Take some pics!......

I'm considering adding radishes to a couple of my t &M plots. I've been told if you don't have an electric fence, I am wasting my money. Is that right?

Depends on the size of your plots and deer density…..but I’ve found radishes to be more preferred than turnips and rape and they get hit pretty hard. Might be a good idea to split it and add radishes and turnips. Make sure to keep them at a really low rate though…..1-3 lbs/ac total in a mix.

One plot is 2.5 acres, other is 2, one is about .75. I'm going to plant wheat, oats, rye, crimson clover, and possibly rape/radishes. How about 25 lbs each of wheat, oats, and rye per acre, 5 lbs crimson clover, and 5 lbs of rape/radish? Too much? Too little?

If you’re planting into good conditions then it doesn’t take much turnip seed at all. There’s a dang gazillion little turnip seeds in a pound. Most people probably bury them too deep in traditional plantings but they do outstanding in a properly done T&M planting. I only added 1 lb to the acre of turnips into my mix last year (pic below). In some places it came in even thicker but this is a pretty good representation of the average. My seed blending left a little to be desired. Radish seeds are just a little larger so you could up the rate a little on them compared to rape or turnips. It’s your call in the end as to how thick you want your brassica component. It doesn’t take much overdoing it to end up with just a brassica patch.

I drilled my radishes at 10# per acre. Yea it's pretty thick. May just go to 5# next year

Chamberbitter aka Gripeweed

This is a plant I’ve had my eye on out of concern. I even saw a thread on the GA forum that was titled…”Beware of this plant!!!”…..

Now I concur that it’s definitely aggressive and spreading….a lot of that though is directly associated with me disturbing areas and mowing….. therefore promoting its spread. I’ve seen something here at the end of the summer though that alleviates a lot of my concerns. As the other plants have hardened off and went to seed……the deer have started to absolutely hammer the gripeweed. I don’t mean just a little bit of browsing here and there either….I mean it looks like they’re mowing it down as the nights go on. Just about every plant I see has been browsed on…….Some of the smaller plants have been eaten back to the ground. Some solid patches of it that look like you cut it across the top with hedge trimmers.

I need advice. My cousin (land owner) lives more than 4 hours from the farm. He's going to be down this weekend since he has a 3-day weekend. It's basically this weekend to plant or bust. I'll actually be missing out because I'll be in Montgomery for my grandfather's birthday. Anyways, my cousin is gung-ho about throw and mow, but the fear is no rain in the forecast. So now we're trying to decide between discing and burying the seed for it to wait for rain or going the approach that's better for the soil (T&M), but perhaps a higher risk for germination. With a long delay for rain, is the main concern critters eating up a lot of the seed or the heat damaging the seed? We tend to plant too thick every year as it is, so maybe a higher seed rate would help give us a bit of a buffer? The fields are pretty thick right now with sunn hemp, which is new for us. Thoughts?

I would throw and mow. The seed will be fine, waiting on a rain, as long as there is enough thatch to cover it well. Even though that looks thick, it'll thin out dramatically when it dies because its mostly broadleafs. Are the deer browsing the sunn hemp? If so, I would plant strips thru it and leave strips standing.

I think you’ll have enough thatch to be ok looking at the pic…..Kinda depends on how much grassy stuff you have at ground level to go along with the sunn hemp…The sunn hemp probably won't make as much "hay" as what it looks like it will. .Kinda hard to say for sure on that one. What you have to worry about from the standpoint of birds eating the seed is not having enough thatch to cover it over and just leaving exposed seed on top of the ground. If you get it covered over well then that’ll buy you time and protection from the birds. I actually think a nice thick thatch covering is about the best protection you can have from birds.

I’ll also throw out there that there isn’t anything a bird likes better than freshly plowed dirt and seed. They LOVE scratching in it so don’t think they won’t get it just because you disk. I remember one year we were planting the fields in a hunting club I was in……It was later on in the day and one of the tractor guys realized that he had dropped something in one of the first plots. I don’t even remember what it was now….But I told them I’d ride back around and look for it. Well, when I got back to the first plot it was slam full of turkeys scratching our seed up and eating it. We hadn’t even finished planting yet and they were on it.

I don't know how long the sunn hemp will keep living but I'd be perfectly fine with doing T&M if my fields looked like that.

Bought some brassica, clover, and rye mix for a small secluded plot on a ridge property I have permission to hunt. Threw it out on the 24th of September after raking the leaves away and then attempting to rake the soil back over the seed. Came up nice after the rain. Sorry for the bad pic quality.

BamaT........That ought to be a killer little honey hole. If they find it and start wearing it out then feed it some nitrogen....34-0-0

Thanks guys. I've passed the feedback to my cousin. Nope, the deer aren't browsing the hemp hardly at all. I don't think they know what to do with it this first year of having it up there.

Soybeans were planted with the sunn hemp. They did the worst this year than any of the previous years. I'm not sure if they simply were browsed harder, or if it got dry at the wrong time or what. There's a decent amount of other stuff growing too though. I attempted to plant the hemp thinly, but a little goes a long ways apparently. Maybe we'll do one field with T&M and then see how well the seed gets covered.

So, CNC, assuming the soil is fair (not terrible, not but not good, which is the reason I am using T &M to build up OM), what's a good rate of wheat, oats, rye, clover? Thanks.

Roughly 75 lbs cereal grains……8-10 lbs clover depending on varieties used…….1-3 lbs brassica……on good sized plots with medium deer density. I wouldn’t be skeered to go with 100 lbs of cereals if browsing was intense but 75 will work better with a mix. The thicker your cereal grains, the more it’s likely to smother out the clover. 50lbs of cereals would be a good rate for mix but I just don’t think that’s enough on small plots that get hit hard. The clover is mostly a spring time food source too so you just got to adapt what your doing to best fit your situation. In really small plots I'd go with 150 lbs of grain and probably just leave the other components out. The hands down most important thing to me is a killer Jan-Feb food source.

Awesome. I have been wondering what to do if they eat it down quickly (which i assume they will, lots of deer on camera). Thanks for the tip CNC.

Thanks so much.

New throw and mow rig.