May 2012 Food Plot Update

A Favorite Picture

Bigfoot

Welcome to the May Food Plot Journal. May brought weather closer to normal although it was a little dry. Our established clover plots did well, but the new plots could have used more rain.

We've done some experimenting with the two plots we planted in March. We disked up the one we planted in Area 2 and sowed Evolved Harvest Provide Clover and Chicory on May 19th. Why did we use this seed blend? It was available at Walmart when I was getting some food for our weekend and it was relatively cheap. As of the 28th we hadn't yet seen anything popping up here. Rain should do wonders.

We left the plot in Area 6 untouched to see what it would do. As of May 28th it looked to be more chicory than clover. I think the chicory likes the dryer weather. Hopefully when we get some rain the clover will come on strong.

You can see that Area 6 on the left is now green and the part of Area 2 that we disked again is still just dirt on the right.

In late April we started disking the Middle plot and on May 19th we disked, dragged, applied 200 lb of lime, 45 lb of 10-10-10 fertilizer and sowed Biologic Maximum. This is a brassica blend so were anxious to see if it grows as well as a small plot of this same blend grew a few years ago in the Right of Way plot.

We're still impressed with our new drop spreader for both the lime and fertilizer.

I think I might have an idea what happened in Area 5 (Area 51) where the clover seemed to be growing well in patches. I started having trouble with our broadcast spreader last year so I may have spread the lime and/or fertilizer by hand in frustration. That's what some of the patterns remind me of. I may try using our drop spreader in this plot to add more lime and fertilizer. I mowed the plot on May 28th. It had a nice crop of daisy's among the clover.

We mowed just about every plot some time in May and we also used either Arrest or Slay Herbicide in most of them as well.

There is a lot of clover in the hayfield, some providing more than others. I'm thinking about planting oats in part of our oldest area of the hayfield plot later this summer.

The oldhouse plot still has some grass, but the clover looks real nice. Hopefully the herbicide we sprayed it with will help us get rid of some of the grass.

Here are two deer eating in the oldhouse plot, you can see that there is still a lot of clover.

The whippoorwill and right of way plots are doing well and the garden plot has a lot of clover and we're back to mowing it with a garden tractor, which the clover seems to like a lot.

This is the garden plot right after we mowed it. It looks rough, but the next time we see it the clover will have jumped back up.

We need rain on our plots and we finally got some yesterday. It wouldn't hurt to get a little more over the next few days.

So far our established clover plots are doing well, while the new ones are still having some trouble.

We get thousands of pictures each month with our digital trail cameras but we narrow down each set of pictures to our favorite six or seven and these are usually buck pictures. As you can imagine there are always several more that are very good but don't make the cut.

Below is one of our favorite pictures from May. Somehow we caught this squirrel in mid-air. You can take a look at our favorite deer pictures from May 27 here.

A couple of weeks ago we arrived in the late evening, after dark. Ryan had a 12 gauge shotgun that he hoped to turkey hunt with the next morning and he couldn't wait until the next day to shoot it for the first time. He walked around the house form where I was and fired one shot. Shortly after the shot we heard a “scream” and what seemed like whimpers from the woods over the hill in front of the house. Initially I thought that it was a coyote, but as it continued it sounded nothing like a coyote.

My first thought was, what in the world did he shoot! Well, it wasn't what he shot at that made the noise. I walked around the house and Ryan was standing there looking into the woods wondering what he had just heard.

We had never heard anything like that before, but we'll be looking for bigfoot in our digital trail camera pictures from now on. I don't have a picture yet, but I'll post it as soon as we get one.