Food plots.

[CJ1]

Mini. We have thousands of acres of farm land around us. And while that is good food for them during the summer and early fall, as soon as it's harvested much of the wildlife leaves and heads to the bottoms down by the river.

 

[Mini Horses]

River here is about 6 miles away. But the winter wheat gives them grazing all during cold and the forests have a lot of hardwood, so acorns, etc. Mine are here year round.

Nice to see them.

 

[CJ1]

The Mississippi is right around 15 miles as the crow flies from where we are. You will see some of the younger does and bucks stick around over the winter. But the older ones leave. Leaving the younger to go hungry and get picked off by the growing coyote population and other larger predators that have been moving south.

As a side note. When I got home from work I took my afternoon walk and saw signs of pig. So I suppose it's time to do some summer time culling. They can do a lot of damage really quick.

Looks like I'm calling in to work on Saturday.

 

[tortoise]

Last year our food plots flopped. DH did soil test last week, there's NO nitrogen in the soil. NONE. He bought fertilizer.

We plan to plant alfalfa, kale, and sunflowers in food plots. Sunflower because the ground squirrels eat sunflower seed out of the garden!!

 

[Britesea]

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

 

[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.

 

[sumi]

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

 

[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.

 

[frustratedearthmother]

Sounds like an idea worth trying!

 

[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.