when i got into the plating craze about 8 years ago i found out some things that make for a no brainer.its nice because i get away without lime and fertilizer and in white sandy poor soil conditions. i found out regular grass seed rye isint the same as rye oats. go to your local feed store and ask for fall COVER CROP RYE. its usually not available till september in my area and you get a 50lb. bag for 10-12$. it goes a long way and is dirt cheap. i have just thrown it on the ground and it will work but not the best. what i try to do with my small secret plots is bring a big leaf rake with me. i scratch and clean up the ground and then throw the seed down. after that i flip the rake over and lightly go over the top by draging trying to push the seed into the loose soil. i dont kill myself planting this way and it works fine. also i was told that the quick start seed in alot of those fast grow deer plot is nothing more than rape seed. you could also try a bag of that i guess.

Not sure, but Cabela's has a seed called "shot plot" ?? I think. We threw that around our stands last year, just to add some added feed, and it realy shot up.

when i put it down, i didn't fertilize or lime. so i figured i shoot it with miracle grow. That plus the nice soaker southern wisconsin got this morning really made it pop. The rye is bout 1 1/2 inches long already!! so far so good.

do u have a pik?

There is more to rye than just being a cover crop. Most things planted now won't grow or won't grow well. Rye will take off now and continue growing, providing greenfeed in the fall and early winter for deer. I find my deer sweeping my rye plot with their noses to get at it in Michigan in December. It will stop growing in the dead of winter but will be the first thing to green up in the spring. But, as others have mentioned, get winter rye, field rye farm rye (never heard it called rye-oats before) not the rye grass seed that you find being sold for lawns.

I bought a bag of biologic hotspot, which is wheat, buckwheat, and peas, and planted it in a sunny opening in our woods near one of my stands. I have a few pics of how it is doing about a month later below. Basically, I raked away all the leaves and debris, scored the ground good with a steel toothed rake, applied the sead and then raked it into the soil the best I could. I timed this right before a major storm so it could help soak the seed into the ground.


I also planted some shotplot (not sure of the company), which is mostly brassicas directly across the road you see in the pic last night using the same method. These plots will be relatively small but haven't been hit that hard yet as their are crop lands all around our woods. Still, provides for a nice little incentive for them to stop off for a few minutes of nibbling.

Here is the other pic. Next year, I am going to go to the farm store and buy some crop seed but I am just experimenting this year so I thought I'd buy some smaller quantities.

There is rye grass and rye a grain like the fire water you drink which is a grain.

When we have a plot do poorly - or get over browsed - we sometimes sow Cereal Rye Grain in the fall.(uncertified seed - from the local Mill - locally combined)

2 weeks ago we seeded 75 lbs/acre over top of this over browsed Soybean plot. Because the seed was Roundup Ready - and sprayed 2x this summer - there was alot of exposed soil - so in this case - it truly was throw & grow. We seeded it right in the middle of a soaking rain, and did not cover it at all. The exposed soil and sure rain made it work.

The first picture is how it looked when we seeded on 8-20:



The second picture is from 9-4 - and the rye has sprouted. You can see that the soybeans are even more heavily browsed. The location is such that the deer feel very secure here and even though there is ample soybeans elsewhere - this plot is taking the brunt of thepressure.-The Rye will hopefully salvage it as a fall plot too.

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