We've had a steady group of visitors to the feeder that is adjacent to the new projected clover plot. Wiley E. showed up and then on a rainy evening some bucks that I had not seen on camera before. The weekly check of the cameras is almost as exciting as sittin' in a stand!
Treefarmer
Nice little bachelor group
Here is the same bunch, showin' up during daylight hours. We also had some visitors in the front yard this mornin' during coffee time, a hen and 5 young turkeys. We've been seein' these birds for a month or so. The first bunch to raise a brood around here in a long time!
Treefarmer
Man, that's looking good as usual TreeFarmer. Nice to see someone with a nice crop of critters growing. Should be a great season.
It has been about 6 weeks since I checked in with the new food plot progress.
Our weather has finally showed some fall temperatures about the time the Pennington man said to plant the Durana Clover, October 15th. We spread 150 pounds of 10-10-10 and 200 pounds of Pelletized lime on the 1/10th acre strip between the pine rows. Then the fertilizer and lime were cut in with the disk. Not having easy access to a cultipacker, I choose to firm up the ground with the tractor tires. The tires on that tractor make an 18" wide print. So each round would effectively "cultipack" 3 feet of the 16' wide plot. So with 5 or 6 rounds I packed the soil in preparation for the clover seed. The reason for firming the soil 1st is that clover will not do well if covered too deep with a disk in soft soil, clover only needs about a 1/4 inch cover to germinate. Some food plot seed will do well if covered over with a disk but not clover.
After the soil was firmed up I used a little hand held spreader to scatter the tiny seeds. There are a little over 3/4 of a million seeds in a pound (776,000+/-). They will leak out of a lot of spreaders! I walked down the center of the plot, then returned along the south side and the last lap was along the north side, spreading the clover seed, lots of walkin' for an old man!
I Then covered the seed by dragging an old set of bed springs up and down the plot, now all we need is a little rain. We had company at the feed about an hour after we finished.
This clover will probably not do anything for the 2017-18 season. It's an experiment to see how it does in the planted pines.
In the old 2 acre plot north of the new undertaking, I planted a curved, 100 yard X 25' strip of oats back in September. The deer are working it over according to the camera and noticing the clipped leaves.
Treefarmer
