Vet Judy

            By this time, your weed worries in your food plots may be a thing of the past.  Your food plot plantings may be well on their way to providing deer forage this fall.  However, if you’re establishing a new food plot this fall, there is a class of weeds that may prove quite troublesome.   They’re the cool-season weeds that thrive in the same conditions that some of your best food plot crops thrive.

            Cool-season broadleaf weeds can be especially troublesome, especially in areas a little farther south than mine.  (Weeds like deadnettle, common chickweed, and henbit have proven to be especially troublesome.)  Such weeds present particular problems when you’re trying to seed perennial crops in the late summer or fall.  Many perennial crops that are used in food plots can be slow to grow after seeding; this gives the weeds a great chance to overtake your plot. What a waste this would be prior to fall and winter hunting attraction goals for whitetail  or Mule Deer.

            Honestly, the best thing you can do under heavy weed pressure is spray the weeds.  The most effective sprays are pre-emergent herbicides that you can actually spray before seeding.  Obtain a local recommendation for these and be sure that any herbicides you use are properly applied.

            If you’re applying a post-emergent herbicide, take special care that the herbicide you choose won’t affect the variety of crops that may be in your food plots.  Some herbicides, for example, will affect legumes in younger stages but not in older stages.

Of course, replanting may sometimes be an option.  Like anything else that deals with food plots or growing other crops, you may sometimes have to start over from scratch!

For More information on Do It Yourself deer food Plots, please visit our website www.diydeerfoodplots.com/

            Deer food plot planters are well aware that the best food plots are those that are well planned.  In this fall season, I want to take a look at the flexibility that a fall-seeded small grain like wheat may give you next spring.

As I’ve mentioned in this blog before, wheat can be a most valuable deer food plot crop for winter and fall forage, especially in larger plantings.  But it’s time to review another advantage to winter wheat plantings beyond the food value: as preparation for planting spring legumes.

You have a couple options with the 60-120 pounds of wheat that you seed per acre in a fall planting.  It may be utilized for winter forage, and then fertilized in February to provide standing grain cover and habitat the following summer.  Larger wheat plantings, of course, can also be harvested for their grain value.

But wheat seedings in food plots may be most valuable for the flexibility that they give for frost seeded legumes in the early spring.  You can overseed clover or lespedeza into a wheat planting and provide valuable legume forage in the early spring and summer months.  Other legumes may be appropriate for seeding into a wheat stand depending on your location.