10-4. Thanks Fisher / Turkey.

Looking to add some biomass to my plots. What would y’all recommend planting to accomplish this?

By most accounts, sun hemp produces pretty serious tonnage with minimal effort. I've never tried it, but I'm planting a few spots with it this year

I agree with what others have said....once the deer wipe out the beans then you'll likely have plenty of native forbs and grasses come in if your soil is fertile. The amount and native forage you grow during the summer is a pretty good indication as to your fields fertility. A good fertile field with nutrients in check will grow all the biomass summer you need through the native plant community.

This part of the answer is for you and Cal as well.....The easiest thing to do to produce plenty of summer biomass is to get your soil nutrients in line such as Ca, P, & K.....hit it with a dose or two of N throughout the summer if needed.....and allow the native plants to do their thing.....they will produce plenty of biomass for you as well as repairing the soil in the process with their root growth. The deer will still use the fields, picking and choosing the plants they like. I haven't done squat to my field this year but I still have deer out here browsing in it every night. The soil is fertile and the plant community is very diverse. There's probably 25-30+ different plant species growing in and around the edge of my field. Species composition will change as fertility increases and organic matter builds. Seven or eight years ago my field was nearly pure crabgrass during the summer due to the degraded conditions.

I'm going to slightly modify what I said and add a caveat to CNC's comment. You have to pay attention to what CNC said, which is "if your soil is fertile." I've found that if your soil is bad, as in sandy or sandy loam like a lot of Alabama soils, then, you are going to have a hard time in year one getting summer growth that worth a darn. I'd strongly recommend something grassy like millet. Grows just about everywhere and produces lots of biomass. At the same time, hit it with lime. If you haven't done a soil test and you aren't in the black belt, I'd hit it with a ton of ag lime per acre.

If you want tons of biomass for the fall, plant rye and crimson clover the following fall. deer aren't as big of eaters of rye where I am, but it makes some serious biomass, and I was willing to trade that off in my food plots with the worst soil. Year two, I planted wheat, oats and rye, with crimson, arrow leaf, and rape and some turnips. All did well.

So in my five T&M plots now, I rotate WMS pea patch, then in the fall wheat, oats rye (heavy on wheat), crimson, arrow leaf, rape and turnips. Just 1lb an acre on turnips, though. Those buggers are expensive!!

AlFisher is spot on...….millet is an excellent choice if you're struggling to grow natural vegetation.

It is simply amazing to watch a field totally change every couple of years, I've got one that started out as BlackBerry, ragweed, broomsedge, and poplar seedlings, I bushhog it 2 or 3 times every summer and it literally seems to change every year.

There's a lot of factors that can effect species composition as well. Mowing..... timing of the mowing....and frequency of mowing can all have an impact on species composition. Frequent mowing tends to favor grass species and thin out broadleafs.

I was getting soil samples yesterday and snapped a couple of pics of my thatch and my durana clover growing in this heat.


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Nice!.....I think the standing grain crops really help the clover from going dormant as easily. It helps hold in the soil moisture and also provides it will a little semi-shade. .

I have a question for those that use the throw and mow method but also include the spraying step. Last year we changed over to the throw and mow method. It really didn't work very well and the primary reason was because we had way too much natural grasses that did not terminate when we mowed. The native grasses utilized a large portion of the fertilizer before the 3-way mix (wheat, oat and rye) ever got established. Also since the native grasses were very thick the 3-way mix had a difficult time competing.

Our plan this year is to also spray and this is were my question comes. For those that typically spray, is there a better time to spray relative to your planting date? Three weeks prior, two weeks prior, one week prior, or the day you plant.

Thanks for the feedback....

We do 2-3 weeks. This gives you time to see if you missed a spot. It’s easy to miss a strip if you are using an ATV to spray.

If you've got a really thick stand of grass to kill then it wouldn't hurt to start a month ahead of time. That'll give it a little time to start breaking down and maybe thinning out before you plant. Long term I'd start looking to thin the grass component down some in the summer so that you get a better mix of broadleaf plants. Ideally we would like to have a balance of grasses, broadleafs, and legumes.

Worked hard on some throw n mow this week

A Kuhn disc...interesting..don’t see many of those around here.

It’s a good one. The Krause landmaster is even better. Will flat slick some ground down

T&M is easier but discing a field is instant gratification when it breaks up real good

I'm sold on T&M, but I love the smell and feel of that dirt in my hands.

I agree. I haven't broken any dirt in over a year now. Barely did any last year. Results are so good, and it's so much easier, I'll never go back.