This year was a very valuable one for me in learning about my food plotting strategy. We had a record drought in the spring, record heat in the summer, a very warm wet fall and so far this winter we have gotten a ton of snow. All of these conditions presented unique challenges and helped me see which plant species were hardy enough to survive in the harsh and changing conditions.
After frost seeding a diverse mix at the end of last winter in March we experienced the driest spring on record for our area and that led to an almost complete failure in germination. The one big exception was the small burnet, which is proving to me to be an exceptionally hardy species and solidifying my decision to make it a key player in my future mixes.
The mixes that I had planted in the fall of 2020 seemed to do fairly well despite our drought. Cereal rye continues to prove that it is a great hardy fall annual and provides a lot of forage and biomass. Also some clovers like crimson and arrowleaf have both proven to do very well in my area. This mix I think did pretty well because of it's fall germination and winter dormancy which made it already well established by the time it experienced the drought and is leading me to believe that as long as my seed mixes get a decent amount of moisture during the time of germination than they should be able to establish and survive through much drier periods.
This past year I did not plant a summer annual plot because of the drought, however I did decide to make a mini plot in my garden area where I planted buckwheat, sorghum, sunflowers, lablab, cowpeas and scarlet runner beans. I gave this plot just enough water to keep it alive through the summer but only the sunflowers and buckwheat did ok. The rest barely grew and I will probably remove them from my future summer annual mixes. I would like to try some other species this summer, however, to see if I can develop a hardy summer mix. Some species I'd like to try out are safflower, various types of millet, forage corn and forage soybeans. I think the summers in my area are just too cool for some of the more heat loving plants like cowpeas and lablab and it will be best for me to stick with warm season plants that are well known to thrive under somewhat cooler conditions.
After our long hot and dry summer was coming to an end in September it was time to plant my fall annual mix. This fall I decided to come up with a very diverse mix and one which would be planted over the largest area of my property yet. I had a new plot where my large circular plot used to be where I had put down a large black plastic tarp in the early spring and left it into the summer to kill off the underlying sod. It worked very well and by September all the sod grass was dead. Then I decided to purchase a drag harrow to use to bury the seeds in the plot instead of just broadcasting over the dead sod. I actually broadcasted my fall mix first onto the dead sod then used the harrow to rake the seeds into the dirt and make sure they had enough seed to soil contact. This worked very well after our first fall rains in late September and we got excellent germination over the next month or so.
I also spread my mix onto the roadcut that circles my property and it also had very good germination. We had really good growth this fall because we had a wetter and warmer than normal fall. This allowed my mixes to put on some really good growth before they entered winter dormancy and I think we will get some great diverse and lush plots this spring especially since our winter up until this point has been very wet.
Before this upcoming spring I will frost seed another mix onto my plots, mainly perennials, in order to make up for last spring and hopefully I can get some better germination than I got last spring. I also have plans to try out a very unique mix for an experiment I want to try out where I will be attempting the method of "Pasture-cropping" invented by Colin Seis from Australia. Although my experiment will be more like "Pasture-food plotting" and if successful could help me provide multiple seasons of forage in one single plot. More about this experiment in a future post so stay tuned.
This year was another huge learning experience for me and I will no doubt be learning even more during this upcoming year and in future years. Also my food plotting areas will continue to grow in size and over the next few years I hope to have permanently established foodplots in every location on my property that is able to grow them. There's lots of exciting things to look forward to. I can't wait to see how it turns out.
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