Thank you for the reply. Actually I do have a good cultipacker and will use it to roll over my summer plot after broadcasting. I also intend to add crimson clover to next fall’s WR,Oats,&Winter Wheat mix.
Questions:
Are you suggesting I need to lime my low ph, sandy plots even how I do not intend to apply any commercial fertilizer?
What would be a good mix to plant in my summer plots. I have 5 plots averaging about 1.5 acres each. Remember, I am in central Louisiana. Good rain through June. Gets very dry August-October.
Yes, pH affects how plants can uptake and use nutrients, regardless of the source of the nutrients. So, getting the pH correct is important. It is even more important when you are relying on natural nutrient cycling.
I'm not an expert on sandy soils. My soils are heavy clay. But I do understand enough to know sandy soils can be even harder to manage than heavy clay. It will take time to build to build your organic matter. With sandy soil, I would soil test every year for the first few years. Once you apply lime and get the pH up into the mid sixes, watch and see how quickly it drops. That will give you and idea of how often you will need to add lime to keep the pH in the target area.
Your crops will need the same nutrients regardless of the source. Farmers have high commercial fertilizer inputs, but then extract those nutrients when they harvest. With food plots, we don't harvest. The only nutrients that are removed are those eaten by animals. Most of those nutrients are returned to our land in some form. The same animals that eat the plots also defecate and urinate back into those plots returning nutrients. Eventually they die and their remains are cycled back into the nutrient system.
So, the concept is to pick crops that don't have high fertility requirements to start with. Choose complementary crops and mix/rotate them so they don't all use the same nutrients at the same levels. Farmers need to plant monocultures to make harvesting easy. Food plotters don't need to do this since we don't harvest. Once we get our soils healthy, natural nutrient cycling should be enough to sustain our plots. There is nothing wrong with using commercial fertilizer, it is just expensive and labor intensive to apply. We can use that money and time to plot more land at a lower intensity. Deer are concentrate selectors when it comes to feeding. Their social structure dictates female family groups will often anchor around a good food source like a plot. Having more plots at a lower intensity allows for more family groups to anchor at different locations on the property. I think it is a fools game for food plotters to chase yield.
I see the primary objectives of food plots is to supplement native foods when nature is stingy. You want to select crops that will produce during periods when nature is stingy and a secondary objective to attract deer during specific hunting seasons. Either way, a small high yield plot will get wiped out much faster than a larger lower yield mix of crops and weeds. Ice cream crops will often attract deer and get wiped out when deer could be eating high quality native foods. A less attractive but nutritious crop in a larger lower yield planting will often still be available at a time when native foods senesce.
I'm in zone 7a in Virginia. I would leave it to others in your zone in LA to offer specific crop mixes for your area.
For my summer crops, I've been using a 50/50 mix of buckwheat and sunn hemp. This works very well in my area. Here, I can plant it in June. The buckwheat comes up very fast and out-competes many weeds. It seems to dominate the plot at first, but as it begins to go to seed, the sunn hemp takes over. Sunn hemp is a legume and fixes N into the soil. The N benefits the buckwheat. Buckwheat is a nutrient scavenger and is often called green manure and it quickly makes those nutrients available to the next crop when it breaks down. I then mow and surface broadcast my fall mix.
This works great in my area, but may not be a fit for your. Sunn Hemp does not reseed here. It may in your area. Our summers are short compared to yours. Here both winter and summer are about equal in terms of being stress periods for deer. Summer is clearly the stress period for deer in your area.
Try to take the concepts and figure out how to best apply them to your soils and location.
). Seriously, WR need vernalization to produce seed heads. You may not have enough chill hours in your location. I'd check that first. You may need a different choice of crops and a slightly different approach.
