April 2006 Food Plot Update

Apple Trees

Digital Game Cameras

The green-up seemed to come upon us quick in April. It was interesting how our digital game camera pictures seemed to show the spring green-up on April 22nd. Of the four food plots left three of them followed along in the green up for the most part.

We also spent time getting our new plots ready in April with a few twists to our earlier plans. Rather than plant all of the new hayfield plot we've decided, after some wise counsel, to work harder on getting our dirt in better condition.

You don't have to read much food plot literature or the back of very many seed bags to see that they all say that your PH needs to be right for your food plots to thrive. We have decided to put more effort into this endeavor by purchasing a 200 lb capacity pull behind spreader to try to add more lime to our plots. We've purchased and have already spread quite a bit of lime and we have more to spread over the coming weeks. We are striving to get over one ton per acre added to each of our plots.

We've also checked all of our plots with our PH meter and plan on trying to calibrate it with some products of known PH. Fortunately my son just covered this topic in science class and he'll be a big help. With our meter the PH of our plots varied from 6 to 7 but we want to know just how accurate it is. We are suspicious that it is giving slightly high readings.

There has been quite a lot going on so let's see what's happening.

Oldhouse Food Plot

This plot has been our strongest clover plot over the last couple of years but so far this spring it looks rather sparse. As of the end of April it is more grass than clover even though there is still clover left. This plot was planted in the spring of 2003 and I plan on putting a fall annual in it this year.

I did get some Arrest grass herbicide and sprayed most of the plot on April 28th. We'll see how much this helps over the next couple of weeks. Hopefully the seed I added in late March will jump up and fill in the bare spots.

Since I plan on planting an annual this fall I'm going to lime the plot as soon as I get the chance. This will probably happen when I get the other plots planted this spring. I'd like to get about one ton per acre put on it and then add more when I'm working the dirt later this summer.

I'll probably not spray this plot with Arrest again since I'm going to plant it in the fall. There will still be a good bit of good clover for the deer to eat through the summer until I work it up and plant for the fall.

This plot has the best clover so far this spring. The whole plot isn't doing great but about 2/3rds of the plot is real thick and green. Interestingly it is the newest part of the plot that is doing the best. The part of the plot that has been used as a food plot for several years looks the worst.

I sprayed the grass that is in the plot with Arrest. Some areas needed it more than others.

I'd like to hit this plot with some lime also. It had one of the lower PH readings. We want to keep this plot in clover for some time. This is one of the plots we can see from the house and we enjoy seeing them eating there and it is also one of the largest.

The garden food plot looks like two different plots depending on where you stand. There are a couple of areas that are pretty thick with clover and there are spots that are almost bare. I'm hoping that the seed we added in late March will jump up to fill in the bare spots.

I'm a little worried about the weeds in this plot. It has as many weeds as it does grass. I sprayed it with Arrest in late April and I may need to get some weed herbicide as well. I planted this plot two years ago and would like to get more years out of it.

This plot has the worst PH so we'll hit it with lime as well. As the name implies this was a garden in the past but we always struggled with the dirt.

We like this plot since we can see it from our screened in porch and there are usually does and fawns that visit it regularly each summer. We won't give up on it and will try hard to get the dirt improved.

So far it looks like this plot is mostly weeds at this point. I had considered planting this plot in a summer annual but have decided not to since we've spent more time working on the dirt in our other new plots. Unfortunately we only have so much time.

Once again we'll lime this plot as soon as we can and plant something in it for the fall.

I'm not going to attempt to get rid of the weeds. I'm going to keep track of the activity here with one or more of our digital scouting cameras. We'll see how often we see deer in the plot, all may not be lost for the summer.

There was a lot of activity in this plot in April.

We spread 200 lb of lime, which amounts to a little over one ton of lime per acre in this small plot. It was nice and white and so were we.

We then sprayed it with Round-Up to kill what little was left growing there.

Two weeks later we disked the plot and did another light Round-Up spraying on any green we could find.

As I have said before the dirt is real nice in this plot and it has started to work up real nice. We may be able fertilize and hit it again with our disks and plant our first offering of the year on our next visit. We may even add another 50 lb of lime just to top it all off. That would be a quarter ton of lime on a less that quarter acre food plot.

We've decided not to plant this whole plot this spring. So far we've applied 850 lb of lime, which is getting close to the one ton per acre we are shooting for.

We have decided to plant part of it. One edge that we cleared earlier won't need much work along with one end of the plot. This will form a strange L shaped plot. We disked the L shaped plot a little and sprayed with Round-Up to start killing the hay, grass and weeds.

The rest of the plot we'll try to get limed and then plant it in the late summer.

Right Of Way Food Plot

Similar to Whippoorwill, we used 200 lb of lime in this plot and sprayed it with Round-Up in mid April.

On April 28th we made a few passes with our disks and sprayed again with Round-Up.

The dirt started to work up some but will need more attention since it had grown up with high weeds the last few years.

We'll fertilize, disk and maybe add some more lime before planting. This may or may not happen on our next visit. We're playing it by ear to see if any more green pops up.

Overall we're probably only going to plant about one half acre this spring but we're going to try to improve our dirt in all of our plots to some degree.

We're going to try to get lime onto the plots that we plan to plant in late summer so that they can be planted in better dirt than in the past.

We have had apple trees on our hunting property for years but they were all getting pretty old, so last year we planted six apple trees. All of these trees have done very well. We had to put wire fences around them to keep the deer away from them but they all look real good this spring.

This year we decided to plant some more fruit trees and planted two more apple trees and three peach trees. The peach trees are for us.

Deer can't resist apples when they are dropping in the fall so it's a no brainer for attracting deer. The apples also provide some very good natural food for both the deer and us.

If you are looking to attract deer naturally with little upkeep try planting some apple trees. It may take a few years for them to bear fruit but once they do the deer will not leave them alone.

The picture below is one of the trees that we planted last year.

As you likely already know I've been testing digital game cameras. I'm currently testing my 13th. I've learned a lot along the way and can say that there is a big difference in quality from the best to the worst.

There are digital game cameras that I can put out each visit and I know that I'm going to get perfect operation each time and there are some that are unreliable and frustrating to operate.

Take a look at the reviews. My latest is the Wildview XtremeII. I just put it out on our last visit and I've not yet seen the pictures from it yet. Stay tuned to the reviews to see how it stacks up against the rest of the field.

The bonus in having these digital game cameras is that I will have them spying on all of my food plots throughout the spring and summer. I'll be able to tell just how much the deer are using the food plots. I've always blamed some of the poorer food plot performance on high deer usage so now I'll now be able to tell for sure.

You can see pictures we post from our digital game cameras at our website.