Aldeer.com Forums Alabama Deer Talk Serious Deer Talk Forum My biggest frustration with throw and mow

Is turkeys. I think wheat is a useless throw and mow crop.

I know some people love them, but they are an absolute PITA when it comes to getting cereal grains going. Even if you disk them under.

You probably need more thatch......A lot of the folks I've seen try it in the past arent putting down nearly enough hay on the ground......Its why I'm always recommending fertilizing the native growth during the summer

I'm all about some throw n mow. But fertilizing a plot of weeds in the summer when the deer have plenty of browse just to build up more thatch/organic material to mow down in the fall? That's taking it too far and wasting money/time IMO.

I guess it’s a matter of perspective…….I also grew fall plots with zero added fertilizer for many years because I had enough built up fertility that I was recycling in the topsoil. Deer also hammered my fields in the summer growing nothing but "weeds".....All you really have to do is hit it with a little nitrogen once or twice during the spring/summer

Does your hay look like this??

If you don’t have hay like in the pics above to cover your seed up then your just top sowing wheat and yes the birds are going to hammer it……

ALclearcut……..many folks don’t fully understand the situation and how fertilizer works…..When you build up a good holding capacity for it then phosphorus and potassium with hold in the soil for quite some time….especially phosphorus…..I’ve had soil tests where I was still holding 180 lbs/acre of potassium a year later after adding 0-0-60…..If you’re doing things right and not allowing your topsoil to wash away carrying your fertility with it then you can add P&K during the summer and it still be there in the fall when you plant....Phosphorus is something you shouldnt have to add but maybe every few years or so depending on the soil type.....Its possible to completely eliminate fertilizer all together over time

Wow, if I had that much thatch I would rake a bunch off. I don’t think you’d get acceptable clover seed germ there. I’m seeding and mowing day before rain and I use scarecrows the first week or so.

I also like to burn new or fallow plots in April to get a forb response then throw and mow into ragweed, goldenrod, etc. Some people try their first throw and mow in a Bahia pasture and then say it doesn’t work. It all takes some degree of planning.

This is that bottom pic later in the season......I ended up going back and mowing down most of what was standing so I could see the deer better....This planting had zero added fertilizer

Nice. It’s definitely working well for you. I planted 15 acres with three different approaches this fall. 4 acres of spray, throw, mow. 6 acres conventional disk and cover, and 5 acres of burn and top sow day of rain. It’ll be a fun comparison.

I think the reason that worked so well is that I just broadcast the seed into the standing thatch and didn’t do anything else….Even though its pretty thick thatch it still had a lot of “space” for the seedlings to emerge……

I would be careful of making side by side comparisons of one single year….especially if it’s the first year……Things change a lot over time when you quit tilling and start building topsoil……There’s a lot involved with it that folks don’t consider……A big aspect of it is the microbial community and how it comes back to life over time and impacts the whole cycle of things

Lockjaw......I think you will have a lot better food plotting success if you will stop searching for a magic bean to plant during the summer and instead just fertilize and lime the things that nature puts there for you......I think you'll see the overall production improve a lot more

T-hatchie…….Another "pro-tip" that I think really helps the clover do well is to let it go to seed in the spring and don’t mess with it…..Just let it keep standing and naturally fall to ground…..In the picture I posted above I think that I was constantly getting clover sprouting throughout the fall from the seed bank and filling in as that thatch broke down……

Just a side note......You can tell that the cereal rye didn’t have a bunch of added N in this pic……I could’ve probably added a little and had better cereal grain production but…..the plot served its purpose…..All of that clover likely gave my spring/summer growth a nice boost

as much as i love a turkey in the spring is how much i hate them this time of year.

We're so turkey poor I'd be glad to up my seeding rate just to see one.

That would work if I could keep the stuff out I don't want, like horse nettle, briars, some of these lespedezas, and fennel. Most of the fields I only plant in the fall eventually succomb to briars. And they grow like 20 feet tall in 1 year it seems. Kind of hard to manage those on a subcompact tractor. Unless you like bleeding. So all this crap that clogs up the grill on the tractor, I don't want.

I guess I need to just pick some fields and put them on a rotation of spray, disk, wait, spray, disk, wait all summer. By then I should have depleted the native seedbank.

What I am after is something that's productive in mid August thru the dry part of October. Most native forage, short of the crap I mentioned above, is wilting and drying up.

That makes it tough to throw and mow. My turkeys would sift through the fields in your pictures if they discover seed in them. And they will go through them every day until they stop finding stuff.

So whatever is in a field, it needs to be turkey proof/

Spot spray the things you dont want and mow one time in July.......Be careful about spot spraying out everything that the deer dont eat though....You need some stuff to make thatch from at planting time.....

I would take that field, broadcast clay peas into it, and run over it with the disk once the clover is done. It's almost like crimping it.

I’m sure you would… ….You keep doing you though……I’m just gonna correct the record when folks critique “throw and mow” without really knowing what they’re critiquing…..If you’re intent on pounding a square peg through a round hole then its not throw and mow that’s the problem