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For those of us at Midwest Whitetail, at the time of this writing, it's the point in the season when we'll be starting our fall food plots here, specifically our brassica plots. In this article, we'll give an overview of our approach to general upkeep and maintenance of our plots to get them ready or keep them well-maintained throughout the year as we do with our spring plots.
SOIL TEST
The first and perhaps most important thing to do before you even begin seeding is to have a soil test done. We do soil tests on each of our plots every year and feel that's the best practice. When you're trying to get food grown, you don't want all of your hard work to be spoiled by bad soil. The best way to find out ahead of time if you have bad soil or if it needs some kind of conditioning is to do this soil test. It will make you aware of the deficiencies and/or positives with your soil. It will reveal the pH or variety list of nutrients. It can also inform you as to what type of fertilizer you should get, if you need lime, etc.
FROST SEED
Once you've had the soil tested, something you can do that'll help with the ongoing maintenance of your plots is to frost seed, which is the method of spreading seed into your field in late winter to early spring while the ground is still frozen so the freezing and thawing cycles can help to incorporate the seed into the soil. We frost seed red clover every year. It creates a food source throughout the year and also helps keep some of the weeds down.
MOW / SPRAY
Once we get to the point in the year where the grass that is really starting to establish and get taller, we start to think about mowing or spraying our plots. There are different reasons to do both. With our clover plots, we generally spray Clethodim on them, which is a grass killer. Aside from that, we do routine mowing. Clover specifically is not very drought-tolerant, so you have to be careful when you mow your clover. If it's lush, looking really good, and there's some rain in the forecast, go ahead and mow your clover. However, if it's hot and dry, then it's probably best to skip mowing for that round and wait until the ground has had a chance to recuperate some moisture.
Specifically with brassica plots, we do frost seeding, and we mow them throughout the year, but we do not spray them upfront. That's because, generally, we spray with a Roundup 2,4-D mixture and wipe everything out a couple of weeks ahead of when we want to plant. Then there's clover in there from the frost seeding. Therefore, what we'll do is keep the plots mowed every time we do our mow pass for the fire breaks. That way we keep our clover base in there, allowing that natural browse while maintaining the weeds to where they're not overtaking the plot. Many of these food plots have such large seed beds in them that, even when you spray them, a lot of stuff comes up the next year. It can be frustrating to look at, but sometimes the decision not to spray and just mow is the way to go.
In regard to spraying, there are a lot of different reasons that we spray our plots, in particular our AG plots. We'll go through at the beginning of the year and use a pre-emergent. That really gives us a five-to-eight-week head start where the seed can get ahead of those weeds and establish good germination. Generally, local co-ops are a great place to go for knowledge on this. Each plot is different regarding what you want to spray and why you want to spray it, and your local co-ops will have a lot of those answers. They're a really great source of information.
FERTILIZE
The last category we'll talk about here is fertilizing your plots. Different types of plants like different types of fertilizer. Clover really likes potassium and phosphorus. Brassica really likes nitrogen, and they don't necessarily need phosphorus and potassium. There are a ton of different varieties of available fertilizer blends, and the soil test will really help you in narrowing them down to what's best for your plot. (That soil test will also help you decide what to plant).
To recap: 1) soil test. 2) frost seed. 3) mow. 4) spray. 5) fertilize.
Good luck!
--Midwest Whitetail
