Ultimate No Till Food Plot Planting Recipe

now this is truly one of the best ways to plant a food plot and I'm gonna even go as far as to say it doesn't matter even if you have 1215 acres of food plots this is an outstanding way for just about anyone to plant a food plot and if you look up on YouTube you can look up ultimate no-till food plots you know my content will come up you can also hashtag on Instagram I've gone over these steps there to buy it number six down here I have why why you want to plant this way let's start with there it will go outta order here for a second this method is great because it gives you a huge variety of seeds you can plant and you can do it easily without a lot of equipment now you can use big equipment if you equipment if you want for some things that makes it a little bit easier especially spreading big seeds a lot of lime a lot of fertilizer but with this method right here and what a true no-till method does there's a lot of things out there people talk about you know no-till I've been doing this this method I came up with and originated in the early two-thousands now some people say well these rotations no-till has been around for decades well of course novotel has been around for decades but the term no-till is used extremely loosely all over the place it's bastardized I mean it's really not a good not using a good term as far as there's no really defined use of actually what no-till is and I'm giving an example there's a lot of single pass type implements where you pull a disc it has a drop box eater and then it has a called a packer and in theory that's supposed to and people call that no-till well no-till means you're not working the ground at all so you're planting seed without working the ground that's the best way I can describe no-till this is a great method because again this applies to anyone that plants food plots and it allows you to get these seeds in the ground and you have to follow these steps originated this because I'm using buckwheat as a smother crop there's no other crop that you can use that you can actually blend with this type of no-till method and you can use it to crush seed and crush on top of the seed it acts as soil we'll talk about this in a little bit but this is something with this buckwheat rotation that I came up with back in the early 2000 simply because I was trying to improve very poor soils my soils were in the pH of high fours my parts-per-million of all nutrients was as low as can be just awful I wrote an article if you look up poor soil food plots or food plots for poor soils you can find that at Google I wrote that many years ago and I think it shows up as 2012 I probably wrote that in 2006-2007 but I was using this method as a way to actually make things easier for myself because when I was using buckwheat because you use buckwheat during the summer you use annual rye in the fall people been using this farming practices it was the way it was explained to me for many years but when I was doing that and I was going in and killing up that buckwheat I bought caught my implements and and would have been the tiller in my tractor on fire it was simply because there is so much debris from the buckwheat that was wrapping up and inside the tiller and it just started to smoke and smolder I stopped I threw sand on it but it was actually getting hot and it was just so close to my tractor at the time at a beautiful Kubota L 46:10 and and I was so worried that this was going to burn everything up I thought there's got to be a different way so sometime in the early 2000s I started using buckwheat in planting the seed into the buckwheat then rolling it then spraying it and using that buckwheat we're going to back back up now we're going to start on number one this number one the first step in the recipe is you have to have adequate weed control don't ever let yourself be fooled that a lot of weeds is a good thing sure deer will hit a weedy food plot a lot of times during the summer time depending on the type of planting that you have and the type of weeds that are coming in obviously if there's ferns maybe some yellow mustard mustard yellow rocket whatever there's a lot of different types of food sources that they're not gonna eat that come in as weeds during the summertime sometimes goldenrod ragweed briars that are coming in maybe some Aspen shoots that are coming up they'll eat those during the summertime the problem is none of that is available during the fall so it's very deceiving because you can get pictures of deer eating weedy food plots during the summer time but then those weeds are taking volume out it's a very critical volume it doesn't matter if you're planning 10 food plots 10 acres and food plots you can't afford to waste 6 acres because you have a lot of weeds or 8 acres maybe just plant two acres plant the rest and cover and plant two acres well and and so critical control weeds I start controlling weeds the year before and we'll talk about this towards the end but you have to control those weeds now I like a mix in the spring if you have really weedy plots that you're first establishing the best thing you can do is kill it as soon as it greens up you can't kill the weeds of course tell it to greening up I would not use simha's eeen in this because it stays in the ground for 60 days so something that you might use for switchgrass you can't use for this type of planting because you're actually in a plant with them that 60 days likely or you don't want it to linger or have any residue left in the soil so I'm really practicing a lot of weed control in April waiting for things to green up if you do have a tractor you do have a tiller you do have a disc not a bad time to till those weeds into the ground after you kill them till ten days later 14 days later and then you could wait and what I like doing is once you set those weeds back whether it's an early 2 4 D 1 pint of - 4 D + 2 quarts or glyphosate you can really set those weeds back early with the 2 4 D you can't plant within three weeks of spraying that - 4 D it's a broadleaf killer and so if you put buckwheat in the ground there is a chance of injury or killing that buckwheat if you play it too soon after spraying the 240 so let's just say around here good weed growth by the end of April if I'm planting on previously planted food plots and I have weed showing let's say I didn't take care of them well last year and the good thing about this is your most weed control you're going to take care of is in that first year of your planting because one you've been taking control the weeds once you're planning winter rye during the fall you're playing buckwheat all summer you're gonna really smother and limit the amount of weed you have in your soil and so you can actually use less chemicals as you go through in the future and for those that you don't like chemicals you can leave now really you know if you have food plots you're trying to do without chemicals yeah I'm trying to help you be effective and to be a heard influencer you have a bunch of weedy plots going into the fall if you're constantly tilling using big equipment to tell and disk over and over and over again you're drying out the soil you're hurting the soil you're hurting that top layer of topsoil in the top layer of the soil that you're planning into so what's better continually disking tilling working the earth exposing the soil to erosion bring in weed seeds up or simply using a few chemicals to do it right you could argue that using that big equipment used in the fuel spending tens of thousands on earth ripping equipment is way more costly to the environment to your food plots to your food plot health to your soil health than using a few chemicals don't be sheeple people don't believe what you hear about the glyphosate online that kind of thing I live in an Ag area where all my farmer friends are using glyphosate around here and they're using chemicals for all the food that we eat and they've been doing it for decades and I don't think that's a bad thing and neither do the farmers around here either so I'd rather sight in with them good country folks that have been doing this for a living and prefer further profession for a long time so a lot of times I'm using initially let's say I'm I'm not going to work the soil which I don't then when those weeds are eight to ten inches high and they're growing aggressively sometime the end of April early May mid April depending on the spring then I'm going to hit that with two quarts break or bypass eight and one pint per acre of to four d then when it gets into early June I'm timing my buckwheat planting which is number two I'm planning to plant my buckwheat so that it's approximately seven weeks before I'm going to put in my fall crop or my late summer crop so I'm looking at right around August first that means my buckwheat should be going in the ground the first week of June now if you're I'm in southwest Wisconsin that timing is really good for even up into northern Wisconsin northern Minnesota northern Michigan upstate New York over into maybe northern Pennsylvania New Hampshire Vermont but if you live more Iowa southern Illinois southern Indiana southern Ohio maybe southern portions of Pennsylvania West Virginia Kentucky then you're gonna want to target more your late summer planting middle of August third week of August which means you're putting in your buckwheat more mid June I hope that makes sense so you're putting your it could be the 15th the 20th of June there's not an exact specific date I really like I really like to look at moisture being my guide but bottom line is you're getting that first really good kill in when I plant my buckwheat around here that's going to be early June let's say it's a seventh the fifth depends on what what's going on I happen to know that I believe the fifth of June this year is a Friday I'm going to be home that weekend we're actually closing out our lane in Minnesota that week I have that weekend to plant buckwheat and so I'm pretty sure that's the weekend I will be planting buckwheat somewhere around there and I'm looking at again seven weeks eight weeks at the most for that buckwheat to be in the ground so I'm targeting the early August late season planting when I put that buckwheat on the ground buckwheat is like winter rye you can throw it right on the soil before rain and you'll get great germination you can't do that with peas you can't do that with beans you can't do that as well with oats but wheat rye clover Brassica been doing that for years many many years probably 20 years that you can plant that way it just soared on the ground little girl you can't throw it on the ground if it's not hitting the soil so no folks out there that doesn't work you throw it in your yard I had someone try that in the yard said it didn't work in their lawn and well there's lawn there so the seed has to be on the soil Espio take root into the soil a lot of times on especially old food plots when you're getting that spring initially with 240 and glyphosate there's a lot of open soil it's when it gets into first of June you're putting 50 pounds of buckwheat per acre keep Islands and put that down right here I hope this makes sense if you're on poorer soils you might want to put a little more because you're not gonna get the height and volume you're trying to fill space if you're on really good soils then 4050 pounds I like sticking with 50 pounds I actually bought I think it's 600 pounds I have in the garage right now for 12 acres of food plots and I'm gonna plant this year so really important it's okay to go a little bit extra you're just wasting seed but you don't want to go later because you want the buckwheat to shade out the ground and you want to be a smother crop for weeds down below what I found throughout the decades of using this method is that the areas that have the strongest growth of buckwheat will yield and meaning the stronger scroll to buckwheat there's not a lot of weeds will yield your best food plot acres in the fall and repeat that where you have the best and most consistent buckwheat growth then you're going to have the best food plots when it gets into the fall again I've been doing this for years you really need to pay attention that you can't have weeds mixed in you want the buckwheat to smother out the weeds and that's why I like throwing the seed on the soil now if I have a late crop of rye and that right now if you're in Kentucky right now and that rise 5 feet high then you're gonna need to eliminate that rye to actually plant get your seat on the soil now it's possible you can get the buckwheat into the standing rye you kill it and then you crush it with a call to Packer mow over it and that'll act as good mulch for that buckwheat the problem is when you mow and when you even get into the end I'll mention this real quick when we crush the Bleak with it buckwheat at the end you do not want to mow it trust me I've done that you mow it now if you mowed it with a finishing more so you put a fine layer and consistently or even layer across the seed then that might work the problem is when you mow it brush hogs most mowing is going to leave clumps in areas where there's a lot of thatch and where there's no thatch at all the no thatch at all areas again you have to have this buckwheat leaned over the seed like 1/4 inch of soil so if you have area that are exposed when you mow then those beans and peas or larger seeds like that aren't going to take root and grow they're not going to germinate and be viable they might germinate but they're not going to be viable and I could grow into a plant and then you'll have areas that are so thick that'll keep new girls from coming because it doesn't hit the Sun even some of the bigger seed growth to throw up a big leader like a bean or a pea there's not enough so crushing it is perfect you don't want a mole in most cases like this and that even applies to when you're establishing the buckwheat in the spring if you have rye so yeah they have to get rid of it early which is my choice I killed that riot when it's 8 to 10 inches tall if there's rye and it works out with the timing of the buckwheat or it's only 1015 inches high 18 inches 20 inches at the most and I can put that buckwheat on the soil there's a lot of soil exposed that's not a bad way to do it because then you can put the buckwheat down you can roll try to crush that rye very difficult to do without an expensive crimper and big tractor pulling that crimper thousands of dollars of a crimper and tens of thousands in a tractor so crushing it down and that's why you don't want that ride to be 1015 inches or more because if you put the buckwheat in and you kill the Rye then you're gonna have enough sunlight hit to that hit that buckwheat as opposed that Rye being three four feet tall laying down over it and trapping that sunlight not allowing the plant to grow so you're getting the buckwheat in the ground early June 50 pounds per acre a lot of times you can just throw it right on top of the soil that's where I have some great growth than doing it even on light sandy soils in the U P for many years it works then you're just waiting if you want to Lyme I love liming in the spring now really the time to Lyme is anytime that's what it's used to say in the bags that I used to spread those 65 tons of 50-pound bags I've read it over and over again but I like putting lime in early you have two months up until that time you know really April in May before you plant the the buckwheat but once the buckwheat is growing you don't want go in there and smash it buckwheat smashes easily and rolls over it compacts it crushes and that's what makes the buckwheat such a great crop it's the only crop that we've we've tried lots of other crop radishes tried some hemp they don't work they're not stocky enough they don't have enough leaf growth growth so they can't be a smother crop buckwheat really is the only and if you're using grains like oats wheat and rye you have to use a really expensive crimper and because you're not gonna be able to crush it and roll it over with a simple call the pack or ATV tires tractor tires it just bounces right back up and it continues to grow so the next step again you're targeting a 7 to 8 week window that that buckwheat is going to be growing not less than 6 to 7 more like 7 to 8 is that perfect time so 7 weeks if you can target 7 weeks of growth before seeding and fertilizing now when you see it and fertilizer the best way to do this is with a hand spreader or a front-mounted ATV spreader but you're spreading into the standing buckwheat some buckwheat standing and what's great about that is buckwheat is very stocking at 50 pounds per acre you should have a plant every 3 4 or 5 inches what's nice about that is your seeds fall right onto the soil remember this buckwheat is tall it's got a really good leaf structure and it's been shading out the ground for probably a month so not a lot of weeds growing underneath especially if you've taken care of the weeds to begin with before you can put the buckwheat in the ground I'll back up once you put that buckwheat in the ground if there's weed showing great time for another spring of two quarts per acre of glyphosate if needed because you're not spraying if you don't need to I see people that spray it and there's no weeds so you don't need to do that this is only a spring remember you've already hit it with 2 4 D and glyphosate at least three to four weeks before you put the buckwheat down and I'm targeting more like five weeks 6 weeks sometimes and in this so there's a little bit of weed showing that I'm gonna kill them when I throw the buckwheat on the ground so an additional weeds if needed if you need the chemical put it down 2 quarts breaker glyphosate again no 240 because you're gonna kill your buckwheat when it germinates and come up the seating fertilizing you're spreading that right into the standing buckwheat you can even put the fertilizer on later if you want a lot of times I've done it right into the standing buckwheat it's pretty easy with big equipment if you have a tractor to aid with a PTO mounted spreader an ATV that you can just dump fertilizer in on a front mounted spreader or back mounts better then pretty easy to do and you can now fertilize after that fertilize we're still working the ground through the through the buckwheat not a bad time after you plant your fall food pot you can even spread lime at that time before you're crushing the crops when they come up so there's a little window there if you want to put lime down the great thing is I'll seed sit on the soil there's a lot of open soil and then you crush the buckwheat and when I mean by crushed buckwheat what's easiest is to use a called a packer probably the highest quality at a cheapest price call the packer is a packer max that's what we use it's got a polyethylene tank I think is what Lincoln told me it is it's a cross we've designed on the ridges as a hat it's a half inch thick and in the valleys of the tank it's a quarter inch thick so very very strong takes a beating and it's built very well we actually get the packer max HD so a lot of times you're buying a used called a packer for five $600 $700 and it's a 40 year old mcCormick or whatever kind it is and it's a little bit broken up and you have to grease it and take care of it a little bit but this is brand new at about 650 bucks that's very easy to crush all the buckwheat right over so you lay the buckwheat right down and it's gonna fall evenly now like a mower works clumping in one side or the other so I'm crushing it down in that seed fertilizer it's just laying down on the surface of the soil right below that you're not in using this method you're not ripping up the soil and drying it out you're not disking tilling drying the soil out you're not disking and tilling and bringing more weeds to the surface you're not desking and tilling and creating a greater chance of erosion but best of all those bucket buckwheat roots and then decaying buckwheat on the soil substantially and significantly build your soil and that's very important to understand this is a huge soil builder buckwheat and fall right rotations have been uses have been used for decades to improve farmland it's great on a large or small scale and that's why I originally started using this method in the late 90s early 2000s just incorporating buckwheat and rye and then this became a better way to plan it and and opened up into planting my lawn I've said before in the mid-2000s planting Braska every kind of crop that you can imagine that's easy to plant this way so you crush it over the seeds and then you follow up with two quarts per acre of glyphosate this is an important step that a lot of people miss you want to kill that buckwheat it's crushed over so the chemicals get right into the plant go right into the root system and kill it immediately it's a fast kill if you don't use buck glyphosate and kill it then that buckwheat starts to stand back up a little bit some of it will die some one will stand back up and you'll get competition for your food plot seeds down below in some cases it can even shade out the new growth because it's not dying it's full of leaf even if it's soy beans or peas that have a big leader of the pop-up what I'm typically doing is I'm spreading a mixture of 100 pounds of peas per acre on one side along with 50 pounds of beans maybe 30 to 40 pounds of oats and the other side of using a Brassica blend in some cases where there's a lot of buckwheat I might increase the braska amount by 10 to 20 percent at the most six pounds braska I might add a pound and a half pound in a quarter at the most seven pound maybe an extra pound just to account for some of those seeds that might be shaded out a little bit too much in the buckwheat and make sure that there's enough suppose of the Sun but you can have to be very careful on that I wouldn't go more than if it's a six pound maybe and just go seven pounds just to be conservative and that's not a bad way to do it now in some poor soil areas I might just use a combination of peas heavy Peas and that might follow up with Rye later some areas are really poor soil too northern area and the peas aren't gonna make a tonic season then I might just use the buckwheat and rye rotation so it really depends on the area there's some areas southern where I might use a heavier amount of beans less peas and no oats so and that's in some of those big farmland a Giri everyone wonders what they should plant for food plots in order to answer that question anybody who's competent and has experience isn't going to answer that question for one unless they know your neighbors are doing what your local deer herd numbers are the percentage of AG fields versus non AG in the area are you in a big open woods area wilderness area you know your deer populations play a huge part what are your planting methods how are your planning in the first place there's so many questions that you need to figure out that someone can't just throw that seed and if they are they're trying to sell you some snake oil most of the time or hit me up in the messenger on the back they'll send a hit me up the messenger I got a color I get a discount code for you right there run they're just trying to sell you something half the time those quotes staff people for a seed company they have even planned those seeds before they're just trying to get a discount some free seed they're standing behind something they haven't even used for years to come so this is something I've used for 20 years I wouldn't be teaching it to you so it really depends in my area it's mixed AG this year I'll use 100 pounds of soybean or a hundred pounds of piece breaker 50 pounds of soybeans I might not even use any oats this year on the other side I'll use braska and then around early September the ground has completely opened up enough the buckwheat will be just brown stalks and very easy to add 200 pounds of riper acre and that would be approximately five weeks four to six weeks somewhere on there but approximately five weeks after you planted the initial planting and crushed the buckwheat and then followed up with a spring what that does for you I'm adding the Rye only to the beans and P side if the Brassica crop failed because of drought or over browsing then I'll add that 200 pounds of rye per acre at that time round here that's going to be around Labor Day early September that's going to be the timing for that the cool thing about the rise it's a failsafe that's a way of making sure that your food pots are viable even in the worst disaster or the worst growing season in August because there's no rain you can still plant rye 200 pounds per acre and enjoy the season if the timing of the Rye you don't get that at five weeks and you're gone whatever the case if you're planting around here be closer to October so say seven eight nine the closer you get to that seven eight week window look at increasing the amount of rye that you just simply broadcast right over your crops so if you're following up late you're not gonna get as much volume and height and growth so you're looking for more seeds to fill the space so I would plant up to three hundred pounds per acre if I'm running late so around here for whatever reason I couldn't plant in early September I know I have a full schedule with Ohio clients I think nine or ten oh hi oh clients in September scheduled so it might be that I'm following up late this year probably not I like to do things on time when it comes to food plots but if I am if it's closer to October first you can bet I'm putting out 300 pounds per acre when you get done with all of this the really cool thing about this is in that first year you've significantly addressed weed concerns you're improving your soils at the same time when you get into the following spring you can rotate these if there's areas eat you want to add switchgrass edge you can Frost heat at that time and there's all kinds of frosted seating videos that I have out there and you can find out about that but it's a great time to frost seed because you won't have crops to compete with weeds to compete with I like to rotate both sides and just repeat the following year the cool thing is when you go into the spring not very many wheats once you've done this your soils have improved so typically you're getting away with one spring in the spring and then the one spring in August does it make sense that August spring when you plant your seeds and we across the buckwheat you want to keep that buckwheat down and kill it fast and have it deteriorate fast to make sense that's your most important spring this is a great method because you can plant brassicas into it you can plant clover if you want chicory if you want beans peas rye oats wheat every kind of Brassica coulis and radishes about everything do you want a plant you can plant this way with the one exception to be corn you're not planting corn August first if you get buckwheat to grow in March and April and part of May and then you put corn in the corn would very well this way the problem is buckwheat gets killed by the first frost that's a good thing because it's not a food source it's a low value food source during the summer I don't like creating food plots in the summer that created Oh factory there's a huge risk on small parcels especially and large parcels but small personals especially because you have 40 acres and you have 30 does and fawns on it every year because you've created that summer dough factory you're not gonna have any space for bucks you can't just say well I'm gonna start at 150 yards and work backwards to a food plot they'll be a buck there no that's not the case especially in the U P in Michigan when those Bucks will want to bed three quarters a mile to a mile and a big wilderness or big wooded section in Kentucky Pennsylvania go bad 3/4 a mile away from their afternoon food source maybe a mile northern Ohio that might be a hundred yards so the dole Factory is a is a very huge concern it's a very important concern that people need to account for any property big or small but this will not create that dole factor because buckwheat is a lower value food they didn't even hit it that hard in the UPA Michigan where there's no other food available there's so much food and that's that's tells you the kind of times where you need food the most and when you don't need it you know during the summer time you can have great clover fields alfalfa fields soybeans and they continue to grow a lot of times unless are small and inefficient or low-quality they're still going to be viable and continue to grow but there's a big reason all that gets smashed down to the ground and knocked over in November and December is because that's the critical need sure deer need everything during the summer to grow just like babies growing they need high quality nutrition when they're young and growing they certainly do the rest of the year but summer is a time of abundance E in the local habitat that's a good thing you don't have to take care of the deer down in the summer time so this buckwheat if they do need it and they hit it to the ground that's telling for the type of habitat you have in your area they didn't even do that into my you pee properties now surrounded by fir and spruce and various conifers tagged alder leather leaf sandy soils you know like I said high for is low fives for pH and and they've even hit it hard there so a great crop that improve your soil can be used by someone with a handheld spreader just an ATV last year 80 you broke down halfway through planting for Diane and I so we use the pickup truck literally to smash down the buckwheat way more efficient pulling a packer max behind an ATV and just crushing it all down in fact we have a lot of times with Diane and I I'm seeding then she's following up and crushing it with a packer Max and the ATV and then she's following up with a spring and then she's on to the next plot that I've already seeded and that's how we work the two of us together just going around so if you have a buddy and you can do this together it's awesome so something that you can do with just a minimal amount equipment even a sprayer handheld or a backpack sprayer handheld spreader and just a truck to smash down the buckwheat you can get it done and I'll expand that this year I think I'll be planting right around 12 to 13 total plots with this method and it's pretty easy to do or I wouldn't be doing it it saves me a lot of time because I can have that buck way down there improving the soil keeping the weeds down I complained into it very easy to do proven method but you have to follow these exact steps you can't play them into your lawn you can't miss Springs you can't mow over the top of it you can't use another crop other than buckwheat I've tried them all there's really another smother crop that you can use that works like this and that's why when I came up with this method back in the early 2000s I was so excited because it saved me a lot of time back then as the amount of food plots that I have was in the amount of acres that I was planting was ever increasing and so I hope this makes sense I know this is kind of a maybe a boring topic to some people but I know people really wanted this recipe broken down on the white board I hope this is good for you I can't remember who asked me about doing this in the comments and really wanted a recipe on the white board broken down but thank you for the suggestion I hope it helps a lot of folks out there this year and really think about it what is no-till means you're not tilling the soil you're not disking the soil there's a lot of people out there that say again I'll just finish with this well I don't want to use chemicals and they'll make fun of someone for using chemicals but then they go out and disc five or six times throughout the season to break up the weeds that are growing they use fuel they use expensive tractors they destroy the top layer of soil they dry out their soil they erode their soil and I'm not sure they deserve a pat on the back this is actually a way that you can plant no-till without big equipment without buying a no-till drill and guess what you're gonna have just as good a crops as someone else next door who's using tens of thousands of dollars worth of equipment and you're gonna do it and not only a lot less time but a whole lot less money enjoy this process enjoy this planning method I know I have and I'm relying it on and again this season

Channel: Whitetail Habitat Solutions

Views: 174,088

Rating: 4.8778996 out of 5

Keywords: no till, no till food plots, ultimate no till food plot, sturgis food plot, how to no till, ultimate no till, food plots, food plots for deer, no till food plots for deer, ultimate, no, till, food, plot, how to, deer

Id: CwzP0yME2AU

Length: 31min 47sec (1907 seconds)

Published: Sun May 17 2020