It is time, a bit past time here really, and I have been considering what to do. For the first time in forever, a good friend has slaked lime from a water treatment plant for free. Problem is, I am working too hard at the office to have an ounce of energy left, the motivation, or any helpers to go get it and spread it. No co-op or bulk spreaders for lime here. No independent spreader person or equipment owners to assist in sweetening the land.
I have four-plus acres of plots. Strips mostly. All very good for drawing wildlife from the Dismal Swamp to which I am adjacent. Problem is, historically, as soon as my iron and clay peas germinate, the deer get on them and don't leave until the peas are eaten to the air-sky interface and then the pea plants are dead. I have seen this cycle for well over 10-years of wildlife food plot planting. It gets real hot here with no rain, so planting time is touchy as crop failure is a real danger.
I may just plant grain sorghum again. That was fun. The bag said the individual plants would attain 4-feet in height and to seed at a rate of "X" pounds per acre. Not having a grain spreader with calibration, and spreading seed by hand cranked seeder, I am certain I spread the seed at "X squared" pounds per acre. When the plants passed 4-feet I thought "Good!" When the plants passed 6-feet I thought "OK." When the plants stopped growing at 9 and 1/2 feet in height and were so thick you could not drive a bull dozer through the field, I wondered how, from a 14-foot tall tree stand are we ever going to see anything to hunt in that? Fortunately, a sounder of hogs took up over-night residence the weekend before hunting season and nicely opened up shooting lanes in the most natural of ways. That was a unique hunting season.