Food Plot Help
 

Has anybody tried to plant a no-till food plot. Is it worth the time and money. The spot that I want to plant it at is very hard to access with equipment.

RE: Food Plot Help
 

Even with it being no-till, you still have to prepare the soil. If the PH is not right, then it won't matter what you plant, it will not do so hot. To anwser your question, I have tried to plant some no-till stuff in some tight places and no I did not have a lot of luck with it. How big of an area is it?

RE: Food Plot Help
 

my buddy tried to plant his 4-wheeler trails with no-till stuff and it seemed to work, for about 6 days...then it rained about 3 inches over the weekend nd washed every seed away

i would not recommend no-till anything

RE: Food Plot Help
 

Skip the no-till. Tried it two years running here in Se Alabama. Poor, poor results.

We had only what might be described as mimimal equipment .... so we tried tjhis route. Wasted $$$. So we decided to do this the hard way.

Then we were doing only about 1.5 acre total - 3 plots, each about the same size.About 2 months before we planted,we mowed the areas as close to the ground as we could with an old HD Yazoo walk behind mower. Raked all of the cut grass out. Sprayed the place with Eraser (generic Round-Up).Two weeks later, we hit the plots with Eraser again. After a week or so these were , for all practical purposes, barren. On "plant day" we took 2 walk behind garden tillers in and beat ourselves to a pulp "tilling" the fields. Took a long time and was really some hard work, but we ended up with a decent food plot seed beds.We raked ut the "root wads'. We did not do a soil test that first year ... just guessed and added 500# of lime and #100 of 13/13/13 to each plot. Tilled this in, which was easy but time consuming. Broadcast a seed mix sold by the Co-Op called "Big Buck Blend" at a rate of about 75# per acre. Thius stuff is a mixf... mostly wheat andoats, with someElbon rye andcrimson clover. About $17/50#. We added 10# of Austrian Winter pea to each plot and dragged this in with a chain-link fence, home made drag. Then we broadcast about 2# of additional crimson clover to each plot. Gently dragged these seeds in.Worked great.

Subsequent years we did the same thing ... tilling was much easier, just time consuming.Only thing we did differently was a spring soil test and corrected the pH with lime in May.

Donl't hunt there any more due to loss of the lease on that land 3 years later ...so, all this work was in the end a waste of time. Oh, well.

RE: Food Plot Help
 

There are numerous "no-till" or "throw & grow" mixes out there but they all have one thing in common, a seedbed does need to be prepared. Lime and fertilizer also help make things grow better. Small successful plots can be put in with minimal equipment and some elbow grease.

Most of these types of mixes use seed that requires only 1/4" of soil contact. Most commonly used items are clovers, turnips, rape, chicory, trefoil etc.

All of which are small seeds. Big seeds need more soil contact and are not as successful in a "throw & grow" type mix.