Regenerative Plotting

I mow my durana clover plots a couple times each summer. I dont have much grass in any of them. I overseed with wheat in early October - along with a little clover seed. Clip one more time after planting. Been working for me for several years now.
No herbicides at all?
 
I found a new broadleaf this year on my property. I do lots of slow walking and looking at flowers and what is getting browsed. This one first popped up on some trails, and has now found a spot in my clover plot.

Willow herb. Deer have browsed every one I have found.

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I would like to have something growing all the time on my plots, but it’s all but impossible when you have hogs. If I let grain head out, the hogs are in it. If I throw and mow, the hogs eat it. The only plots I can sustain are clover plots and in our heat, they turn to a mess that looks like melted plastic starting about July and don’t come back until October or so. Where I hunt now we have only one pipeline R. O. W. that’s suitable for white clovers. The red clover that I planted with last September’s wheat never made it into summer. I might have starved it out with wheat, I don’t know. I’m not done trying and I’ll try to remedy that this year.

I’m pretty well hemmed into growing grains in the fall, then planting IC peas or similar in the spring. That leaves two month long periods, or more, that I have bare, or almost bare ground. I don’t see any way out of that. Nothing will have enough moisture to germinate here (most years) past June until September.

All suggestions are welcome.
 
^^^^^^^
and that sums it up here in east texas

~july 4 ,two switches are flipped..... Rain:OFF.....Heat:ON

Our "stress" time for deer

bill
 
I would like to have something growing all the time on my plots, but it’s all but impossible when you have hogs. If I let grain head out, the hogs are in it. If I throw and mow, the hogs eat it. The only plots I can sustain are clover plots and in our heat, they turn to a mess that looks like melted plastic starting about July and don’t come back until October or so. Where I hunt now we have only one pipeline R. O. W. that’s suitable for white clovers. The red clover that I planted with last September’s wheat never made it into summer. I might have starved it out with wheat, I don’t know. I’m not done trying and I’ll try to remedy that this year.

I’m pretty well hemmed into growing grains in the fall, then planting IC peas or similar in the spring. That leaves two month long periods, or more, that I have bare, or almost bare ground. I don’t see any way out of that. Nothing will have enough moisture to germinate here (most years) past June until September.

All suggestions are welcome.


You ever think about doing some irrigation? Not cheap, but over time it can cut down on seeding rates, failed plots and waisted fertilizer and lime.
 
You ever think about doing some irrigation? Not cheap, but over time it can cut down on seeding rates, failed plots and waisted fertilizer and lime.


Yep, and on the place I recently sold I drilled a water well for that very purpose. Mostly, it just made me feel good, until I realized how futile it was to try to irrigate with a water cannon and pulling it around manually. It would water in a 130/140 foot circle. I used a golf cart to drag the fasline (fasline is an oilfield term for plastic pipe that is able to be rolled up on a reel) and sprinkler around, wasn’t hard work at all, but it just didn’t do that much good. It would take all day to water an acre of clover and two days later, (while I was working), it was burning up again.

An automated system buried in the ground would work, but well water is sterile compared to rainwater, it just doesn’t do as much good. Pond water would be great but I’m not drawing my pond down for irrigation purposes. Besides, I didn’t have a big enough pond on that place. An irrigation system that would really work well would be cost prohibitive for me.

I can’t say that many of my plots failed, because they all served their respective purposes, which was feeding deer, and nine months of feeding them beats zero months. I tried my best to make that irrigation work for a couple summers but I quit trying to buck Ma Nature and decided to just live with what I knew I could do.
 
Do you have electrical near by? I have designed systems before that work quite well. I have one system the is fully automatic and can do 4 acres. I think the trick is that people think they need a big system that puts out lots water to make any headway. Most of my systems use zones similar to a lawn system with irrigation heads mounted on tee post's. Zones allow for smaller pipe, smaller pump, smaller everything, while still covering a large area. Zones also move the water for you. If you want to revisit your irrigation system let me know.
 
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Do you have electrical near by? I have designed systems before that work quite well. I have one system the is fully automatic and can do 4 acres. I think the trick is that people think they need a big system that puts out lots water to make any headway. Most of my systems use zones similar to a lawn system with irrigation heads mounted on tee post's. Zones allow for smaller pipe, smaller pump, smaller everything, while still covering a large area. Zones also move the water for you. If you want to revisit your irrigation system let me know.


I hunt and plant on three different places, and all my plots are of random sizes. I don’t have any large uniform plots. No electricity close, no water available, multiple small plots would necessitate lots of pipe, all this would make it much too costly.
 
I would like to have something growing all the time on my plots, but it’s all but impossible when you have hogs. If I let grain head out, the hogs are in it. If I throw and mow, the hogs eat it. The only plots I can sustain are clover plots and in our heat, they turn to a mess that looks like melted plastic starting about July and don’t come back until October or so. Where I hunt now we have only one pipeline R. O. W. that’s suitable for white clovers. The red clover that I planted with last September’s wheat never made it into summer. I might have starved it out with wheat, I don’t know. I’m not done trying and I’ll try to remedy that this year.

I’m pretty well hemmed into growing grains in the fall, then planting IC peas or similar in the spring. That leaves two month long periods, or more, that I have bare, or almost bare ground. I don’t see any way out of that. Nothing will have enough moisture to germinate here (most years) past June until September.

All suggestions are welcome.
Could you get a forage sorghum growing in your clover? I wonder if the hogs would go after the seed, or if you could generate a crop of less desirable grass like that. It may help shade your clover and put a boat load of roots into your soil, and keep the soil protected from the sun.
 
What about letting it go fallow and having natives cover it? I just sprayed a plot for a fall planting that is 2 foot tall in grasses. It wasn't deer food all summer but the soil was shaded and there were living roots in it.

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Mark, the hogs would definitely eat the sorghum and tear up any plot that it was growing in, but, I don’t have any clover growing now. Here at home, the largest plot I have is maybe an acre, and wheat is just too good an attractant to not have it in the fall. Even if it would make a good clover plot, my experience tells me that clover is least attractive here in August through September, and that’s when I need it most. I have three other plots smaller than that, none really suitable for clover. In my experience clover, at least white clovers, need soil that has some residual moisture, all of my plots need rain to flourish. That’s just the soil and terrain I have. I bought this place 25 years ago and I didn’t have a clue about laying out food plots to take advantage of the best soils or even the best stand sites. On 80 acres I have four plots that probably don’t total out to 2 acres. I’m gonna add just a little more to my bow blind plot, but other than that, no plans for more plots. In the winter we feed corn and I have one protein feeder that I keep up from January to late summer.

I was thinking about this last night and I think my plan for next year will be buckwheat in all the plots here at home for a late spring planting. The two plots I planted this year did very well in a couple of places that nothing has excelled in before. I had a good stand and the deer browsed it somewhat. I think they will browse it even more next year. It’s easy to grow and should help keep the weeds out, provide for a little moisture retention, and give them something green to eat.

Catscratch, as you can probably tell, I have no room room for fallow fields because all I have is woods and thick brush. I cut quite a bit of pine timber two years ago and my place has gotten quite a bit thicker with low brush, weeds, etc., and without that, I’d have no deer actually living on me. In the past most of the deer we see would come off of the neighbors’. Now, some bed on me and I want to keep it that way. We only average one buck per year off this place, either myself or my son takes it, and no does. We both have other places to hunt so no need to kill more.

In reading over this thread, I can see that I probably confused y’all somewhat. I hunt three different places and I kinda mixed them up. Here at home (80 acres) is the place I’m currently posting about.

My lease (350 acres) that I share with others has several plots that we plant in IC peas for spring and wheat for fall. We’re gonna plant another in clover this fall in hopes of having a perennial clover plot. It will be a long, narrow plot on a pipeline. I planted buckwheat on two of these plots this past spring with fair results. Each of those two had been limed but it hadn’t been in the ground long enough to help much. I expect better results this fall. The wheat crop each year in these plots are very good.

My other place is a 2,500 acre lease (out of 16,000 acres) that I have a small corner of. My son and I have one spot each to rifle hunt. It costs us nothing, and we plant wheat each fall. I have zero interest in spring plots here since it’s pine plantation and what little area I have would be devastated in two weeks. If everyone who hunted there would grow spring plots we could do great things, but they hunt over feeders and are just interested in big antlers, not deer nutrition. I can’t and won’t fight that, especially since I only hunt by invitation and the friend who leases it could give it up at any time. There’s no future there for me, so I’m gonna use my resources elsewhere.

Not important to this discussion, but just as a matter of information, I’ve never shot a buck there, but I’ve passed more 3 to 4 year old 120” to 140” bucks than I ever thought I would. Those bucks would probably go down on any other place I hunt, but when I was invited to hunt there I determined not to shoot a buck that wasn’t 5 years old or older. I’ve killed a few does, but so far the only bucks that I was sure of did not give me a good opportunity for a shot. I don’t do iffy, antlers aren’t that important to me. It sounds like a cliche, but at my age the journey is really more important than the destination.
 
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I would like to have something growing all the time on my plots, but it’s all but impossible when you have hogs. If I let grain head out, the hogs are in it. If I throw and mow, the hogs eat it. The only plots I can sustain are clover plots and in our heat, they turn to a mess that looks like melted plastic starting about July and don’t come back until October or so. Where I hunt now we have only one pipeline R. O. W. that’s suitable for white clovers. The red clover that I planted with last September’s wheat never made it into summer. I might have starved it out with wheat, I don’t know. I’m not done trying and I’ll try to remedy that this year.

I’m pretty well hemmed into growing grains in the fall, then planting IC peas or similar in the spring. That leaves two month long periods, or more, that I have bare, or almost bare ground. I don’t see any way out of that. Nothing will have enough moisture to germinate here (most years) past June until September.

All suggestions are welcome.

Drycreek, my previous post about letting it go fallow was in reference to your summer dry spell, hogs, and bare dirt. My thoughts were that if you let it go fallow in the spring and wait until fall to plant your plots then maybe natives would take over for the summer. I'm guessing there is something in the seed bank that is adapted to grow there and it would be better at building soil and conserving moisture than bare dirt. You wouldn't necessarily have year round deer food, but it could help you have healthier plots in the fall.
 
Mark, the hogs would definitely eat the sorghum and tear up any plot that it was growing in, but, I don’t have any clover growing now. Here at home, the largest plot I have is maybe an acre, and wheat is just too good an attractant to not have it in the fall. Even if it would make a good clover plot, my experience tells me that clover is least attractive here in August through September, and that’s when I need it most. I have three other plots smaller than that, none really suitable for clover. In my experience clover, at least white clovers, need soil that has some residual moisture, all of my plots need rain to flourish. That’s just the soil and terrain I have. I bought this place 25 years ago and I didn’t have a clue about laying out food plots to take advantage of the best soils or even the best stand sites. On 80 acres I have four plots that probably don’t total out to 2 acres. I’m gonna add just a little more to my bow blind plot, but other than that, no plans for more plots. In the winter we feed corn and I have one protein feeder that I keep up from January to late summer.

I was thinking about this last night and I think my plan for next year will be buckwheat in all the plots here at home for a late spring planting. The two plots I planted this year did very well in a couple of places that nothing has excelled in before. I had a good stand and the deer browsed it somewhat. I think they will browse it even more next year. It’s easy to grow and should help keep the weeds out, provide for a little moisture retention, and give them something green to eat.

Catscratch, as you can probably tell, I have no room room for fallow fields because all I have is woods and thick brush. I cut quite a bit of pine timber two years ago and my place has gotten quite a bit thicker with low brush, weeds, etc., and without that, I’d have no deer actually living on me. In the past most of the deer we see would come off of the neighbors’. Now, some bed on me and I want to keep it that way. We only average one buck per year off this place, either myself or my son takes it, and no does. We both have other places to hunt so no need to kill more.

In reading over this thread, I can see that I probably confused y’all somewhat. I hunt three different places and I kinda mixed them up. Here at home (80 acres) is the place I’m currently posting about.

My lease (350 acres) that I share with others has several plots that we plant in IC peas for spring and wheat for fall. We’re gonna plant another in clover this fall in hopes of having a perennial clover plot. It will be a long, narrow plot on a pipeline. I planted buckwheat on two of these plots this past spring with fair results. Each of those two had been limed but it hadn’t been in the ground long enough to help much. I expect better results this fall. The wheat crop each year in these plots are very good.

My other place is a 2,500 acre lease (out of 16,000 acres) that I have a small corner of. My son and I have one spot each to rifle hunt. It costs us nothing, and we plant wheat each fall. I have zero interest in spring plots here since it’s pine plantation and what little area I have would be devastated in two weeks. If everyone who hunted there would grow spring plots we could do great things, but they hunt over feeders and are just interested in big antlers, not deer nutrition. I can’t and won’t fight that, especially since I only hunt by invitation and the friend who leases it could give it up at any time. There’s no future there for me, so I’m gonna use my resources elsewhere.

Not important to this discussion, but just as a matter of information, I’ve never shot a buck there, but I’ve passed more 3 to 4 year old 120” to 140” bucks than I ever thought I would. Those bucks would probably go down on any other place I hunt, but when I was invited to hunt there I determined not to shoot a buck that wasn’t 5 years old or older. I’ve killed a few does, but so far the only bucks that I was sure of did not give me a good opportunity for a shot. I don’t do iffy, antlers aren’t that important to me. It sounds like a cliche, but at my age the journey is really more important than the destination.

Is your feeder(s) in your food plot, or could it be? That can be a great way to consolidate animal manure to improve soil.
 
Is your feeder(s) in your food plot, or could it be? That can be a great way to consolidate animal manure to improve soil.
I was wondering about using the feeders too, but to move hogs away from plots for a couple of weeks so that they wouldn't eat all his seed. Could that work, dump a bunch of corn away from the plots and the hogs would stay put? Or would they just roam and eat everything anyway?
 
Is your feeder(s) in your food plot, or could it be? That can be a great way to consolidate animal manure to improve soil.

Yessir, at home most plots have feeders. On my place I have more opportunity to experiment (I have lots of native browse from the TSI done two years ago) so I’m going the buckwheat route for spring and wheat/MRC for fall route next year.

On the lease (which is managed strictly for timber by the owners) we are constrained by the open areas that are large enough to plant, some of which are only spring plots because of wind direction and stand locations but most feeders also have a plot. Bow stands don’t have plots, mostly because of the difficulty involved in accessing the stands with the winds we have.

Not only do I have deer poop in my plots, hogs make their contribution also. It’s about the only thing they’re good for, other than furnishing meat for the yotes during fawning time.


I was wondering about using the feeders too, but to move hogs away from plots for a couple of weeks so that they wouldn't eat all his seed. Could that work, dump a bunch of corn away from the plots and the hogs would stay put? Or would they just roam and eat everything anyway?

That could work I suppose. I used to have an acquaintance that leased his farm to corn farmers. Hogs will eat planted corn starting the very night that you plant so they poured last years corn out on the ground to protect the seed until it germinated. They won’t bother it after that so that was successful. The only seeds I can leave uncovered are tiny seeds like clover. The hogs still try their best but they just can’t pick it up. I’ve never had them eat wheat seed even lightly covered, but wheat, beans, or peas better be buried or they’ll be gone.

I know I rave about damn hogs, but until you’ve witnessed the horde grow bigger every year like we have here, you just can’t imagine what it’s like. I’d about as soon have a zombie apocalypse !:mad:
 
Hogs like soft ground. I run feeders march thru august to hunt hogs. I quit feeding end of august. I want the hogs dead or gone when planting season comes first of oct.
 
i have a spot next to my lawn that used to be part of a trail that goes all the way to the back of my property. I sprayed it three years ago to clean the slate for clover planting. Annual clover grew great that year. The year after it blew up in 5’ Canada thistle. I never touched it after that.

I was out “watering” that spot a couple days ago and noticed the thistle was practically gone, and it had nearly rebounded back to what it was, only with more clover in it.

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