I am going to be planting my first food plot this year and I am trying to figure out what would be the best way to prepare the soil. It is going to be on a power line easement that has been sprayed the the natural vegetation is anywhere from 2-6 feet tall. I cleared out a spot yesterday with a rough cut trail cutter. Now I am left with 3-4 inch stubble that is made up of dead weeds, briars, and small tree stems. You can see what it is made up of from my attached pictures(Well I was going to attach pics but I keep getting a error message at the end of uploading- I will try to figure it out and post them later). My question is what is my next step in clearing this soil. I have ran a tractor and a bush hog before but that's it. Should I use a disc to break it up and then plow or vice versa? I am just not sure how to go about it. My time is limited so the quickest and most efficient way is what I am looking for. Thanks for any help!!
Well if you cut it with a rough cut trail cutter then the stuff should be chopped up decently. If the plants were already dead then I would take a disc in there. If they aren't dead, they will be dead and getting decayed in about a week or so. I would wait til then to take disc in there. Once you disc it wait a week and go back and disc it again. Then start to finely tune the soil the way you are wanting it.
Thanks Illbowhunter. Any help or suggestions I can get are helpful. Yeah the Power company just sprayed a few weeks ago so it's all dead. Thanks again.
I definitely agree with disc'ing the area is possible. If not possible I recommend at least getting a rototiller in their to finish chopping up the weeds and mixing the dirt up to be ready to plant. Of course pick out any bigger rocks, I don't know how rocky the terrain is in your area but where I'm from we definitely run into a lot of rocks in our plots. I would go with some clover/chicory mix the first year using a hand spreader walking around the plot with a manual spreader. It's good to have some crop rotation into your foot plots but the machinery/tools is also always a factor. I run and operate a big cash crop farm so our machinery easily accessible and the option of crop rotation is very high. In example we will start out with oats for mid summer food; harvest it then till the ground to plant clover. Following that year the clover will be plowed under in the spring and decomposed to organic matter making this great ground for a corn plot. Following the next year will be beans and the rotation just keeps going throughout the years. You can email me back if you have any more questions at [email protected] or check us out on facebook at Trophy Whitetail Management or our site www.TrophyWhitetailManagement.com and post some trail cam pics to win our monthly trail cam contest including a free gear giveaway.
Thanks Thanks Rowe! I will definitely keep that in mind. Yeah the soil here is not very rocky so there shouldn't be the issue. The guys around home have really had good luck with Buck Forage Oates so I think that is what I am going to start with. It says not to plant around here until late August I think, so I have got some time. I probably want wait that long if we get the needed rain. Another good thing about this spot is that there are a couple oak trees that are about 20 foot tall that are covered in small acorns. I am just excited about actually growing my first food plot. It is not that big but about 50 yards behind the pictures is about a 70 Ac. field that more than supplies the feeding demands for the deer on the farm. Typically deer travel up and down and across this power line. I am looking to create a place where the deer will be comfortable coming into during the daylight hours before they head out to the big crop fields. Thanks again Illbowhunter and Rowe!
