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

A couple of inches of rain every week this month has made this October as good as it gets food plotting.

Question: Does the clover planted in a mix with cereal grains continuously provide nitrogen that the grains can also use? Or does the nitrogen fixing ability of the clover plant provide nitrogen only to the clover? I know clover is often used as a cover crop that is then tilled under to provide nitrogen to a cereal grain planted over it, but can the clover provide nitrogen to a cereal grain while the clover is still alive?

I'm no botanist, but I think the benefit of nitrogen fixation for other plants is only after the clover dies.

That is what I am assuming as well.

Yes this is part of the nitrogen cycle. You could also consider it a green manure process.
Legumes are just very efficient at removing nitrogen from the soil and air due to their relationship with nitrogen fixing bacteria. When they die it is released.

The original plan was to add 50 lbs of 34-0-0 at planting and then come back around Thanksgiving or a little after and hit with another 100…..however, me planting early and those couple of heavy rains we had upfront with the hurricanes seemed to have leached my N a little faster than I would have liked. My color just wasn’t there. So……last week before the rain I split my application went and added another 50 lbs…..She’s starting to hit another gear now. I’ll just play it by ear from here. I’ll probably add my other just before Christmas.

I felt like my plots needed some help so I put 1K lbs of nitrogen out right before the rain saturday. I've had over 7 inches of rain in less that 5 weeks on my plots and you could tell. hopefully they jump like yours

This was a small scale experiment where I simply broadcast some clover seed into grass that I routinely mow. I wanted to show it to illustrate just how easy clover germinates. Now that I know it’ll work, I’m gonna sow some clover into all of my grass areas. You can see the clover emerging now that the grass is dying. It may still need a little fert….germination is good though.

What type of clover is that?

Crimson clover

I top sowed some cereal rye in a small foodplot this morning. The field came up great, but the deer have worn it out.

I do this in my backyard all the time. Crimson in the winter and white dutch in the Spring. The white dutch tolerates a low mow height all season long.

Got turnips around baseball size now……...

Do your deer actually eat the turnips? I realize they help bring nutrients back to the surface.

Mine aren't but a few inches tall.

Mine were well over ankle tall and then the deer mowed them down to a couple of inches tall.

If we had a really cold winter and you had a high deer density then you might possibly see them eating on the bulbs. I haven’t planted them in several years so we’ll see if they get any action late in the season.

There’s one thing I’m seeing with the turnips without much doubt……The clover is definitely thriving more where it’s growing in conjunction with the turnips as opposed to the areas where there are no turnips. I didn’t do a very good job of blending my turnip seed in with my fert so its not the most even. The good thing though is that it allows me to compare with and without turnips.

I figure that its partially due to the shade that the turnips are offering the clover but I also suspect that there’s some root interactions of some kind as well that are benefiting the clover. This is yuchi arrowleaf in this pic………

Here’s something kind of interesting….See that browsed plant in the middle…..that’s ground cherry….a native plant that’s a cousin to the tomato. Of all the things in the plot that the deer has available to it, it still chose to browse the ground cherry. Should we still consider it a “weed”???

I wish the deer would leave my turnips and radishes alone until late season like I intended. Lol