- By Rich Miller
With deer season opening this weekend in one part of our state, it is a reality that in another month I will be hanging off the side of a tree with my bow in my hand. With the season getting closer, my dad and I have already started getting all of our food plots ready for planting. We had sprayed all of the plots that we were planning on replanting a couple of weeks ago. Since there was a lot of dead grass, I wanted to get them plowed up before the rain they were calling for this weekend came. Friday afternoon I was at a buddy’s that lives next door and he had been plowing with his monster tractor and plows for the last couple of days. So I asked him if he would come and bust up our food plots and for us and save us a lot of time. Thankfully, he agreed and we got started bright and early Saturday morning. Within an hour, he had all of them busted up for us. He saved me a couple of days plowing by coming over and doing that for us; and I know because last year that’s how long it took me to get it done.
After he was finished I started putting up a bow stand on one of the clover plots when we decided to go ahead and do some planting. We were redoing a couple of perennial clover plots so we got some fertilizer put down. Then got our tractor with the box tiller on it and plowed it again to get a smoother seed bed for the clover. That box tiller is the way to go, especially after we had the big tractor to break the ground up first! Then we broadcast the clover over the area and used the cultipacker to press it into the ground. I always try to use a cultipacker when I can, because it gives you good seed-to-soil contact and you end up with a lot better germination. Plus, it just makes your food plots look a lot better.
We got everything we wanted in the ground and just needed the rain to get it going. All day it looked like the bottom was going to fall out, but we never got a drop. Then, Sunday, we had a good chance of rain and nothing again. I should have known it was too early to plant my clover because I usually wait until after the first of September, but I thought that with all the rain they were calling for it might be a good opportunity to get it in. We ended up not getting any rain over the weekend, but according to the weatherman, we have we have a really good chance every day next week…so keep your fingers crossed.
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