Winter Food Plotting

File this under meatball farming.  

click on image to enlarge

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.

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.