Aldeer.com Forums Alabama Deer Talk Quality Deer Management Throw n Mow Q&A

I tried it on my first T&M plot last summer. It worked but the deer never let it get very tall.

That is good news. I will wait for some rain and try and put it out just ahead of some rain. I've got plenty of vegetation on half of my plots to cover the seed, on the others I may have to lightly disc to help cover so the birds and turkeys don't get it all before it sprouts...As far as the deer hitting it too early, I had to spray mine with fish emulsion last year to keep them off of it for a few weeks. It worked great and only costs $8, and I think I used a half of a bottle.

Westflgator, how are you spreading your sea 90 minerals, mine doesn't want to come out of my spreader very well. It feels damp and kinda packs, like lime.

I use the larger granular type Sea90 (not the fine ground) when I spread. I have two spreaders, one is a pull behind that is exactly the same as the one for my tractor (pto driven) except it is a wheel drive spreader, and both of them work fine. The key is not to let it get wet, and you may have to open the spreader a little wider than you would with traditional fertilizer. I just put some out on my yard last week without any issues with my pull behind.

I tried the throw and disk method today. I was gonna seed then bushhogg but my Hogg rows the grass to one side. So I broadcasted seed and fertilizer in a field of standing wheat and oats that has died off and set my disc straight and lightly ran it over hoping the grass and little bit of dirt will cover the seed. Hope it works.

Peas and buckwheat should work great. Just need to pray for rain now. Forecast looks pretty ugly.

Wouldn't matter if it was throw and mow or plowed ground it'd be dead up here. We're bad off. On a side note I planted no till corn on April 26 into sunn hemp and wheat cover crop stubble from last year and as of now it's hanging on. Better than no cover ground is.

That’s one of the reasons I’m going the route I am this summer... so that drought and timely rains really aren't a factor as much. If I have what you want to call a “cash crop” in my rotation, then it would definitely be my winter plot. Due to be limited by acreage, nothing I do during the summer really has much impact on what I see during hunting season. Deer switch feeding patterns in early fall and everything changes from that point. I’ve come to the conclusion that in my situation, I’m much better off to spend my summer months protecting and improving my soil so that I can grow a better winter cash crop.

A fair amount of volunteer Egyptian wheat is coming in. Some of it is doing fine and some of it is struggling like the one below. It’s a plant known to be finicky. This is one of the reasons I say that you are better off to turn things around with weeds instead of worrying about trying to plant crops. Weeds are soldiers. They will thrive in hostile conditions where as other more finicky plants may struggle. Weeds still get the job done in these situations. They are my summer cover crop.





Remember that deer are just goats. Despite only growing healthy weeds….I still have deer readily browsing in the fields at night.





This is some kind of wild brassica….a turnip like plant....healthy and being browsed.





This some kind of briar. Healthy and being browsed. I’d take a field full of them. Everyone has been browsed and the bushy ones look like they’ve had hedge trimmers taken to them.

This plant is called purpletop vervain. It is one of the most heavily browsed species on my property. All of what I have has come back from the natural seedbank..... but if you don’t have this plant present in your summer fields then I think it would be well worth getting it started in the mix. It should reseed itself from there. I’m going to see if I can collect some seed from this powerline to put out in my big field. It’s pretty scant in the big field.

https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=purpletop+vervain+seed&tbm=shop

I have some of that growing wild on my Lee Co lease. I noticed yesterday that most of it had the top nipped out of it.

The deer on my properties hammer vervain. I wish i had a field full of that and poke salad.

Here’s another one. If you mentioned the word “thistle”…most food plotters would automatically think of a negative image. The deer love it though and I’d put it right up there in my top ten list of summer plants that deer hammer.

Not even sure what this one is called. It's coming into the big field in places though and being readily browsed on. See the stems nipped off in the center of the plant.

Now, thats one thing i don't see browsed. I wished i did.

I wonder if it's the same variety of thistle? You couldn't find one around here that hasn't been heavily browsed on.

Not sure, these will get purple flowers on them.

Yep, it's a different variety of thistle. Mine have yellow flowers and I believe are called "prickly sow thistle". The ones you are talking about have purple flowers and called "bull thistle". Someone correct me if that's wrong.

Deer are hammering the young blackberry as well. I find that they don’t mess with it too much when it first emerges but rather right as it starts getting stemmy like in the pic below. This patch is the front edge of my big field. It gets hit with the lime and fert too as I’m putting it out.