Well good and bad news here.

I did get about an acre turned and planted with a general wildlife mix. I had called to get my results from land samples before the planting. The guy said," looks pretty good. No lime really needed with a 6.9ph, and just a light application of 12-12-12."

Well, I cam to find out that the guy had very little knowledge of how to read the report, and assumed I was just growing grass.
I just had to hurry though you know.

Only the field rye in the mix came up. (I knew the rye would come up, as that is all I planted last year.)I knew that the soil needed more than what the first guy said, but I delayed getting to another guy. At that point, he walked me through each part of the test, and gave me ideas for land improvement.

I just replanted the field with buckwheat, which I will cut before it drops seed, and then plow it under as green manure later. I recently worked out access to unlimited "regular" manure, and have a lead for some compost.

Whew! A lot of effort on land that isn't even mine, but it should keep me in good graces with my hunting partner.

All my plots are going super with all this early rain going on. I planted a little bit of everything oats,rape,alpaha, clover buckwheat and corn. I really don't see a lot of deer sign yet but I'm 452 nuff said..marty

Marty- How big are your plots and did you till the ground or just kill off the weeds and plant over? I made the mistake of listening to the weatherman who said the drought would carry into spring and summer and opted to wait till fall and next spring to plant. I did just start spraying Roundup in the areas I want to plant though, getting ready. Curious what you did w/ such good success.

Nailer I have a total of 4 plots on my place 50 acres. My plots average from an acre to about a half. What I did was last year I had the wood taken off and the stumps remove. I didn't have a lot of time cause the fellow doing the work was slow getting it done. Word of advice if you have anyone doing any work on your place get a contract drawed up first with all the details no matter how small. Ok next I put in the required lime and fertlizer
planted my seed it didn't come up very good first cause we had such a lack of rain although my rape did real well. This spring as soon as the snow was gone I sprayed with spectricide it's cheaper than round up and works very fast. Then I had a guy plow and disk my fields under and placed about 300 lbs of 0-0-60 which is nothing more than potash and about 150 lbs of 6-6-24. He then ran his disk into the plots really smoothing them out nice. Then I seeded my field and use a cultipacker over it. I have used a bedspring in the past but it tends to push seed unlevel throughout the plot. I plan to turn the buckwheat under pretty soon and go with rape and soybeans. My other plot is going into trefoil with a clover combination too. One thing I found out is ferns don't like lime I don't think I have seen fern one in my big plot and only a few in the others. Hope this helps out I'm no expert by far but have been doing food plots for 8 years now.
If anyone needs any help you can email at [email protected] If I don't have the answer I got a good friend who's a farmer and he's really knows his stuff......marty

Marty- Thanks for the help, let me know how the soybeans do I was thinking of them for a small plot. I know 0, zip, nada about farming how long will soybeans stay in the fall? Do they die off after the first frost?

Nailer I believe they will bite the dust after the frost but in the mean time the deer love them. That's why I'm going with rape also so they will have something to chomp on into the winter. The beauty of the rape seed is that its keeps on growing. Let me explain last year the deer ate it right into the ground then we had a little snow at first. Then when we got that december warm up the rape started to come up again. After the snow finally stayed on the ground the deer pawed through the snow and pulled up the root and ate it too. It's an annual so you have to plant it every year although I've seen it come back up but its get real stemmy and gets a head on it and the deer dont seem to care for it. At 65 cents per pound and 10-12 pounds per acre pretty cheap stuff to plant.......marty