there value to that approach?

 

[wiscwhip]

BW does not frost seed, if it germinates and gets hit with a couple more frosts, it will die. Red clover could/should have been put down with the rye this fall for "best" results, but red clover does frost seed about as good or better than any other crop. So yes, red clover broadcast into the sparse areas in the early spring will be fine.

Keep in mind that if you have a nice clover plot going when the rye seeds mature next summer, you can just mow it down and get "free" rye for next fall to keep it a rye/clover plot without doing much else. If you notice only spotty rye reseeding after you mow it, you can just walk through and broadcast more rye in August. No real need to till anything up unless you are looking to plant something else in that area.

 

[scott44]

Hi, newbie to food plots here.

I planted WR as part of the LC mix on a new plot I created this year. Can I just let it grow next spring into summer and then mow/till it all under in July for my fall plot again? I was thinking of frost seeding some buckwheat and clover into there to give me more OM when I till it all under. Is there value to that approach?

Did you add clover to the WR when you planted it? If not start adding some to the WR and you won't have to frost seed it in the spring, clover is really easy to establish in the late summer early fall with rye. I have never tried frost seeding buckwheat before but buckwheat is fairly easy to get going if you just broadcast it into the WR oce it warms up. I have one plot that has been a cereal grain plot for 4-5yrs and it seems to work ok for me, good luck!

 

[MojoRisin]

Thanks for the answers guys.

Yes, I did plant red clover along with WR, oats, radishes, and AWPs. This is a new plot so I want to turn it over before doing the plot next fall (to be planted in 2 strips with brassicas in one strip and the LC mix again in another). I do not have great soils and need the soil building capabilities from the green manure OM I can gain by turning it over. I was thinking that broadcasting in some buckwheat would help with the green manure (OM), food for the deer, and additional weed prevention.

Thanks for the heads-up on not frost seeding buckwheat. Is there any value to broadcast seeding some BW in late May?

 

[scott44]

Thanks for the answers guys.

Yes, I did plant red clover along with WR, oats, radishes, and AWPs. This is a new plot so I want to turn it over before doing the plot next fall (to be planted in 2 strips with brassicas in one strip and the LC mix again in another). I do not have great soils and need the soil building capabilities from the green manure OM I can gain by turning it over. I was thinking that broadcasting in some buckwheat would help with the green manure (OM), food for the deer, and additional weed prevention.

Thanks for the heads-up on not frost seeding buckwheat. Is there any value to broadcast seeding some BW in late May?

If you broadcast the BW I'd do it before a rain, BW seems to germinate for me pretty easy. It couldn't hurt to broadcast some BW in there.

 

[yoderjac]

BW does not frost seed, if it germinates and gets hit with a couple more frosts, it will die. Red clover could/should have been put down with the rye this fall for "best" results, but red clover does frost seed about as good or better than any other crop. So yes, red clover broadcast into the sparse areas in the early spring will be fine.

Keep in mind that if you have a nice clover plot going when the rye seeds mature next summer, you can just mow it down and get "free" rye for next fall to keep it a rye/clover plot without doing much else. If you notice only spotty rye reseeding after you mow it, you can just walk through and broadcast more rye in August. No real need to till anything up unless you are looking to plant something else in that area.

This is good advice. The questioner mentioned tilling under to build OM. I wanted to add that tillage introduces oxygen into the soil which increases the microbial consumption of OM. You can actually pick great crops to add OM and then lose more than you add by tilling it under. Keep this in mind when trying to build OM.

 

[MojoRisin]

If you're on sandy ground in the UP, you'll gain more by not tilling/turning over your crops

The soil is sandy for the most part. Why would I not want to turn it over? Wouldn't I want the green organic matter to help improve that "soil"?

If I don't turn it over, do I kill it off with Gly and then replant if I want a section of something different like the brassicas strip I mentioned doing next year?

 

[MojoRisin]

This is good advice. The questioner mentioned tilling under to build OM. I wanted to add that tillage introduces oxygen into the soil which increases the microbial consumption of OM. You can actually pick great crops to add OM and then lose more than you add by tilling it under. Keep this in mind when trying to build OM.

Thanks for that piece of information. That is why I am here. This is year 1 of food plotting for me. Lots to learn and lots of questions. Some of the books I read as well as reading threads by LC on QDMA talk about turning over green plots calling it green manure and saying that is better than fertilizer in some cases. I believe LC was a big advocate of that. Not sure what to do now.

 

[yoderjac]

The soil is sandy for the most part. Why would I not want to turn it over? Wouldn't I want the green organic matter to help improve that "soil"?

If I don't turn it over, do I kill it off with Gly and then replant if I want a section of something different like the brassicas strip I mentioned doing next year?

The short answer is in my previous post. To get a deeper understand, start with Ray the Soil Guy. His infiltration video is a good place to start: https://vimeo.com/channels/raythesoilguy/23850878

When you've watched a few of his videos, you will understand the principles, but most of the application is focused at commercial farmers with large no-till equipment. Next, look at Crimson-N-Camo's Throw-N-Grow thread: http://www.habitat-talk.com/index.php?threads/the-throw-n’-mow-method.5510/

He takes the underlying principles that Ray talks about and shows how small equipment food plotters can apply them.

Thanks,

Jack

 

[yoderjac]

Thanks for that piece of information. That is why I am here. This is year 1 of food plotting for me. Lots to learn and lots of questions. Some of the books I read as well as reading threads by LC on QDMA talk about turning over green plots calling it green manure and saying that is better than fertilizer in some cases. I believe LC was a big advocate of that. Not sure what to do now.

There is no simple answer. There are benefits and risks with all planting methods. Folks with good soils can get away with a lot of abuse and not see any consequence until many years of abuse. Folks on marginal soils will see those consequences sooner. Deep tillage has the benefit of weed control without the consequences of herbicides. Throw-N-Mow and No-Till approaches rely more on herbicides and they have consequences.

I'm not suggesting that no one should ever till. It just depends on the situation. For example, I have heavy clay but low OM. I'm working on soil health and minimizing my tillage and building OM. However, my clay tends to crust on top making throw-n-grow and no-till difficult. Some seeds have a hard time breaking through that crust. I will sometimes take a tiller and set it so high that the tines are barely hitting the top inch of soil. I'll move quickly and till the field. The tiller chews up the vegetation and gets just a little soil mixed with it. When you look at one of these fields, you pretty much see dirty, dead vegetation, not soil like a tilled field. On the "old forum" there were some threads that referred to this as "Thirt", a mix a thatch and dirt. I'm not sure if I've seen that term here.

Another example of where I needed deep tillage is in reclaiming old logging decks. The top soil had been removed and heavy logging equipment had compressed my clay so badly that weeds would not even grow on it. I ended up using a sub-soiler to decompress it. They are now great food plots after a few years of building OM.

It is not easy, but you've got to figure out what works best for you. I'm just trying to say that building OM is not as simply as tilling under a cover crop.

Thanks,

jack

 

[MojoRisin]

Thanks for those posts Jack. I will watch the video and check out the thread. So much to learn. Thank goodness for the internet and the kind folks like yourself who are willing to assist others.

 

[swat1018]

Many plants contribute as much OM below the soil with the root mass as from above. WR, brassicas, etc.

 

[wiscwhip]

The soil is sandy for the most part. Why would I not want to turn it over? Wouldn't I want the green organic matter to help improve that "soil"?

If I don't turn it over, do I kill it off with Gly and then replant if I want a section of something different like the brassicas strip I mentioned doing next year?

Take it from someone who planted food plots on the beach sand lake bottom of Glacial Lake Wisconsin(Google it) back before "foodplotting" was even a thing. The old man just called it the "deer food patch". DO NOT till, disk, plow(especially plow), or otherwise dig into that sand any more than you absolutely have to! At the very most a light pass over with a spike toothed harrow, and even that isn't really needed. A chain-link fence drag is usually sufficient to bury seed if you plant something like oats that prefer to be covered. My dad listened to my uncles who farmed all their lives in another adjacent county on nice deep black dirt and they convinced him to keep plowing and discing that soil(sand) for almost 20 years(because that's what "good farmers" do) before I convinced him otherwise. By then, even the grains of sand had been hit by "steel" so much that they turned it into a fine powder that dried out even faster than the surrounding areas that were never "turned", it also took our OM from somewhere around 1-1.5 % to basically nothing. It could rain 2" in an afternoon and within a day or 2 of 80 degree weather with a bit of wind, the top 4" to 5" of soil would be bone dry. Literally nothing but sandburs and cereal rye would grow there. Leave the "steel" in the equipment shed................

 

[yoderjac]

The above two posts really hit the nail on the head. I would trade in my plow for daikon radish. Because these produce such large tubers below the ground, they are sometimes called "Organic Tillage" just like buckwheat is sometimes called "Green Manure". By the way, since you are new to this, any daikon radish will work just fine. Don't buy the hype all the brands try to sell. You will see it in many posts as GHR which stands for Groundhog Radish. That is just one brand name that happens to be pretty cheap. Some will have words like "Trophy", "Tillage", or some kind of similar word in the brand name. They are all Daikon Radish. Like cereal grain, I buy it on price. I use to order GHR from Welter Seed and Honey because it was less expensive than the brands my local coop carried even with shipping. This year my local coop changed brands I'm using Eco-Till Radish because it is cheaper.

One more thought here. I had to learn about other soil types to understand my own soils and match techniques to my situation. Wiscwhip not only has hands on experience with your soil type, he is in your region. I'd weight his advice more heavily than mine since I'm in a different zone and have the almost opposite soil type.

Thanks,

Jack

 

[Tree Spud]

Not sure if this has been mentioned, but winter rye is also aleopathic. It will suppress grass and weed growth.

 

[Corbin.clay]

Come April and Turkey season in NC, my rye is normally knee high except for the areas I mow down early spring. I mow some paths through it to keep some of it green as long as possible. Some years it works (depending rainfall), some it dies out. By end of season, rye is starting to dry and set seed ( again depending on spring rain). I put some rye in every plot I plant, even brassicas, to ensure something survives to feed the deer.

 

[MojoRisin]

Thanks again everyone on the advice to not till. You saved me many headaches. I am glad I found this and decided to join and ask versus just lurking like I was doing on QDMA.

I went and read the Throw and Mow thread and am pretty excited about what I learned there.

As an FYI, I got alot of my seed (WR, oats, AWP) from the coop-type place in Escanaba MI. I did not buy any of the name brands, but I do try to support Grandpa Rays. That place has been very helpful to me too.