Vet Judy

when getting ready to do a food plot tillage is often a big question. What do I need? What is available and what does what.

There are basically three different types of plows that you might run into when looking for tillage equipment for your do it yourself deer food plot.

There are disc, moldboard, and chisel plows.  In the disc plows for plots and other tillage requirements there is a big round disc which goes deep into the soil and rolls the soil over and mixes it. Not to be confused with a disc for finer work.

The moldboard plow is a breaking tool also. It lift the soil column and then drops in back down inverted.

The chisel plow is one that has long shanks that go into the ground. These are narrow shanks and do not mix or disturb the soil, they just break it up.

Do not confuse this with a subsoiler which goes much deeper as this severe depth is rarely required in food plots.

For more information on deer food plots see this resources page: http://www.diydeerfoodplots.com/articles/whitetail-deer-food-plots.html

Tillage is basically a depth and particle size concept going from the deepest to the shallowest penetration and from the largest particles to the smallest.

What tillage does is basically break soil into finer and finer particles in preparation for seeding.

The suprising thing is not all soils or plots even need tillage to get your food plot started. And there are some disadvantages to tilling the ground. For example. turning the soil over or disturbing the soil exposes new weeds and dormant seeds. These can then become strong competitors for your recently planted deer food plot.

So the best advice is only go as deep as you need to in the tillage action. How do you decide what you need to do and how deep you need to go. Consider the following:

1. What you are going to plant? Small seed or large seed? Deep roots or shallow roots?

2. What is the depth of the healthy soil in your plot? Do you have only an inch or two of surface dirt before you hit sand or clay?

3. Potential Moisture issues. Are you in a notoriously dry area, or is rainfall practically the enemy?

4. New site or a site that has already been used or prepared.

5. How much money can you or are you willing to invest? How big the plot is and what is available to you in terms of tilling options for behind your truck, atv, or hand tilling.

Keep posted and I will continue the saga of Tillage in days to come. I will even have some hints for those people with no cash, no land, no plot…..that is the no tillage, no plot, natural resource plotting concepts applied to the great outdoors in hard to reach, out of the way, no one knows it is there kind of places.

            Anytime you go into a place that hasn’t been cultivated and do some cultivating, you’re going to disturb thousands upon thousands of seeds that have been waiting for something to disturb them.  These seeds are called “weeds,” and they’ll love you for making a food plot.  Here are some tips to keeping the weeds from growing where you want your deer food plots to grow.

·         Get an early start

            Weed control is just another good reason to begin planning your food plot in the spring—even when you won’t be planting until late summer.  When we establish new plots, we go in during the spring when the grass is a few inches high a spray the field with glyphosate (Roundup™).  Glyphosate is a very safe herbicide and gives us a good “burndown” before tilling a few weeks later.

·         Spray it again

            An initial application of Roundup™ won’t take care of all the weeds, though.  So come back in the middle of the summer and do another burndown.  This second application, combined with the tillage for your late summer seeding, will take out a lot of those weed seeds.  For new plot sites where there may be a lot of weed pressure, another burndown application might also be an option.

 A herbicide like glyphosate easily and economically applied to plots sized less than a few acres.  If you don’t have the sort of sprayer that can easily do a whole acre, you may be able to hire the application rather inexpensively from a local farmer or farm supply business.  I hear from friends in the States that this can often be done for around $30-$40 per acre, and I think you’ll find a $75 investment that keeps the weeds of your food plot to be worthwhile.

Once you have your weeds under control first, then you can move onto choosing what to plant. I love annuals especially when you spend most of your first year just dealing with the weed issues. For more information on annuals see article: http://www.diydeerfoodplots.com/articles/annual-forages.html

            Because we’ve all been trained to keep fire out of forests, prescribed burning can be a controversial topic.  But well-managed “burns” are one of the professional wildlife manager’s best tools in the control of habitat.  They might also be an option for you in planning for your deer food plot.

            Like you already know, I’m a vet.  So let me issue a little disclaimer here that, if your local regulations allow you to choose to use prescribed burning, be sure to notify the appropriate local authorities.  If you’ve never performed any large scale burning for your food plots before, it’s also a good idea to get a land management professional to help you devise a plan.

            A plan is essential for a prescribed burn, and it’s crucial to the success of your food plot (or other land management goal) that you have an adequate goal in mind for the burn and a plan that helps you meet that goal. 

            A quick search of the Internet reveals other benefits to prescribed burning.  Burning can help reduce invasive trees and shrubs, manage grassland, and remove excessive leaf cover.  It can also help in diversifying the species on your ground and aid in controlling some kinds of plant diseases.

            For deer food plot establishment, especially a design that is seeking to intersperse natives with supplemental plantings, burning offers another benefit.  There are some native legumes and grasses that are beneficial to deer where the seed actually benefits from the seed coat being burned (called scarification).  Burning can help “open up” these seeds for better germination.

            Always, always do any kind of open burning under appropriate weather conditions and with the proper authorities notified.

Controlling perennial weeds in food plots, with expansive root systems can be very challenging and you usually have to use all control methods at your disposal.

Remember three key words: mow, till and spray!

In the case of bracken fern, if it is coming out of the woods and into the plot, it will likely take years of effort consistently applied. Try cutting and spraying, but don’t get your hopes too high in eliminating it. It is almost impossible to eliminate when originating from nearby woods, but steady vigilance may help you keep it from overtaking your plot.

In a food plot environment, a writer for our website www.diydeerfoodplots.com, recommended the following approach. 

He sprays in the fall the first year, when the plant is still green so it pulls some of the chemical into the root system. Then he uses a tillage in the spring to remove the foliage and spray the regrowth. He is back at it after the emergence has died with yet another tillage. Then he sprays regrowth again.  So, three spraying the first year, fall and two spring-early summer application. 

He then plants an annual species like chicory, rapeseed or forage oats. Check out our tips on annuals at www.diydeerfoodplots.com/articles/7bv78nn.html

For those of you with deer food plots, you may need to plant only Annual Forages on that plot for two or three years using multiple spring and early summer chemical applications to get control of the fern.

If you have had bracken fern or other perennial weed problems it is best to get started early this year with an early mowing, or a hard tillage pass - literally working the area hard followed by a chemical application after a good six inches of regrowth or so.

Colin, had the following comments to add to my previous post on bracken fern control: It is doubtful whether or not you can get the type of tillage completed, for that first pass anyway, with four-wheeler attachments.  This will take a larger tractor and heavy tillage equipment - like a moldboard plow or a ripper.  Then till the area again, which four-wheeler and attachments may work, as the second pass shouldn’t need to be as extensive and then spray the re-growth again. 

Your client could then plant an Annual Forage in late July or the first week of August.  Due to the root system nature of this plant they will have to do the same thing next year again.  It will take a dedicated effort of weed control and using an Annual Forage for the first two years, at least.  I wouldn’t fertilize yet, and just get what you can from the annual.  If you fertilize it may stimulate further weed growth.