My 2020 Food Plots: Year in Review

  

   This year was the first year that I started experimenting with "food plots" or herbaceous forage species for wild game. While the first few years on my property I mainly focused on planting woody browse species, including fruit and nut bearing trees and shrubs, this year I wanted to focus on finding out what species I could plant on my property that I would be able to use for my "wild game meadow" idea. I learned a ton this year about different species of plants and I feel very confident that I have a good foundation of knowledge about where I would like to start next year's food plots. 

    I started this past January by frost seeding several varieties of seeds into several different plots. On the dry south facing road cut on the southern side of my property I had really good success with Small Burnet, but not much else grew well in any quantity.  The Small Burnet is known for being extremely hardy and will stay green year round. I also think the steepness of this plot was able to keep the deer pressure off and allow the burnet to thrive, while in some of my other plots it was continually eaten to the ground. Other than the burnet it looked like some chicory, sweet clover and a handful of crownvetch plants were able to survive, but most did not seem to thrive. As most of these are perennials it will be interesting to see how well they do next year and if they will spread over time. 

    On some of my other plots the chicory, burnet, plantain, sweetclover, crimson clover, hairy vetch and blue flax all seemed to do fairly well, however because the plots were so small the deer pressure was very high and most were eaten close to ground level. However, despite the severe browsing most plants seemed to survive so hopefully they will come back next year. Also the hairy vetch and crimson clover, which are annuals did seem to reseed themselves so I will likely continue to use these in my future mixes. 

    The big circular food plot I seeded with Cereal Rye and Winter Wheat was almost a total failure.  I think because the seeds of these species are relatively large and the fact that the area was still mostly sod, even though it was severely weakened from scalping, made the seeds not able to germinate well and in fact almost none were able to germinate. With this one I abandoned it as a food plot and continued to scalp it during the growing season to help kill off the grass. As of now it is largely bare soil although there are still a fair amount of widely spaced grass plants that would likely fill in if I let it. I think for this one I will continue to use annuals to eventually shade out and kill off the remaining sod and then after several seasons of annuals I will seed it with a perennial mix like in some of my other plots. 

    This past May I experimented by creating another plot where I chose summer annual cover crop species that I could cycle between cool season and warm season species to build up the soil and help shade out any perennial grass trying to grow in the plot. I planted sunflowers, buckwheat, grain sorghum, lablab and cowpeas. The buckwheat did really well early on and went to seed within a couple months which is what was expected. The sunflowers did the best and grew up to 6 feet all the way into September when they flowered, but were killed by an early fall frost in Mid September.  The grain sorghum only ended up growing about a foot tall and did not do very well probably from the summer drought and the lablab and cowpeas both did very poorly most likely because I did not inoculate them with nitrogen fixing bacteria. Because of this from now on I've decided that any legumes I plant must be inoculated before I plant them. After this mix died in September I broadcast Cereal Rye onto the plot then used a handmade foot crimper I built to crimp down the dead plants, mostly sunflowers, on top of the seeds to give them some cover and increase the seed to soil contact. This worked very well and I got good germination as soon as the first fall rains came near the end of September.  I will also likely plan on frost seeding some annual legumes such as crimson clover, balansa clover and hairy vetch into the plot in late winter so it has some more diversity and then in May I will again plant a warm season mix and crimp down the cool season plants on top of those seeds.

    During mid summer I mowed and weedwhacked some areas that were mostly starthistle and medusahead grass, both annuals, in order to control the starthistle and to experiment with planting annual clovers and cereal rye into the dead annual weeds. I figure converting these areas into food plots will be much easier because the annuals are easier to control than the perennial grass growing on other areas of my property.  I seeded these areas in late August and September and most of them seemed to have germinated fairly well. I'm hoping the rye and clovers are able to shade out a large portion of the annual weeds and over time eradicate that vast majority of them. I will likely frost seed these areas with more rye and annual clovers this winter as well as adding some hairy vetch.  I also might experiment with planting summer annuals in these spots and mowing or crimping down the cool season annual growth to cover their seeds like I did in the previous plot. 

    This next year I think I will focus mostly on using annuals because they are much better at handling weeds. And then once I have good weed control hopefully after only a year or 2 then I could start adding back in perennials that would be able to thrive without any competition from weeds. I also would like to experiment this year with using large sheets of black plastic to kill off the sod and create a great spot for planting my seed mixes. And eventually, maybe in a few years, I would  like to get pigs to use as tillers to uproot the perennial sod grass and create more bare areas to plant my mixes into. 

    I learned quite a bit this year and my experimentation will definitely continue next year and on until I'm able to develop a system of planting and with species that will thrive in my area. I will continue to learn and make mistakes, but these will only help me in the future while I am attempting to create an amazing wild food property. 

The Implications of Biomimicry in Food Production

 

    Lately I have been listening to a lot of podcasts about wild game habitat management.  A new one I have recently found is Jason Snavely's "Droptine Podcast".  In this podcast he describes his method of habitat management as Regenerative Wildlife Agriculture, which as the name implies, applies Regenerative Agriculture, practiced by farmers like Gabe Brown, to wildlife habitat management.  I recommend everyone who is interested in these ideas check him out as he provides a lot of great ideas and information. Something he talks about a lot in his podcasts is the concept of biomimicry in relation to food production and wildlife habitat management. To me this is an extremely important concept to understand when thinking about where our food comes from and how it is produced and it is what I will focus on in today's post.

    Biomimicry is the simple idea of people mimicking nature and natural processes in the things they do. For example, airplanes came from watching birds soar through the sky and velcro mimics the burs of some plants such as burdock that stick to animals as the walk by. Biomimicry shows us that we can observe nature and come up with some amazing ideas that help us in our daily lives. I believe that this concept is especially important in regards to our food production systems and that in general the closer we get to mimicking nature the better off we'll be.  Today I'd like to look at different levels of biomimicry in the various ways we produce food in order to understand what each has to offer.

    In my diagram above I detail 5 different levels of biomimicry in food production.  These levels are not set in stone and there is a lot of overlap, but I think they can help demonstrate these ideas pretty well. On the diagram the amount of biomimicry increases from left to right.  On the far left you have the least amount of biomimicry, which would be our system of conventional modern agriculture. Then on the far right you would have the highest amount of biomimicry with subsistence hunting and gathering. I then split the diagram into 2 halves with one side describing animal production and the other plant production. Then below that I describe some basic management characteristics of each level. 

    On the far left is our system of conventional modern agriculture. This is characterized by factory farming for meat production and conventionally grown crops for plants. This level has the least amount of biomimicry and in my mind is probably the type we would want to avoid the most. At this level we see a very high amount of inputs such as tillage, heavy chemical fertilizer, pesticide and herbicide use, the use of feed lots and large warehouses where livestock are kept and prevented from going outside. These are very unhealthy systems and produce very nutritionally poor food compared to the other levels. This is because the animals are fed an unnatural diet that makes them sick, such as corn fed to cattle and the plant products are grown in very poor soil that is degraded from years of abuse. This is also the least sustainable system because it leads to ecosystem degradation through soil loss and pollution as well as requires chemical inputs from products like petroleum that are non-renewable. Over time if this was the only food production system used then there would eventually be a collapse from one of the links in the chain breaking. The one potential positive aspect of this system is that is it highly efficient for the modern industrial economy and up until this point has been able to lower food prices and bring many people back from the brink of starvation. However, over time the inputs and environmental degradation will only become more costly and eventually we will not be able to sustain this type of production. 

    The next level is characterized by production systems like pastured livestock and no-till and/or organic crop production. These systems differ from the first in that they tend to produce much healthier food.  Livestock are fed more natural diets and they are able to experience fresh air and sunlight. Plants at this level also improve in nutrition because the non-tillage leads to healthier and intact soil that does not degrade as readily and organically grown plants do not suffer the consequences of chemical fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides, which have been shown to, at least potentially, have health risks for people as well as the soil that they are applied to. At this level we see less environmental degradation and pollution, but it is still not an optimal system and over enough time will still cause some degradation.  Livestock at this level are often rotated on a handful of pastures at best or at worst spread out over a single pasture. This type of grazing alters the plant communities on the pasture and leads to the most palatable and nutritious species dying out from overgrazing, which gives an advantage to unpalatable weeds and over time can poison livestock if all that is left is poisonous weeds.  To combat this many livestock producers have to perpetually replant their pastures, which over time becomes very costly and labor intensive.  In drier more extreme environments this overgrazing leads to desertification as talked about by those like Allan Savory who promote a more holistic approach that can actually reverse desertification and regenerate soils and plant communities. The plant production at this level also can contribute to some environmental degradation and non-optimal nutritional quality because they do not integrate animals into the system or plant poly-cultures, which both improve the soil and contribute to higher nutritional quality. This is what people like Gabe Brown have talked about and improved upon with their more regenerative approach to crop production. 

    The middle of my diagram is characterized by food production practices that not only are sustainable, but that can regenerate degraded environments. These types of systems are able to produce even healthier food than the last because they mimic nature to an even higher degree. The livestock at this level generally are fed a much healthier diet because they are rotated through many more pastures than more conventional systems. This mimics wild herds of herbivores constantly moving to new pastures due to the presence of predators that push them out of recently grazed areas which helps prevent the over grazing of the most nutritious plants. On the plant production side at this level regenerative farmers use techniques such as cover cropping and animal integration to heal the soil through keeping living plants in the ground as long as possible and maximizing the collection of solar energy as well as providing animal impact and natural fertilization that can help to quickly build up the soil. These systems are very sustainable and regenerate landscapes over time, making them more productive.  However, these techniques still require fairly high inputs such as the perpetual need for tractors on the regenerative agriculture side and the need for fencing and livestock rotation systems for holistic livestock management, which both still require a relatively high amount of labor. In my mind these techniques are very valuable, but I still think they could be improved upon with the practice ecosystem design. That being said I think the practices at this level could be used perpetually and would be pretty optimal if they were the most common practices in existence. 

    The next level is what I refer to as ecosystem design. At this level wild and/or feral animals are used as the main source of meat. This would be the system of meat production that I developed on this blog which I refer to as the "Hunter's Eden" system. In this system one would design an ecosystem that would provide optimal wild game habitat and manage it for a high production of diverse wild game animals. The major benefit of this system would be that once the habitat was established then almost the only labor that would be needed would be to harvest the game. There would be times where one would have to make slight alterations to the habitat, but this would be relatively rare compared to the holistic management of livestock for example. Livestock still need care and infrastructure from people in order to be a productive source of food, whereas wildlife can survive and thrive without any human interference at all. For plant production this level would be characterized by the permaculture concept of a "food forest" For this system one would design an ecosystem with plants that are edible to people including the different levels of a forest such as the tree, shrub, vine, ground-cover and root layers.  These ecosystems would be comprised of mainly perennials and self seeding annuals that would continue perpetually with only minimal maintenance such as trimming plants that are blocking out too much sun on the lower layers. While these systems probably couldn't match the production and efficiency of the previous level I think most would probably be surprised at how productive these systems could be and if needed I think they would be able to feed the current global population and then some. Ultimately I believe that a mixture between the systems at the previous level and this one would be optimal for society as a whole. 

    On the far right of my diagram is the level of subsistence hunting and gathering.  The obvious major benefit to this level is all you would need to do is harvest. No maintenance or management required.  This is the food production system that humans are designed for. If modern civilization collapses this would likely be the most viable option for one to survive. Hunting and foraging is the last option we have if we lose everything else.  It is the foundational food system if all else fails.  Obviously, however, if everyone were forced to hunt and forage all their food then we would wipe out many plants and animals pretty quickly. This is because our influence around the globe has led nature to be pretty unproductive.  The bison were nearly wiped out. The fish in the ocean have been severely over-fished. And wild plants have been destroyed through agriculture an urban expansion. And even if we were able to restore wild plant and animal populations, we would still end up wiping them out again if we were to stop our maintenance and management of the natural world completely. That's why ultimately living off a pure hunter-gatherer lifestyle would be unsustainable. Luckily we know how to maintain and manage natural ecosystems. It is some of the knowledge that we have learned over our long existence on this earth and if we put those ideas to practice I think we can create a bountiful world that eliminates starvation and maintains an eden-like level of abundance perpetually into the future.

    

 

Seasonal Forage Availability for Deer and Elk in My Area.

For many wild game species, forage availability will vary drastically according to the time of year.  Deer and elk diets are closely matched to what is the most abundant and most palatable in any one season. So anyone who is managing for these species and many others should pay close attention to the seasonal food sources in their area.  This will help determine any limiting factors in seasonal forage availability and help to determine a management strategy for their property.

In my area during the early to late winter time period the staple forage type is woody browse.  These are the dormant twigs and buds that grew on woody shrubs and young trees the previous growing season. At this time of year this is one of the few available food sources and during periods of deep snow cover it is possibly the only source. At times during the winter the snow may melt in some areas such as on south facing slopes, exposed ridges and lower elevation areas. In these areas there could be green cool-season grasses available, although it is rarely abundant. Cool season grasses are very hardy and will sometimes grow very slowly during the winter or stay green from growth in the fall providing a source of green forage for deer and elk. Also if there is snow on the ground, but it isn't too deep and it is light and fluffy then wildlife may be able to dig through it to reach the green grass underneath. One more possible food source during the winter months are winter persistent fruits. In my area wild roses will hold onto their rose-hips all winter long and can provide a very good supplemental food source during a time of year when forage quality is rather low. This is generally the hardest time of year for wild game so making sure you have a large variety of woody browse, open areas with grass and possibly some winter persisting fruits will really help game populations maintain themselves.

After the winter snows start to melt the next important time period is early through mid spring.  During this time the most utilized food source will be the fresh growth of cool season grasses. This is when grass will be most utilized in my area, because it's new growth will contain a relatively high density of nutrients compared to other times of year. It is also the dominant forage type because most other plants have yet to start growing during this time.  In some areas you will start to see some cool season forbs starting to increase in prevalence, but during this time growth is very slow so they will usually only make up a small part of the diet of deer and elk. Also during this time woody browse will still be available and utilized to a lesser extent, but it is still important in case a large early spring snowstorm buries lower growing forage.

The next time period of forage availability is mid spring through early summer.  During this time cool season grasses will start to grow more course, less digestible and contain fewer nutrients, especially for deer, so use will decline.  Elk, however, will likely still utilize grass as a moderate percentage of their diet because they are better adapted to digest more mature grass than deer. The main staple for this time of year, however, will switch to cool season forbs. Cool season weeds like prickly lettuce, clover, and salsify will be the most nutritious forage type available at this time and will be heavily utilized. In most areas this will be the most important time of year for deer and elk because at this time forage is at it's highest nutrient density and it's highest abundance. This includes the new green leaves and stems of woody plants, however in general forbs will still contain higher nutrient concentrations than browse during this time of year. At the end of this time period around early summer some species of soft mast such as cherries and some warm season forbs will become available, but they will make up a relatively small percentage of deer and elk diets until mid summer.

Once the summer heat and drought hits most cool season forbs will go to seed and die out or go dormant. During the time from early summer to the first frosts in early fall the green leaves and stems from browse will become the dominant food source. The green growth on most shrubs and trees will usually maintain fairly high nutrient densities throughout the summer especially compared to cool season forbs, which usually dry out by this time. This is mainly because woody plants generally have deeper root systems than forbs and can reach deep soil moisture late into the summer that allows them to continue to photosynthesize until temperatures dip below freezing in the fall.  Also during this time warm season forbs will likely be available, but rarely are they abundant in our area. Some warm season weeds such as ragweed, lamb's quarters and amaranth make excellent and highly nutritious forage, but they are rarely abundant due to our dry summers, however if they are available they will likely provide the most nutritious forage around during this time. Also, this time of year is the best time for soft mast species. In our area we have cherries, plums, grapes, blackberries, raspberries, apples, pears and many other wild and feral fruits that provides a great high energy supplemental food source to deer and elk during the summer months. While deer and elk generally won't subsist off of this fruit it can make a relatively high proportion of their diets until about the middle of fall.

After the first couple of hard freezes in the fall most vegetation will turn brown and go dormant. However, their is a short period of time in mid fall after the first fall rains begin and before the really cold temperatures set in when cool season grasses and forbs have a short period of growth. During this time there might be just enough growth to provide a decent amount of forage for deer and elk, but it will still be a relatively small percentage of their diet. Once the leaves fall off the shrubs and trees deer and elk will again start to browse on the dormant buds and stems and this will usually make up the majority of their diet through the winter. Most of the summer fruit will be gone by this time as well, but some like apples and pears can persist for awhile until winter really takes hold and can provide a valuable supplemental food source for the last few weeks of fall.  While not common in my area, hard mast, if available, can make another excellent high energy supplemental food source during the fall.  In my area, although rare, some hard mast species include hazelnuts, walnuts and acorns from oak trees. Because of their rarity in my region I have decided to plant a large amount of hard mast producing trees and shrubs on my property and I'm hoping they will mature and produce abundant crops someday in the future.

Monitoring the different forage types as the seasons change can be an important part of developing a management plan for your property.  Making sure wild game have abundant forage year round can really help populations expand, while neglecting forage in any one season can create a bottleneck in food sources and lead to lower numbers of game. As you can see, in my area browse from trees and shrubs make up the majority of the forage during most of the year.  It would only make sense then for me to try and manage most of my property for an abundance of this forage type. So if your goal is to create excellent wild game habitat, research and monitor what the game are eating on your property on a seasonal basis. Then once you have a good understanding of these patterns you can figure out your limiting factors and plan accordingly and hopefully it will lead to abundant game populations in your future.

First Seeds in the Ground!

After a lot of planning and waiting for the right conditions I've finally started planting seeds in order to establish my "wild game meadow". I used the seed planting technique of frost seeding in order to plant seeds without needing any heavy equipment.  Basically I just broadcast the seeds with a handheld seed spreader over the planting area while trying to time it so the ground was bare, but right before a heavy snow. In theory the snow will cover the seeds helping to protect them from birds as well as help to push them down into the soil providing good seed to soil contact when it eventually melts. Also as the ground cycles through freezing and thawing over late winter and early spring the heaving action will incorporate the seeds even deeper into the soil further improving the seed to soil contact.  

In my first plot area I decided to only plant cover crops of winter rye and spring wheat. This is because for this plot I was experimenting with cutting the existing grass short multiple times with a weed eater to weaken it. Then I'm hoping the cover crops will be able to outcompete and shade out the existing perennial grasses eventually killing the grass and allowing me to plant my main mix of species that are part of my wild game meadow. In this plot I planted a third in winter rye, a third in spring wheat and a third in a mix of both species for experimentation.

My second plot area is actually an area of eroded soil on a cut bank for the main road leading to my property.  This plot is quite steep and after heavy rain will tend to break apart and erode into the ditch. There are some weeds already growing here, but it is mostly bare soil. This plot is also south facing and receives a lot of sunlight which makes it an especially hot and dry site so it is a good test plot to see which plants will survive these harsh conditions the best. For this plot I planted crown vetch, small burnet, sweet clover, purple salsify, forage chicory and forage plantain.  

My third plot is an area where I dug up a small area of sod with a grub hoe. I took out large chunks of sod flipped them upside down and placed them on top of an area of existing sod adjacent to where they were dug up. So on one side of this plot you have an indented area where the sod was removed and on the other half is the overturned sod placed on top of existing untouched sod. For the sod half I planted cover crops including spring wheat, winter rye, crimson clover and hairy vetch. I used these cover crops to shade out any of the sod that tries to regrow and then next year I will plant my main wild game meadow mix. On the bare non-sod half of this plot I planted crimson clover, hairy vetch, small burnet,  sweet clover, purple prairie clover, lewis' flax, purple salsify, forage plantain and forage chicory.

My 4th plot area was another small plot this time in an area dominated by mostly annual weeds such as medusahead grass and yellow-starthistle as well as the perennial sulfur cinquefoil. For this area I used the grub hoe to scrape the weeds off the soil surface until I got to bare soil. For this plot I decided to plant crimson clover, hairy vetch, small burnet,  sweet clover, lewis' flax, purple salsify, forage plantain and forage chicory.

Later into the spring I will be planting a 5th plot of just sainfoin. This plot will likely be made with the grub hoe ripping up the sod similar to my 3rd plot. Then lastly I will plant a few seeds of each species into my fenced garden area where I can monitor their growth and provide optimal conditions such as regular waterings and protection from deer and other herbivores. This will allow me to compare these pampered plants with their counterparts in the plots to see how well they are able to handle our summer drought as well as grazing pressure.  Also once the seeds begin to grow in the spring I will also likely create small exclusion cages in the plots themselves to again monitor grazing pressure.

It feels really good to have finally started the planting process. I am really excited to see how the plots do in the future and to see which plants do well and which don't as well as which plot creating techniques work the best.  It will be a lot of trial and error over the next few years, but eventually I will be able to develop a streamlined system that others will be able to recreate on their property in order to create their own wild game meadows and will be an important part of my hunter's eden system for creating optimal wild game habitat.