I’m curious what advice y’all have for planting a sandy food plot. We have one food plot that sits in hardwoods and not too far from a creek. It’s a prime location, but due to the sandy soil it doesn’t grow as thick as our other plots. It did better this year because when we seeded it, we didn’t pack it. We left it on top and let the rain pack it in and that seemed to help. I’m wondering if it needs a different fertilizer schedule or if there is anything we can do to improve it. Below is what we did this year.

Planted Sept 16th. Planted wheat and buck forage oats. Before planting we tilled 500#/acre of pelletized lime in. Spread Triple 13 at 150#/acre and 34-0-0 at 50#/acre at seeding.

Top seeded Nov 9th. No fertilizer

December 15th put 34-0-0 at 75#/acre.

Again, the field looks much better this year, but I think it could be better. All our other fields are clay and grow real thick.

Thanks for any suggestions.

Try building up the soil with organic matter?

Smaller doses of fertilizer but more frequently. Dolomitic lime but also add K-Mag to get your base saturation Magnesium up around 15%. This will slow the infiltration through your soils.

When planting, top sow seed and fertilizer then barely work the soil. Never disk those sandy plots clean.

Thanks. Great advice.

We’ve considered that but due to the location of the plot it would be a lot of work to get it to the plot.

Could you plant a summer crop like buckwheat or sun hemp?

Grasses- millet, sorghum etc do a tremendous job of building organic matter. It’s through the root mass they create not the top growth. That’s why I recommend not heavily disking these sandy plots. Just the top 1-1.5 inches. Adding Buckwheat, peas and hairy vetch will help. Be prepared to add supplemental N as the top growth breaks down.

On our sandy plots I’ll bushhog and a couple weeks later just put the seed and fertilizer out and lightly disk in one time and the do really good. Like said above try not to disturb the soil. Over the years at my place doing this I’ve built up organic matter by doing this and have slowly started getting the sand turned into topsoil. We do pour the lime to them about every two years to

Yes, but I’ve been worried a summer crop won’t last due to the heavy foraging. But, if it’ll help build it up I’m happy to do it.

You do liquid lime or ag lime?

Ag lime. I’ll have a truck load dropped on the property and just rent a pull behind buggy to spread everything with

Cereal rye is your friend!

Both will hold up to heavy forage

Along with millet or weeds in the summer with low rate periodic applications of nitrogen......If you're going to break the ground then do it as lightly as possible....it doesnt take much to separate OM from sand

What is your recommended amount of seed per acre and fertilizer amount when planting? Can I top seed it over our fall plot? Based on what others say it looks like I wouldn’t want to disturb the dirt much.

There’s an old thread on this site, search “ throw and mow sunn hemp”. The fella that post also included buckwheat when he planted.

We found that the sandy soil would not hold the root system when first browsed. We had pictures of does with roots hanging from their mouth. Cultipacking helped some, but we finally no tilled.

I used to plant a sandy plot on edge of creek. The only thing that semi-worked for me was T&M with rye and wheat. I would spray, wait 2 weeks, seed fertilize mow and cultipack, but it never did great. I abandoned the sandy plot once I was able to cut timber and increase plot acreage. The sandy plot is currently about 3" high in broomsedge and I'm thinking about planting in chufa.

If you’re in South AL, I would plant Abruzzi Rye. Have a couple of sandy plots and we don’t disc them. Spread seed and triple 13 and then mow. After a couple of years you’ll begin to see and improvement in the soil. Produces a good plot and the deer eat it as good as they do winter wheat.

Plant the plot in ryegrass and crimson clover. Turn it under each spring for 3-4 years in a row. You'll have much better soil as a result.