SIX REASONS FOOD PLOTS FAIL
By addressing these six problem areas, you can drastically improve your food plotting results.
By Bob Humphrey
Establishing and maintaining productive food plots is not a casual undertaking, unless you’re not too concerned with results. But if that’s the case, why bother? Most folks who plant plots want optimum performance and benefit and knowing why their efforts sometimes fall short can go a long way toward seeing that they don’t. What follows are some of the most common problem areas and how to address them for better results.
Planting P’s
We’ll begin with the general and then move to specifics. This first one is perhaps the most important because it incorporates the others. Just remember the five Ps, or in this case, six: Proper planning prevents poor plot performance. If you attend to that, remaining issues are largely beyond your control — such as weather.
The first step in any food plot program should be planning. Start with a comprehensive short and long-term plan rather than simply striking out with a tractor and bag of seed. You can always modify the plan as goals or conditions change, but your efforts will be much more efficient if you have specific objectives.
Soil Testing
Moving to specifics, the biggest reason for food plot growth failure is also the least expensive and easiest to fix — soil testing. And it’s a two-step process. The first is simply conducting the test, which takes minimal time and effort yet is so important.
“Even if you do everything else exactly right, there’s a reasonable chance you’ll get a marginal crop or a failed crop without conducting a proper soil test,” said John Cristinziani, Whitetail Institutes advisor in Canada.
The second step involves following the recommendations provided with test results. “Once you get the soil fertility and pH right, all the rest of your efforts can pay off at an even higher level,” John said.
Seed Selection
The next step — and it’s crucial — is matching seed to soil. John notes this is more important with perennials but matters with most all food plot choices.
“If you have good heavy soil that holds moisture, there’s nothing better than Imperial Whitetail Clover or Fusion,” he said. “On the other hand, if you have more well-drained soils, like on the side or top of a hill, you should plant something deeper rooted, like Alfa Rack Plus or Extreme. And all brassicas do better on well-drained soil.”
Again, planting in the wrong soil type likely won’t result in complete failure, but even in the best conditions, you won’t get the most out of your time, money and effort.
Consider the benefits of blends, particularly in marginal areas. Soil moisture and temperature conditions can sometimes vary considerably within and between seasons. Blends offer a hedge against extremes, where one variety, such as clover, might thrive in an exceptionally wet spring, but another, such as chicory, is more likely to provide more growth during a drier time.
Prepping and Planting
Another important part of the process — one where people often go wrong — is proper site prep. What you can and should do before you plant obviously depends on conditions, but as John pointed out, “The better job you do of preparing your seedbed, the better the performance of your plot, both short and long-term.”
Start by ridding the site of as much existing vegetation as possible before putting seeds out.
In a field situation, that might mean herbicide followed by disking. If it’s a brand-new plot, you might want to spray before and again a week or two after disking, as dormant seeds often germinate in newly turned old fields. If it was previously wooded, timber harvesting and pulling stumps often provide enough soil disturbance to follow with a light application of herbicide. You can follow that by applying the lime and fertilizer recommended by soil testing and properly incorporating them into the soil as best as you can before the planting.
Selecting the right seed for the soil conditions is important, but you also need to cover or not cover that seed properly. This is probably the most specific of the six variables. Fortunately, it’s also one of the easiest to properly address by simply following the recommendations for the specific seeds you are using. John offered several examples of small seeded plants, such as those in Imperial Whitetail Clover, Fusion and brassicas.
“They need to be sown on top of ground or LESS THAN 1/4 inch deep,” he said. “Bigger seeds, like Whitetail Oats Plus, need to be planted deeper; 3/4 to 1 inch.”
Also it’s important that you stay close to the recommended seeding rate, especially with blends.
“You can vary a little, but stay as close as possible,” he said. “Too little seed leaves too much space for weed and grass competition. Too much (seed) creates a situation where there are too many plants crowding root space often resulting in smaller, stunted plants.”
Maintenance
You’ve picked the right spots, properly prepared the seedbed with recommended lime and fertilizer, matched seed to soil conditions and planted them at the right depths. You’re done right? Wrong! During the spring and summer, perennials need a little TLC (maintenance). This includes an occasional mowing if the deer aren’t keeping it mowed down and if it’s not too hot and dry. Mowing helps prevent weeds from seeding out which would create more competition in the future.
As noted, these factors are interrelated, and you can often reduce the level of required future maintenance with proper initial site prep.
One of the most important maintenance steps is maintaining proper fertility and pH. The best way to make sure you do this right and have the longest lasting and best performing food plots is to do a soil test (for an established planting) and add whatever is recommended from the soil test results. (You can also follow the general recommendations on the bag or at canadianwhitetailfoodplots.ca) Aside from too much or too little water, over which you have no control, the most common source of poor food plot performance is a specific lack of soil nutrients.
More Planning
That brings us full circle to planning, a process that never ends. When your baseline is established and you start implementing your plan, you’ll begin to see where some things worked better than others, and you can modify as necessary. You should also be planning for the future with crop rotation, food plot expansion and other plotting activities that will positively affect future efforts.
Through time, you will become more familiar with potential pitfalls. Then it becomes a matter of more maintenance — in this case maintaining the proper level of effort and attention to details. And to my mind, there’s no better place or time for future planning than sitting over one of your plots during hunting season.
The other variable, over which you have no control, is Mother Nature. But if you concentrate on the first five, you should expect to have your best hunting ever. If you have any questions, you can always call (514) 881-2080 and let one of the experts at the Canadian Whitetail Food Plots walk you through each step to make sure you are as successful as you can be.