Does anyone use the Throw N Grow food plot. Thought about using it as I heard it was easy to use with low maintenance. I was going tonuse it as a late season plot as my areas has farm land on both sides. What is everyone's thoughts and experience. Your neighborhood Bow Hunter
In my opinion. I'll start off with "it's not what you plant, it's where you plant it." Throw n grow is okay if you just throw it on the ground. Some of it will grow. If you break up the ground a little bit and throw some lime over the top and mix it in. It will do a lot better. I tend to use the throw and grow as a "trail liner." Lining the sides of the trails leading to and from bedding areas and along the edges of the trails to and from my stands. I don't have the ground or the equipment to plant big food plots, so this is what I do to try and keep them on their feet a little longer in the mornings and evenings.
You can get better results getting three pounds of crimson clover at the nearest mom and pop seed and feed store.
It's all about seed to soil contact no matter what you plant. I plant a plot with a seed blend and only about 50% came up. I broadcasted AntlerKing NoSweat and it filled the plot in. The good thing with NoSweat here in North Carolina and Virginia is that it will be green through April or until the summer heat kills it. Bottom line is if you put some effort into it most will do fairly well. Effort equals to at least raking all debris from the site so the seed contacts the soil. Add some lime and fertilizer and all should be good.
Thanks for all the advise guys. With the land I hunt on I got crops on the east and west sides of the woods, so thinking about this now I don't think a small quaternary acre food plot would be able to compete with the larger farm crops of soy beans and corn. What they don't have is mineral sites. I've had some local hunters say to use swamp donkey and one said to use trophy rock. So now with much thinking, mineral sites or small food plots that is the question. Your friendly neighborhood Bow Hunter
I did the other year, and it seemed to work alright. It has some kind of seed in it that looks like a radish when it first comes up. But it will grow probably 4 feet tall and have pods of seeds like peas. Just let nature take its course and they will spread. Like I said, I planted it the year before last and there is still stuff coming up and the deer do seem to like it. Just remember to plant it where it can get lots of sun. I didn't think about it when I did and put it too close to the wood line so I wasted about half the bag
Really, you may want to think of it as providing something that is not there. If there are regular crops, maybe a late season food plot. A mineral site. Or even a tub of water. Planting a food plot with soybeans isn't effective when there are 200 acres of them nearby.
I used Whitetail Institute's version this year. Bought a house with 27 fully wooded acres and moved in June 29th. Started cutting in a food plot in an area that wasn't super thick. I had to put in about 40 hours of back breaking work to get a 1/10 acre cleared. I threw down a bag of 10-10-10 fertilizer when I planted and it grew decently. Deer ate it but it didn't pull a lot of deer in.
We have a major pinch point in our river bottom where the woods is about 150yds wide. It probably gets about 40% sunlight through the day and the ground stays a little spongy all the time. We wanted to carve out a little plot to give deer an added reason to stop when passing through. We created a little plot by just cutting some brush and raking as best we could, not really knowing if anything would grow at all in there. We decided to go with what we thought would handle those conditions the best (White Dutch Clover, Ladino Clover, Hiafa Clover, Purple Top Turnips, and a little chicory & winter wheat mixed in) It ended up turning out better than we thought. 1st pic is before any work was done, 2nd is after our initial clearing in the spring, 3rd after weed wacking and spraying one more time in August this is what it looked like in November.
We used some on a logging road this year. It came up nice. Can't find the pics but it was a carpet Sent from my iPhone using Bowhunting.com Forums
I used it on a small 1/4 acre plot. I used round up first, then hand raked, put it down, racked again. No water was available, but got some rain that week. I'd say I got about 30-40% germination and what sprouted grew well. I'd say was acceptable.
Throw and grow is mostly ryegrass. I'd prefer the whitetail institute no plow or secret spot. More brasicas and anual clovers
