Here's the latest pics from our virgin food plots at our cabin here in WI. It was pretty wet when I had the time to plant them and we got some heavy rains after that, so we ended up with some bare spots where the seeds sat in standing water and rotted out. Then, it got extremely dry and the heavy clay stunted the growth a bit. Wish we could have gotten some rain in early Sept here. After the heavy frost the other night, I'm afraid to see what they look like tomorrow when I get there. Wyatt next to the Lettuce, Turnip and Rape mix. Another look at that mix. Walking through the plot, the lettuce was mowed down pretty good. Wyatt with one of the better looking turnips. Dry clay isn't conducive to growing big bulbs! Experimental Radish plot. Lots of browsing going on and tons of trail cam pics of does, fawns and small bucks in it. The dry clay is like a rock in here. A radish from that plot. I'm amazed at how much they hammered our beans this summer. 6 acres and they have it browsed like crazy. So, I wish they would have turned out better, but the heavy soil and huge dry spell really shut the growth down.
Don't worry about it. A lot of people do this when they have something really important to show every one! Nice looking plots. A couple of my oat plots took a hit from frost, as did a lot of the crop fields around me. BTW, what did you use for planting and covering the seed?
How do the deer do on the turnips? My uncle planted a small plot of them 2 years ago and they barely touched it. Looks like you'll be hunting near the beans, huh??? p.s. Good job on getting the youngster out there and involved!!
def looks like you've set some lil honey holes up! good luck on connecting, i'd like to see whats cruising in the right about now!
Wow...looking great Dan...and it is good to see you are teaching your young one. Sent from my DROID X2 using Tapatalk
So, beans went over well, and lettuce did ok too? Would you change anything knowing what you know now? Do you see yourself changing the types of plots planted for next year?
The planting itself Greg? Just a hand spreader that I got at Farm N Fleet. We didn't do any covering of the seeds. It's pretty heavy clay and doing any driving on it with the ATV with a cultipacker makes the ground pretty solid. The one plot we did cultipack turned out horrible.
I would change quite a few things. First, I would put the radishes in a little sooner than they recommend. 30 days is just not enough, IMHO. But, that may be because it got extremely dry. For next year, our 6 acre bean field will be almost 7 acres and probably be half beans and half corn. We are also turning over a 12 acre field that hasn't been planted in probably 40 years. That will probably be 5 acres beans, 6 acres of corn and also planting probably an acres worth of trees along the road side. We'll also plant the corn so that no one on the road can see the beans. We're also going to make the existing plots bigger. All we had to work with this year for the smaller plots was a Sodbuster. We'll use that for the tight spots, but there's a couple spots we'll be able to get a tractor into and make the 1/2 acre plots 1-3 acres. As for the experimental radish only plot, I'm not totally sold yet. I was very happy to see that the plants resisted the frost this week and will continue to grow with the rain we just got. They have been browsed pretty good, but the final verdict will come in now that the beans have frozen, turned brown and when the neighbors corn and beans are picked about 1/2 mile south of us. Oh, one other thing I would change a little bit. I would seed a little lighter. We just guestimated on the sized of the kill plots and used a little too much seed. A little more room for the plants to grow would have made a difference. Its easy to get carried away and use too much seed.
Nice Dan'o Nice Plots look great!! good looking kid there to, must take after momma Frost?? already,,,Daaaaaaam
