Last fall while attempting to plant a food plot, I ended up breaking our disk while trying to get it across one of the creek crossings on our farm. It's been increasingly difficult to get heavy equipment to any of my plots, so this year I decided to try no-till. Semisane utilizes a pretty good method to establish food plots without tillage, so I used his ideas for inspiration. Because I feel this topic has potential importance for other food plotters, I want to document my efforts here for all to see.

Since the clover has pretty much died out, I wanted to try out a few annuals for the first time in a while. Since it's been a few years, I chose one of my favorite summer annual crops: Lablab. For those who don't know about it, lablab is a vigorous, vining cowpea that's drought tolerant, nutritious, and a heavy forage producer. The best part about it, though, is that no matter what kind of weeds you might have come up in your plot, lablab will climb up them and choke them out. Even seven foot tall johnsongrass won't hurt it. Last weekend, I placed an order for a 20 pound bag, and it arrived a few days ago:



Lablab grows best alongside other tall plants that provide a structure for the vines to grow on. Luckily, I have two gallon size bags of mammoth sunflower seeds from a garden project a few years back. They may not be as viable as fresh seed, but I figured it couldn't hurt to try them out.

In addition to the seed, I went to a local Co-op to pick up 1,000 pounds of pelletized lime and 200 pounds of 15-15-15 fertilizer.



I had hoped to rent a spreader, but none of the Co-ops I called had any small spreaders. I ended up buying a small, 200 pound capacity spreader. It's a little small for our tractor, but it'll do.

Step 1: Spraying the plot

Last week, we sprayed the existing weeds and grass with 2,4-D. Unlike previous food plot preparation attempts, I didn't mow down anything before spraying. After a few days, everything growing in the plot was either dead or dying.



Step 2: Sowing the seed.

I quickly mixed together the lablab and sunflower seed. With rainclouds passing occasionally overhead, I set out on foot to broadcast the seed with a handheld spreader. I wanted to spread the seed first so that all the future passes we would have to make with a tractor would help push the seeds into the untilled soil.

Step 3: Liming



My dad arrived to help out as soon as I finished spreading the seed. It took us several passes with the little spreader to apply all the lime, but we got it done, even in spite of the rain.

I'd like to point out that we didn't plant the whole plot. There's a moderate downward slope near the entrance of the field that we always leave untouched due to practicality. I figured I'd leave the deer a little cover.



Aren't the dogs helpful?

Due to the grass, I couldn't usually see the seeds on the ground. There were a few bare spots, though, where the seeds were clearly visible:



Step 4: Fertilizing



After spreading the lime, we did the same thing with the fertilizer. You can see our pile of trash once we emptied all the bags.

Step 5: Mowing



It was only after spraying the field, letting the grass die, and then sowing the seed that I mowed the plot. While this seems like a strange way of doing this, there's a valid reason for it. Since the field wasn't disked, the ground is pretty hard. Consequently, seed doesn't get worked into the ground that well, and seed that just sits on the surface isn't in the best position to sprout and grow. Using this method, the seed ends up on the ground covered by a layer of dead plant material. While they may not be in the ground, they're at least pretty well covered by a layer that will retain moisture. Whether this works as well as planting in tilled ground is what I'm hoping to find out.

Step 6: Cultipacking



The last step was to cultipack the field to ensure the seed was in good contact with the soil, and that the plant material was all firmly on the ground.





I flew my drone over the field later this afternoon to take an aerial photo as a reference. Even if these storms in the forecast render the plot inaccessible, I can still see how well the plot is doing.



Just gotta hope for a good rain, and then see what happens.