Thought I would share the progress of my throw and mow plot for the summer. It’s about a 2 acre mix of Egyptian wheat, milo, cowpeas, corn, sunflowers, okra, and a handful of watermelons. It runs to the back woodline but its getting too tall to really see now. I'm holding the camera over my head to take the pic below. It was planted by simply broadcasting my seed into a mature stand of cereal rye, hairy vetch and clover….. and then simply mowing it down over the seed. No tillage....no drill.

Relatively speaking, its still early on in my attempts to “rebuild” my sandy soil so its still not holding moisture and nutrients as well as I’d like even though I’ve already seen some pretty significant improvements. I’m really looking forward to this fall’s planting as I think it will be the one that really turns the corner for me. I’m still lacking a good microbial presence in my soil. One of the most important components to good soil health is worms. That link is still missing but I hope that I'm on the verge of having them move in now that soil conditions are much more hospitable.



A shot of the understory........



Here is the OM that I’ve built up on the surface over the last year and half. That’s black gold for a food plotter. My goal is to keep building on that layer, working it deeper and deeper into the soil profile.

Looks great! Nice job

pretty awesome for no tilling. have you fertilized it a second time since the initial broadcasting?

No....I wish I would have added another little dusting to it though. I threw out 100lbs of 34-0-0 per acre a couple weeks after planting but we received some heavy rains there at first and it didn't last as long as I wanted it to. Now its been really hot and dry for the last few weeks and the plants have been stressed. Its still holding the nutrients a lot better than it has in the past though. Got a good little shower yesterday so everything is perking up a little. I'm actually debating on mowing it down to about 18-24" and hitting it with another round of N. Mowing milo and EW causes the roots to tiller. Improving my soil is really my main goal right now.

Thanks!....

Was there any special inoculate on the seed when you planted it

No....it was just regular ol' seed. I had really good germination but the deer absolutely hammered it. Amazingly just about everything survived the browsing pressure but its way behind what it would have been had I put up an e-fence. The beans are really just now coming on since the grass species have gotten some height on them. Here is a pic from back during May, just a couple weeks or so after planting showing how well it germinated.

This is continuing to move backwards in time but here is another couple pics at planting showing how I mowed the mature rye down over the seed.

We were just talking in the other thread about using cover crops as a means of weed suppression. You can see in the last series of pics how well the cereal rye kept virtually all weed competition from coming in until I was ready to plant. This is how you get a jump on the weeds. In this situation someone could transition directly from a stand of rye such as this to a thick stand of buckwheat and probably smother a lot of their weed competition. I chose plant species that were too desirable in my high deer density area and the browsing pressure allowed the crabgrass to eventually start coming in and competing in some areas. Had I not had such browsing pressure though....my crops would have easily canopied over most of it and shaded it out. You can see in the prior pics that my crops had plenty of head start before the crabgrass ever emerged. Tillage, on the other hand, creates a situation where everything starts emerging and growing at the exact same time. No head start for your crops over the weeds.

Looks good!

Here at the house we drilled 102 acres of cover crops. 52 acres last fall and 50 acres in early April. Which are now no-tilled in corn and soybeans. 52 acres drilled with cereal rye, clover, hairy vetch and forage radishes. 50 acres drilled with a mixture of iron clay peas, buckwheat and forages oats.

Thanks Swamp.....Sounds like you guys should have plenty of groceries for the deer this year. I think using cover crops and moving more toward these type plantings for food plots will eventually be more the rule than the exception. It'll just take some time for folks to come around to do something a different way than they've been use to doing likely their whole life. Letting the plow have a lot more idle time sitting next to the barn instead of out in the field will be hard for many people. Once you really understand the principles of soil health though and realize how inefficient most of our past efforts have been with things like fertilizer use and soil moisture....then it starts to make a lot more sense.

Atta boy. Looks pretty dang good to me

As usual, impressive. Just hard for me to make myself try it once. Next Spring might be the year I do it. Do you think the cover crop would hide seed from the hogs any better than normal agriculture practices? We lost 700lbs of beans to hogs last month after no tilling them.

looks good

Nice

Thanks fellas....I appreciate all the comments.

I haven’t had to deal with hogs yet using this method so I’m not 100% sure what they’ll do. Its just a matter of time though as they come and go at my club property and are only a couple miles away from my home property. Hogs are just one big PITA. I will say that covering the broadcasted seed like that helps tremendously with bird issues. I had a turkey hen take up residence in my plot for a week or two after planting. I observed her from a distance and noticed that she never scratched at all. Instead she was steadily on the move walking around the plot. I’m pretty sure that she was chasing and catching bugs and not eating seeds.

If you have hogs really bad then I would rethink your approach to food plotting. Do not plant corn….Do not plant turnips…..Do not run feeders. Try to stick with things like cereal grains and clovers that have small seeds and don’t present so much of a food source to draw the hogs to. Don’t put out anything that will entice them even further to come into your plots and shoot the chit out of them when you see ‘em. They don’t like getting shot at and will sometimes move on if there aren’t things like mentioned above keeping them around. A lot of that is going to depend on your habitat though. Hogs have a tendency to stick to the major watershed drainages but will move around and venture out as food sources change.

If you are going to try this throw and mow method, I’d suggest trying it first in the fall with cereal rye and clover. Very, very easy to get those two going as long as you haven’t formed a hard crust on top of your soil. A fall plot will be a lot more forgiving than a summer plot and will offer you a better chance at good results on your first try.. Just be patient and don’t get discouraged if the first try doesn’t go perfectly smoothly. Anyone who tries doing something new like this and doesn’t expect a few snags or set backs is probably just being unrealistic in their expectations. I’ve had to go through a learning curve and adjust as I go. You will find that there are many things that you can tweak using cover crops and this method to affect your results. As an example, one spring mowing of your cereal rye can produce a thinner stand of rye and a thicker stand of clover. On the other hand, not mowing will leave the rye thick and smother out anything underneath. Depending on your objectives, you may choose to do it either way. Everyone’s situation will be a little different and may require you to adjust your methods to suit your individual needs. The key is to understand the principles of good soil health so that you can make the decisions that are best for you and not just try to repeat the same process that I'm doing.

I use this method to establish cereal grains and brassicas in perennial clover stands every fall and it works great. I spread wheat, oats, cereal rye, rape and purple top turnips in our Durana and Patriot clover fields in the early fall. Fertilize and then mow and my fall plots are done. Works great.

Oh, I usually try and do this sometime in late October. My clover is really growing then and I have tons of biomass that covers the seed.

My summer ritual is a bit different though. This method does work though, no matter when you use it.

CNC, I would be interested in doing a field with your approach using the "scientific method". What I mean by that is choose a good sized field, plant half with normal tillage and do the other half your way. Do this for a few years then compare the soil. Have you attempted this sort of thing?

Kinda…Sorta………I don’t know if you could label it “scientific” though.

When I first started trying this I was like everyone else and skeptical. I did it in the summer time with nothing more than one bag of milo just to see what would happen. Not wanting to take a chance on my EW screen that I planned on wrapping the plot in….I went ahead and disked a 15-20 ft wide swath around the outside of the throw and mow section like a track around a football field. To make a long story short…..that area is now well behind the interior in terms of organic matter as a result. The perimeter area is still mostly just sand with bare dirt exposed. Here is a pic I took a few weeks ago showing the color difference now in the more recently tilled area as compared to the interior that has more OM present in the soil. The color difference is due the ability of the higher OM area to hold and deliver moisture and nutrients better that the area lacking in OM. If you look in the bottom left and in the very back of the field you can even see where I made the turn swith my disk to come across the front and back of the field. I know someone will say it’s the woodline causing the difference but this difference in color and plant health runs around the entire plot following exactly along the path that I tilled….even in wide open areas.



Here is a closer shot of what I'm talking about. This is actually on the opposite side of the field from the last pic.