Food plots.

[CJ1]

I'm curious to know how many others on this site maintain a food plot for their wildlife? I'd also like to hear what all you folks plant in them? Are you focusing on summer and fall feeding or late fall winter feeding or if you plant for all four seasons.

I really look forward to hearing everyone's opinions and methods.

 

[CJ1]

Interesting.

As an aside. Rats are more nutritious ounce for ounce than beef.

 

[Beekissed]

We are going to try something different this year for food plot planting...I've searched the web and can't find anyone else doing it this way, so this should be interesting. It's a no till approach, which many are doing but they do it by using RoundUp to kill all the weeds, then planting seed into the dead weeds....then they mow the weeds down to provide a mulch for the seeds.

Since we don't like poisoning the land to grow crops in poison so we can eat deer meat fed on poison, we're going to spread round bales of mulch hay to kill the existing growth, frost seed the crop and let the hay provide a mulch for it all. May spread some blood meal or soy meal to top dress it for added nitrogen later.

In effect, it should/would do the same as killing all the weeds and using them for mulch, but without all the poison and using the hay for mulch instead.

 

[tortoise]

My plan for 2 of the 3 food plots this year is mangel beets in one and excess squash/pumpkin/zucchini seed in the other. I don't have a weed control plan. Might cover crop the squash vine plot with clover.

@Beekissed , I read an interesting no til weed approach. Start with raked soil and grow a nice crop of weed seedlings. Nurture them - try to get all the weed seed on top to grow. Then at cotelydon state, hoe them or burn them. Try to not disturb the soil. To avoid exposing other latent weed seed. You could repeat this a couple times in a row. Then with weed seed in the soil reduced, sow your crop.

 

[Mini Horses]

I live surrounded by several hundred acres of crop land & some hay fields. Never need to plant anything for the wild ones as they eat from the growing and glean after harvests....wheat, corn, cotton, milo, soybean, mainly. One side I have about 12 acres, other 50 and front 40. Woods surround and the deer give me a show every morning & evening. Wild turkey are abundant. So, I don't need to help them, LOL. I do buy and plant strips in my pastures with the "food plot" mixes that are sold to seed for the deer, mixing in some extra turnips, grazing alfalfa, etc. My animals get to rotate thru the pastures and each picks their own "fav".

Several hundred in crops behind the strip of woods behind me. Well fed animals around my area. Good hunting but, I don't.

 

[Britesea]

Fava as a cover crop. They have one of the highest nitrogen-fixing rates of all

 

[sumi]

This sounds like an interesting way to do it, Beekissed. Please let us know how it turns out!

 

[baymule]

I like the wild sunflowers, so now I have about a million of them. I pull a few at a time, toss to pigs or chickens. Free treats. I also let a lambs quarters go to seed, have a gazillion of those too. The chickens go nuts over them, so do the sheep. If they get too out of hand, I just drop cardboard on them and mulch heavily.

Thinking about making a fenced off "weed garden" in the pastures so the sheep can enjoy them.

 

[HomesteaderWife]

Our deer are big fans of suprisingly- winter rye, corn, okra, beans, clover....and they once devoured our pumpkins. In general, we keep persimmon trees cleaned up for them and plant rye. Though other local hunter swear by a food plot of turnips, clover, millet, and wheat mix for combined deer/turkey plot

 

[wyoDreamer]

The deer around here won't touch a turnip until after a hard frost. My dad sat and watch a doe dig up turnips one evening- said she was very determined to get a really big one exposed and out of the ground.

DH tried to grow black beans out in the field one year - deer ate them before they even got their second set of leaves...