Plot is in the ground!

F

F12Mahon

Member
I tilled my half acre food plot yesterday (Saturday). Then I spread 5 pounds of white clover, 10 pounds of medium red clover, mixed into 40 pounds of oats. For the oats I just picked up a bag of feed oats at Farm and Fleet. Then I spread 40 pounds of black oil sunflower seeds. Then I raced the sunset to spread a pound of Eco-Till daikon radish. This was the variety that was available locally. Today I used a spike tooth drag harrow to cover the seeds. Either black birds or starlings were making a meal from my provided buffet.

Had some time to meander and found a pine tree of some kind. It's the first I have seen in that area of my farm. Tomorrow I'm going to cage it and see what kind it is. Also going to put up an exclusion cage in the food plot. I planted millet and sunflowers last year and didn't put up a cage and regretted it. No sunflowers made it past about 8 inches.They simply disappeared. I think they became a cervid meal. (Had to look that up.)

I found this study of daikon radish from VA Cooperative Extension. Looks like it is a good variety. I don't know what variety is pictured but one of them had a 29 inch taproot! Study Link

Eugene

Edit to add the link leads to a pdf file.
 
Those are definitely some high seeding rates. Maybe the birds will thin it out a bit. I love using sunflowers as my deer gobble them up quickly after emerging but I plant at a rate of about 15# per acre. The biggest problem is over competition with that heavy of seed rates. Keep us updated on how your plot doe .
Good luck
Todd
 
seed rate is very high. Good luck though I hope it works for you and like others said keep us posted
 
Half that much oats and clover, with the pound of radish, would have been perfect. Hopefully the deer will totally wipe out the sunflowers again, because if they don't and those canopy, nothing else planted will grow much. I hope you have good success with this mix and prove us all wrong, but in most scenarios you'll find that less seed actually gives better results.
 
Boy did I have a brain fart. I was going to keep half the clover to interseed in other grassy spots. Was so excited about getting my plot done I put it all in food plot. I feel kinda embarrassed.

Eugene
 
F12Mahon said:
Boy did I have a brain fart. I was going to keep half the clover to interseed in other grassy spots. Was so excited about getting my plot done I put it all in food plot. I feel kinda embarrassed.

Eugene
Click to expand...
I was planting two clover/chicory plots one year and needed 5# of chicory in each plot. I had been working in the heat and was tired and dumped all 10 # in the seed hopper with the clover. When I went to seed the 2nd plot I couldn't figure out where the rest of my chicory was. Let's just say that first plot had a lot of chiCory and the 2nd plot has none.
 
F12Mahon said:
Boy did I have a brain fart. I was going to keep half the clover to interseed in other grassy spots. Was so excited about getting my plot done I put it all in food plot. I feel kinda embarrassed.

Eugene
Click to expand...
It happens. I've done most habitat things wrong every possible way before I ever got them right.
 
I'm impatient so I went to look things over today. I didn't think to take a picture but I found a half inch wrench sprouted. :) I wondered where that went.

Eugene
 
F12Mahon said:
I tilled my half acre food plot yesterday (Saturday). Then I spread 5 pounds of white clover, 10 pounds of medium red clover, mixed into 40 pounds of oats. For the oats I just picked up a bag of feed oats at Farm and Fleet. Then I spread 40 pounds of black oil sunflower seeds. Then I raced the sunset to spread a pound of Eco-Till daikon radish. This was the variety that was available locally. Today I used a spike tooth drag harrow to cover the seeds. Either black birds or starlings were making a meal from my provided buffet.

Had some time to meander and found a pine tree of some kind. It's the first I have seen in that area of my farm. Tomorrow I'm going to cage it and see what kind it is. Also going to put up an exclusion cage in the food plot. I planted millet and sunflowers last year and didn't put up a cage and regretted it. No sunflowers made it past about 8 inches.They simply disappeared. I think they became a cervid meal. (Had to look that up.)

I found this study of daikon radish from VA Cooperative Extension. Looks like it is a good variety. I don't know what variety is pictured but one of them had a 29 inch taproot! Study Link

Eugene

Edit to add the link leads to a pdf file.
Click to expand...
Did you spread lime and fertilizer? With that heavy seeding fertilizer would help things grow. Triple nineteen if you want to feed everything, two ten forty if you want the clover to get established.
 
Jason Broom said:
On half an acre? :eek:

That's 52 pounds of each nutrient...what did your soil survey call for?
Click to expand...
Previous year soil survey called for 1000 lbs. per acre of 6-12-12 but I didn't put it on then. It also called for 1200 lbs. of lime which I did put on last year. I didn't do a soil survey this year.This plot is on top of a hill that is classified as highly erodible land.
Also from the soil survey.
pH 6.0
CEC 7.9
Organic Matter 2.6%

Eugene
 
F12Mahon said:
Previous year soil survey called for 1000 lbs. per acre of 6-12-12 but I didn't put it on then. It also called for 1200 lbs. of lime which I did put on last year. I didn't do a soil survey this year.This plot is on top of a hill that is classified as highly erodible land.
Also from the soil survey.
pH 6.0
CEC 7.9
Organic Matter 2.6%

Eugene
Click to expand...
You are doing all of the right things. With highly erodible soil the nutrients tend to wash away. It's important to keep tillage to a minimum to help build your soils, preserve the fert you put on and get more organic matter in the ground. Organic matter is key to building that type of soil. I'm guessing everything will germinate but not take off really fast in growing those tons of forage that we all want, but hopefully you get a decent plot for the year. No matter what, doing food plots is fun and if you continue doing what you did next year's plot will be even better! Keep us posted on the progress of your plantings.
 
I checked my plot today. It looks like I had 70 to 90 percent germination. Radish might cause a problem. Way to thick. It has already formed a canopy and is only about 4" tall. The pound I planted is strip about 4' wide by 300' long. I used an Earthway handheld spreader and on a low setting I made one trip the length of my plot. A couple weeks after sowing I saw quite a few sunflower hulls on top of the ground. Not all of the seed was incorporated so was subject to bird eating. Deer have left a few tracks but the only thing I saw browsed was one black raspberry bush seedling and some golden rod.
nipped black raspberry.jpg nipped goldenrod.jpg

There is no shortage of moisture. What is need is some sunshine.

Eugene
 
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