Food plot question

[Dirty Steve]

Have decided to convert our septic area to a food plot. Out property is 100% wooded except for the house, driveway, a small swath of grass around the house and our septic field. Kids are mostly grown and gone and therefore what little grass we do mow is without a mowing crew. I hate to mow grass and I'm not going to get the wife to do it.

We already have a lot of deer in the area. They are in the "yard" daily and we go through 40 lbs. of feed a week at the feeder. I am not really interested in doing this so I can hunt my yard. I primarily want to do this to provide food for the deer and reduce my mowing. There is an abundance of bedding cover in the area, but food sources seem limited to me. No agriculture in the area, just hundreds of acres of woods and "woods" food sources. In the winter they really hit our feeder hard.

The question is this. The area only receives about 6 hours of direct sunlight in the summer. It is mostly shaded and is a mix of grass and about 25-30% moss. Is converting this area to a food plot even feasible or am I just p%**ing in the wind? Any recommendations on what to plant that is semi-shade tolerant? Should I kill off everything and disk the area up? Should I kill off everything and use some type of throw and grow mix?

Any advice would be appreciated.

Dirty Steve

 

[AGarbers]

I would get on Biologic's website or one of the other big names. They can answer most of your questions. I think 6 hours is enough to grow clover. Just from my own experience I would kill everything, get the soil ph tested, add lime, disk it in, plant the clover, fertilize it with the right mix which I think is 10-0-0. You will want to do some reading on that. Clover doesn't need two of the three minerals so all you would be doing is encouraging the weeds if you used 10-10-10. Let it grow and keep the weeds out with the right herbicides, one for grass, one for broadleaf weeds.

In reality, a food plot is going to be a great deal of work and money compared to just mowing the grass that's there.

Here's a place to start:
Back Issues for The Food Plot Journal

 

[hawkencougar2]

This fall/winter I seen the oddest thing. Late one evening as I was driving down the road a house had only 1 green bush/shrub in their yard. The deer were standing around it like cattle around a hay bale. There were eating away on the thing.

 

[AGarbers]

The heavy snow we had really drove the deer down into our back yard where the previous owner planted Japanese Honeysuckle. It is choking out trees and everything else. While it is an invasive species it does provide green leaves when everything else is dead.