Cover Crop Cocktails for Food Plots

Why multi species cover crops make great food plots

Whenever I suggest multiple species plantings for food plots I often get the argument that a crop will grow better individually. That is true when we want to maximize production of cash crops, but what is the goal here? We are not growing corn or beans for market, we are growing plants that will transfer nutrients from the sun, soil and air through plants into animals.  I am advocating the use of cover crop cocktails for food plots.

Not All That is Green is Deer Feed –

What and how deer eat

Cows have giant rumens and have teeth and a gut that is geared to grind up and digest course grasses. The big rumen allows them to digest lignin and get nutrients out of it. Deer need more tender, less lignified plant material.

Deer are very selective feeders. They detect what is palatable and has what is needed at the time for their health and they seek it out. If a field or woodland has growth that fits their requirements, they will feed there. When a field has a wide variety of plants to choose from, there is bound to be something that is at its peak of palatability more of the time than singe crop fields.

Deer eat the newest growth from a plant as it is not lignified yet (has no hardened cell walls.) That is why they love to eat the new growth of trees and the buds in winter as there are nutrients concentrated there and the material can be easily chewed and digested. The only time grass is eaten is the first flush of spring when it starts to grow at the tip of the blade. Where cows and horses eat up all the grass and other forage they can jam in there mouths, deer pick the new growth only. That’s why you can have a field of soybeans, for instance, that have no pods – deer browsed off the growing flower buds since it was the most nutritious part of the plant. It can be difficult to determine if deer are feeding heavily on a field of clover or other forage because they pick the new growth and “mow” the field evenly.

What is the Best Plant for Deer

What is the best plant to plant in your food plot? The most popular question I see on forums. The answer…drum roll…there is no best plant for deer. The best plant for deer is the one that is at a point in its life cycle where its the most palatable and gives deer what they need at a given time of the growing season, not a particular species.

Deer eat around 200 species of native plants. Most of the plants we put in for forage are non-native. That’s fine but the point is that it is not as much what specific plants but to have many plants growing at different rates and maturity times. In proper cover cropping, we want to mimic the Tall Grass Prairie. The original prairie had many species of plants growing together in a mixture. Nature knows best – when do you ever see a monoculture in Nature? Think about it, you never see a field of one broadleaf, grass or shrub species. You never see a forest with one species of tree. Every plant has a job to do and every patch of ground has growing on it several plants that are most often found associated together. In Silviculure, we study the tendency for particular tree species that are always growing on the same site together. We call that an association.

The more species of palatable plants to deer we can grow in the same field, the better the health of the plants, the soil and the deer.

Cover Crops Fix the Soil

And the soil feeds the plants. The plants feed the animals. A plant is simply a conduit to get the Sun’s energy, carbon and other elements into the animal. The healthier the soil, the better it will support plant life. There is a huge, complex food web in healthy soil. Plants feed the underground food web through living roots, so the more roots and the longer living and active roots are in the ground, the better. Healthy soil with an intact food web provides a proper pH and balance of nutrient elements without the need for soil amendments. The idea of beating the soil into submission, planting mono-cultures and spraying herbicides, then leaving the soil bare for 8 or 9 months is a practice we should rethink.

The Soil is Alive

At least it should be. A living soil food web made up of bacteria, fungi, nematodes, earthworms, protozoa, centipedes, pill bugs and so on is a living thing, like a jungle only with way more species of organisms. Today, I raked up some ground in my garden to plant some spinach. When I scratched away the leaves and debris, I could see many lower life forms mentioned above heading for cover. Try doing that in a corn field that has been continuously planted with RR corn, sprayed and a cursory attempt at cover crop with a little rye planted in fall. I have seen fields that are so devoid of life the soil is just a place to hold the roots. The plants are grown like hydroponics with a growth media to hold the roots and all of the nutrients are fed artificially. Then the crop is taken away to feed cows elsewhere. So more fertilizer is needed which acidifies the soil then you need lime, it never ends. It is possible to grow crops in healthy soil without any fertilizer. The nutrients are provided by microbial activity and fungal nets that mine nutrients and water and bring them to the roots in exchange for food. The more living roots in the ground, the better the food web works.

What are the Benefits of Cover Crop Cocktail Food Plots

Here is a list

• less soil erosion

• reduce or eliminate fertilizer pollution

• cooler soil and better water retention (drought-proof)

• manages excess nutrients (plants store nutrients for later use)

• produce N from the atmosphere, eliminating the need for chemical N, mines P from deep soil

• increases biodiversity – fully functioning soil ecosystem

• weed suppression

• pollinator benefits – with a huge kill of bees due to modern farming we need to help pollinators

• home for beneficial insects – there are far more species of beneficial insect than harmful

• year round forage availability – if you are serious about feeding deer, you need to have some forage available all year. Too many food plots are “bait plots”

What to Plant for a Cover Crop Cocktail

Separate mixes for spring and fall

On my YouTube channel I show a spring mix I put together for this year. https://youtu.be/ZwRMkYrj-fE

In it, I put in two legumes, field peas and soybeans. This makes up the majority of it and I put a lot in since my plots get a lot of deer pressure. If you have lots of space, you may want to reduce the rate of legumes some. I also, put in some broadleaf and brassica – sunflowers, buckwheat, African cabbage, hybrid rape, chicory. I did not put in a grass but sorghum, millet or oats would be good choices. The reason I did not add grass component is that I have infestations of Japanese stilt grass and foxtail which will need chemical suppression. Once I get a good system of covers, I won’t need to spray for these but there are very aggressive and we need to achieve a balance.

In the fall, we want a mix of cool season plants where some will freeze out but others will last the winter and start to grow in the warm days of April. I like winter wheat and cold hardy brassicas and legumes. Some good plants to consider are: awnless wheat, rye, triticale, crimson clover, oats, tillage radish, kale, collards, winter peas. If there is snow cover to insulate the ground, these plants will provide forage into and through the winter and green up very early in spring, thus offering forage in months where clover, chicory and soybeans are not usefull. If you are lucky enough to have room to grow corn and have standing soybeans, these are great supplements and a huge attraction in winter. Most plots I plant will not make a soybean pod as the beans get hammered by deer. Corn takes a lot of space, time and effort to grow, so I am not interested in it. Better to buy corn and feed it as a supplemental.

Cover cropping has to be a process of weaning ourselves off the til, spray, plant, harvest cycle. It may take some amendments, herbicides, mowing, failure before you achieve what we want. Persistence is necessary, but the rewards to hard work and patience is going to pay off in savings of time and money, and of course, healthy game.

Here is a YouTube video on how I go about choosing seeds for my cover crop cocktails: [embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=10f6EDXtV_w[/embedyt]

If you dont want to get into making your own mix, here is a Whitetail Institute product I think has a pretty good mix for a summer food plot:

https://amzn.to/2qzCvkR

Antler King also has a mix that I think fits the bill nicely: https://amzn.to/2EQNFH2

Full Disclosure: If you buy through these Amazon links, I make a small commission on the sale at no extra cost to you and I never link to something I would not use myself:)

If interested in wildlife habitat consulting services and forest management, please take a look at my services page and see if you could use my help: http://chilcoteforester.com/consulting-forester-wildlife-habitat-cosultant/wildlife-habitat-services/