My buddy and I started a food plot a couple years ago, but we wanted to expand it this year. The problem we are running into is that the other half of the plot was overgrown. We sprayed it with round up and used a chainsaw and trimmers to get the saplings. The round up seemed to kill everything, but our disc isn't going through the grass and weeds very well. Any tips for this? We talked about burning, but its been around 105 degrees the past week, and I dont think its a good idea. Any ideas? We have a mower but its a pull behind atv mower and getting it to the plot is pretty tough.
What kind of disc do you have and how are you getting it there? If it's a pull behind 4 wheeler one, it probably isn't heavy enough to do what you need it to do. I would try to get the mower back there.
We planted beans this year in a area that had been a pasture for the last 40 plus years. It took us around 45 minutes to disk up the 1 acre size plot. I would suggest to keep going over it and eventually it will start breaking up.
The plot in this blog took us about 8-10 hours of discing to get it turned over good. http://www.bowhunting.com/blog/post/Kill-Plots-The-Other-Food-Plot.aspx The big mistake I made was doing the outside first, before weed whacking it. I did round up the whole thing a few weeks before, but there was still a lot of material in there. The middle I weed whacked, raked and disced. It took about half the time to disc the weed whacked part as opposed to the other. Oh, we were using an Antler King Sod Buster.
What are you planting? If it's small seeds like clover, turnips or wheat, just broadcast it before a good rain and let mother nature take care of the rest. Assuming you have killed everything with round up. If you disc, you're just gonna bring up more weed seeds. All you need is seed to soil contact with these small seeds.
ILLbowhunter- We are using an atv disc that is about 3 feet wide. It does have a weight bar that we put a couple cinder blocks on for weight. Dan, we weed eated a lot of it, but we ran out of gas and when we put new gas in it for some reason we couldnt get the darn thing to start for anything. Youre right this took forever and we didnt even finish the plot after a couple hours of working in 100 degree temps. lol John- We will probably be planting outfitters blend by mossy oak biologic. It has New Zealand Triticale, Austrian winter peas, brassicas, clovers, wheat and oats. Are plan is to disc it to make the soil as visible as possible then plant and drag it after the seed is down. Do you think this will be effective? Last year the plot came out alright, but it just wasnt as full as we wanted it to be.
Did you do a soil sample at all? All of the smaller kill plots we did this year we never did a soil test. But, we spread quite a bit of pelletized lime on them because we knew the Ph was very low. Also, did you fertilize at all last year? If you want the plots to come in thick and full, fertilizing is a must. We checked a new 1/5 acre plot last weekend that we had turned over, limed, planted and fertilized 3 weeks before and it was coming in beyond my expectations. Remember, you'll only get out of the plot what you put into it. Doing the extra few hours of effort will pay off.
Dan- last year we did do a soil sample and we had to add lime. I can't remember if we fertilized or not. This year we are definitely planning on adding a fertilizer. I was thinking of using plot max this year too. I know we will have to add lime to the new half of the plot, but do you usually add lime yearly to an existing plot?
