Teaches your everything you need to know about planting food plots on your farms for whitetail deer. I have a bachelor of science in Agronomy (plant and soil science), I farm full time, and have a 1800 acre whitetail deer hunting outfitter in western KY where baiting is not allowed. I rely on food plots to successfully harvest mature whitetails every year, and I’m brining y’all along with me. In depth details that are critical to making your food plot a success.
*As Requested, I am now offering Whitetail land consultation, as well as food plot consultations*
For business email: clarksriverwhitetails@outlook.com
I don’t understand why anyone likes brassicas. The deer eat the forage tops early and once eaten, they are gone. When they are starving later in the winter, they will take a bite or two out of the bulbs. There is nothing left to eat afterwards Compared to cereal grains, which grows all winter and feeds the deer until the spring, my money is on the the later.
I use both cereal grains and brassicas. I’ve actually got a video coming out soon talking about this exact subject. I’ll have to honestly say, the brassicas plots last year were prolly my most fruitful over all….not the best plot I ever had but for the year of acorns, they did really well at keeping deer in and around the plots. Thanks for watching
Deer lay off of the iron clay peas until they reach their highest protein level and then destroy them. Plus the peas will re-sprout and give them way more tonage than soybeans. Soybeans get wiped out before they have a chance and don’t re-sprout.
Once soybeans are established, they will continue to come back, even when deer browse them to the ground. The key is to make sure they are established b4 whitetails wipe them out. I’ve tried the peas on 2 different plots and I’ve just not had the luck with them that a lot of folks have. I’m not saying it’s a bad plot….if it’s working in your area then I’d stick with it, but in my area deer much prefer the soybeans or alfalfa. Thanks for watching
Wes...as always good info. We sprayed everything down last week and will be planting in the next 10 days. We try to plant only once to save time, money etc, since we are interested only in a fall crop to hunt over. Bob.
Thanks, slow progress still relying on a walker.....hope to maybe get out this year though. My grandson and I are still doing the food plots as I enjoy seeing the deer from the house. God Bless, Bob
My brassica plot I'm going to plant this year was cereal grains and red clover last year (planted in September). I mowed the grains off in the spring and I've had a nice stand of red clover all year long so far. Can I count on any nitrogen credits from the red clover and lower my nitrogen for the brassica?
That’s a wonderful question!!! Clover can actually fix more nitrogen than most other legumes. As I’ve discussed nitrogen can be leached out quickly though. You SHOULD have enough to raise the brassicas plot from the clover….however I would keep a close eye on it and if you start to see a yellowing or just not that dark green clover, I would roll the nitrogen to it. My gut says you will likely have to add some, but definitely not a full rate. Thanks for watching and good luck with the plots.
Thanks Rich! Yes sir, I wasn’t seeking any more land, but I couldn’t pass up this tract! It’s a phenomenal farm, with long history of some giants being taken off of it. Thanks for watching.
Good information and great timing. Some of us have learned these lessons the hard way! Spray and let it breakdown. Disc and some of my best brassica plots have been after a second spray in between discing and planting just as the weeds sprouted in the fresh till. Good luck Wes. Another great video man.
Thank you sir! I completely agree, if I get a bunch of rain and I’ve worked the plot in advance, I typically spray again and kill that generation of weeds before seeding! Thanks for watching
Just remember guys if i plant a food plot its for the deer to eat period! It dont need to look like a golf course or manicured lawn if it looks ugly there might be "weeds" in there that your deer like to eat! Stay cool guys! Good luck!!!
No doubt! A plot is meant to attract deer and make hunts more enjoyable, and a lot of folks just enjoy doing the plot work. I agree, my plots aren’t 100% clean and free of any weeds, but I try to limit them as much as possible. I’ve seen fields that have been overtaken by resistant weeds, that started out with just a few in the field. 1 roundup resistant pig weed can drop hundreds of thousands of seeds in just one growing season. In my opinion it’s all about knowing what weeds you have, and which ones are big deals and which ones arent. Thanks for watching.
Perfect timing wes! I was going to overseed brassicas into beans but since beans failed because it was just way to wet , hopefully I can just spray and start a new plot of brassicas.
Absolutely! It’s amazing how so much of the country was terrible dry last year and this year it’s flip flopped around, a good deal of flooding in several places.
Does killing your summer plots before fall take away the benefits of just cutting and discing it in the ground green? Or does the soil still benefit when you kill it? Thanks Wes
That’s a complicated Answer….so technically that green manure that a lot of folks refer to won’t be there if you spray and then disk. The green manure is essentially when you turn that green vegetation into the soil, breaking plot, chisel, etc. In my opinion, I would much rather have the plot sprayed than trying to disk that in and get the green manure. I’ve never seen that much benefit from that. Thanks for watching!
First week of June we got corn and beans in and some clover. I sprayed gly in May to terminate oats and weeds. Need a lot more ground work here in southern Ohio. Did some pellet lime and a little triple 19. So I’m back now and with only about a 1/4” of since planting the beans are getting eaten and are about 3”-5” and the corn is almost knee high. Clover however was not good at all so I just over seeded more….and we got rain. I’m still in a learning curve and it’s not a straight line. Thanks for sharing I’m always watching….when I have time. Back to work.
I’m wanting to start a perennial clover plot in a quarter acre food plot that I currently have buckwheat and summer annual clovers in. It has no weeds and great seed to soil contact opportunities. Should I just broadcast my perennial clovers in it this fall?
As always enjoy the videos. I've been doing strictly no till the past 5 years now. I am by no means a farmer or have the background knowledge that you have. I've used a drill and crimper scenario as well as just spraying but never disc this particular field. I'll be the first to tell you that it is extremely hard to combat weeds. That seed bank is no joke. I've had a couple great smother crops and then plant and to my surprise the weeds will pop up in he same rows as the crops. I tried soybeans this year. Sprayed 2 times to kill everything in the field. Fertilize and lime based on a soil test and when I checked it out today there are weeds everywhere again. Good thing it's a monoculture of RR beans. They seem to be really stunted growth wise with the weed competition so hopefully spraying them will free em up. Good luck to ya
Yes sir, roundup should help eliminate most of those weeds, enough weeds and grass out there can definitely stunt the soybeans. But also could be whitetails feeding on them, they love those soybeans and keeping them off is a tough thing to do. Thanks for watching and good luck with the plots
We've seen Great results interseeding our corn. Shut off every 3rd row on the planter. So you end up with 2 rows at 30 inches and then a 60 inch gap before the next 2 rows. We wait till after our first spraying before interseeding our mixes. Usually, corn is about a foot or more tall when we do it. The skip rows open up the canopy enough to grow everything underneath. We up the population on the corn to still give us 30,000 with the other rows shut off. We have average yields over 200 bushel per acre doing it this way.
Yes sir, a good rotation is absolutely key in not only helping the soil, but also helping control that weeds that are so difficult to control! Thanks for watching
Great topic Wes! I’m doing my my beans and corn this year just like you said bc of previous videos. 1 question for you is what do you think about sorghum? Attractive? Good food source?
I think Sorgum, like most plots has its place….to me it’s a decent replacement for corn when for whatever reason that farm or area isn’t capable of raising corn. Sorghum is extremely drought tolerant, and will typically make when corn doesn’t. But I’ve never seen sorghum have the pulling power corn does. Thanks for watching, and good luck with the plots
Wes, I totally agree, we tried the spring release system for a few years with little or no success. We currently plant corn and soybeans in the spring and have alfalfa and clover in other areas along with the beans and corn. We plant our fall plots into the corn and beans and spray and till up a few smaller plots in addition. This system has worked well for us and saved us a lot of time and money. We sold our no till this year. Thanks for sharing, we have been doing this a few years and it has been working well for us. Bob
Bob thanks for sharing your experiences with us! I think the mixes system has a place, but I don’t think far and wide it’s the best system for folks! Thanks for watching!
Never even thought about it this way,,Definitely makes good sense to me. Thanks for the info! Im gonna try this in my farm Been struggling over last 3 years to get a good program going. But of course dry weather hasn’t helped either🤦♂️
A drought can make food plots a major headache, that’s another reason I like my system, you’ve got a large window to plant in the spring and the fall. Thanks for watching
Hey Scott! Thanks for reaching out about hunting with me! Currently I am booked completely full for the 2024 season! I will know what openings I have for the 2025 season in February. Thanks
Thanks Wes, perfect topic for the question I have. I’m planting alfalfa this year, I was thinking about over seeding tillage radish into it late September or early October, your thoughts
I’ve never done that before, I don’t know why it wouldn’t work. But i always seed a pure stand of alfalfa and never mix anything with it. Tillage radish planted early could shade the alfalfa out would be my only concern. Alfalfa won’t do a ton that first fall, it like many others is sending roots out and then come early spring it will hit the ground running. Thanks for watching and good luck with the plots.
Utilizing the "Release Process" with mixes is fraught with potential failure on many different levels. Last year for my KY farm, I sprayed the field three times throughout the spring/summer to eliminate all weeds and grasses. Then for the fall planting, I no till drilled cereal grain and it came in clean and looked great. For year two, you have to wait until the "Dough" stage to crimp which, according to the mighty Google is the end of June in Kentucky. I booked my vacation for the end of June and traveled down to my farm to discover that I was past the dough stage and already had hardened seed heads on the grain. It turns out the plant cycle of cereal grain is dependent on many things, including rain, for which we had a lot of and served to move up the life cycle of the grain. I'm not sure of the best method to address this situation since I will soon have an early crop of volunteer cereal grain.
Yes sir, wheat in KY usually matures the first 2 weeks in June, I’d wager cereal rye would be very similar. I wished I knew what to tell you, but it’s going to be loaded with cereal rye seed for this fall, I’ve never been in that situation to shed any light on the subject. Thanks for watching and good luck with the plots!
Wes we are on the same page. I’m doing both at separate areas. Mono plots and mixes as well as interseeding into grains. I think a bunch of plotting is learning. Trial and error. I like the stewardship part of the release program and how it doesn’t have the input costs, but that drill! I’ve said it before if a manufacturer can come up with a small drill with a price point around 3g they could sell them like crazy! For now I will continue to learn while experimenting with new blends and keeping places for the old standby corn and bean plots. I also want to experiment with winter peas and pumpkins/gourds/melons. Good video my friend!
Yes I completely agree, trial and error is one of the best ways to learn what works in different parts of the country. Drills are so crazy expensive, I’d love to own one but can’t justify that huge price tag….Maybe one day! Thanks for watching and good luck with the plots!
Great scientific information as well as actual experiments. Wes, you are the man and we appreciate you! By far the best explanation on why not to use Spring/Summer blends!!
Thanks Nathan I really appreciate the support! You have watched the channel since the very beginning, and I certainly appreciate that very much! Thanks for watching
Generally 6-8 weeks before a frost…..but I experimented with varying planting dates last year and had pretty good results. I planted as late as 2-3 weeks before the frost and had decent results! Thanks for watching and good luck
Thanks Wes, as always great information! I enjoy your channel and am learning a lot from you. I watch your videos so much that my wife can now do a Wes impersonation of your southern accent :). We live so far north our neighbors are in Canada so there's not any southern drawl up here. Appreciate you Wes!
Do you think maybe we should have tried spreading the seed prior to tilling? Or maybe go over it with the tiller after spreading seed? I was just worried about releasing too much moisture from in the soil by tilling a second time.
Sometimes Mother Nature can ruin a plot no matter what we do, and that sounds like the case here. For broadcasting any plot rain is 100% critical and without the crop is likely to fail. Tilling would have brought more soil moisture up to germ the seed but it also would have dried the soil out much faster….its a double edge sword
I tried everything I knew to get them buried, we cultipacked, used a drag harrow and the dirt seemed loose after spreading seed. But apparently it still wasn’t enough. I do know that at least what we’ve tried, just doesn’t get the seed close to the 1.5” seed depth that is recommended.
When you mentioned something about watering, it’s extremely difficult to water a food plot, it takes roughly 30,000 gallons of water to get an inch on an acre.
It sure is looking good. My pre-emergent worked well, but my single row planter I think put my seed too deep in a lot of spots so I didn't get the amount of plants that I wanted. My soil is a sandy loam and in June we only received a 1/4 inch if rain so even my dove proso millet is suffering. A lot of my sunflowers are stunted but they all seem to be making flowers. I just hope they produce seeds. Thanks and I'll keep watching your progress.
Good deal! I bet they will make seed! Sunflowers are really easy to plant to deep, with a planter or by broadcast. The old saying I go by is when disking or planting is if you can’t see a few on top of the ground your planting them to deep. Glad your pre emerge worked well! Thanks for watching
I’m pretty sure that I just didn’t get them covered well enough. I’m pretty sure they got baked. I have been able to find allot of beans laying on top after we got some rain. We didn’t get the rain that was forecast for about three weeks after planting. We trucked water in and tried to get water on them but I don’t think it was soon enough, and enough water to save them. It happened twice this year. I’m buying a drill and am done trying to broadcast beans.
Kenneth, rain is definitely critical when broadcasting any plot. I’ve had good luck broadcasting but the seed has to be buried….if it’s on top of the ground you have to have rain right after seeding. If it’s buried in the ground and it gets dry it will wait until the moisture is there to germ up. Drills are definitely very nice to have and give you much more precise depth that you want to seed.
If you got to aircrow.com they have it as the first thing that shows up. It’s the plot protector pro. There are 2 videos, and right under the videos you can click on view product. That is the same one I have. Or call the number, he will walk you right through the process and answer any questions you might have. Thanks for watching.
Wes, at what point in the food plot process do you fertilize, before planting, same time or after a certain # of days after germ... Planning on a soybean, cow peas, sunn hemp, sorghum, millet, sunflower blend in FL...with soybean and cowpea inoculant.
You don’t need any nitrogen for that system, all you need is p and k. I like to put it down a week or so b4 planting. Also if you are going to till the soil, put it down b4 you till, if your no tilling just throw it on top of the ground.
@DIYfoodplotpro the curremt location is kind of overgrown and needs a major bush hogging first. Do you think this mix would do okay in a no till situation.? I would think the seed needs to be covered, no?
Very interesting. Please post a following video a month or so and let’s see how it holds up. You for sure have a wonderful testing ground. I am using the 3d hot fence with a twist I learned a couple years ago to keep cost down. I use one strand of hot tape and two strands of flagging tape stretched around the plot. Only had a fawn get through that I’m aware of. I set a cell cam in there as well.
@@DIYfoodplotpro Everything works for a little while. Most farmers here have custom built rifles, night vision, and silencers and of course crop damage permits. And yes, a local guy came up with something similar without the clown on it. Had it right behind my bro in laws house in HEAVY Sika deer country, whitetails too. It worked for a while, hasn't used it since. I'd say a good 5 years ago. Even flying lead works for a while. I've actually killed deer on crop damage permits within 100 yds of a gas gun going off every 10 minutes in July. Matter of fact the 20 I killed was all close to that gas gun
Love to see your enthusiasm. As a farmer you feel the pain of crop damage !!! U of Ga. study I think, unanticipated sound of human voice taking spooked deer faster than coyotes, wolves, etc. Mix up the siren with other sounds, at random. For smaller areas the yard enforcer by orbit is great but you need a water supply. O damage in all my vegetables, or orchards, etc if I use that. Perimeter motion detector with compressed air tube “fizzy” bombs. Perimeter mini speaker system with laser flashes. Some other ideas no more costly than this. But for a big area this is cool.
Happy 4th. We had a cherry tree when I was a kid. Birds love cherries. Nothing would work forever,keeping them away. Noise,lights, people,dogs. They would get used to it all. Today we have an apple tree tight by the house. We sit ten ft away and the deer come. My dog barks at them, they come if it’s good to eat, they will come. This will work at first, but give it a few weeks. The deer will come
