The Whitetail Institute of North America
is proud to announce its newest annual food plot product for fall and winter:
Imperial Whitetail Beets & Greens. A diverse brassica blend, Beets &
Greens establishes and grows quickly, providing massive amounts of forage, turnips,
beets and radishes to attract deer and provide them with a variety of food
options from fall through winter. The nature of its forage components maximizes
attraction by offering a variety of food options within the same plot
throughout the life of the stand.
Forage
Components and Performance
Beets & Greens is a precise blend
of diverse brassica components. Each component has been carefully selected
using a broad range of criteria, including attractiveness to deer, rapid
establishment, prolific growth and abundant production. Then, it’s blended in
precise ratios that Whitetail Institute testing has shown to maximize the
performance of the stand by providing deer with choices of multiple food sources
in the same plot continuously from fall through winter. And as is the case with
other Whitetail Institute seed blends, Beets & Greens includes forage
components that are only available in Whitetail Institute products.
Sugar Beets: Most hunters already know how exceptionally attractive
sugar beets can be. In fact, sugar beets are so high in sugar they’re commercially
grown throughout the world for sugar production. Sugar beet tops, which offer
deer substantial levels of protein and carbohydrates, are highly attractive to
deer immediately, most often even before frosts arrive. And the abundant forage
keeps attracting deer into the late season and beyond.
Tall Tine Turnip: Tall Tine Turnip is the only turnip variety
scientifically developed specifically for food plots for deer. Forage
experimentation on wild, free-ranging deer has proven Tall Tine Turnip to be
the most attractive turnip variety the Whitetail Institute has ever tested. To
develop Tall Tine Turnip, Whitetail Institute agronomists and scientists
painstakingly selected and tested numerous existing turnip varieties; isolated
those that best exhibited high tonnage, tuber size, attractiveness to deer,
rapid establishment and growth; and then protected them from further browsing
to let them produce seed. That seed was then put back into testing the next
year, and the process of developing the most attractive turnip variety
continued for the next six years. Tall Tine Turnip produces abundant foliage
and large, sweet tubers. The foliage provides variety with other brassicas in
Beets & Greens, as they begin to attract deer during the early hunting
season and become even sweeter with the first frosts of fall. The turnip tubers
continue to attract deer and provide them with critical nutrition during winter.
WINA 210K Kale: WINA 210K is a kale variety developed by the Whitetail
Institute according to the same stringent protocols followed in developing Tall
Tine Turnip for use in food plots for deer. Not all kales are the same. Some
are coarse and indigestible. The leaves of kale varieties grown mostly for ornamental
purposes are technically edible, but they aren’t nearly as
palatable as other varieties. Also, some kales form tight heads instead of
loose leaves — for example, the cabbages you see in grocery stores. Some kale varieties
don’t grow as quickly or as tall as others, making them less suitable for food
plots. WINA 210K Kale suffers none of those drawbacks. It’s a vegetable
cultivar that grows large, individual leaves instead of a head, and the leaves
are extremely attractive to deer.
WINA 412 Radish: WINA 412 Radish maximizes the attraction of the stand
during the long term by adding variety to the forage and tuber offerings of the
plot.
Additional
Benefit: Soil Tilth In addition to
serving as food sources for deer, the Tall Tine Turnips and WINA 412 Radishes
in Beets & Greens also provide additional benefits beyond the normal life
of the stand by improving the “tilth” of heavier, compacted soils.
Soil Tilth: Tilth refers to the physical condition of soil as it
relates to the soil’s ability to grow crops. It’s determined by specific
physical characteristics of the soil, including how well or poorly the soil can
hold moisture and how well or poorly it’s aerated. Soils with good tilth have
spaces that allow water to infiltrate and move, adequate levels of oxygen for
roots to grow, and also acceptable levels of moisture and nutrients. Generally,
heavier soils with a high clay content are especially prone to poor soil tilth
because of compaction. In addition to serving as sources of food for deer during
fall and winter, the underground tubers formed by WINA 412 Radish and Tall Tine
Tubers help create such spaces in soils with poor tilth through biodrilling, which
is the process of using plants that can drill down as they grow, even in compacted
soil. Using radishes as an example, WINA 412 Radish produces tubers that can
push several feet even into compacted clay soils and grow as thick as
soft-drink bottles — much larger than the small, round radishes we commonly see
in grocery stores. In addition to aerating the soil as they grow, any turnip
and radish tubers remaining the spring after planting also add organic matter
to the soil as they break down.
Conclusion
Available in 3-pound bags that will
plant 1/2-acre and 12-pound bags that will plant two acres, Beets & Greens
comes ready to plant, including the Whitetail Institute’s Rainbond seed
coating, which maximizes seedling survivability by absorbing moisture from the
soil and keeping it next to the seeds as they sprout and grow. If you’re
looking for a unique brassica planting for fall that includes highly attractive
brassica forage and boosts attraction even further by offering multiple food
sources to deer from fall through winter, give Beets & Greens a try. Your
deer will thank you for it.
