Rain is coming. Anyone planting this early? Avg soil temp >60 (5 day avg).

I’ve got a couple spots almost ready. Looking like our temperatures are going to get right with nighttime temps in the mid 60’s

I may do it tomorrow seeing as how my time is limited these days

Trying to get some corn in the ground at my place

It’s a tad early but I got seed down, counting on this rain now.

I'm waiting for bout 2 weeks

65 is the temp for beans and peas, and it's supposed to cool down after the rain comes thru. I usually plant right after turkey season.

Good rain

The conventional soybeans are looking better than the Eagle soybeans I planted. If they don't come through this year it will be the last year I pay for them.

I’ll be checking my plot soon. Night time temps have been a little cool but the overall soil temp has maintained about 60.

I had that happen to me too. Planted a bag the first year, and they did really well. Next year I planted a bag, and not so much. I have always had very good luck with Whitetail Powerplant though. Just not RR like Eagle beans are.

I wonder if you just got some older ones? I think the second year ones I got were old.

I could have possibly got some older ones. The best year of hunting I ever had was when I planted it all in corn. I had pics of bucks from July until the end of the year. Next year that's what I'm going to do again

Stonewall beans have always done well for me. I run a cultivator through there maybe 1-2 times during the summer. Keeping it simple

I am a little leary of corn, since we aren't allowed to "bait". I can't decide if I want to ask for permission or forgiveness.......

Corn is a magnet if you can keep it standing through a deer season... the issue is this is difficult. The bushel per acre is way down in a food plot.

I have too many deer for corn. That's different than too many deer for legumes. Too many deer for corn means you are sitting pretty early fall but by February there is about ZERO left. If you spread some extra out there that's same as feeding corn from a feeder IMO.

I use to do corn in strips but I gave it up. I just put corn in the feeders and let that happen that way. I use the plots for summer food. I think that summer food has made much more impact on antlers than trying to hunt over Corn in the Winter. Corn doesn't help as much in Summer, however deer do eat the green ears before it matures. I don't have any issues attracting deer so I don't need the cornfield in January.

Hopefully that is making sense. I'd gladly hunt over a corn field any day but there is no comparison with Legumes regarding what a Summer plot is trying to accomplish = Antlers.

I don't have a plot that is over about 1/2 acre and I would have a coon issue too I am afraid. What I normally see is the deer I have cannot eat clover down. If I plant straight soybeans, they don't get very tall before being eaten to the ground. So I have to mix other forage in to be able to get the beans to grow, like sunn hemp, which is probably one of the best forages I can plant. Great root structure, and a ton of biomass later on.

I have some plots that need more organic material, and what I have been doing is not disking them at all. I just broadcast into what is there and then depending on the time of year, I either mow it with the flail, or I just leave it. So in spring, I broadcast and then mow the fall crop to cover it. In the fall, I mainly broadcast into it and leave it. The red clay is a PITA, and I usually have to subsoil those. It doesn't help the loggers push them off with a bulldozer, sometimes its like trying to till a patch of concrete.

I have 250 pounds of a "house salad" mix from green point ag, and then I have 50 pounds of sunn hemp and soghum. On my big clover plots, I may not plant much, but on these fields that need biomass, sunn hemp is going there. Some people don't like it because its hard to cut down, but I haven't ever had an issue using my flail mower. I could also go in and plant the sunn hemp and let it get up a little before planting beans/peas.

Exactly my situation lockjaw. No discing just broadcast into existing plot and mow. Last year used a mix from petcher seed and this year trying one from greencover. It’s a mix though, never monoculture. The variety from petcher did not require any fertilization and grew exceptionally. This years mix has soy bean and mung bean in it opposed to just cow peas last year so we’ll see how the soy and mung fair out. I have no problem with the sunn hemp stems I just rolled them over and they stayed down, and the winter forage grasses came up through it well.

WMS Summer Spot is supposed to do well. I've seeded one small area with it and have several more to do.

I tasked my GF with grabbing two of the 8# bags today. The place I’m getting it from was hoping to have more joint vetch come in but apparently the distributor is out. I’m going to take off mid week for a few days of camp chores and planting.

Well I don't think there is any magic bullet. For me, my focus has been on having year round food. It always baffled me to see in hunting clubs how they would go out and plant clay peas, and then they mow then down in August, which is when the deer were really starting to get into them. Then they would spray the fields, and let them sit for a couple weeks before disking. Then wait a week or so for fall planting, depending on rain. Then repeat the process in the spring.

You end up having plots with nothing for the deer to feed on. I want mine to know that they can come to a food plot every day and every night and find something to eat. I want them to have plenty of high protein browse to eat during fawn development and recruitment. So for me, clover and sunn hemp are my top 2. They can't eat them down. They might like a soybean better, it may have a little higher protein content, but guess what, when they eat it down to a stem, then they switch to something way less than sunn hemp or clover from a forage quality perspective.