How to Fix a Failed Food Plot – What to do When Your Food Plot Sucks

Every time i plant a food plot, I picture in my head what it will look like – amber waves of grain and lush forage with lots of great chow with dozens of deer feeding in the green field.  After spending your time and money on herbicides, rented equipment, hired pros like myself, seeds, lime and fertilizer you deserve to have a great food plot, right?  Well, after planting hundreds of these things I can tell you it never looks like you envisioned it would.

What Goes Wrong With Food Plots

There are many things that can go wrong when planting food plots.  Especially in poor mountain soils where most guys are planting them.  Anyone can grow a good looking plot in the farmlands of the Midwest.  But in a field that is just scratched out of the woods or has been fallow for decades, its a tough situation.  We can’t know how many different types of weed seeds lay dormant in the soil for one thing.  Usually, we are dealing with low fertility and pH, as well as moisture problems due to sandy soil texture.  Weather can be a factor as well.  Sometimes you just can’t win when Mother Nature doesn’t cooperate.  Too dry, too wet, too cold – weather can cause failure.  But, we can reduce the risk of failure by playing the odds.  One thing is to plant tender, slow growing plants like clovers in the fall with a nurse crop to help protect them in spring when they really start to grow.  Spring plantings are risky, especially in well-drained soil.  Another thing to think about is to plant species that are pretty fool-proof, always making some kind of feed.  Cereal grains and brassicas are in this category.

Recently, I had a food plot not germinate at all.  I traveled two days to buy the primo custom seed blend, rented a no-till drill, bought herbicide.  Spent a lot of money.  And…nothing but foxtail grass – the very weed I most wanted to get rid of with the spray treatment.  I had some Fusilade II on hand so I used that and tank mixed with glyphosate and crop oil surfactant.  When I asked some more knowledegable people than me about it, they told me I should wait a month to plant after application of Fusilade.  It does not say that on the label.  Anywhere.   So, apparently, I killed my plants but did not get enough on to take out the foxtail.  What a disaster!

So, now what?  All one can do is live with it, learn from the mistake and keep going.  If you get disgusted and give up, your time with have truly been wasted.  So, the plan on this field is to spray it again, mow any foxtail that survives and replant a fall plot.  Wheat, peas, leftover soybeans and brassicas will be drilled in August ahead of some rain in the forecast.

Once i planted a stand of clover after tilling a field with very light, droughty soil.  I put the seed in with my Brillion seeder, which almost always produces a good stand.  It rained great and the seeds came up but then it didn’t rain at all for most of June and the sun fried the little clover plants.  I will never do that again.  Fall planting or frost seeding is the way to go.  In that case I drilled in some Sorghum Sudan on the recommendation of an Amish farmer.  Wow!  That turned out great.  I had a 7 foot tall stand of cover with seed heads to eat and some great organic matter on the surface the following spring.

Everyone likes to see a nicely tilled, smooth field of bare dirt to start with, including me, but the fact is when you till you do a lot of damage to the soil biota and create an extremely dry environment.  Best to no-till whenever possible.  There are times when tillage is appropriate but it should be avoided.

Causes of Food Plot Failure and How to Remedy Them

So, the main causes of food plot failure are:

• poor use of herbicides – not reading the label or seeking expert help on chemicals
• rushing the job and trying to get it done on your designated weekend even when conditions are not right
• heavy deer browse pressure killing the plants before they can establish themselves (a big problem with soybeans)
• not maintaining a plot with mowing, herbicide and overseeding – letting weeds take over

The remedy to the first one is to read the label from front to back.  Then ask a farm service guy or crop guy from nrcs about the chemical and what to watch out for.  Always calibrate the sprayer – don’t wing it.  Too much is a waste and can hurt your plants and environment and to little won’t do anything.

Take you time and do it right.  The plot I had go wrong above was sprayed and planted the same day because that was the day I had rented the drill and the landowner had his tractor on site.  In the case of trying to plant into a field of unwanted plants, you should get the field cleaned up either with multiple tilling, herbicides or both.  You may have to spend one growing season just getting your field ready for a food plot.  Planting into heavy weed pressure is folly.  One good practice is to till, spray, till again, plant a GMO variety and spray it again.  This will be a lot of work but will yield a clean field ready to grow whatever you like.

I have a food plot on a client property that has so much deer pressure due to no farmland in the region, I can’t get anything to grow.  So, I put a 3-wire electric fence around one field and let the deer eat the clover perennial field only for a while.  Once the plants are well-established, I will take the fence down and let the deer have at it.

The reason most food plots fail is lack of attention.  We would not have had the foxtail problem to begin with if the landowner had mowed and sprayed for grass weeds as I advised.  The grass went to seed and made millions of seeds ready to germinate this spring.  Especially with clover plots, it is a very simple and easy thing to mow, spray for grass and frost seed.

If you want to take a look at the planting of this field and the video about what it looked like after a month, check out my youtube channel;  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yzl0RzmWQfA&t=49s

Cover crop cocktails for food plots: http://chilcoteforester.com/

For information on planting food plots in the woods: http://chilcoteforester.com/food-plots-in-the-woods/

Here is what the plot is supposed to look like…planted in a different location that was properly prepped