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/

Accurately determining the size of your deer food plot is one of the elements of having a successful food plot. It determines proper seeding rates, lime application and fertilizing rates. Here are some examples of how just guessing can lead to big problems in your food plot.

a) Too little seed leads to poor uniformity and decreased competition for weeds. The result here: you spend tonnes more time in weed control and your deer food plot annuals or perennials forage won’t flourish.

b) Too much seed result in plants that are too close together. They don’t get proper nutrition due to competition from their own. This results in plants that are more susceptable to poor moisture levels, decreased fertility in the soil, and increased weed competition.

c) Too much lime may potentially swing the pH to the opposite side of neutral. Neither acidic nor basic soils are good for most plant types that we chooose for our food plots. The vast majority of soils are acidic enough that this may seem unlikely, but I have seen it happen.

d) Too little lime or lime applied to the wrong level in the soil will not raise the pH sufficiently. This means the soil will remain more acidic than you would like and the nutrients and the fertilizer will not be available to the same extent. You may as well throw you money out!

e) Too much fertilizer is a bit self explanatory given the cost of fertilizer. Remember anything you do for the plants, you do for the weeds. The other important thing is that too much of a good thing can actually be toxic to the plants you are desperately working to grow.

f) Too little fertilizer is a little like depriving yourself of proper nutrition and then wondering why you are sick and weak and feel awful. You need to give the soil what it needs based on your soil test, nothing short of that is really a good idea for the forage, even if money is tight. It leads to weaker plants and thinner forage and may allow weeds and schrubs to take over the plot. Then you will end of spending money dealing with that problem.

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

I had a client email me with the following question regarding food plots for deer and corn:

Just want to know if there is any difference in corn for the deer. I have a four row corn planter , and plan on planting  5 acre in central Michigan. The choice is sweet corn or field corn. Are there any other types of food plots  that will attract deer and keep them in the area.

I thought I would post the response here, in case any other deer food plot growers have a similar question.

Cow varieties are best. Avoid sweet corn and white corn.

Consider using an annual if this is your first plot, rather than corn, this will allow you to get the weeds under control in the first few years of the plot. I would plant corn though as a transition along the edge of your plot, especially if there is no natural transition zone. Just a thought.

Disadvantages of corn:

-not cheap to plant

-higher fertilizer needs

-fussy about pH , like 6 to 7

-doesn’t tolerate drought too well ( I don’t know about you, but we didn’t get the usual snowfall this year)

-needs very good weed control

-ideally should be planted in plots over 5 acres  as deer can consume 2-4 acres in a short time and totally ruin the advantage of having a plot

Advantages of corn in food plots:

-good winter attractant

-considered candy to deer (if you can keep them from destroying it before you need it)

-best mixed with sorghum (grain or forage), soybeans, cow peas or American jointvetch .

corn for deer food plots can be used in combination as well. Some of the combinations  people like are:

-corn with sorghum

-corn, cow peas, and soybeans

-corn, jointvetch, and cow peas (the jointvetch can tolerate heavy grazing)

I would consider keeping your plot a little simpler to start, until you have success under your belt. If you still want to go ahead with corn, keep it to the transition zone. If want to go for the corn plot in spite of some of the disadvantages go combination planting as listed above.

Check out the following links to see more information on food plot annuals and also successful food plot recommendations for those planting new plots or others wanting to revive their old ones.

http://www.diydeerfoodplots.com/articles/6dfs678.html

http://www.diydeerfoodplots.com/articles/7bv78nn.html

As spring approaches many people will be succession planning their food plots and giving some thought to location strategies, plant selection and weed control. Feel free to email me a question at any time jmcfarlen@diydeerfoodplots.com. Sometimes I am swamped with questions, especially at this time of year, but I will get back to you as soon as I can. You can also check out the resource page at http://www.diydeerfoodplots.com/resources.html for more good strategies and suggestions.

Have a great winter day out there today:)

Dr. Judy