Late summer plots for deep south

[Brian]

Buck268 has an excellent thread going in which he posed the question of whether he shouldn't just ditch summer plots and plant clover and chicory with a small patch of turnips & radishes??? Lots of good discussion, but not all of it works for us guys in the deep south... so rather than hijack his thread I thought I would just do a spin-off.

In my area the peak nutritional stress period is July through early October. Pennington Seed, the folks who gave us Durana and Patriot clover, describe a "clover line" that runs from Macon, Georgia to Dallas - I'm almost 150 miles south of that line and perennial clover plots just don't stand up to our climate. Instead, this is annual reseeding clover country; crimson and arrowleaf are king down here and although they produce well, they also fade out in July - right at the start of our peak nutritional stress period. I usually add a pound or two of chicory to my annual plots every year, but don't get a whole lot of forage out of it - possibly because I'm treating it as an annual and not giving it enough time to get established.

FarmerD suggested medium red clover, but even that starts to fade out just when "my" deer need supplemental nutrition the most. The standard answer to this problem in this area is cowpeas, but my biggest plot is only 1.5 acres and I've never bothered planting peas because even with an e-fence I assume they would be wiped out as soon as I took the fence down. I'm thinking about experimenting with the 1.5 acre plot and trying to establish a pure stand of chicory (as a perennial plot) but it looks like that might require a good bit of work to keep the weeds beat back.

I know there are other guy that are as far south as I am and I assume I'm not the only one without access to a 5-acre plot - what are you doing for late summer forage?

 

[DIY]

I don’t see many southern guys talk about alfalfa. I know it’s more drought tolerant than clover. Does it struggle in the prolonged heat like clover does?

 

[TreeDaddy]

Buck268 has an excellent thread going in which he posed the question of whether he shouldn't just ditch summer plots and plant clover and chicory with a small patch of turnips & radishes??? Lots of good discussion, but not all of it works for us guys in the deep south... so rather than hijack his thread I thought I would just do a spin-off.

In my area the peak nutritional stress period is July through early October. Pennington Seed, the folks who gave us Durana and Patriot clover, describe a "clover line" that runs from Macon, Georgia to Dallas - I'm almost 150 miles south of that line and perennial clover plots just don't stand up to our climate. Instead, this is annual reseeding clover country; crimson and arrowleaf are king down here and although they produce well, they also fade out in July - right at the start of our peak nutritional stress period. I usually add a pound or two of chicory to my annual plots every year, but don't get a whole lot of forage out of it - possibly because I'm treating it as an annual and not giving it enough time to get established.

FarmerD suggested medium red clover, but even that starts to fade out just when "my" deer need supplemental nutrition the most. The standard answer to this problem in this area is cowpeas, but my biggest plot is only 1.5 acres and I've never bothered planting peas because even with an e-fence I assume they would be wiped out as soon as I took the fence down. I'm thinking about experimenting with the 1.5 acre plot and trying to establish a pure stand of chicory (as a perennial plot) but it looks like that might require a good bit of work to keep the weeks beat back.

I know there are other guy that are as far south as I am and I assume I'm not the only one without access to a 5-acre plot - what are you doing for late summer forage?

Eloquent summary of our dilemma in east Texas

now.......what do we do ?!?!?!?!?!?

bill

 

[Baker]

Brian, I am 8b also in central La. Ditto everything you said about clovers. Last year in the middle of a drought in July I planted a field of sunn hemp. It did great getting about 4' tall before I terminated it mid Oct. What I have found after several years of planting sunn hemp is that it is amazingly drought tolerant, heat tolerant, grows very fast , deer will eat the growing top and later browse the leaves and being a legume it is high in protein and great for whatever crop planted after it. It is very browse tolerant also.

It might take a year for deer to completely accept it but once familiar they graze it readily. You probably can get away with adding cowpeas to the mix even in a small field as you mention with the hemp acting as a cover crop.

 

[Drycreek]

Rusty, I tried sunn hemp last year but when it quit raining I lost the crop. High deer density where I planted it and I only had two acres to plant. It's piney woods country and I can only plant where there's an opening. I'm not convinced that it won't work on a normal year, so I'm trying it again this year as you suggested, mostly sunn hemp but with some IC peas thrown in. What mix are you using per acre ?

 

[Baker]

Going from memory...I had good luck with ~ 5lbs/acre sunn hemp mixed with peas. When I planted 8 lbs/acre sunn hemp it chocked everything else out...that was in an 18 acre field.The hemp doesn't like wet feet much. I have planted a pure stand of hemp at 15 lbs/acre and its a jungle nothing else will grow in...but great for soil.

 

[SwampCat]

I planted tecomate lablab plus in a plot intended for eagleseed beans - but the hogs ate all the eagleseed before it had a chance to germinate. There is a small seeded pea in the lablab plus mix - they call ebony cowpea. That pea grows like crazy - to the tops of 14’ tall coffee bean. The deer ate all the pods in december after it died down. The lablab plus mix also contained lablab, white milo, and sundlower - but the ebony peas overwhelmed them. The sunn hemp and the ebony peas might make a great combo since the hemp is so robust. By the way, the lablab was almost a no show in the mix

 

[Brian]

How did Sunn Hemp hold up to early browsing pressure? I see you planted an 18 acre field, but did you get the impression it would need need to be fenced to get established in a small plot?

I've been reading about it and I'm intrigued! https://petcherseeds.com/pages/sunn-hemp-production-guide

 

[Triple C]

I don’t see many southern guys talk about alfalfa. I know it’s more drought tolerant than clover. Does it struggle in the prolonged heat like clover does?

I've never planted alfalfa but always hear good things about it. I'd be interested in hearing from those down south that use alfalfa as part of their food plotting.

 

[Drycreek]

Going from memory...I had good luck with ~ 5lbs/acre sunn hemp mixed with peas. When I planted 8 lbs/acre sunn hemp it chocked everything else out...that was in an 18 acre field.The hemp doesn't like wet feet much. I have planted a pure stand of hemp at 15 lbs/acre and its a jungle nothing else will grow in...but great for soil.

Thanks !

 

[THE LLC]

Alfalfa in the South is tough due to nematods and high nutrient input requirements---plus high pH requirement. Can be done, but TOUGH. In my experience from growing summer plots in the sands of Glascock County, GA, it is VERY hard to beat a mix of iron-clay peas and alyceclover. Just don't plant alyceclover until the soil reaches 70 degrees. Also, it starts slow, but once going the hotter and drier it gets, the better it grows. Another plant I have had good luck with in the heat is Birdsfoot Trefoil. I was amazed at how well it did in heat and drought.

 

[Brian]

I've never planted alfalfa but always hear good things about it. I'd be interested in hearing from those down south that use alfalfa as part of their food plotting.

I'm a total nerd for forage studies from Universities and had this link saved on my computer:

http://georgiaforages.caes.uga.edu/...rages/docs/georgia-cattlemens/2018/GC1802.pdf

It looks like alfalfa can be grown in the south... but the growing conditions are much more precise and demanding than most other crops ("deep soil" is tough to find down here!) and it is expensive to plant and maintain. Even with that, the kicker for me was when I read that it won't hold up to browsing pressure unless you plant at least 3-5 acres. Like a lot of other southern plotters I don't have any 5 acre plots - and if I did I would probably do like LLC recommends and grow cowpeas or even soybeans because they are easy, cheap and prime late summer forage.

 

[Brian]

Well crap, so much for my interest in Sunn Help:

We do not ship Sunn Hemp or mixes involving Sunn Hemp to Mississippi and Arkansas because of these states’ seed regulations. Sunn hemp (Crotalaria juncea) is in the Crotalaria family. There are more than 150 Crotalaria species in the world, 15 of which are used for cover crops. Mississippi and Arkansas seed regulations prohibit all Crotalaria from being sold in their states.

I live in Louisiana - I guess I could just have Sunn Hemp seed shipped to my house and then smuggle it across the state line....

 

[Baker]

I've planted alfalfa a couple times here in La.The variety was cimarron alfalfa which was supposedly suited for our area. It lasted about 3 yrs, required more maintenance than clover, didn't go thru the year any better than clover and had insect problems that I have never had with clover. Was beautiful though...and I'll probably try again cause I'm prone to stubbornness . That said my takeaway was it wasn't worth it and a combo of clovers yielded better results.

I also plant alyce clover/joint vetch combo every year. I love the vetch and alyce does well though not as preferred as the vetch. This combo probably would work for a year or two on a very small field till the deer all take to it. It can handle heavy grazing but may not reseed with excess pressure. Vetch grows big deer!!! And loves hot weather though does require more moisture than alyce.

Brian, I don't think you would be the first to smuggle hemp from La. to Ms.......

 

[THE LLC]

Vetch is a good one too---just more expensive most years. Sunn hemp was a disappointment for me when we did the original deer tests years ago. Unprotected, the deer wiped it out, no matter how big a place we planted. Protected, we took acres off our deer's table for several months. Does make a TON of organic matter if protected, though.

 

[BenAllgood]

When I was working at LSU's deer research farm in the late 80's, they planted jointvetch. The deer loved it. We would sit over fields of it during the summer counts, and the deer were always using it.

 

[DIY]

I honestly can’t imagine the deer densities that some of you guys contend with. On the Cumberland Plateau in southern Tennessee where our 1000-acre lease sits on a pine plantation, there are no ag fields within many miles. Our deer density is medium, at best. Probably more like medium-low after EHD hit us hard in 2017. On what was previously a 1/2-acre WINA clover plot, I planted WINA Power Plant (39.53% vining forage soybeans, 21.67% Iron & Clay cowpeas, 17.82% Hutcheson conventional soybeans, 10.89% sunn hemp, 8.94% Peredovik sunflowers) on the first of June and it managed to grow into a small jungle 6+ feet tall. When deer started showing interest in mid-July, they barely dented it. When they really started hitting it hard in mid-August (start of summer stress period), they would vacuum up many of the soybean and cowpea leaves, but by then there were so many soybean and cowpea vines in the plot that a few days later it would be loaded with new tender leaves again. This 1/2 acre plot kept producing and drawing deer through the first 5+ weeks of bow season until the first frost hit in late October. This was the first time our deer had seen sunn hemp, and they didn’t start browsing it until the sunn hemp was 4+ feet tall and covered with soybean and cowpea vines.

This year I’m doing Power Plant again in this plot and 2 additional plots of similar size. I want to see if it keeps ahead of the deer now that they’ve had a year to figure it out. I highly recommend Power Plant, or a homemade mix like it. The combination of sunn hemp and the vining forage soybean in the mix seems to be a winner.

By comparison, a half mile away on the lease we did a 1-acre plot of pure Eagle forage beans. These were planted late (early July), and the deer never let them get more than 6” tall. They kept pumping out new leaves and the deer kept pounding them. I think they would have fared better had we started them on the first of June when we planted the Power Plant.

I’m interested to see if a mix like Power Plant, as opposed to stand-alone beans, allows for small summer plots to reach critical mass on our lease so they can rebound quickly from browsing once deer start slamming them in late summer and into bow season.

 

[Drycreek]

I planted Power Plant two years running back when it had milo instead of sunn hemp. My deer loved it too, (so did ALL kinds of birds), and it stayed viable until late summer. When the sunflower and milo matured, the hogs trashed it, (and I trashed a few of them). My place had a fairly low density also and I got away with just 2.5 acres total in two different plots. I had lots of good native browse on that place and that definitely helped keep the pressure low on the plots. I've been threatening to try it again, or a homemade mix without the milo.

 

[Brian]

When I was working at LSU's deer research farm in the late 80's, they planted jointvetch. The deer loved it. We would sit over fields of it during the summer counts, and the deer were always using it.

Was the deer farm still on Ben Hur Road south of campus when you where there or had it already moved up to Clinton?

 

[BenAllgood]

Was the deer farm still on Ben Hur Road south of campus when you where there or had it already moved up to Clinton?

They had just moved to Clinton. I lived in Pride and was still in high school. It was the most fun job I've ever had.