This is a two acre food plot in the bottoms. Decent dirt. I usually bush hog, disk, spread wheat, drag, and then top seed with a white clover. The current crop of clover is a decent stand of Durana. Pic was taken 7/23 and still growing. Chances are it will get hot and dry here in AR before end of Sept wheat plant time. Does this look like a good throw and mow candidate? If so, what would you do with this plot between now and late September planting time?
Throw and Mow Candidate?
- Thread starter SwampCat
- Start date
This is a two acre food plot in the bottoms. Decent dirt. I usually bush hog, disk, spread wheat, drag, and then top seed with a white clover. The current crop of clover is a decent stand of Durana. Pic was taken 7/23 and still growing. Chances are it will get hot and dry here in AR before end of Sept wheat plant time. Does this look like a good throw and mow candidate? If so, what would you do with this plot between now and late September planting time?
Jason Broom
Well-Known Member
Between now and when you want to plant, I would let it grow to produce the material you'll need to lay down on top of the amendments and seed that you broadcast before mowing. You could get a soil sample and figure out what those amendments should be, for the stuff you're wanting to plant. I would include a heavily-reseeding clover, like Arrowleaf, to complement the Durana. Those three plant types (wheat, and two clovers) could be the basis for a once-a-year food plot. You just wait until late summer, when all three have set seed, amend accordingly, bush hog it and then cultipack. It's a system Dr. Craig Harper has been advocating for years.
Crimson n' Camo
Active Member
That's a nice looking field. The field in the pic doesn't really have enough biomass to do a good T&M planting. If I were gonna plant that field the way it looks in the pic I'd first inspect the soil surface and see if I'm dealing with a really hard soil surface or if the dirt is nice and loose. If it's loose dirt then I'd probably broadcast seed and then pull some kind of drag across it that would really scuff things up and get the seed down to the soil. If the soil surface was really hard then I'd go ahead and lightly disk it.
That soil is what we call buckshot - very little sand. It gets hard in the summer when it is hot and dry. It will most likely still be hard in late Sep when I plant. So hard, that I usually disk the field first and then run a tiller over it. If I use a tiller without disking, it jumps and bucks like running it on concrete. I have two months (at least) before I plant, so there will be quite a bit of growth regenerated in that time.
I have arrowleaf in one plot. It came in volunteer five years ago when I clear the plot and has been going strong every since. Deer like it and love to have their fawns in it. I don't know what variety of arrowleaf it is, since it came in volunteer. It gets three feet tall and is so thick you can hardly walk through it. I would be concerned that it would shade out any lesser clover, and also concerned that as big and thick as it is, when it dies back it creates a thick mat. Would the wheat seeds be able to penetrate that mat to get in contact with the ground?
Crimson n' Camo
Active Member
It probably wouldn't hurt to hit that top field with a light dose of N if you're gonna try and grow biomass for a T&M planting. Can you adjust the angle on your disk?? That bottom field of clover looks like a prime candidate to do something similar to the "mob grazing" you see me doing in the other thread. That's likely how I will have to deal with my stuff from now on since the biomass is becoming so thick.
Yes - I can run my disk blades almost straight if need be.
Crimson n' Camo
Active Member
That's probably what I'd do in that clover field then for sure. If we call perfectly straight disks 0% and as much angle as you can put on it 100%.......I'm probably putting about 10-15% angle on them with the simulated mob graze. Start with a little bit of bite and then adjust until its just enough angle to cut and throw the thatch around but not really dig into the soil hard. A little scratching of the surface will be ok but I wouldn't want them cutting down 4-5+ inches or anything like that.
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