Winter Food Plotting

File this under meatball farming.  

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If you want to save time, fuel and wear and tear on your equipment you may wish to consider frost seeding.  This involves broadcasting your seed on frozen ground and allowing the freeze-thaw-freeze-thaw cycle that occurs as spring approaches to provide good seed-to-soil contact.   

The moisture contained in the surface layer of your soil freezes, expands and forces the soil upward.  This heaving of the soil assists in working small seeds like clover into the soil.  You get the same result as you would with discing and culti-packing - good seed-to-soil contact.  With the arrival of spring and the warming temps the seeds will hopefully germinate.   

Under ideal conditions you should prepare your planting bed in the fall with a foliar herbicide application.  Alas, this I did not perform.  I simply broadcast into several trails where the clover is beginning to establish itself.   

Today I spread a bunch of leftover red clover and chicory seed. All the critters like clover and chicory - especially in early spring. 

Fingers crossed.

Sunshine Flowers

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The giant bird feeder I planted earlier this year is doing fantastic!

Excellent germination (although a crowded planting) and ample rain has let to an explosion of flowering plants.

Raising a toast to meatball farming!

Sunshine Flowers

The strip of sunflowers planted earlier this year is going, growing and now blooming.  The giant bird feeder is doing just fine.  These are oil sunflowers and unlike some of the giant sunflowers you see in a residential yard these are shorter and have smaller flowers that produce abundant numbers of seeds.

When these blooms complete their metamorphosis to seed heads the birds are going to go nuts! 

Brush Bust'n

Feeling a wee little bit like the guy that drives the county or state highway mower clearing the shoulders and medians.

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For as long as I can remember the northeast field was mowed every even-numbered year to keep the woody vegetation at bay.  Wildlife need some irregular openings for nesting, browsing, bedding and the like.

Last year was the year to clear the 7 acres (give or take) at the northeast corner but it was too wet to get back there with the tractor.  I would have bogged-down and gotten stuck.

Drier this year (as per usual) so this past weekend I tackled this and the smaller openings located at the ancestral campsite and shitter location - which also is a proven gobbler hotspot.  

Took me a good part of the day and it was tough going because all of the willow, dogwood, alder and cottonwood had another growing season under their belt.

The good news is I saved some nicely established plots of Joe Pye Weed ...

And only mowed half of the food plot...

I frost seeded that plot late winter/early spring and it's doing just fine (you can see it as the rectangular growth in the picture above.  I figure by mowing half and fertilizing both halves we can compare growth rates this fall.

Stay tuned... 

Meatball Farming

From the perspective of a couple of trail cameras here's Your's Truly getting a couple of food plots in.

  

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By the way - those plots got in just in-time as and inch and a half of rain has fallen in the past 48 hours.  Good timing!

Meatball Farming

Had a bit of a dry spell the last couple of weeks so I thought I better get a couple of wildlife food plots in before the monsoons arrive in a few days. 

Disced-up a couple of strips. Fertilized the daylights out of them with triple 19.

Broadcast the first plot in turnip, rape, clover and chicory.

The second plot was planted in oil sunflower. It is going to be a giant bird feeder.

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Disced everything again and ran it all smooth with the big tractor tires.

Meatball farming!

Fifty Pounds of Goodness

Twenty five pounds per box.  Delivered to the day job.  Free shipping too.

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If successful the critters are going to love the results.

Can't wait.

Frost Seeding

Finished frost-seeding this afternoon. 

You deer camp guys would know this to be the center trail of the middle plantation. Much of it was a real mud hole most of last year. Maybe my custom seed mix (red clover, dwarf rape, chicory and turnip) will germinate.

Fingers-crossed as it would be nice to have a flush of green forage for the pollinators, turkey poults and other critters this spring.

The girls wore themselves-out today so they're sleeping it off.

Frost Seeding

Change-up on wildlife food plots – or as I like to call it:  Meatball Farming

Attempting an experiment.  Will report on success or not in three months or so.

Picked-up seed yesterday at the Door County Co-Op and mixed a couple pounds in a large Tupperware bowl.  Equal parts of red clover, turnip, chicory and dwarf rape.

Used the spinner to broadcast it on top of the snow covering a ratty bare patch of food plot that didn’t germinate last year.

The theory is that as the snow thaws, more snow falls and the freeze thaw cycle does its thing the seed is slowing worked into the ground by Ma Nature.  No till!  When the ground warms-up in the spring hopefully it will germinate and there will be a flush of new growth for the pollinators and critters when they need it the most.

I’ll have to see if it works.

The girls and I are going to do another patch tomorrow and overseed some of the trails with straight clover.

If the experiment fails I’ll nuke it with glyphosate.  When I have some extra hands at Schuetzenfest we can run the disc over it and replant it traditionally.

Also going to order 50 pounds of oil sunflower.  A giant sunflower patch would be like an acre of bird craziness.  Pheasants Forever has free shipping on their seed mix.

Hatching a Plot

The food plots the boys planted a little more than a week ago are beginning to hatch.

Germinate that is.

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Two are coming-in real nicely and the third is mostly under water.  

What with all the rain we also have a huge hatch of mosquitoes...

Hatching a Plot

During Schützenfest weekend the guys did trail and deer stand maintenance and worked on the wildlife food plots.

Several clover plots were over-seeded and fertilized and three other plots were disced, fertilized and seeded with rape, turnip and clover.

The rape and turnip will germinate quickly.  Because they are frost-tolerant they will provide forage for the fall and winter.  The clover will persist for several years as it's a perennial plant.  It's also real easy to maintain - mow it once a year and broadcast fertilizer over it.

Clover is terrific forage for browsing animals and attracts insects for the birds.

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All the critters like clover.  

An Honest Day's Work

Not the day job but the chores on the tree farm.  Work, work, work.

Last weekend I finally found the time - and the opportunity - to prep some wildlife food plots.  I've either been preoccupied with the vast garden and other chores.  Or waiting out the rain.

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Fifteen gallons of Glyphosate (generic version of RoundUp) on three locations that will be planted into a combination of rape, turnip and red clover.  The rape and turnips are brassicas that will provide forage into the fall and winter.  They grow fast and are cold-tolerant.  The clover is a perennial and will persist into the years to come.  

A low maintenance planting all you have to do is mow it and fertilize it once a year.  The flowers attract insects for the birds and all the critters like munching on fresh, sweet clover.

The weekend of Schützenfest is an opportunity to plant the plots...

Food Plots

The food plots are still doing their thing.

Even though they're covered in eight or more inches of snow pack the critters (deer mostly) have been scratching and pawing the snow away to reach the succulent green stuff that hides beneath the snow.

Even the dogs will dig around in the plots.  Mostly because there's some other critter's scat in there to find...

Food Plot Update

The five food plots we planted just a little over a month ago are doing exceedingly well.  A meatball farming success story.

We got another 1/4 inch of rain last night and with regular precipitation we've had good germination and the sunny days and cooler nights have promoted growth.  A little extra fertilizer doesn't hurt.

The plot above is located within the boundaries of the north/south trail in the far northeast corner of the north plantation.

Meatball Farming

The food plots are coming-in very nicely...

Meatball Farming

It is hot, hot, hot today.  The heat from the four-wheeler was hot.  Even the wind is hot.  Just got back from fetching the SD cards from the three trail cameras only to find out that two of them were entirely blank.  Two weeks outdoors and they were devoid of pictures.  Did I mistakenly reinsert the old card instead of a new card?  Or did I fail to turn the camera on?  Or was there a malfunction with the device?  What the heck.

I'll check them again at the end of the week.

Last weekend during Schuetzenfest the boys completed the planting of five wildlife food plots.  I prepared them with a couple of applications of glyphosate (RoundUp) and they disced and rototilled, broadcast seed and fertilizer and dragged the plots with old tractor tire chains for a somewhat decent seed to soil contact.

This is what I call Meatball Farming.  And in a good year we get pretty decent results with all manner of stuff growing to tide the critters over the winter and into the following spring.  Where we seed clover we can get a crop that persists for years.  All the critters like clover.

Here are some pictures.  In the space of one week we've had fairly decent germination.  Let's hope the rains continue on a regular basis...

Meatball Farming - An Update

Yesterday morning the girls and I went for our customary walk - nice and early.  It's been so damn hot lately the Labs return home with their tongues hanging a foot out of their mouths.

So, they recieve a ritual hosing-off, a walk around in their wading pool and chill out in the shade of the porch.

From there they're happy to absorb the world around them and watch me putzing in the garden.  Before too long they're out cold.

This is our routine.

Anyway - we checked on the food plot to see if progress has been made.  It's been horribly dry of late but we did get inches of rain recently a week or so ago.

Lo and behold - greenery!  Lots of it too.  And talk about crowded.

The dogs approve and the plot was chock-full of insects for the multiple turkey flocks we've been bumping into on our ramblings.

One more thing.  Two thirds of the trails have been cleared and the big food plot up at the north end looked very dead.  I mowed all the dead grass down to stubble.

Food Plot

Remember that food plot I planted several weeks ago?

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There's stuff growing in it.  Which isn't all bad considering it's meatball farming.  We sure could use some rain though.

For any of my hunting compadres who might be reading - on Saturday I filled the big sprayer on the ATV and nuked the large food plot in the north forty.  I figure I'll mow the dead stuff and someone else can disc it into the ground in a couple of months.

Thinking about planting it into rape, turnip and a couple of clover varieties.  The brassicas will come up and remain hardy into the fall with their natural frost tolerance.  The clover will put on some serious growth in the spring and summer of 2013 and be virtually maintenance free.

All the critters like clover.

Meatball Farming

I put in a food plot yesterday.

Having killed the grass and weeds about three weeks ago with a 6% solution of glyphosate I disced-up the strip in preparation for planting.

Not much science to this.  Which is why it's called meatball farming.

Disc, disc disc.  Broadcast seeds, fertilize the heck out of it (19-19-19 from the Door County Co-Op), disc it again and drive over it with the big, fat, tractor tires to create a good seed to soil contact.

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Pray for rain.

I planted 30 pounds of seed - much of it free, second-hand stock.  Grain sorghum, corn, buckwheat, millet and sunflower.  The plan is to leave all of this grain stand over the winter to feed the resident birds.

Hope I have adequate germination to make it all worthwhile.

The Deer Camp Guys Hatch a Plot

Last month Braumeister, New Guy and I did some deer camp prep.  We fixed some stands and overseeeded and fertilized  the clover patches in the trails.

We also planted three food plots from scratch.  Disced the soil.

Broadcast fertilizer, forage rape and turnip in the strip above.

Drove over it with the tractor for good seed/soil contact.  The plot above is a couple of clovers, rye and some brassicas.

Forage rape, turnip and buck forage oats in this large plot.  As you can see they're doing rather nicely.

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