Last year I planted my third try at chufa on my place in the past 15 years or so. Roughly 1 acre this time. It, like every other attempt, made a fine stand of nuts. One problem, I have never seen one turkey in it or one sign that they have scratched in it. It's wrapped in an area with approx. 20 acres of mature thinned and burned pines. I have seen and killed turkeys on my 200ish acre property in the last 15 years or so. Last fall, there was a group of 12-15 hens that regularly visited a fall food plot within 100 yards of this chufa patch. In the spring I would get pictures of hens and gobblers sporadically pass thru my place, close to the plot, but again never any sign of scratching in there. I have tried disking to show them and basically every other thing to get them started. NOTTA...

So last month, I was aimed to get away from chufa so I had sprayed roundup on the plot, I turned it under and planted it all in sunn hemp. Well the volunteer chufa(it's chufa for sure cause there is plenty left over...) has taken over and the sunn hemp apparently has either been over browsed or failed as it's about 4-6" high after a month. I get the lack of rain but it hasn't effected the chufa. So I'm going to try and spray out the grasses/weeds, essentially killing the hemp, but if it fails again to get eaten, I'm off the chufa boat.

Do I just win the award for the unluckiest chufa planter in AL? Y'all ever had this kind of thing happen to y'all where they just won't eat it no matter what you try?

That’s definitely strange.

You must not have any hogs.

Or racoons.

There's been other folks through the years who have posted here that they couldn't get turkeys to eat their chufas. One guy eventually sent me a picture of his and it was a field of yellow nutsedge. I'm not saying that is your problem, but chufas that turkeys won't eat and that are unaffected by drought make me think it's possible. It's very hard to tell the difference in the 2 when they are growing. Did the field have nutgrass in it before you started growing chufas? Can you post some pictures?

Chufas are also very sensitive to herbicides, while most of them have no effect on nutgrass. BTW, nutgrass is the popular name for yellow nutsedge. Some claim that chufas are the same species, but I don't see how. They developed in different parts of the world and they don't cross, even when growing side by side.

Sure hope you can make a good crop this year and figure out the problem.

Correct no hogs ever seen on my place and few coons. My boys and I trap the fire out of coons.

Not nutgrass I'm fairly certain but I guess I could be wrong, seems unlikely to me in this particular case? I don't have a picture handy but will try to get a few. This last try I had no herbicide at planting only several weeks prior to burn down existing fall crop and monitored it through the first several weeks with very little weed competition. If it was NS, I apparently had zero chufa germination. I guess I say that because the field was sprayed with GLY months prior and plowed three times before sewing the chufa it was solid brown dirt and then all the seeds came up to what looked like chufa at least uniform over the broadcasted area. When I did spray cleth and 24db the field dynamics didn't change from the uniform standpoint just nailed grasses, morning glory and coffee weed. Last fall I would pull up random plants and they would be full of the same looking seeds I had sewn??? When I disked the plot it was littered with chufa(at least I thought) as well. Just strange to me as I all I've ever read was they cannot resist them. And I've seen on my friends places that very thing.

I'm uncertain about NS in it prior to planting, because this field had been used as a fall food plot for several years before I took it out to try to "convert" it to a turkey field lol! I had significantly more turkeys using/strutting in it in years with a deer mix than last years chufa attempt I'm really contemplating whether to cut my losses and just put it in all clover this fall and trying to maintain it long term.

Everyone has luck in there life, and I've been blessed mostly with good so if this is my very few bads so be it, but dead gum this luck hurts cause I sure have worked on trying to keep the birds fat and happy

Strange that they have not found the chufas on their own. But, maybe you can disk a strip in February and maybe add some wheat/corn to get them feeding in the area. If they don't start on the chufas I would suspect you have nutsedge. Or, you had no nut production from the year before. But, you obviously had production if you have a solid volunteer crop come up.

I had 2 fields planted in Chufa 280 yards apart and both produced an exceptional amount of tubers but for some reason birds would not touch one but would devour the other.

Had the same thing here near Waverly. Disced a strip....they NEVER touched them....not even the Coons!! 40 years ago they would head to the Chufa patch Everyday...very Strange.

I believe I'm done with it, spraying it soon and after a couple plows, sprays and soil amendments its going to clovers in the fall