I’ve had several people sending me PM’s with questions about the Throw n’ Mow Method and I’ve been asked if I would start a tutorial thread showing the steps involved. For the folks who are opposed or who have strong criticisms toward this method…..I’d be glad to continue to debate you on the subject but I’d respectfully ask that we leave that out of this thread and allow this one to just be a Q&A for those folks who are truly interested in trying this approach to food plotting.

Any of you guys who have specific questions, feel free to post them up. In the process of answering them I will also begin to post up pictures of how the process work and what you need to do to begin.

Welcome to the Throw n’ Mow Tutorial……….

I'm very interested. I guess my first questions are - how do you get started? If my fields look like the one in the picture (which they do, plus a whole lot of crimson clover), what do I need to do? My guess would be to make sure my soil ph is in the correct range, and if not add lime. Then what? Plan some summer crops? Wait till fall? Looking forward to this thread. I am going to try it on a couple of plots first and see how it goes. Thanks for doing this.

That picture is a little deceiving. I have really heavy browsing pressure and the deer have kept all of the clover browsed down to ground level this spring while the rye has begun to bolt. There are actually 3 different varieties mixed in there….crimson, yuchi arrowleaf, and durana.

The first step is to get a layer of thatch down over the top of your bare soil. For folks with small plots and really heavy browsing pressure…..this will be one of the biggest hurdles to cross. The reason being is that you need the plots to produce excess of what the deer are eating in order to also grow a crop of biomass to feed back to the soil. This type of plant growth can be tough to achieve if the soil is in poor degraded conditions.

Once you put down a nice layer of thatch across the soil surface then it will begin to decompose and turn into mulch. Basically we are just creating one big mulch pile that’s spread a couple inches thick over the surface of the plot. The microbial community will break it down from there in the same manner that you see forest debris rotting away and disappearing in the woods. Once you have gotten the soil surface to the point that its like potting soil then seed germination will greatly improve.

Below is a really short video showing the current conditions of the soil surface in my field. I am still about 50-60 days away from spreading my summer seed. Between now and then I will let the rye mature and go to seed while the clover continues to cover the understory (if the deer allow it to)….At planting I want the remaining debris on the soil surface to be at a very advanced state of decomposition. When I mow, what is left will almost disintegrate and mix with my seed that I’ve thrown out….creating like a rat’s nest of debris. It’s like replicating the way you sprout seed in a paper towel but we’re just using processed straw instead of paper towel

Current soil surface condtions……….

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iACVPPOje3M

So what to do this summer?

If you are just beginning the throw n’ mow process then there is a good chance that right now your soil surface looks something like the one pictured below after last fall's tillage……



You can see the difference in this soil surface versus the one I posted in the video. This bare soil surface is not going to give us great germination success with the first crop that we seed on top of it. That being said, the option to plant something this summer is still up to you. If you do….just temper your idea of success and realize upfront that these aren’t ideal throw n mow conditions. My advice for the first summer is to let the cereal grains and clover mature…..mow it down for your first crop of thatch around the end of May…. and then let nature take its course for this summer. If you want to throw something in this summer then buy a cheap bag of milo and add some in before you mow..

In the meantime, go ahead now and get a soil test sent in. Go ahead this summer and begin making the lime amendments as well as the P&K amendments after you mow in May. This initial summer of converting to a throw n’ grow method we are not as much focused on growing “deer food” as we are just focused on growing biomass to feed back to the soil……high volume grass crops.

Hey CNC do you think through your experience that maybe running a cultipacker over the thatch may push a few more "layed up" seed to the soil surface and may improve germ by another 10-15% from what you've seen? I know some of the seeds like annual rye are very light and may hang up in the thatch. Just curious?

Thanks, CNC. I'll be following this tread and trying the method on some of my plots. Our soil is about as fine as flour and has ZERO moisture holding ability.

Used your throw and mow method in my half acre orchard. I threw out 100lbs of year old wheat seed into some standing grass and mowed it all down. this was back in November or December. The wheat germinated nicely and is now really coming on. Now I have a good stand of wheat in with my naturally re-occurring crimson clover.

The orchard is the only part of my farm I've designated no till so it looks like I'll keep it up. You think spreading ic peas into the standing wheat and clover in may sometime and mowing it down would work ok?

This or maybe lightly discing with the disc turned straight just to cut the thatch a little.

I think it may depend on how thick the thatch is…….I kind of wish I had a cultipacker to experiment with but on the other hand I don’t want to start adding 1 more step to the process until its gets to the point of being just as time consuming as any other method. I think there is still a lot of room left for folks to experiment with different tweaks to the method.

I really haven’t had a problem getting good germination from cereal grains. It may not all germinate in one flush but as the hay settles down after the first rain… it acts just like two napkins pressing together…..One failure I do think I might have had in places though was burying my clover seed under too much thatch. My summer crop last year was a little too thick. I think I could have helped the problem out a lot if I had raised my mower up and only cut about half of the hay down. From what I’ve seen…..once you get your soil surface turned around the seed germinates really easy in the top soil mulch. This coming fall I may try just seeding my fall mix straight into the standing summer crop without mowing at all.

Keep us updated with some pics. I enjoy seeing how other folks are progressing and the different seed blends that people are trying. One of the hardest things about trying to experiment with this is the fact that you have to wait so long in between each new attempt or trial run.

Awesome!..........

I've found that ic peas and winter peas both do very well with this method. This is ic peas in a mix at a rate of 25 lbs/ac. It was the very first thing to jump up after planting.

From a starting standpoint, can plantings, such as, sun hemp produce too much biomass?

Maybe …. but in the beginning I would much rather have too much thatch than not enough. From a germination standpoint the clover seems to be the only thing that is really finicky to being covered over too much. The rye and peas just pushed right on through it. It may be better to broadcast the clover after mowing and just let it work its own way down to the soil…. or maybe mow the thatch at a taller height and only put a portion of it on the ground. The Japanese farmer from the book actually sowed his seed into the standing crop that was already in the field. He waited two weeks and allowed the seed to sprout first... then he removed the overstory of the mature crop…..spreading the hay back out over the field. This is why I think once you get the soil surface turned into mulch….you may just be able to make the process super simple and only broadcast your fall mix into whatever you grew in the summer. Part of being able to do that will depend on how much sunlight is able to penetrate through whatever is standing in the field. It maybe that mowing about knee high or waist high is just right to remove the overstory and only lightly cover the seed. Still some playing around to do to figure out what’s “just right”.

If you felt like you had too much biomass on the surface you could always make an additional pass over the field with a disk after mowing to further chop it up but then again there we go having to add additional steps. I really like the soil health benefits and the use of less fert, etc…..but one of the biggest benefits to me (and many others) is the time savings. Every hunting club I’ve ever been a part of….its always been a major undertaking to try and do all of our fall plots in one work weekend. Not having to make numerous passes over every field really speeds things up. We even made a mixing barrel and combined our seed and fert together so that it was all broadcast on one pass.

I'm thinking that it would be too much biomass for a disc to cut into our soil. Of course, this all depends on how well the deer eat it. I wonder if bushhogging it everytime it gets head high would help keep it from getting too stemy?

That would probably help a lot. From the pics I’ve seen some people post, it would just be too much to handle if its allowed to grow like its capable of. The end result will just depend on soil fertility, browsing pressure, plot size etc….. Its why I always say that the most important part of all of this is to understand the basic principles and concepts rather than just strictly trying to imitate what I or someone else is doing. If you understand the principles then you can assess and adapt.

Great idea. With your help and advice from others on here I've got a pretty good plan for my first attempt. Since other rookies might also be curious, can you comment on spraying before seeding and mowing to cover? I know there can be weed control once the plot gets going, but many of us are working with old fields that have grown up over the years.

CNC, you're welcome to borrow my cultipacker when you get ready to play with one. We're not far from you and I might even deliver it for the opportunity to see your successes first hand. I am going to try to roll over our sunn hemp this year instead of mowing it down. Since the sunn hemp stores nitrogen in the leaves that act as fertilizer upon decay, it makes sense to attempt to get nice, even coverage. Trying to bushhog tall growth like that often leads to large clumps being discharged behind the bushhog. Then you're not getting the fertilizer benefit to the entire field.

I bet with the proper crop selection, you could eliminate the mowing altogether. Spray, sow, and cultipack. I don't see why this wouldn't work.

CNC, I'd like to thank you for taking your time to create a tutorial for us newbies. I've attached a pic of what I'll be working with this year. It was planted with NWTF wheat. I'm going to get my soil sample soon and let it get a little higher before mowing. Thanks again.

The Rodale institute has been experimenting with just this. They have invented/created a "roller/crimper" which is kind of a like a huge cultipacker with chevron teeth all around it. What they found is that they needed a roller that could cut the crop and lay it flat at the same time. By just rolling over it with a large 55 gallon drum filed with water or just by rolling it with a regular cultipacker they found that the crop would not die and planting was not a success. No mowing, no spraying. Just rolling and crimping the crop. You need something to break the stems or cut the plant when rolling, thus their roller/crimper was invented.

http://rodaleinstitute.org/our-work/organic-no-till/

Whether or not to spray will really be a bigger issue in the spring that in the fall. If summer weeds and grasses are allowed to sprout and cover the understory before you plant in the spring then you will need to spray in order to establish your “crop”. At that point mowing the weeds would only clip the foliage and they would spring right back. So basically they have a running head start on the seeds you just threw out because they are already established and growing. The seeds you threw out will take time to germinate and establish themselves…..in the meantime the weeds will be off to the races and your crop will never catch up.

One way to prevent that from happening is to use the same canopy effect on the understory that you likely see happening in many of the pine stands you hunt. If you drown out the sunlight to the understory in the spring with something like a mix of rye, clover, vetch, etc….then all of the summer growth is held in check. Even when you remove the overstory and allow sunlight to the ground…..it still takes the weeds awhile to get going. This window of time allows for the seed you throw down to get a head start on the weeds and summer grasses and canopy back over them with them same shading effect as before. This is why the Japanese farmer in the book threw his seed out into a standing crop 2 weeks ahead of removing the overstory. It gave the seeds time to initially sprout and get even more of a head start on any competition that would later come in. He also said that sowing into a standing crop prevented any issues from birds. My thatch has been thick each time I’ve mowed and I’ve seen no problems from birds.

Something else besides using the canopy effect to prevent spraying is the timing. Crops like cereal rye would just continue to come back from mowing at the stage its in right now and would need spraying in order to establish a crop anytime soon. However, if I leave it alone and let it run through its life cycle and go to seed…..clipping it after that point will terminate it. I’ll make this terminating cut in latter half of May. I will then allow everything to grow during the summer and run through it’s complete life cycle as well until early October. Mowing during the summer or spring will prolong the life cycle of the plants and prevent them from going to seed until later than they would have if left alone.