By Gerald Almy
The reason for my delight was that I’m an expert on this subject. Actually I’m good at making all kinds of mistakes. Through the years, I’ve used that in my writing, penning pieces such as “How to Avoid 10 Common Float Fishing Mistakes” and “How to Avoid 10 Common Rut Hunting Errors,” all based on personal experience. Most of what I’ve learned about fishing, hunting and planting food plots has also been by the hard-knocks school of trial and error. And that’s actually a critical point. In no other way does a lesson get burned into your mind more forcefully than if you learn from making a mistake and seeing the unpleasant consequences of what you did wrong. And so it is with the title for this
piece.
After graduating from college, I moved into a small cedar cabin with a couple of acres on the Shenandoah River in Virginia. There wasn’t much room for food plots on that small parcel, and few people even fooled with them then back in the 1970s.
But when my wife and I sunk most of our life savings into a larger parcel nearby about 20 years ago — a 117-acre abandoned farm selling at a cheap price— the situation changed. Now I had some land to work with. And it coincided perfectly with the growing interest in food plots for deer management, ushered in by Ray Scott and his sons, Steve and Wilson, with the founding of the Whitetail Institute of North America in 1988.
More than 80 acres were in forest, so I thankfully didn’t try to put plots on the whole 117 acres. And a lot of the remaining land was rocky and covered with cedars and brush — definitely not food plot potential.
But I ran roughshod like a maniac trying to convert every other little spot I could between the rough areas and the cedar thickets into some kind of plot or other.
The results, as you can expect, were less than stellar. I did have deer use some of the plots. Others were ignored. And the use was very short-lived, mostly because the plots didn’t last long before they died off from lack of fer ilizer or lime, insufficient seed, weed competition or a host of other reasons. I’m not dumb, but I am stubborn. It took a while to recognize my most glaring error. But finally I did.
I was overextending myself, and not putting the proper effort into a smaller, more manageable number of plots. Steve Scott says my mistakes are all too common.
“I don’t know if it’s biting off more than you can handle as much as getting in too big of a hurry. When hunters find out the benefits Whitetail Institute products can provide, they want everything right now,” Scott said. “ For example, if someone has 20 acres they want to plant but their budget requires them to skimp on fertilizer and/or lime, we would rather see them do five acres right and get the full benefit than plant all 20 acres half-way right. In most instances, they will get more tonnage and benefit from the five acres done right than they would from 20 acres with corners cut.”
The potential problems are many. Let’s address some of the negative consequences from tackling more than you can handle. First and foremost, you will likely not prepare the ground well enough.
In your haste to get in all the parcels you have planned, you won’t clear away rocks and debris thoroughly enough. And you probably won’t totally kill off the existing vegetation before beginning. Those rocks and debris will hurt your equipment and the productivity of the plot. And those weeds and unwanted grasses will come back to haunt you.
I know from experience. Some of my early Imperial Clover plots lasted barely a year before they were overtaken by lingering fescue, orchard grass and a wide assortment of weeds. They should have lasted three to five years.
Of course weed problems can be addressed later by mowing or using Arrest and Slay. A better approach, though, is to limit the amount of unwanted vegetation in your plots from the start.
If you are in a hurry you won’t likely till the ground enough because you’ll be anxious to get to the next plot and get it prepared by the optimum planting time. I like to disk or till my ground three or four times, waiting between the steps for new potential weeds to sprout up that spraying didn’t get rid of so they can be killed by burying them. Some fanatics devote six to 12 months tilling and killing weeds repeatedly until they get a 100 percent smooth, weed-free seedbed. You can’t take a careful approach like that if you bite off more than your time and resources will allow.
Part of the problem with weeds can also be traced to not making sure the soil has the proper nutrients. “It all comes back to the soil test. When a soil test is done and the recommendations for lime and fertilizer are followed, the plants that will be growing have the best chance to flourish and better compete with weeds and grasses,” Scott said. Even more refinement might be best if you have different types of soil on your property with varying fertility and pH levels. Phosphorous, potassium and nitrogen levels as well as acidity can vary widely even on small properties.
My land lies in the foothills of a mountain, and the soil ranges from very good in the bottomland where a creek flows to extremely poor as it slopes up into the mountain. The fertilizer and lime needs are entirely different for the different soils found on it, and one sample simply won’t tell you the specific needs you have on the different parts of the property.
Here’s another problem of tackling more than you can handle: timing of planting correctly. Preparing and putting in a large number of different plots might consume so much time that you can’t get some of them in at the proper time for optimum germination. Finances are another thing to consider. Most of us only have so much we can allot to our passion of working the land and growing plots. Do you want that to go into five or six acres of superb plots or 10 or 20 acres of mediocre ones?Instead of spreading yourself, your plots and your seed too thin, realize that some of those areas you were planning to make into plots probably are marginal at best. Maybe they’d be better left to grow up in cover or planted with some fast-growing sawtooth oaks or bushes such as lespedeza, indigo, chinkapin, Chickasaw plum or red osier dogwood. Then take the spots that get the most sun and moisture, have the best top soil available and aren’t too steeply sloped and make those top-notch food plots that you can be proud of. I think if you do this you’ll notice something I gradually came to realize. A few excellent plots will draw in more bucks — and yes, bigger, older bucks — than a greater number of mediocre or poor plots.
Admit that some ground is too rocky, some soil is too poor and acidic and some terrain is too sharply sloped. It’s true some of those can be salvaged with Imperial Extreme, Imperial No-Plow and similar Whitetail Institute products, but others might be beyond the effort for those of us with only a certain amount of time to devote to habitat work. “The best strategy is to move slowly. Don’t get in a rush,” Scott said.
“Take the time to do things right by talking with a Whitetail Institute consultant and laying out a plan. Don’t try to do everything in a weekend or two. The first thing to do as soon as possible is a soil test. A soil test is the most important step for successful food plots. It’s inexpensive and easy to do.”
One final piece of advice I have is this: Don’t be tempted try to put every piece of open land into food plots. For instance, just because you have a big field doesn’t mean you have to plant it all at once or even all in the same crop. Although I immediately began planting the little plots on our land myself after we moved onto the property, I knew one 13-acre field was beyond the scope of my time and my little tractor. So I enlisted a local farmer to plant it in alfalfa.
Agricultural alfalfa grown for horses and cows is one of the most difficult crops to get started and maintain in prime condition. The neighboring farmer quickly realized after he planted it that my soil hadn’t been prepared thoroughly enough with the right fertilizer and lime. But what did he care? I paid him for the seed he happened to have on hand in his barn. And the deal struck was that he was going to get the alfalfa just for planting it. I would simply get to let the deer eat it between his cuttings. To make a long story short, he never cut it. Over time weeds and fescue came back and the alfalfa grew poorly. Eventually I slowly began reclaiming that field, one small parcel at a time.
And I did something else small landowners should consider. I put in different crops as I reclaimed the field, killing the weed-choked alfalfa field and then putting in products such as Imperial Whitetail Clover, Winter-Greens, No-Plow and Chicory Plus in small sections. Now, different parcels of the field get rotated with different crops according to their planting guidelines. Some, like Winter-Greens, last less than a year. Others, like Imperial Clover, produce for three to five years. Not tackling more than I could handle made a success of this large field, one small section at a time.
Hopefully the mistakes I made in biting off more than I could handle in my early food plot years will help you from wasting time and energy in a similar way. Think small. Think efficiency. And get advice from an expert at the Whitetail Institute before you make the mistake of trying to tackle too much at one time.
