Blog Entries from the WeHuntSC.com blogging crew
This past weekend Adam and I got out and did a good day's worth of work on two food plots that we're installing in the fall session of the Food Plot Journey. Boy was it hot too! Up until this point we have taken soil samples for both areas, sprayed, and disked both of these plots. Given the best case scenario we would have preferred to get the lime in the soil a few weeks ahead of the seed, but due to the fact that we're just like you (weekend warriors) we've kind of gotten in a bind with our time and are putting down both the lime and seed on the same day. Again, I don't think this is the best practice method, but it can still work or at least we hope so!
The soil samples we took for these plots returned a pH of 5.2 for both of these plots...which is a little low. We are putting lime in the ground to help bring the pH up to a level that creates a better growing environment for the plants that we are planting. Also, this fall we are using a new type of lime. We?re using "Fact Acting Lime" which (I believe) is a recent development within lime products. Fast acting lime is supposed to do just what it is named "act fast"! Normally it takes several months for lime to start breaking down the acidity in the soil and changing the pH. Though, this fast acting lime is supposed to be able to start changing the pH at an accelerated rate. On the bag of the lime it says that it's 15 times more effective than regular lime. Since we're late putting the lime down due to our schedules, I sure hope it acts fast! We'll be interested to see how it works. The bags are about 30-40lbs a piece and we put 4 bags on the small plot and 8 bags on the larger, power line plot because that was the recommended amount given the size of our plots and the coverage of the lime.
After we made the passes with the lime and spreader, we then hooked up a drag to the ATV because we wanted to drag the lime in. We're doing this to hopefully cover the lime up with dirt and get the lime near the area of the soil where the roots of the plants will be located. If all went well, the lime will be right where it needs to be right when the plant needs it. You'll see in the video where we drug both areas. We used an old drag hare to do this and it seemed to work well and started leveling out some of the small hills as we drug the soil. It was real similar to dragging a baseball field.
After liming and dragging, it was now time to put the seed down. On the small plot we are putting in Tecomate?s Monster Mix. The seeds for Monster Mix are very small and look neon green in color. We only had to make 3 or 4 passes with the spreader because the seed got out so quickly. It didn?t take too long to get all this done on the small plot as it, of course, is smaller in size. Adam also climbed up in the stand to take some pics of the envisioned food plot to demonstrate our perspective on what we will be seeing this coming fall. Hopefully we'll be looking down on something that is green and thriving!
We repeated the same process on both food plots of liming, dragging, and seeding. As mid day approached, it started getting really hot. We worked on the power line plot for a while. We both were soaked and I even went to the store and bought 6 drinks and we drank them all within an hour?but there was still work that needed to be done. Since the power line plot is steep and "hilly", it was a little tougher to manage. The drag would get clumped up, the spreader would bounce and act as if it was about to tip over, etc. The power line plot required a little more time because of all of this mixed with the fact that I was going back and forth from the video camera to the regular camera etc.
With regards to the seed and food plot product for the power line food plot, we're planting Tecomate's Max Attract & Ultra Forage. We mixed these seeds together to offer the deer in the area a smorgasbord of food sources. Optimistically we?ll have a hillside leading to a creek that is covered in green right about when other food sources start to diminish for deer in our area. This will not only get them where we want them to be, but will also help them with their year round nutritional and dietary needs.
Now that the weeds have been sprayed, ground disked, soil limed, and the seeds have been sowed, all we can do is sit back and hope for rain. It has been extremely dry these past few weeks/months. You can see this in the videos we've previously posted where dust is flying everywhere and covering us from head to toe. Without any rain, there's nothing much that can grow so we?re going to be praying for rain in the coming weeks. Hopefully everything will come together. On a positive note, Tecomate's seed is covered with a "Yellow jacket" coating that retains any moisture it comes in contact with. This coating is specifically designed to aid in dry conditions.
The seeds of the Monster Mix were bright green and very small as seen in the image below
Below is an HD video collage of the lime, dragging, and seeding install.
And now...the wait for rain!
Regards,
Clint
As you can see, this past weekend was a full weekend for me. By the time Sunday got here I was dragging pretty good. Though, we still had some work to do. We returned back out to the remote food plot to put down some lime.
To recap a little in case you are unaware of what?s going on? We are about mid-way through our Tecomate Seed online ?Food Plot Journey?. Tecomate Seed and GroundHog MAX are sponsoring this online documentary. The blog series consists of a yearlong blog where we take someone who is totally clueless about food plots (me) and document an installation of a food plot. To this point we have collected our soil samples, had the readouts returned, cleared the land, and disked it up with the GroundHog MAX. It is now ready to be limed.
As a web developer, I started out totally uninformed about this whole process, but I have been learning a little. It turns out that the soil preparation step of the food plot creation process is a critical step in the journey. For a remote food plot, installation and soil preparation can be labor intensive. We took soil samples back in January and sent them off to the Clemson Agricultural extension. One of our locations came back with a pH of 7.0 because it had been prepped last year. So with that one area, we are right on track. Though, with other areas we are not as on target. The pH in this specific location for this blog entry ended up being 5.2. This is not a terrible pH, but the closer we can get the pH to 7.0, the more fertile the environment will be for our food plot products.
This is where lime comes in. Lime helps reduce the acidity in the soil. So if you have a low pH, then you?ll need to add some lime to raise the pH level. How much lime should you add? The result returned to you by the agricultural extension has the recommendations of lime and other minerals you may need. Keep in mind that lime needs some time to go to work in the soil. It?s not like you just put out lime and overnight the pH in the soil is adjusted. Successfully changing the pH in the soil is comparable to making a u-turn in the Titanic?it?s not going to be quickly done. It may even take us putting the lime out a few times over a few seasons to get the pH to reach our goal of 7.0. In our specific case with this location, we are actually somewhat late in putting the lime out. Many factors contribute to our lateness such as me being slack, a long cold and snowy winter, wedding planning, etc. So because of our timing, we have kind of put ourselves in a tight spot with regards to giving the lime time to go to work.
Lime is fairly cheap. We got our lime from Lowes and it was pelletized lime. Initially in my mind I had pictured lime being a grayish powder. I?m not really sure why, but I had this image in my mind. The pelletized lime we got was actually darker in color and it had a unique smell to it. It didn?t smell bad, but it was unlike anything I?ve smelled before. I think you can actually get the powder looking kind, or pelletized like we got, or even liquid lime. I believe I?m accurate in that?if not, just respond to this blog and let me know.
Actually dispersing this lime was a quick and easy task in comparison to clearing out the land and running the GroundHog MAX over the dirt. We had a spreader attachment that we hooked up to the 4-wheeler and all we had to do was drive. The spreader had a gap in the bottom of it where the operator can control the rate at which the seed was dispersed. Essentially, if you left a big gap in the bottom, then more seed would come out and if you adjust the gap to be narrower, then less seed would hit the spinning metal piece below and get spread in the area.
This whole process only took about 20 minutes to do. I think it took us just as long to unload and get everything out there as it did to actually spread the lime. I will also add that when we got out to the remote food plot area, we saw a lot of deer tracks in the mud where we had previously cleared the land. It had to be recent due to all the rain that we?ve been having. Either way, I believe the deer are a little curious as to what is going on out in the middle of the woods. Hopefully they?ll walk back through there next deer season and stop in order to eat some Tecomate Seed food plot product! Though, we have to get something to grow in there first! While riding the 4-wheeler, I stopped and took a picture of one of the freshest deer tracks. I wish I would have put a quarter down beside the track in order to give you some perception of how big it was in comparison to the relative size of the quarter. I?ll just tell you that it was a good sized track.
So now that the lime is down, the next step will be to actually spread the seed. The goal is to spread the seed after the last frost of the winter. This is usually around the end of April to early May. So in a month or so, we will return to spread the seed. We will also take another soil sample in the fall to see where our pH levels are and to get lime and fertilizer recommendations for our fall food plots.