We have never tried any of the members of the Brassica family for summer plots. We do in the fall .... purple top turnips. It is a big cool weather crop for us.

We have maintained several acres of perrenial clover over the years. We added a few more acres this year. Right now we have plots that are in Durana, Ucchi Arrow Leaf and White Ladino. So far we have had good rainfall and all of these fields. We've been able to do a good job of keeping the weeds out of the clover with selective herbicides. The deer have been hitting most of these fields hard. Our other fields were planted over the past 3 week period with most of the acreage going in last week.

Again this year our main summer crop is Sunn Hemp. We are experimenting with Red Hemp this year as well. We planted it on a 1 acre field. The seeds are very small and supposed to be high in protein. It, like the Sunn Hemp, is supposed to be drought tolerant. We mixed in some Quail Haven soy beans on some of the plots where we planted Sunn Hemp. I am skeptical that this crop was worth the $$$ and effort to plant.

The Chufas areas were replanted last week ... 3 different road strips, total of about 1.5 acres. We may be feeding more raccoons with the Chufas than turkeys !! Next year, we are planning to condition about 3-4 acres of log-sets from this past year's thinning and plant Chufas there as well. We are doing this in hopes of attracting and holding turkeys on the property .... plus Chufas is a good winter food source for them.

We have one more summer crop to get in the ground .... one of the guys wants to try Tiosente'. I have zero experience with this corn/maize crop. It will be interesting to see how well it does and/or if critters like it. The grain seeds are supposed to be preferred by turkey. Deer are not supposed to like the stalks/leaves, but will eat the mature seed heads. We have enough to plant about an acre. We'll see.

This will be the most acreage we have ever committed to summer plots in the 15 years I have hunted on this property. All in all, if I have figured it up correctly, it will end up being abuot 22-24 acres.