we have (5) 1/2 to 1 acre food plots that we are planning on putting in this year, the soil samples came back perfect for clover, chickory, brasillas, and turnups.

i may buy a push tiller and a 4 wheeler soon. can i get away with a harrow drag after i till the ground? will a 250cc 13.5 hp 4 wheeler work? also if i decide to upgrade in the future to the cabelas atv cultipacker/disc, will the 4 wheeler be big enough to pull it?

should i spray the grass in the spring to let it die before i till and plant, if so what process do you do?

i plan on creating some switch grass walls and large bedding spots, should i fertilize the locations to help them grow thick and tall or anything? if anyone has experience with them, i would like to know any information i can about them.

thanks;
victor martin

If your talking about breaking new ground you'll want a minimum 500cc atv. I'd also suggest one thats lower geared, has more torque or grunt. Some of the speedier geared atv's won't handle a heavy workload as well.

However if your food plots have a thick sod I'd suggest using a tractor, and plow to turn the soil over, let the sod rot a year first. If your plots are not of a thick sod, a atv with a plow disc setup will be fine. I rented a good disc set from Gander Mtn for a wknd to do ours.

Far as weed killing I usually do mine in early fall after brush mowing it,then spot it again in spring. I also use a bushog cutter behind my atv for that. You'll need something similar to mow your plots. But you can spring spray it also. I went the cheaper way, and just used hand sprayers mixed with roundup. I had someone sit on the back atv rack, and I drove slow as they sprayed it.

Other advice is if you need to lime, the lime needs a few months to work into the soil. We lime ours in the fall for spring planting.

I can promise you, you aren’t going to use a push tiller on 1 acre of unbroken ground. If you have to buy equipment either way, buy a tractor. Even the biggest and best 4 wheeler isn’t made for the work involved in planting.

Heavy field work for a 4-wheeler is not a good idea. You will soon be putting a new transmission in your 4-wheeler.Rent/hire/buya tractor.

thanks for all the help, it is very usefull. this will be my first year to plant some real food plots, i have done some in the past but they weren't large enough so the deer destroyed them.

i do have a very large tractor, but i would have to move it 5 miles just to get to the first spot and each additional spot is 1 to 5 miles from the other, in total i have 4 food plots picked out and i have many more to come. we also have a lot of land in another area that we have other food plot, i know i can't get the tractor into that area. i will plan on bringing a24 pack of beer some real good gloves and till all day over a weekend.

ifthe4-wheelercan't handle the load, we will only use it to hook up a harrow drag or bed spring to flatten out the ground to get the seeds to stay near the surface.if there are any other ideas that i can use to do this best, i would appreciate it. if there are any other suggestions on what i should do, be sure to tell me, i am soaking it all up right now before i make any bigmistakes.

the ground ph in all areas are perfect. one spot has a very tough root systemto bust up and the grass is thick and tall, should i burn off the grass and then till it or what would you do?