When to start food plots for deer
How Late Can You Plant Food Plots For Deer
what i wanted to talk about in this
webinar is not just one topic but
just several things i wanted to bring up
and one of them
is about seed variety planting dates
so depending on what you're planting
this fall there are different
times as to when you want to plant
different plant species and so that's
something i want to run through here
and the first one i want to talk about
is the brassica planting dates
so brassicas of course being turnips
radishes forage rate kale canola and
rutabaga
those are the most common brassicas that
we food plotters put in the ground you
know there's other brassicas too like
you know cabbage and broccoli
but you know who's who plants that in
their food plot right
so what i wanted to illustrate here is
just some general planting dates as to
when you ought to be planting your
brassicas
so i i divided the country up into
thirds from north to south and you know
this it's not like this is set in stone
and it's not like you know if you plant
outside these dates in your area
that you know you're doing it wrong but
these are just a good
guideline as to what you ought to shoot
for you know because hey
a lot of guys are on vacation or you
know the weather's not cooperating it's
just too dry to plant
and so but this is just a general guide
as to
when the optimal time to plant is in
your neck of the woods so you can see
here john comp with his
monster brassicas and most of you know
john is up in menomonee michigan
which is up in the upper peninsula he's
right on the
michigan wisconsin border just about 45
minutes north of green bay
now when planting brassicas there's two
things that you can keep in mind that
will really uh
help you to grow some bigger brassicas
and really decrease your chance on food
plot failure
and that is to plant the seeds at the
recommended rate because brassicas do
not like competition
amongst themselves this is a food plot
here that i had planted a few years ago
and you can see that there's a lot of
spacing between the brassicas
and so this is going to allow them to
grow and
and not out compete each other now you
could plant other plants in here
like you know rye and oats and that type
of thing but it
that doesn't serve as a competition to
the brassicas
as brassicas are to each other but you
can see here
um it was early season and the deer in
this area
really loved the brassicas we had
nowhere near frost and they were already
hammering them
and you can see the exclusion cage right
here how tall the brassicas would be
so you know a lot of biomass i got a
little bit of purple
leaves going on over here which means
it's kind of low on nutrition
and that's because it was in pretty
sandy soil but
you know in this little plot uh it was
kind of a test plot
just really wanted to see if i could
grow brassicas in a sandy food plot and
you know it worked okay um you know i
didn't get bulbs near as big as what
john's was
but uh you know because i put on the
correct fertilizer and i got the ph
right and i didn't plant it too heavy or
too thick
you know one of the uh one of the
mistakes i think that some landowners
make is
they try and plant brassicas in a food
plot that's just too small
and you know the deer are gonna
overpower it way too quick
if you're in a high deer population area
and you've got small food plots you know
brassicas is probably not your best
choice for producing the most tons of
food per acre
because they they're not very browser
resistant you know they nip the tops off
and then the bulbs don't grow
and then the whole point of brassicas is
kind of out the window so
now this is a food plot of a client i
visited uh several months ago
and uh this was the pictures that he
took of his food plot
uh last year but you can see here that
the
this there's almost no spacing between
these brassicas i mean it's almost
a solid green carpet on the ground so
you know quite a bit of difference
between the open ground that you see
here
because this here was planted at the
recommended rate
whereas um you know the client he
noticed that he was uh putting it on a
little bit too heavy
um something malfunctioned on his
spreader and
all of a sudden he looked and the
brassica seeds were almost all gone you
know and and so
it was coming out way too fast and he
didn't realize it so
anyway you can see here though that uh
the the other thing about
having it planted too heavy is there's
just not enough nutrition to go around
and we got a lot of yellowing leaves and
purple leaves here so that's a
sure sign of a lack of nutrition you can
barely see
right here there's a trail camera on
this real little tree
that trail camera right here prevented
deer from
browsing on these brassicas right near
the camera you can literally see the
green line
the browse line i mean they they browsed
about up to here and they would not get
any closer to this tree
they haven't been browsed down they're
they're more healthy where
when you get to the brow beyond the
browse line you've got a lot of uh
they're a lot shorter
and a lot more stressed you know and so
think about that you know if you've got
you go through all this work to put a
food plot out
and you know whether you're tilling up
the soil or going out there and spending
money on fertilizer and seed and all
that good stuff
and then you put a camera right here
three feet off the ground
serving it up on a silver platter for
the deer to come over and sniff it and
get all nervous about it
you know why not just put that thing up
eight to ten feet up in a tree right
just take one section of climbing stick
put it on the tree step
up on it and then put your camera up
there or you know use a few
um ameristep screw-in tree steps you
know man we go through all this work to
put in a food plot
and then you know don't shoot yourself
in the foot by putting a camera right
there on a t
post or on the side of a tree right on
the edge of the food plot at three four
feet up like you see on tv
if you're in iowa i guess that's not a
big deal but most of you guys are not in
iowa so
i would just highly encourage you guys
this year to really try and get your
cameras up at least eight feet off the
ground
just wanted to show you another angle of
this same
section of food plot here that my client
had
this right here is the tree that the
trail camera's on you can barely see it
but again you can see the browse line
from the other angle
i mean they didn't even come any closer
to that tree than than right there so
i mean if the does and fawns and young
bucks are not gonna come over by this uh
camera and browse can you imagine how
freaked out the mature bucks
are about that camera i mean they
probably not even gonna come into this
food plot so
you know just something to keep in mind
now like i said you know too much
brassicas in the same plot
is going to cause too much competition
amongst each other but you can plant
other species of food plot seeds in that
brassica plot
and even though it'll be overcrowded
it's not going to stunt the brassicas
because it is a different species and
you know some of these plants really
work they have a symbiotic relationship
where you know one species will help out
the other
when you're thinking about planting the
food plot and you're thinking are you
gonna throw in some purple top turnips
you know well
you know don't just plant purple top
turnips you know don't ever plant
a monoculture food plot you know we
don't want monoculture in our woods and
we don't want monocultures in our food
plots always think about planting blends
and and
i would shoot for at least you know five
or six way blends
because you know it's going to give the
deer some variety but these plants are
going to help out each other
and you'll create more biomass when you
grow a species than if you ever grow a
monoculture
so we can see here we got some hairy
vetch hairy vetch is really good at
generating nitrogen they create these
nitrogen nodules
on the roots and so that's something
that the brassicas need
you can see we've got some oats and and
some radishes over in here
so you know just a good variety it's not
gonna out compete each other because you
can see there's a lot of spacing between
these brassicas you know we got a purple
top turn up here we got we got radishes
over here
and so uh you know we got no brassicas
right here so spacing is good
and a good variety of plants in that
food plot
now when it comes to the grain blend the
grains being your winter rye grain
winter wheat forage oats winter peas
that type of thing
and that by the way is what is in john
comps fall forage over at northwoods
whitetails
and so in the northern tier states you
want to plant these
almost a month later than you do you
know the brassica blend so
you know in the northern tier stage
you're looking at august 20 to the
you know last day of august and then in
the mid-tier stage you're looking at
september 1 of september 10
and then uh september 11th to 20th in
the southern tier states
and so i know a lot of guys are really
kind of getting nervous once they get to
the
middle to late august they're really
getting you know
impatient or worried that you know the
the deer are not going to find the food
once it starts growing because it's so
late or they're afraid that if they have
a food plot failure it's going to be too
late to plant again
and i get all those concerns but i'm
telling you the
the the grain blend really does grow
fast and so even though you're planting
you know your brassica blend a good
three to four weeks before the grain
blend
once you get that grain blend in the
ground and it starts growing it's going
to grow right past those brassicas
and the grain blend is a lot more
attractive in the early stage than the
brassicas are because remember the
brassicas
have a very bitter taste to them before
a frost the alkaloids are very bitter
but when we get a hard frost the
alkaloids in the
brassicas they turn sweet and they turn
like into sugar and so that's when the
deer really start hitting them
so before we get a frost that's why we
have the grain blend
on a different part of the food plot so
that they start hitting the grains
and then they leave the brassicas alone
so that the brassicas can grow bulbs
and some of the most attractive plants
in that grain blend is the oats and the
peas i mean that's like
ice cream you know and even the rye
green you know that's very attractive
too when it's nice and young
but the problem is you don't want to
plant this too early and
i've seen some guys on social media post
the fact that they've already planted
their grain blend already for this fall
the problem with that is if you get it
in the ground too early
is it's going to be too mature it's
going to get too stemi
and some of those uh like the you know
the oats and peas might even go to seed
you know by the time we get to the
opener of bow season well
you know generally by the beginning of
bow season you want young
tender plants that are actively growing
you don't want plants in your
food plot that are already gone to seed
right because then deer might visit your
neighbor's property because maybe their
grains are a lot more tender and growing
so here's an example of oats that have
matured in seven weeks
look at all these oats seeds and you
know we got the uh the buckwheat is
blooming
this is only seven weeks so if you
figure out we've got uh
you know from august 1st to october 1st
we've got eight or nine weeks
eight and a half weeks something like
that you know it's it's gonna be uh it's
this stuff is gonna go to seed
and at this point you know these plants
aren't as as attractive anymore
so don't get too worried you know that
the deer aren't going to find the food
the deer know
everything that's going on on the
property and so when it comes to
planting blends there are some
species that actually produce nitrogen
and those are the legumes
plants like alfalfa bird's foot tree
foil clover hairy vetch
peas soybeans and sunhem and so these
all produce nodules on their roots
and so you can see these right here you
know after
the plant has taken up the amount of
nitrogen that it needs itself
then it starts to produce these uh
nitrogen nodules on its roots and
they're really easy to see and so this
is why we like to throw some radishes
in our grain blend because they really
benefit real well from the peas
that produce nitrogen and the radishes
can actually store
the nitrogen and other nutrients in its
big tuber
it's like a storage tank and it just
holds it there in the soil
for the next planting which if you do
the three strip method
you know after the grain blend the next
year will be brassicas
and so then you'll have all that
nitrogen stored
in these tubers that are in the ground
and
then the brassicas are going to be able
to utilize that and take that up again
the next year so that's one reason why
we don't like to mix
our grains and brassicas together we
like to split them up you know
doing a three three-strip method because
um there's just more benefit to
splitting them
up than to putting them together and so
you know this is a famous picture of
dave brandt
in central ohio and you know he really
learned
that when he planted peas with his
radishes wow his
radishes really got a lot bigger and
that was because of the
nitrogen available to it by way of the
peas
and you can see he's got a pretty good
blend out here he's got a lot of
different varieties of seeds
you look right here you see this little
brown hint right here this is a
you know a weed has got another weed
right back in
and over here and so big deal right i
mean look at these radish tubers that
he's growing
it's just uh pretty incredible and so in
one of dave's seminars he was talking
about how
200 years ago ohio soil had a four to
six percent of organic matter
but today it only averages one and a
half to two percent
and that's a direct result of declaring
war on soil
with plows and discs and tillers and all
that and also because of synthetic
inputs you know fertilizer and that type
of thing
and so that's one of the big reasons why
lake erie has such a big problem with
algae blooms in it because of all the
runoff
and he said the average ohio farm loses
five tons of topsoil per year to erosion
due to disking and tilling and so if you
think about that how in the world can
they build or maintain
organic matter when they got so much
erosion and runoff that's going into the
you know the ditches and the
streams and the creeks and the rivers
and eventually all out into the lake you
know
there's a lot of phosphorus out there a
lot of fertilizer and a lot of manure
and you know so it's no wonder they got
this big algae bloom out there in lake
erie
so on the flip side you know dave is
working with nature
dave's farm only loses a hundred pounds
of topsoil a year
and that's because he's always got
something growing
he's always got you know the soil
covered and you can see here he's got
radishes hairy vetch in here this is
probably rye
and so he plants that stuff just before
he harvests a corn or just after he
harvests the corn
and so as soon as the corn is gone you
know by by the time it's off the field
he's already got green stuff growing
and so you know this uh this ground is
not going to be bare
it's going to suppress weeds he's not
going to have a huge weed problem next
spring
and because he's got green growing stuff
on here he's got a good root base
so that in the spring he can get his
equipment in here
and you know plant right into it with
his equipment much
earlier than his neighbors can who do
conventional tilling
and just have a mud hole because they
got bare dirt out in their fields right
so you know lots of benefits to doing
that and so dave was saying that
his blends produce five to six times
more biomass than any single species
planting
so in other words if you are planting
one single species
that species is actually going to grow
more biomass
if it's planted with other species
because it has a symbiotic relationship
with some of these other plants and they
can actually
thrive much better when they grow
together
one of dave and gabe brown's famous
sayings in their seminars is the fact
that
when you start no-tilling you minimize
carbon loss
and when you plant multi-species cover
crops you maximize
carbon input and so if you can do both
of those things man you are really
turning the corner and heading in the
opposite direction toward
building your organic matter and
nutrients in the soil
which is going to allow you to put in
you know less fertilizer
the crops are going to taste better
because it's not using synthetic
fertilizers
so so dave brandt hasn't put fertilizer
on his fields from
in i don't know how many years while his
neighbors that do conventional tilling
are putting on nitrogen every single
year and
dave is out producing county average in
corn of bushels per acre
even without putting any uh nitrogen on
his corn
i think he threw a number out one time i
believe he was producing somewhere
around 200 bushel corn
and the county average for conventional
tillers
was like 175 bushel corn so think about
the cost savings that
dave is realizing by not adding
fertilizer by not running his diesel
tractors over the field you know three
four times during the year
and uh you know the neighbors are
killing themselves and they're they're
actually getting less corn for it right
so and and i'll bet you dave's corn
probably tastes much better
than his neighbor's corn do as well and
it's a lot more nutritious because it's
you know it's working with nature it's
it's all more natural
rather than all the synthetic stuff
another interesting tidbit that dave
threw out in one of his seminars was
that
he averages 25 to 30 earthworms per
shovel full that is an amazing amount of
earthworms
and the other thing he said is that
worms will turn over
seven inches of topsoil every five years
so he says man why are we killing
ourselves to turn over our soil why
don't we just let the worms do it right
seven inches of topsoil every five years
that is a lot
and you can see right here all the look
at all the pore space in this profile
you know you've got
you obviously have the worm channel
you've got little root channels but you
have all these little
you know aggregate holes in here so you
know this stuff is like black
cottage cheese it's a it's pretty
amazing
a lot of pore space a lot of room for uh
rain water to collect in here it's like
a big huge
porous sponge you know and you take that
versus you know a tilled field so here
we got
no-till that hasn't been plowed in 30
years and look at all that pore space
all the root channels and and all that
area where water can just
flow right down and sink in here and and
get stored for
during drought periods versus you get
this
tilled field look at it's like powder
you know the the
the discs and tillers they have just
turned that to aggregates into powder
and so you can imagine how much less
water is going to infiltrate into this
kind of dirt
than into this kind of soil here now
speaking of rainfall
i know some of you guys are not resident
landowners
right so your property is like three
four five hours away from where you live
and during the food plot season boy it's
really nice to know
how much rain your food plot got even
though you're nowhere near
so what i do is i go to this site which
is a national oceanic and atmospheric
administration and i'll i'll give you a
link
to this site and i'll put it below this
video so you can just go down there and
click on it
maybe you might want to save it and put
it in your favorites or something like
that if
this is something that is going to be of
any interest to you
but once you get once you click on the
uh on the link
and you get to this page here you want
to go to the surface maps
which is the left hand tab go down here
to radar
and then it'll take you to the map of
the united states
so search for a location i don't worry
about that i just get rid of that little
box there
because i'll just put my location like
right in the middle of the map
and then i'll go over here to the top
right corner and i'll hit the little
plus sign to zoom in
so you know maybe i'll go one more time
that's about all i need
so if i do my uh my home of grand rapids
area let's say
then right now this is the current radar
map
and if we go over here to the left side
let's say i wanted to find out uh how
much rain did we get yesterday
or you know i can go back i can go back
three years i can go back ten years if i
wanted to i can go back to a specific
time
and you can check it out for yourself if
you know exactly what day and time
uh you had rain in a certain area you
can just verify it with us right here so
pretty cool but anyway i'm gonna go back
in time and
i'm going to put it at uh let's see
let's put it at 1400
there 1400 hours and now i'll set it uh
i'll update the map to this time so i
don't want to click this one because
this sets it to the current time which
is right now
and that's what i know what it looks
like right now so i want to go
update the map to this particular time
so i'll hit the little blue button and
it automatically updates it that quick
so what i can do is i can move in five
minute
five minute increments and so if i want
to go ahead five minutes
i can just click this button if i want
to go back five minutes i just click
this one so we're just gonna go ahead
i'm just gonna
every every time you hit click it with a
mouse it's going to uh
move the map and you can see it's it's
moving across the page here
and so it'll show you exactly whether or
not you got rain or not
and you know if you want to even zoom in
a little bit more
to give you a little bit more detail
because you know maybe the
maybe the system went right by your
property and you're not quite sure if
your particular food plot got rained on
right because it's that close
so you can you can really zoom in and
then uh just click the
little five minute increment and it'll
keep right on going by
so i think that was pretty cool so i
mean we can go way
back in time you know we can go back so
if we go back to august it's
2017 let's pick uh august 1st
so then it drops it into the box come
down here hit the update map
button and that's what we got so
we're going to zoom out here and it
doesn't look like any rain
so if we uh maybe move ahead another day
see what happens no rain again
must have been a dry spell huh guys
update the map
oh there's some rain right up here so
anyway pretty cool
you know you can go back pretty much any
date basically see how much rain your
food plot got
so now here's another historical map
that i found to be
pretty helpful in my line of work what
this is
is this is a site called wind
history.com
and i'll provide a link to this one as
well
below this video so the reason i like
this uh
the site here is because it tells me uh
what wind directions are most prevalent
during the hunting season
so all these blue dots represents an
airport
around the country and so let's say um
let's say i'm gonna be over in um well
let's say fort wayne
so what i'm gonna do is i'll put fort
wayne about somewhere in the middle
i'll come up over here to the left side
and i'll zoom in i think you can just uh
probably
click on the airport too so now i can
see that this is fort wayne
you can see that you know this one is uh
this is chicago midway
this is uh o'hare this is gonna be kent
county ford
international airport so anyway once you
get it zoomed in a little bit then you
can find the individual airport that
you're looking for
in the area so i'll find the airport
that's closest to the hunting property
that i'm going to visit for a client and
if it's going to be near fort wayne i'll
click on the fort wayne
button and it pops up as fort wayne
international
so now what it shows me is this is the
frequency
of the wind by direction and you can see
that it's uh the wind is most frequent
out of the west but that's for a whole
12 months out of the year so what i want
to do though is i want
i want to know what is the most frequent
wind or the prevailing wind
in october so each one of these letters
represents
the a month out of the year and i want
october
and november so now it's only looking at
those two months and you can see how
it's changed
during the hunting season the wind is
out of the southwest
most of the time or not most of the time
but out of all the directions it's out
of the southwest
more than any other direction pretty
close to the west
but you know you can see here that we
still do get some east winds
so you know get northeast and uh east
northeast east northeast
and so you know you start adding all
these up well shoot the wind's coming
out of an easterly direction
about i don't know throw a number out
there maybe 35 percent of the time
and 65 of the time is coming out of some
sort of a westerly direction
so you know this is just something that
i like to uh show
landowners uh because a lot of
landowners that i run into
try to set up their their tree stands
and in
blinds and whatnot on the east side of
the food plot or east side of wherever
they want to hunt because they figure
the wind is always coming out of the
west northwest or southwest
but in actuality there's coming out of
the east a lot more often than what they
think
and 11 of the time the wind is calm so
anyway i thought that was kind of
interesting um if we go to
another um location let's say
um let's try a location
way up here in the in the upper
peninsula so
this would be we'll go back to october
and november and you can see this one is
most of the time it's out of the
northwest
let's try another one let's try this one
over here in northern pennsylvania
and if we go to act so that's uh all 12
months
and if we go to october november it
didn't change too much
but you can see how it comes out of the
uh the south southeast
uh at a fairly um regular clip i mean
almost as much as it does out of the
west uh
northwest so kind of interesting and
every every place around the country is
different and so
if this is something that you're
interested in as to you know what kind
of wind directions uh
happen on your property during the
months of october
and november then just go to this site
here wind history.com and
i'll provide a link to that underneath
this video as well
you
