Do you have weeds in your whitetaildeer food plots that you can’t seem to get rid of? Are these weeds interfering with a successful deer food plot. What helps is to understand the different types of weeds and their natural biologic behaviour. Once you understand weeds, it is easier for you to develop a successful strategy to fight them and not contribute to their distribution.
Just like with plants of any sort, weeds can be grouped by their behavior and growth patterns. There are annuals, biennials, and perennials.
Annuals are the most common weed found in your deer food plots . These weeds have the following characteristics.
a.Lots of dormant seed
b.Grow fast
c.Produce high numbers of seed
d.Can be both winter or summer
Summer annual weeds germinate in spring or summer while winter annual weeds will germinate in late summer or fall. The summer annuals will die before winter, remain dormantin soil for the winter or in some cases for years before emerging again. The winter annual weedsoverwinter in their vegetative form then in spring or early summer they flower, set seed and matureand die with seeds dormant in summer months.
Annual weeds are the biggest concern in fall seeded crops (ex winter wheat and alfalfa) which go through winter dormant period.
The Biennial weed life cycle lasts two years. In the first year the plant forms basal leaves(rosette) and a tap root. In the second year the flower comes, matures and dies.
perennial weeds are those that live 2 or more years. What makes them difficult to control is their re-sprouting roots, rhizomes, stolons, tubers, and plant fragments which can all result in regrowth.
The perennial weeds are spread by two routes: simple or creeping. With simple there is re-sprouting from crown buds on tap root and spreed from seed. In this case the roots are fleshy, may be large (dandelion). Creeping weeds reproduce by creeping roots(canadian thistle, field bindweed), or above ground stems (runners or stolons) (bentgrass, bermudagrass) or below ground stems(rhizomes)(quackgrass, johnson grass). These also reproduce by seed.
Some of the more common weeds that spread by simple means are: dandelion, curly dock, buckhorn plantain, broadleaf plantain, poke weed.
The common weeds that are spread by creeping include leafy spurge, field bindweed, canadian thistle, mouseear chickweed, ground ivy, bermudagrass, johnson grass, quackgrass, and yellow nutsedge.
My recommendation on controlling these weeds: Do not let the seedlings get established. Once they have established the perennial weeds are the most difficult group to control. If this occurs you will spend a lot of time dealing with these weeds and it may require cultivation repeated, herbicide, and mowing.
A lot of us are looking for low maintenance food plots. As such, we may inadvertently contribute to the weed problem. If we neglect proper mowing, judicious use of chemicals, get involved in excessive tillage, or till improperly we may be making the problem worse.
In the next segment we will talk about different methods of weed control available for your deer food plots.
We are please to provide you with resources on the subject of deer food plots. This is the first in a series of educational videos on doing your own deer food plots. If you are interested in food plots stay tuned for our series.
for more information on planting your food plots. We can make the process easier for you.
For those of you also interested in small game and turkey food plots, the good news is, there is overlap and you can achieve results for small game hunting with your whitetail food plot.
Have you read about using native grasses as part of your deer food plot strategy? A friend of mine and I recently had a discussion about the use of this native grass for whitetaildeer food plots. Here are some thoughts:
It makes for excellent escape and bedding cover - Native grass stands like switchgrass, or plantings with more diversity, big bluestem, indiangrass etc, are excellent ideas for land managers improving wildlife cover for deer habitat. But I would use these types of plantings as stand alone habitat improvement projects - the larger the better.
I could see where these strips of switchgrass and brush, evergreens could break up a paddock enough to create a situation where a buck would need to investigate things a bit more. I can also see it on a site where it’s a large open area where these strips would add more diversity, edge and cover. But most paddocks sites, acre or so in size - I don’t see much value to it. Large sites, yeah I can see it, but the plantings of switch
and trees would be more of a habitat improvement plan than a “hunting” thing.
A person could structure the strips to converge at a tree stand area, as when they do become established they will create travel lanes. I don’t see ten or twenty foot wide strips doing it though - more like 50′ plus.
Also, you would want to plan a tall variety of switchgrass - there are several different varieties out there. It may take, and usually does take three years for it to establish.These warm season grasses need good sun to soil contact for the grasses to come and they grow well from late June through August.
Some people have recommended clover with it. However, I would not plant anything with it. clover would already be up and would shade the ground and would certainly set-back growth of your switchgrass.
If you manage your food plots well ie mowing, spraying and tillage I don’t see the switchgrass spreading much - so that wouldn’t concern me. I do see a place for it if you have a large food plot area. The best place for this type of an approach would be a larger area where dedicating both food plots and additional cover interspressed together.
Say you have a fallow field of twenty acres or so, here you would really only need about five acres of food plot - which can be a lot to manage depending upon the equipment you have. If you created cover areas, with native grass, evergreens and shrubs and spread the paddocks out in the area it would add a lot of diversity, edge and habitat.
Trees, shrubs do take quite awhile to estiblish, as you well know, and the switchgrass, native grass planting does come much faster and is some really nice cover. I really don’t see a 10 foot wide strip of swithcgrass creating much cover, or something deer would really use all that much. The thing is though - there are sites where creating a corridor of grass cover may really help “dictate” deer travel.
So I can see some value to it depending on the site - sites would have to be large enough where the site demands both both food plot and habitat improvement “cover” together. Most food plots are small, and if they are too big to cover from one stand, you likely would want different stand locations at the food plot anyway to address varying wind directions.
Native grass - switchgrass can be an awesome habitat improvement tool - I just don’t see small narrow strips of grass really doing much. Now, a strip of natives, say fifty feet wide or so with some evergreens planted with it…. You may have something there!
For a free Chapter Download of deer food Plots Made Easy
Most hunters become interested in food plots because of the utility of plots for attraction and harvest during hunting season.It is often said, when it comes to deer hunting, he who has the food wins!
During the rut, the food is where the does are, and the bucks are out there looking for them. After the rut, the bucks are under pressure to find nutritious food to recover from the rigors of the rut and to increase fat stores in preparation for the winter.
The concept of food plotting is to create and enhance available food sources. This, in turn, may influence deer travel patterns. whitetail deer are selective feeders, consistently eating in their home range as long as palatable food is available there. Lucky for us, they will also move to other areas if better options are made available.
Once a person starts food plotting, they often develop a secondary interest in habitat management.What starts out as a project to create a single hunting plot can turn into a life long passion for native resource management as well as creating both feeding and hunting plots.
L arger scale habitat management includes water, tree resource and deer population management. If you are interested in larger scale management of your deer herd, the best resource I can suggest for complete habitat management is the Quality Deer Management Association”s: Deer Steward Certification Courses.
If you are interested in reading more on food plot Design Strategies, feel free to stop by my website at www.diydeerfoodplots.com/ and download (free) the first chapter to my ebook deer food Plots Made Easy.
Be sure not to neglect the biggest nutrient requirement for you deer this fall: water.
The availability of water is crucial both when designing and maintaining your food plot.You always want to be careful to retain natural sources of water.There are plenty of examples of poor wildlife habitat management where wetlands or other natural water sources were removed—at the later expense of providing natural wildlife water sources.
Adequate access to water is especially important for whitetail deer in the fall months.These are the months when deer are making the transition to shrubby vegetation after the fall frosts kill off the more succulent summer forage.In dry years, some ponds that provide water for deer may also dry up, leaving them dependent on permanent streams for water.
If you’re doing fall tillage or planting, be sure to leave access to water along natural trails and runs used by deer.In fact, access to water should be just an important consideration in your land management scheme as access to cover.This again illustrates the value of advance planning: it allows you to maximize the deer habitat requirements.
If you’re in an area that has been particularly dry this year, providing supplemental water near your deer food plot may be an option that you wish to consider.Livestock watering troughs are an easy option for providing supplemental water for the deer on your property.Be sure that, when you are maintaining water troughs, you are filling them up at times that deer are not likely to be grazing the food plot.
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