We have been planting plots for about 10 years now and the last 3 have been a struggle. Weeds are driving us crazy and I’m honestly out of ideas how to stay on top of them. We have..... Done nothing all year then mow and spray before we plant. Planted spring crops and tilled them under before we plant. Disc ground every 2 to 3 weeks from spring until we plant. Some combo of all the above. CONSTANT battle that is truthfully getting tiresome. Have to figure out what we are doing wrong or not doing right. Any advice?
Turnips, Rape, Radish, Sugar Beets, with Oats, Chickory, Clover mixed in. We threw a Labor Day Hail Mary of winter rye last year and had pretty good luck. Our food plot success has slowly diminished through the years from amazing results initially to almost literally nothing the last couple years. We get soil samples every year and they are just barely out of optimal ranges on some few trace minerals but fundamentally sound. PH is good and we run triple 13 or triple 15 when we plant
Would have to agree with Bucknbears bc it is a fairly common mistake. If you're using a disc try setting it fairly shallow, 2-3". Let it sit for a week or two, weeds come up spray and wait to plant. Everything you listed to plant can be broadcast so do just that and drag the plot or use a cultipacker. You could also go with a monoculture plot and plant something Round-Up ready allowing yourself to spray and have a weed free plot but personally I think that's overkill. I get pigweed/river hemp in my plot and the deer like eating it. I fought sage and it still comes back occasionally but planting clover helped choke it out.
I used to have same problem, I quit plowing and discing, I now spray, wait a week or 2 mow, the broadcast seeds, then roll over all ground withatv tires, has been much better, If I need to disc, I do so, wait till weeds come up pretty good, then spray again, wait a week then plant as above
Plotting is like painting a vehicle, it is all about the prep work. We all want to get that seed in the ground, like some said disc and treat also try a nurse crop like rye or wheat. Frost seeding works wonders for the second year of a plot.
Disc on back of Kubota UTV with downward hydraulic pressure I can go as deep as I want but usually about 3 inches
Do you mean do that every few weeks or just once before planting?? If we wait until late June or July and do nothing we will have full coverage of weeds 3 feet high
Same issue as above........only issue is we don’t have access to large brush hog mowing gear. So we are left with the unfortunate option of letting things go all year and then trying to spray down 3 foot high weeds which at best leaves us dead salad 6 inches thick as ground cover we now need to remove........at worst the spray only kills top half due to thickness and we are royally screwed. We have always been hesitant to overuse round up so we have just been discing every 3-4 weeks which kills all weeks that have grown in meantime but it’s like trying to put out a fire with gasoline.........never ending battle
You can plant 7 days after a application of round up. Basically get your seed bed prepared, get some rain, let the weeds come up a couple inches, spray and plant 7 days later without tilling or discing again. Or... disc it and broadcast buckwheat the same day. Since buckwheat is a short term crop, 5 weeks start to finish, you can work a few rotations in plowing what is left of it under every five weeks. That will give weeds time to germinate but not go to seed before getting whacked. Deer love buckwheat. It also makes a great nurse crop and mines phosphorus from down deep.
I've been plotting for over 10 years as well. Admittedly, I have most all of the tools needed to do the jobs of plotting. One of them is my 6' bush hog. I also use it for other purposes than plotting but it is quite useful to prep and maintain the plots. My plotting usually goes like this. Mow, fertilize, disk, plant then spray (if round up ready). For clover and brassicas I mow, fertilize, rototill and plant (no spraying). If clover, I then mow with the bush hog to keep it about 6-8". I usually cut it back when it gets to about 16" tall. In short, I'm saying that some type of bush hog/mower will make your plotting a lot easier.
Those were all taken today.......look fine, no issues and mostly grasses. In a few weeks they will have full coverage and if we leave them until July it will be waist high if we don’t have access to a brush hog what would you say is our best bet to stay ahead of the game?
Should we just let these go for a week or two and then spray?? disk them under and wait a few weeks and then spray?? disk them under and plant buckwheat or clover and till that in when ready to plant?
Greg.........good to see you BTW when you plant brassicas you said you mow fertilize till then plant.........what’s your ground look like when you plant because we tilled in the edge of a hay field (about 2 acres) just after it was cut and there was TONS of the tilled up vegetation blanketing the plot and it didn’t grow at all. Should we rake off all the dead matter to expose soil before planting?
