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

What kind of soil is it??

I'm not sure of your objective, but a December disking has switched one of my old fields from growing broomsedge and dog fennel to mostly ragweed. I am doing it to benefit turkeys, but it probably helps deer too.

That is my objective as well. I want diversity to benefit all wildlife. I'd be thrilled if I have a big ragweed response. As of now, I'm also mostly dog fennel and some areas of broomsedge as well. I'll play around with winter disking and with fire and see what happens.

Ragweed is definitely a good native plant but I think it gets overhyped as being high preference deer browse…..From what I’ve seen I would rank it middle of the pack…..I’ve seen deer hammer a lot of other plants way more than they do the ragweed…..They browse it but just moderately when given other options……

Ragweed is one of several wild options that I’ve noticed the deer will hit hard or not at all. Sometimes they’ll hammer a couple of plants in a group and not even touch the others even if they are as easy to get to. There’s something that I haven’t yet identified that they regularly turn into topiary on the edges of my plots. It looks like a cross between liatris and dog fennel with dark green needle-like foliage and it smells strongly when disturbed. I don’t think I’ve ever seen one unmolested to know what it’s supposed to look like if it grew naturally.

I hate dog fennel

Yeah……that’s about what I see too……..You’ll have a large percentage of plants that go unbrowsed and some areas here and there where they eat on patch……If I had to put a percentage on it I’d say somewhere in the 10-20% of plants browsed category……Other things though like vervain for example are more like 80-90% browsed……Just about all of the vervain on my place gets eaten……Dewberry is another highly utilized plant…..Its nearly 80-90% utilized……Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that ragweed is a bad plant……just that its not top shelf bourbon when it comes to what the deer like……..its on down there on those lower shelves……The stuff you give your buddies when they come over……Maybe even the stuff your drunk uncles buys

When I first started playing with that test field is was just about pure crabgrass…..As I started building topsoil one of the first plants to return in abundance was ragweed…..That should tell you a little something about it…..It has a purpose and plays a role in the process…..Its meant to be a plant that establishes a broadleaf component without getting wiped out…..That’s why its only so-so attractive…..It wouldn’t make sense for the first broadleaf species that nature throws out there in the soil building process to be things that are gonna get annihilated by a hungry deer herd…..The “process” wouldn’t proceed very far for very long that way…..Your most attractive species start growing when the soil conditions really have top end function and fertility occurring……

I saw a short this am by Dr. Grant Woods, he says just disking 2 inches destroys 90% of the beneficial insects in the soil.

It’s not the insects. It’s the entire microbiome(fungi, bacteria, etc) that making living soil which is different from just dirt. You can grow w things in dirt but life thrives in soil. I mean you need only look around a plot at all the things growing just fine with zero input from a person. No tilling, no lime, no fertilizer and yet plants of all sorts seem to be able to source N, P, K and all the other nutrients using only sunlight and a little rain.

Try to find his video where he picks up a root from a disced field vs a non disced. Pretty amazing how many earth worms are in non disced field vs all the j hooked roots in disced field.

Yep……these are all pretty much the same ecosystems…..You’re just creating a miniature desert when you lose the topsoil....You dont have the components needed to sustain soil life anymore.

Arrowhead hunting in no-till sucks

I will say it is very challenging to start with a piece of untilled ground, especially with a high clay content, and get plots to grow. I have one we even put a trailer load of manure and sawdust on, and you could still make adobe bricks with it. It cracks when dry, which I think is a good thing, I can get seed down in the cracks for when it rains.

And then there are the dewberry vines and I have some tree that likes to grow, plus dog fennel and horse nettle. What I have done before is use a subsoiler and then just plant it like that, but eventually the rain levels it back out into brick material again.

I am going to plant radishes in the spring and see what that does.

Here's spring turnips......Deer didnt mess with them much but they produced well for soil purposes

I may do that, I really want radishes for soil penetration. It's become so difficult to get brassica's going in the fall due to lack of rain, and then frost kills when when it finally does rain because they haven't had much time to grow.

5 years ago, food plotting was easier for me. This dry spell in Sept and Oct for the last 4 years sucks.

Plant daikon in the spring while your ground is nice and moist and let them go to work. They are good for deep penetration and lots of organic matter left behind. Biggest thing though is to always have good coverage over and in your soil. Just let your cereals go in spring. You can throw brassicas right into them. As they get taller their roots go deeper as well.

This is just my opinion but if I were trying to cover hard clay soil like that they I'd probably start the process with a thick stand of millet with periodic applications of N to ensure a nice heavy stand of a fine grass.....You're basically covering the soil with hay to get an initial bandade over the exposed soil surface.....where it can begin to breakdown and become the first bit of a layer of topsoil. That's more important in the very beginning than growing any kind of a bean, etc

This is what I am going to do. I have specific plots I want to target with them.

CNC, I am going to plant differently this spring. While I still plan to have beans/peas, I will put in Sorghum(millet), radishes, and sunn hemp. I have 40 pounds of deer vetch too. On my clover fields, I will probably not do much with them, just mow, spray and fertilize. They may get some radishes/turnips to help with organic matter. Or I could toss out some buckwheat.

I am hopeful the Barduro clover does well. I planted that on 2 plots this year, one has whitetail clover in it as well. It may change my mix next year if it handles summer well. I will also know how the deer vetch does by then too. Like I said, I really want something viable in some of the plots from August thru October.