Guest Blog: Food Plots You Can Plant Now
Posted By
Bill Winke
at
7/14/2009 12:00:00 AM
Filed under:
journal
You are going to start thinking that I have nothing worth saying with all these guest blogs I have been posting lately. Maybe there is some truth to that! Our mutual friend Scott Prucha introduced me to Paul's expertise. Paul Knox is a respected food plot authority from SE Iowa who was kind enough to share his advice on best ways to establish summer-planted food plots. The following words are Paul's.
Midsummer here in the Midwest brings on hot sultry summer days that are perfect for planting food sources that will attract whitetails well into the late season. Perfect that is, if you plant the right crops at the right time.
July is optimum planting time for both field peas and brassicas, with field peas being planted the early part of July and brassicas the second half. Brassicas, you no doubt have heard of, but field peas are somewhat new to many landowners.
We commonly plant Austrian Winter Peas with cereal grains in early fall as a forage food source, but field peas if planted early can provide a late season dry grain food source much the same as soybeans.
Field peas are a common crop in Saskatchewan and deer are drawn to the dried peas there in the same way they are drawn to soybeans in Iowa. 
Peas however are highly digestible and protein levels range in the upper 20’s whereas soybeans are less so unless they are processed.
In recent years, farmers in SE Iowa have been double cropping field peas behind newly harvested wheat sparking further interest here in the Midwest.
Field peas are planted at 100-120 pounds per acre and adding 50 pounds of oats gives the peas something to climb on as well as some early forage for whitetails. Peas are legumes so as long as soils contain a modest amount of nitrogen only 20-30 pounds of phosphate and potash per acre are needed.
Plant seed 1-3 inches deep the first 2 weeks of July and if annual grasses become a problem, they can be sprayed with clethodim grass selective herbicide, although this will also kill the oats. Seed is available from several Midwest sources such as Albert Lea Seed House and Welter Seed and runs about $20 per 50 pounds, making this an inexpensive food source to plant.
Brassicas are another great food source although not everyone will have success with them right away, as some whitetails will ignore them at first. I have two separate farms and though I have planted all brands and varieties exactly the same on both farms, the deer have yet to touch them on one farm. There are two main types of brassicas, short season types comprised of rape and turnips, and long season types consisting of swedes and kale. The long season types require 120-150 day growing seasons thus requiring early spring plantings and often some form of weed control.
Short season brassicas mature in 60-90 days making them well-suited for mid summer plantings, from mid July through early August. In that short growing season however, well-fertilized brassicas can yield 4-6 tons of dry matter per acre at 25% protein.
Brassica seed is very tiny and it is best to use a small handheld seeder closed to the smallest opening to avoid over seeding, a common problem encountered by first timers. If using a drill, use the small seed box - the same one you would use for sowing clover seed.
Sow brassicas at 5 pounds per acre and I recommend a combination of both forage rape and turnips, with forage rape being preferred for grazing early on and then the roots of the turnips providing a food source well into January. Dwarf Essex Rape and Purple Top Turnips are reliable standbys but there are other hybrids such as Barnapoli and Bonar rape and Appin, Pasja and Barkant forage turnips.
Brassicas, like corn love nitrogen and yield best when 60-80 pounds of actual nitrogen is tilled in ahead of planting. 150-200 pounds of 46-0-0 urea will keep them lush and growing even with heavy grazing. At 5 pounds per acre, they will shade the ground quickly so usually weeds are not a problem, but this also makes them poor candidates to mix with other crops.
I recommend planting them alone in late July to get the maximum production and best quality food source but often landowners plant them in late August with other crops such as cereal grains. This forces incompatible plants to compete against each other and lessens both yield and forage quality.
Instead, better results will come from splitting any size plot or field and planting compatible crops at the right time rather then trying to mix a “salad bowl” of plants. Whitetails will stand for hours in a soybean field happily devouring the succulent beans as fast as they can, so it is only human nature, rather than whitetails' desires, that prompts some to mix too many plant species together.
July is a great time to get some fall food sources in the ground with few worries about spring rains and weeds to contend with, so give winter peas and brassicas a try!
