"No Till" food plots?

[mechanic]

Have any of you guys tried any of the "no till" products for food plots?  Wonder if they work or if it's all hype....

Thanks,

Ben

[charles p]

Lots of farmers in NC use no till techniques.  The seed for cotton, corn, and soybeans are Rundup Ready so it doesn't kill the plants when sprayed. 
My favorite deer crop is oats.  I think it ca be sprayed and drilled in the same application.  An early September planting has worked well for me.

[RB1235]

I tried no till plots. I think it was secret spot, or something that would sound close to that. It had lyme and fertilizer in it. To be honest I found it was better off just buying, lyme and fertilizer and something suited for the location. A good gravel rake to get good soil contact is needed. An easier way is to build a drag for an atv and scratch the ground up. The food plot in a bag did work. I just didn't like not getting much seed and a lot of filler. A cool weather crop like brasiacas with small seeds, lymed and fertilized under shade in late summer. Will give a good direct sunlight winter crop in a deciduous area. Just get good seed to dirt promotion.

[HogFan]

I tried a no-till food plot last year. When I got to my location, I found out it had been torn up by a skidder, so I actually thought it would do well. Nothing came up. When I get home, I am going to give it another try this year with a different type of seed.

[30-30man]

I have had no luck with notill.  Very little of the crop germinated.  I think the birds eat the seed before the get pressed into the soil. 

[Empty Quiver]

If you are doing this yourself you are at a disadvantage. Experience is the best teacher in no-till, find a local no-till farmer willing to do this for you. No-till works just fine, but you are more dependant on weather conditions than if you had tilled. A true no-till drill or planter is more expensive and takes more HP to pull as well. My opinion... hire it done.

[charles p]

No-till planting in our area is a combination of three steps performed all at once.  Roundup is sprayed to kill the existing vegitation, seed is drilled into the soil, and herbiside is applied.  Kill your weeds first, then coever the seeds, and apply some fertilizer.  If your plot is too small, deer will over graze it when it first comes up and it will die.

Turnips and rape planted together have worked.  Oats work also.  Cowpeas are excellent.

[hillbill]

if your talking about "no till" as in just flinging some seed out on top of existing vegatation and hopeing for it to sprout and take over, it prob aint gonna work.if your talking about doing it with a actual no till drill it does work better in the spring if your not going to spray first.in the fall,  mow and spray first and then go over it with the no till drill.for fall plantings i have the best luk spraying my plots with HONCHO wich is basically a generic roundup type chemical i get for 13 buks a gallon.when the plots are all nice and brown and crispy and dead. ill then hit them with a disk, l;et them lay a couple weeks, hit them agin with the disk, fertilize and plant all the same day and pray for rain.after the dirt is disked i plant with a hand operated cyclone type seeder.spread fertilizer i get cheap at the local co-op and then roll it with a 50$ 4ft cultipacker pulled with a 4 wheeler.the cultipacker really seems to be the key, it pushes the surface broadcast seed down just enuf into the dirt to let it pick up any moisture it can to germinate.it is a lot of work and yu need a tractor but the results are amazeing.

[sgtt]

Where did you find the $50 cultipacker?

[SHOOTALL]

Have any of you guys tried any of the "no till" products for food plots?  Wonder if they work or if it's all hype....

Thanks,

Ben

yes and NO . But what i think needs to be done is farm the area for some time . When you do if conditions the soil. We tried scraping back the leaves and brush and planting . Less than half came up. Next time we used a disc and had better result but not great last year the plots that were in the 4th year responded really good .

[mechanic]

I put the blade on my tractor and cleared some areas in between the pines, and have disked in some lime.  I will come back later and plant some fall crops. 

After pricing the so called "no till" stuff, and looking at the directions on the bag, I'm just going with some traditional fall crops for Ga.

Thanks for all the info.  This is my first year dealing with feeders and food plots.  I'll have to take the feeders down several weeks prior to open season, but for now it looks like I will have a few deer and a lot of raccoons coming by!

[hillbill]

Where did you find the $50 cultipacker?

    a local machinery dealer had 2 of them. he said they were too small and nobody wanted them. i bought them both and a frame for a 3 pt carrier box im going to make for 100$. im going to eventually weld both cultipackers together to make a 8 ft wide one.

[Land_Owner]

Yes I have used No Till seeding and it has worked, at least the part that the birds didn't eat, including the turkeys.

You need to start with a good Roundup kill first as the weeds will out compete the new seeds.  Also, disturbing the earth will affect the growth of the millions of latent weed seed that is already deposited there.  I recommend to NOT scrape the existing soil unless you are prepared to first wait until after the existing weed seed germinates and killing that with Roundup too prior to planting the No Till.

[hillbill]

im going to try to get sum pics up of my tilled food plots in the next few days. i swear they look like yu could graze on them with a little ranch dressing.

[hillbill]

some of my food plots that are looking pretty good even tho we have hardly any rain.

[mechanic]

Beautiful!  Oughta' have the deer there in herds!