When I bought my place last November, this was very grown over . We mowed it down and hand seeded rye grain. The plan is to double it in size and add 3-4 more about the same size.

Nice toothdoc....


Have you pulled a soil sample yet?

That was a last minute let me just see what happens type of thing. I'm having a guy put in several new plots mid to late June and then he's going to get solid samples and apply whatever it recommends to get me off to the right start. I'll maintain it after that. I'm totally new to all of this.

One thing that will really help you if you’re creating brand new food plots and have a choice..... is the location where you put them to begin with. Try to pick areas with favorable soils and soil conditions. For example, a hill top with deep sand would not be a good choice. An area that held more moisture and had a better mix of sand/silt/clay would be better.

If you haven't done so, you may want to look at a soil map for your property. They can be found online but I don't recall what site it was off the top of my head. USDA Soil Survey Map or something of that nature. I'll see if I can Google it and find it again.

A little “before and after”on some TSI that I was working on earlier in the spring……..Time for a little more hack n squirt on the trees in the background. Looks like a food plot to me.

These storm front are taken their toll on the field. That’s exactly what I want though. The deer will begin pounding on it in another week or so and the field will change over from hay to a field of summer growth with no bushhogging required. That's the plan anyways. At some point during the transition I’m gonna add some P&K. I need to go ahead and send in a soil sample.

Now that the rye is browning you can begin to see some of the volunteer yuchi growing in the mid story. The drought screwed up my plans last fall. I had brought in lime last summer and had plans of reseeding a three way mix of crimson, yuchi, and durana but called it off when we didn’t get to plant until Thanksgiving. I should have went ahead with it probably. It’s actually better than I would have expected being volunteers but not near what I'm shooting for. I’m gonna reseed ‘em this year come hell or highwater. They’re growing much better now that the soil has gotten right and I added the lime.



Crimson, yuchi, and durana each fill their own little niche in time during the spring and early summer. The crimson first, then the yuchi, and later on the durana. This is yuchi arrowleaf....it's a really tall clover that grows on something almost like a stalk.

Gonna suck to mow around all those trees, but looks good!

Yep…..I’m eventually gonna take out all the trees except for just the big water oaks. Most of this bottom will be open. I do want to leave it semi-shaded though with a few trees. I probably won’t actually plant any seed here this fall and just let it grow natural until next Feb. I may broadcast a little crimson clover to get it started here and there….I don’t know. There’s plenty of moisture in this spot for sure.

yuchi very well may be my favorite clover. The deer absolutely hammer that stuff march-may/june which is perfect timing for kicking off antlers. Durana can then take them through the summer.

Yep.....It hangs in there well amongst the growing cereal grains too.

My yucchi is getting tall, as well. I'm about to plant some sunflowers,millet, and buckwheat for dove.

Another time lapse from the last week or so.






We’ve now produced a nice crop of hay to spread over our soil surface. That’ll come in handy as we move into the summer months to help conserve soil moisture and moderate soil temperatures. Eventually it'll become rich organic soil as the soil microbial community breaks it all down.

I’m letting the hay naturally fall down onto the surface in order to not smother out new summer plant growth that will soon emerge. If you had a drill this would be where you could press the hay mat down for a weed suppressant and drill into it. Actually, you could have done that any time after it started going to seed. I’m purposely growing natural vegetation in the summer months though so I want to let sunlight penetrate to the soil surface and stimulate growth. I’m hoping to see a nice stand of teaweed eventually show up.



Here come the deer to eat the seed heads and remove the old canopy…………Right on cue.

This guy is talking about gardening but it directly relates to our food plotting practice too......Listen and think about how this translates over to what we do in our plots. The word of the day is "BRIX"........What is BRIX?

I planted all my plots last year using your method. Even with the drought that lasted into November my plots did great. This was year 2. I wouldn't say my plots are any better but I save a whole day out two of breaking. Time and money I use other places.

Good deal!.....Glad to hear of more and more folks having success. I agree that it saves a lot of time and I think that may be what ultimately draws more people to the method than anything else. The soil health benefits will come with time though.

Starting to see patches of Durana clover popping through some of the rye as it gets beat down. It was added into my fall seed mix 3 years ago. The few larger leafed clover stalks in the back with the red stems is the yuchi again.

I think I'm going to just broadcast some Ic peas into my clover fields and let all the maturing wheat and rye just lay over it after the next big storm and not even bush hog them. I feel like that will help with weeds also. I don't expect them to make it past 16 inches before the deer wipe them out. jsut be added food in the fields

Yeah, if I thought I could get any growth out of them at all I’d do the same. They just wipe it out so fast here though that I think I’m completely skipping it this year. The only thing I would say to anyone thinking about doing something this summer like planting peas…..don’t take that $100 or $500 or whatever you're putting into it....spend it on peas, sunflowers, yada yada….and then not buy the lime, the P, the K, the N, etc…..If you’re only gonna do one or the other then you’ll be a whole lot better off long term to take that $$$ and buy soil amendments. The native summer vegetation will thrive….the deer will like it and browse in it but it’ll tolerate the grazing pressure much better. You'll accomplish more toward long term soil building goals as well. If you have the resources to add both peas and proper soil amendments then great, go for it. I just see a lot of folks going all in on the seed and skimping on the soil amendments. That’s backwards from how we should manage in my opinion. The soil is the foundation that the whole house is built on.

I planted buckwheat this year. Deer will eat it, but not decimate it. It's thick canopy can suppress weeds and it adds phosphorous back into the soil and you can get 2-3 crops out of it. I plan,after it heads out, to drag over it and lay it down. This will disperse the free seed and here we go again. I used a drag over my rye and layed it down over my buckwheat, instead of cutting it. Looks really good.