Preparing the Ground

When it comes time to plant food plots in the fall there are multiple things that you have to consider in order to attain maximum growth. The main contributors to this are the following: weather, making a good seed bed, depth of planting, how big your deer heard is and making sure you have the correct equipment. Weather, is the single most important part of the whole process. Unless you have an irrigation system for your food plots, which I know most people don't, if you don't get rain to moisten the soil you could do everything else right but it just would not work. So having said that you have to plan your plant times around the weather. Take for instance I've been looking at the weather for the last couple days and the forecast shows for rain coming next week all throughout the week so I have already gotten started with my prep so that I'll be ready to plant as soon as possible. Making a good seed bed is not as important as weather but it is still very important. When I said that I had already started prepping plots earlier this is what I was talking about. For me it starts with bush hogging then after I give all of it a couple of days for the cut grass to die out. After that I come back and burn it but to prevent the fire from getting out of the plot and into the woods I take the tractor and disc around the edge so that there is about a five foot wide buffer of dirt around the outside edge. As soon as it is done burning off its time to start discing the entire thing, I usually like to do this twice with the disc and then come back with the tiller for one more pass to make sure and good smooth and soft seed bed. Depth of planting is very key in the process as well. For the most part it has a lot to do with the size of the seed. Your smaller seeds will not really even need to be under ground with adequate rain but your larger ones for example winter peas and oats do. However, I know of a couple of exceptions to this rule of thumb, which are wheat and rye. They are larger seeds but if you broadcast (spread) them over fresh dirt and with adequate rainfall they will come up without being turned under the soil. The size of your deer herd directly affects planting because you have to plant it thick enough and just plant enough in general to keep the deer from eating it all down before it can grow to its mature potential. Lastly, having the correct equipment. For best results and for less work on you having tractor is key, along with this you will need some type of disc or harrow and a seed spreader.
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