Planting Fall Food Plots

Planting fall food plots can be a hunter's biggest challenge. After many years of practice, I have finally perfected the art of planting fall food sources for wildlife. There are three ingredients required to make a successful fall hunting plot: good rain, fertile soil, and good seed. Hunters can adjust the fertility of their plot's soil by adding fertilizer and lime, and of course, seed can be purchased easily. However, the first ingredient, rain, is beyond any hunter's control and it is the most important of the three. Without rain, any food plot seed that is planted will sit in the dirt until a hungry little bird or field mouse comes along, uncovers it, and makes several seeds its dinner. Instead of a fat and happy deer eating the sweet green sprouts, you get a fat, chirpy tweety bird. It will be the same little tweety bird that sits next to your stand all hunting season chirping his annoying little head off!

My number one rule is do not plant in dry dirt. As I explained above, seed will sit in dry dirt until some form of wildlife comes along and eats it. However, if you plant in moist soil just after a rain, the seed is much easier to cover and it will germinate in a day or two rather than weeks. This eliminates a good bit of time that different creatures can go snack on the seeds. If the seeds are eaten by animals, they will not grow. If you have very high populations of doves or other birds, I recommend increasing the amount of seed that you plant in order to account for an expected loss of some seed. When planting late food plots with winter grains such as rye, wheat, or oats, the doves here usually eat about 20% of the grain that was planted. This makes it a good idea few extra pounds of seed to your plot if you have a lot of doves in your area like we do. Or just sit on the edge of the food plot with a shotgun and take out any dove that flies in until the seeds have germinated. But it is a lot easier to just throw out a little bit extra seed.

Planted September 14	6 days later

When preparing a plot for planting, it is best to add any fertilizer or lime that is needed prior to planting. If fertilizer is allowed to sit in the soil through a good rain prior to planting, those nutrients will be available for your plot to utilize immediately which greatly helps germination rates. Choosing the right seed for the soil conditions in your plot is also vital. You are not going to get a lush clover stand out of acidic or extremely dry soil, so you must consider other options. If the soil is able to be broken up very well, a great choice would be wheat, oats, and turnips or rape. The wheat and oats act as an early season attractant while brassicas are excellent for late-season hunting after a hard freeze. When the temperature drops below freezing, turnips send sugars into the large leaves of the plant making it very tasty for deer. Brassicas provide tons of forage and will grow in almost any soil condition. About 20 days after planting, I always apply ammonium nitrate to my plots. This adds a great deal of nitrogen to the soil and makes the plot have a growth spurt. The plot also gets a lot greener after the application, and the deer browse it more heavily. I apply about 40-50 pounds of 34-0-0 per acre on my fall plots.

Some of us are lucky enough to have places with very good soil capable of maintaining a lush perennial plot. Clover and chicory are great choices for planting in these conditions because they produce high-protein forage throughout the entire year. Whenever weeds become a factor in a clover/chicory plot, simply mow it. There are also several selective herbicides on the market that are safe to apply to clover and chicory. These herbicides kill off any grasses but does not harm the clover or chicory.

Overall, the easiest food plot to plant and maintain from my experience is a rye/wheat/oat plot. I mean grain rye such as Elbon Rye--not ryegrass. This mix will grow under most any condition and soil type, and it is a time-proven mix that hunters everywhere harvest deer over each year. It is very tolerate of acidic soils, heavy clay, and sandy soils. The best tip for a rye, wheat, and oat plot is do not forget the ammonium nitrate. If the deer have eaten most of the forage to the ground, prior to a good rain, apply up to 50 pounds of 34-0-0 per acre, and it will give your plot a great growth spurt.

Many people attempt to plant ryegrass as a fall food plot for deer. This is highly impractical. A lot of these hunters confuse ryegrass with grain rye. Ryegrass is very low in attracting power. A deer would much rather try to find an almost rotten acorn to eat over ryegrass. Granted, a few deer will be seen eating the green ryegrass in the dead of winter. With 13-13-13 Fertilizer running at over $20 per bag, there are much better choices of things to plant such as wheat, oats, or grain rye.  The winter grains are a lot cheaper than ryegrass, too. Winter grains grow extremely well when used in rotation with legumes such as peas, soybeans, or lab lab. Legumes fix nitrogen to the soil which is readily consumed by winter grains such as wheat and oats.