Last year I collected seeds from rag weed, giant foxtail and lambsquarter. I am going to plant these in a small area just to see what happens. I hope I can help a small covey of quail I have seen this winter. Q
What will happen is you will have a lot of ticked off farmers nearby! Just be prepared to take care of the problem when is spreads. A single ragweed can produce upwards of 5000 seeds, lambsquarter up to 100,000 seeds and waterhemp up to 1 million seeds per plant. Just keep that in mind!
You'd be doing them more of a favor planting sudan grass or Egyptian wheat and milo. Conservation departments are fond of touting "natural food" and native warm season grasses but it's a bunch of bull hockey. The kinds of numbers we enjoyed in the golden era of quail were due to a man made bubble of plentiful food and predator harvesting...biologists either don't get it or don't want to. I applaud your efforts however, good luck....hope the natural crappola works better for you than it has for me.
I have planted sunflowers and the quail seemed to like it but they don,t last long. Deer like lambsquarters ; I was hoping the quail might do better on wild plants.Q
Yeah sunflower monocultures aren't very good for long term quail management. Quail plots are just like deer plots, they have to be planned for availability over the term of the plot you want. Quail plots are even harder to manage because the cereal grains are hit hard by all birds and deer. I actually also broadcast additional milo with a fertilizer cart or 3-point seeder to extend winter food for the quail where I can't grow enough or any at all like brushy areas. You can't do much better than grain for quail, wild food sources will be used but aren't preferred. The areas of the country that still have good quail numbers, still use milo as a cash crop on a pretty large scale where in the other portions of quail range where there are a lot of problems with quail numbers declining....the soybean has taken over from Milo. Clean cut bean fields suck for quail... Sorghum sudan grass, prosso millet, sunflowers, milo, pearl millet and german millet mixed together, broadcast and harrowed in will get you what you want and what the quail need and will last fall through winter while providing really good cover, low, mid and upper story cover and food.
