There are old wagon type spreaders sitting around everywhere. Alot of people would probably give you one to get it out of their yard.

A little more on the idea of “perspective” ……..

I know most times folks are just giving me a hard time and it's in good fun, etc……but a lot of what I say often gets taken out of context and made out to be as if I think everyone should be growing weeds or this and that……However, what you see me doing is far more about adapting to the situation in front of me and working within the parameters of what I’m given in order to achieve the best outcomes. Everyone has different variables and constraints that have to be taken into consideration with the things they can and cant do……I may want to plant a field of soybeans and it look real pretty like in the magazines but the situation may not allow it ….There’s no need in going out and trying to repeatedly force a square peg through a round hole………..Adapt, improvise, and have perspective on the things that you CAN accomplish. Don’t just keep going out there doing the same things expecting different results......"Oh wow look, they ate it up again as soon as it sprouted!" (sarcasm )....... And for sure don’t go out and do things to make your situation worse. A great deal of this is psychological…….You’ve almost got to recalibrate your eyes as to what “you see”…….If you look at the pics of my field that I post and all you see is a field of weeds …….. then keep dialing it in a few more clicks.

I’ll be dam if I’m letting my place grow up in weeds tho

I’ll gather up a bag of sand spurs, sickle pod and Johnson grass if you can arrange an air drop on CNC’s place

Don't you have armyworms you need to be figuring out how to kill??

I know how to kill them now. Waiting on more poison to get here now

Dawn dish soap???

Hardly.

This article is a little old now but I found it interesting......At the end of the day this product revolves around all of the same concepts.....


https://alfafarmers.org/mulch-ado-about-cotton-father-son-team-turn-gin-trash-into-hydromulch/

Boring.

I have weeds in my parking lot.

Aesthetics..........

Perspective……….Let’s say we have a scenario of a big hunting club of 4,000-5,00 acres with 40-50 acres of food plots……Everyone decides that this summer they’re gonna budget in $150 per acre on “summer food plots”……How do you think most folks are gonna spend that money and what will be the return they’ll get out of it??

Likely the first thing folks are gonna do is start debating over what to plant or what to add into their seed blend……It may be lab lab and sunflowers or someone may say to plant it ALL in soybeans!!! They’ll figure in 2-3 weekends of tractor work to get it done and maybe figure in fuel for the tractor man…..Then they’ll spend what is leftover on a bag or two of 13-13-13 that they’ll apply at planting…….. Been there, done that, got several t-shirts……….Most of these type operations end up doing more harm than good in the end and just waste $150 per acre with nothing tangible to show for it…….It’s usually justified because some deer came in and wiped out a few acres of peas or something as if that made the slightest real impact to anything.

What would benefit situations like this more is to take the same $150 and spend it on something like summer applications of litter and lime and just let the field grow what it grows…. or maybe look to a product like the one made from the gin trash and apply it……or maybe invest the money on periodic applications of nitrogen every few weeks throughout the summer to boost organic matter production……..I’m gonna do something that results in tangible long term improvements to the growing conditions so that I have the best winter “kill plots” I can produce……..

That’s all most of these food plots will ever be…..”Kill plots”……There’s nothing wrong with that though……but you should have some perspective on the fact that if you have 50 acres of food plots across 5,000 acres then it’s the 4950 other acres that are influencing herd health and you manage your kill plots accordingly…….People start getting hung up on ideas that they are using these plots to “feed” deer in June and July and lose sight of the things they could be doing to have a real impact on the quality of their plots in November or January. For example, if you suggest that someone grows millet on their one acre plot in order to help their soil then most people will first and foremost be worried about how much the deer like the millet instead of how much it will improve the growing conditions for the fall. Not picking on jwalker but what was it you noticed about the pic I posted? It was how much “deer food” was there right? That’s just how we’ve trained our brains to see the situation.

Once you get your brain wrapped around the idea that most of these small food plots we all hunt will ever be is a fall/winter kill plot then you start looking at it from the perspective of…… “Everything I do in my one acre plot is prepping for that fall/winter stand"……. and your June/July decisions revolve around what is best for that goal.

So keep in mind that most of these things I’m showing and talking about are revolving around small scale food plot management but at the same time I’m also talking about how the same concepts can effect larger land management practices…... I really think we’ve lost a major connection to the most important “driver” of our ecosystem……We want to just manage deer or turkey or quail and have disconnected our thinking away from still managing the whole food chain and what is the most important factor in that.

If you pull back the straw from the surface of my field right now little critters scatter every which way…….Its loaded with these little snails by the thousands and millipedes and tiny grasshoppers, and rollie pollies and chit I dont even know what is.....…… What is the foundation block that supports this food chain?? The answer is carbon......


Invertebrate predators of land snails include beetles and their larvae, millipedes, flies, mites, nematodes, and other snails. Vertebrate predators of snails and slugs include shrews, mice, squirrels, and other small mammals; salamanders, toads and turtles, including the uncommon Blandings Turtle Emydoidea blandingii; and birds, especially ground-foragers such as thrushes, grouse, blackbirds, and wild turkey.

Pretty Cool. I am learning a lot. Keep them coming.

I like the bugs for turkey. I never thought of that.

Do you post here daily?

Thanks!.......

I have decided this is the last year I am going to mess with peas and beans in the spring. I am going to plant clover/fusion plots, and maybe add some alfalfa, and then spring planting turns into spring cutting, fertilizing and spraying. I am not disking twice a year and letting top soil blow away in the wind, or wash away in the rain. Then in the fall I can come in and broadcast whatever I want into the clover, and cut it. Boom done.

The clover is always there to feed them. Already did the lime. And I should get to where I don't have to add fertilizer. That should reduce the need to add lime again for a while. And I can easily maintain it with pellet lime too.

It is a waste of my time and $ to come in and spend $$600 a spring to plant peas only to have them wiped out in 2 weeks.

I like you're idea.......Everyone has a different opinion on this subject and to each his own but me personally I wouldnt get into worrying about "maintaining" a clover plot.....Just amend the soil and broadcast a little more clover at fall planting each year.....Maybe mow the fields once around June and let it ride from there.....

Think of it much in the same respect as feeding the food chain in a pond……The little tee tiny stuff feeds the small stuff and the small stuff feeds the bigger stuff and that feeds the really big stuff and so on and so forth……A food chain …..When you’re talking about “feeding” the soil food chain and these bug and insect populations then it starts with feeding carbon to the bacteria and fungi……It snowballs from there to the nematodes, arthropods, protozoa, etc and on down the line to the things that turkeys and quail eat……..Carbon is the main fuel for making the whole cycle function though …..From a management perspective you shouldn’t really focus on “producing snails for turkeys”……….No, you’re focusing on driving the big picture process from a base level…….which is producing, growing, storing, recycling humus from carbon based plant sources ……As the “manager” your focus should be to drive the vegetation recycling process that produces rich, vibrantly alive soil for this food chain to thrive in……..Hence, the reason I randomly show pictures of the diversity that is being produced from the process……People may look and say……”What the heck have dragonflies and butterflies and snails and snapping turtles and hog nosed snakes, etc have to do with turkey or quail management??”……It’s because they’re signs that the bigger cycle is flourishing.

Im definitely going to try it before turkey season next year. I figure I will mow as soon as deer season ends, and have a good bed of that dead weeds. Than by April Ill have a ton of bugs in there for the turkeys. I could see them loving that for scratching and bugging!

I dont think that would be baiting I hope. Id hate to get a ticket.