So you decided you want a food plot. what's next? Here is some math that goes into plotting! I hope you find this useful. First get a soil sample tested. This will determine what the ground needs in order to produce to it's maximum potential. Waters Ag is a highly recommended company with mail in test. you can look them up online and get a kit shipped to you. Once you do this you will know what you need to apply for Lime and the fertilizer recommendations for crop specific use. meaning you tell them with the test what you are going to plant then they tell you the fertilizer requirements to maximize the yield on the crop. After you have this information you will need to know the size of your plot in order to know how much lime and fertilizer to purchase. Here is a simple formula to figure plot size. Take plot length and multiply by plot width. I use my range finder to tell these distances in yards then multiply the yardage by 3 to get the length in feet. say I have a plot that is 42 yards long by 57 yards wide. the formula would look like this. 42 * 3 = 126 feet 57 * 3 = 171 feet. So then you take the numbers in feet and multiply them. 126 * 171 = 21546 square feet this is the total square footage of your plot. You then take your total number of square feet and divide that by the number of square feet in an acre which is 43560. here is what it looks like - (42 * 3) * (57 * 3) = 21546 / 43560 = .4946 (basically 1/2 acre) this formula will work to determine plot size. once you know plot size you can then accurately apply the right amount of lime a fertilizer. lets walk through a pretend plot. the dimensions above, say a soil test called for .75 tons to the acre of lime be applied and 60 pounds to the acre of N, P, K you have one half an acre not a full acre, so you have to divide by two / a ton is 2000 pounds. so .75 of 2000 is 1500 pounds divide that by two you get 750 pounds. your plot needs 750 pounds of lime. that's pretty simple. Fertilizer numbers are a little more complex but once you know the bag percents a little math makes it easy. then number on the fertilizer bag represents the percentage of the bag that is that. There will be 3 numbers. they are called N , P, K. They represent (N) Nitrogen, (P) phosphorous (K) potassium. The number represents the percentage of each of these inside the bag. so if you buy a 50 pound bag of 19-19-19 it consists of 19 percent of each of the three. to figure how many bags you will for your plot you need to know these numbers. our plot requires 60 pounds to the acre of N P K for max production, so I need to figure up how many 50 pound bags I need. each 50 pound bag contains 9.5 pounds of N 9.5 pounds of P and 9.5 pounds of K. You figure this off the percentage. 50 pounds times .19 = 9.5 pounds. Now that I know this number I divide my total pounds need per acre by the total pounds per bag. 60 / 9.5 = 6.31 bags of 19-19-19 per acre. Our plot however is only 1/2 acre so divide that by 2. 3.155 bags of 19-19-19 to max out the potential for our crop. It is really very simple once you know the formulas, however without them it can be very scary! and I hate to admit it but i went to a few years with un productive food plots because I was to lazy and cheap to spend the time getting the good prep work done! Here is the formulas again for you to use to figure your plot off from them 1.plot length in feet times plot width in feet = square footage of plot 2. 43,560 number of square feet in an acre) divided by the square footage of your plot= plot acreage size! 3. lime is simple recommended soil test results per acre divided by the plot size. determines lime requirements. 4. fertilizer requirements are figured by bag weight times number of N/P/K to figure pounds of each. pounds of each divided into the required pounds per acre. if plot is smaller than 1 acre divide the number by the percentage of 1 acre the plot is to get bag totals. If the plot is bigger than one acre times the number of bags per acre by the acreage size to get bags total. Overall this is the mathematics equations that go into successful food plotting. Hope you find it helpful!
Love this stuff Pastor and good share, easily frustrating if you don't have the formulas for sure! Anyone that doesn't have this anywhere print it out twice, save it to your computer once. Take one copy and pin it somewhere, take the other copy and laminate it for in the field use if desired (I got a field sheet I take on jobs and at our place)
Thanks for taking the time to put this out here. I have a nice little acreage calculator app that works nicely for figuring out the square footage of my irregular shaped plots. Very helpful when trying to figure out how much inputs are needed. It's just called Area Calculator on the Android Market. All you have to do is turn it on and walk the entire perimeter of your plot and it will tell you the square footage, meters, or acres of your plot. It will also put an outline of your plot on a Google earth image that you can save on your phone and transfer to your computer. Here's a link for any Android users interested. https://play.google.com/store/apps/...?t=W251bGwsMSwxLDEwMiwiaW50cmlnYXNQUk8udGsiXQ..
Great share pastorandrew, addin this tid bit into my personal food plot bible! Gonna need it for future reference!
Great post, pastorandrew! Should be helpful to all the new guys who want to start plotting themselves. Skywalker, thanks for that app. Sounds pretty cool. I might have to try that.
Any clue how to figure out how much cow manure to use per acre ? Sent from my SCH-I535 using Tapatalk 2
If you are serious about this question, thought you might be joking, here is a link to some charts that give you N,P,K levels in manures. notice though there's is per 1000 gallons, you will have to break that down into weight in order to get the formula'd to work in the formula's I gave. Manure is great fertilizer, except you can be tranfering pesky weed seeds into your plots. if you are planting perennials I don't recommend it! but if you can put it on now incorporate it into soil and let it green up and then burn it down chemically before fall plot then i highly recommend it! be blessed!
Yes i was "semi serious," only because i have access to it for free from realtives. Its my second year putting in plots and i was just curious. Sent from my SCH-I535 using Tapatalk 2
