In these smaller plots like the one you are dealing with…..things like peas, beans, sunflowers, etc. are likley just going to be decimated by the deer before they every really get going good. It will end up being a very small, short term snack for them that serves you no real purpose. With these small plots you can also throw out the idea that you are planting stuff to “help” the deer herd. What you can accomplish though is attraction and conditioning the deer in your area to use the plot 365 days out of the year. I would look to do this in the summer time mostly through the use of clovers. Given the right conditions, clovers such as durana can persist for most of the summer. These will do best though planted in the fall.

This is my throw and mow test plot as of yesterday. You can see all of the clover that’s present in the mix. I’ll let this clover take me through the summer as long as it will. However, around the end of May when my cereal rye matures and goes to seed, I’m going to broadcast some buckwheat and maybe some radishes into the standing rye and then mow it down over the seed. The idea is that the buckwheat and brassicas will fill in the gaps left by the terminated rye and this will take me through the end of the summer. It may sound odd but I’m actually hoping that crabgrass eventually encroaches on my field enough to give me a grass component to the mix for the purpose of adding more carbon back to the soil as well as being a source of thatch for next year's fall planting.