Aldeer.com Forums Alabama Deer Talk Quality Deer Management Buckwheat

Does it throw snd mow well? Thinking about slinging out some seed but I don't want to break up the ground.

Pretty decent as long as you don’t have to much thatch

Mix in some millet with it in a combo and you'll hedge your bets some.

Most of my plot is in clover. Where there's no clover, I thought I would sling some buckwheat out and see what happened. How warm does it need to be. What I read said late may

I forgot the exact temps but its up there with stuff like Okra ifI remember correctly......You're probably better to wait until good warm soil temps.

I broadcast it and it does well. I plant it after turkey season when I plant peas.

Our plots are less than a acre. We have planted peas before but the deer ate them before they got established. My question is if I mix sunn hemp and buckwheat in with the peas will that keep the pressure off the peas? If not any suggestions on what to plant for these small plots. We generally feed a 16% feed but with the price on feed we may have to cut back.

The deer here wipe out sun hemp, it never has a chance to grow. They eat it straight out of the ground

I have a suggestion for you.

Go plant buckwheat first. Give it about 2 weeks to germinate and get going and see what your deer do with it. If they aren't mowing it down, then go back and broadcast clay peas and sunn hemp into the buckwheat. The buckwheat reaches full maturity in about 45 days, which would give your clay peas and sunn hemp about 30 days of good cover to establish. At this point, the sunn hemp should be growing an inch a day.

One of the reasons I think buckwheat is a great cover crop for others is because it flowers early, and there are bees everywhere during the day. I am sure a deer wouldn't be happy about being stung on the nose. If you can keep them out of it for 12+ hours a day, especially the growing hours, that has to help.

All of my plots are 3/4 acre or less. I have never been able to plant straight soybeans and get them established, except eagle soybeans. My deer don't tend to hit the clay peas that way. I can get a pure stand of those up. But what I found was buckwheat gave everything else cover to establish.

On an acre field, I would probably plant 50 pounds of buckwheat, 50 of clay peas and 20 of sunn hemp.

One thing you can try, but you probably need to wait until fall, is to plant some durana clover. You would have to have a ton of deer for them to eat down a clover plot, in my experience. Especially in the spring once it warms up, clover will take off. I like Whitetail clover too. If you can get weeds under control in a field, plant Whitetail Fusion, the deer will wear out the chicory. It's just hard to deal with broadleaf weeds in chicory.

I like the idea of planting the buckwheat first. But will probably plant it all at one time. I'm having rotator cuff surgery in a couple of
days and will be running late on soil preparation and planting. Also thought about planting wms pea patch and adding extra buckwheat to it. Another question question I have is can you broadcast buckwheat into a established clover plot.

I have planted most all my buckwheat by just broadcasting it on bare ground, or in an existing food plot, and then mowing the plot. I bought a flail mower just for doing this. It blows all the mulch out the back and the roller acts sort of like a cultipacker.

Most of the time I plant peas/beans now, its the same. I broadcast them into my standing cereal crop from fall, and then a mow with the flail mower.

I really do not want to disk a plot unless I just have to, and really would rather subsoil it and then plant it and not disk it. You would be surprised how well that works too for a spring plant.