Checked my camera this morning. Sure enough, the buck I saw stand up in the back of the field visited the mineral lick as well. After getting a better look at him now, I believe he might be a little younger than I thought……

Heres a pic i took of my little field this morning before i left. I got to get some milorganite on them this afternoon before the deer come in and eat them up.
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Nice Turkey_neck!.....Get something on it soon or the deer with have it eat up!

Deer browsing the tops out of the young ragweed plants in the field……..Ragweed is estimated to be 25% crude protein with 73% digestible dry matter…..In comparison, alfalfa is 27% and 72% respectively.

You don’t HAVE to mow this time of year but I’m like everyone else and just want to ride my orange buffalo from time to time…..so I’m letting it graze off the old overstory today.

I’ve got my bushhog picked up high enough that I’m mostly mowing across the top of the new plants coming in underneath the rye that’s falling over….probably mowing between 12-18”....the wheel on my bushhog isn't even touching the ground. What I’m doing is just removing the overstory and allowing full sunlight to get to the new growth at ground level now…..”releasing it”. It’s also gonna go ahead and put the hay to the ground…..just speeding up the process a little so the new crop of plants can start growing full steam ahead. The yuchi seed heads really could have used another few weeks but I plan on completely reseeding all of the clovers this year anyways.

We’re supposed the get rain for the next couple of days so all of the green should really take off in the next week or two. Let’s go finish mowing………

Heading out tomorrow to lime, mow, fertilize, put out mineral licks, put some corn in feeders, and set up 3 cameras !

Hoping for better tesults with theow and mow second year now. Plus, drought didn't help

It sounds like you're doing the right things to get you there.

I had a good crop of rye/wheat in my food plot behind the house. I let it get waist high and sprayed to kill it. When it was good and dead I took my cultipacker and rolled it down creating a thick mat over my soil. By creating the mat it has prevented the grass and weeds from growing. I've had the mat in place since late April and the entire month of May. I finally got a chance to no-till my soy beans in this morning with my little JD two row planter I had built.

I read and watched some videos about farmers no-till planting into thick mats of rye/wheat and had excellent results with weed/grass control.

Nice Squeaky!......Keep us updated on the progress.

I put out 150# of fertilizer on my fields today to kick them in a bit. I'll be adding another round in a month or so.
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Nice Turkey!.....

do you ever wacith growingdeertv? this is pretty much how
Grant Woods does his food plots

I think the ideas originally stemmed from the same place. He’s friends with dgallow….which is who originally pushed these soil health principles on the old QDMA forum and who sparked my interest in it as well. I’m pretty sure Dr. Woods was either a lurker on the QDMA forum or a secret participant and we just didn’t know it was him. Some of the things he says on his videos sound like the words came straight out of dgallow’s mouth.

So here’s the idea with the three clover mix. The crimson grew early in the spring, the yuchi took over as the crimson died out, now the durana takes over and grows for the rest of the summer or until conditions make it go dormant. There may be other good clovers to add in too….like medium red for example. Over time I may just add a little of this and that to my seed mix. If you manage it right then you’ll have some keep coming back each year even if you don’t add it again the next year. This is a very low maintenance way of keeping your plots attractive all year long…….

Durana clover coming in……..

Another time lapse sequence taken from the same spot showing the last week of growth after being mowed. You can see how much the durana is really jumping now......

1 week ago



Today

Here’s a two-week update on the buck we’re following to see if he hangs around. I believe it to be the same deer anyways. They sure hit the mineral licks hard this time of year. I’ll have to give him a name if he’s gonna be a routine visitor. He may be in danger come Oct 14th if he’s still here…….still too early to tell what he’s gonna be though. The body looks to be decent size with a little bit of a belly. His antler bases look decent size but it always looks bigger in velvet. I really want him to be an older deer but my gut is telling me he’s probably 4 at the most……I don’t know. We’ll watch him this summer and see what happens……….

Then…….


Now……..

I need to mow all of my clover plots, the crimson clover seed heads are just standing and my white clover is thick as it gets. I have two other crimson and Red clover fields and the same thing is going on there, crimson seed heads are dead standing and the red clover is filling it. the two red clover fields had their first plantings last year so they are as thick as my white clover fields but they're growing like crazy with all the rain we've had. I'm interested to see how the red clover smells when it all starts to flower, it's supposed to be an aromatic bloomer and have a sweet aroma.

Ragweed Seed