Fall Food Plots

NYDAN

Handloader
Sep 17, 2013
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Yesterday Rol_P and Captain Cook helped me lime and seed two food plots for this fall and future years. One plot was on top of a hill by the "Shooting Hut" and the other was near the "Swamp Stand".

The first task was to get 1,300 pounds of lime, fertilizer, oat seed, and clover seed up the steep tractor road to the top of the hill. We split the load between the bucket on my tractor (Kubota L2350) which had the disk on it, and trailer attached to Caleb's WD45.

Here is Caleb and Roland going up the hill in 1st gear.

Up the Hill.jpg

Once up on the hill, we emptied half the lime into the trailer. We did half of the lime at a time to better gauge how uniform our application rate was.

Prepping the Lime.
Prepping Lime.jpg

Here is half of the lime.

Half the Lime.jpg

We applied the lime by shoveling from the trailer.
Spreading Lime.jpg

After disking the lime in we broadcast the fertilizer and fall "Forage Oats" seed by hand.

Sowing Oats.jpg

Then we disked the oats to cover the seeds.

Disking Oats-2.jpg

Finally we spread the clover seed using a crank type seed spreader. The tiny clover seeds fall into the interstices of the disked soil and they "cover" when it rains. Which it did last evening.

The "Forage Oats" stay green until the ground freezes solid and provide a food attractant during the fall and early winter. The clover will provide food and nutrition for 4 to 5 years.

Although it was hot work yesterday, it was a good time shared with two buddies. Many thanks to them for their help.

Dan
 
Excellent work, Dan. You certainly do a phenomenal job with your herd. No doubt it pays rich rewards.
 
That was quite the operation Dan. Good friends and some hard work will pay off for several years to come.
Great pictorial!

JD338
 
Outstanding Dan, that's great. I have a much smaller one with clover and chicory, I have to water it from the well so that limits the size. As soon as the surrounding forage drys out they start moving in. By the time I turn the water off in October, the deer have it mowed to 3 or 4 inches high, I get about three years out of each planting because off the forest adjacent to the plot. Again congratulations on a job well done.
 
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