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Ohio Habitat Work

Bigslam51

Dignitary Member
Supporting Member
25,778
127
Stark County
Seed to soil contact is the number one thing to growing plots. I bet if you would of ran over the plot a few times it would of grown better.
 
Seed to soil contact is the number one thing to growing plots. I bet if you would of ran over the plot a few times it would of grown better.


I have gotten away without doing that on more remote plots. I usuallys seed heavy and the existing dead vegetation will hold the seed especially clover seed. Now at home where I have the equipment, I usually run a cultipacker over a plot that has been properly plowed/disc.

By next year alot of the small stumps should be getting pretty well rotted out I would think. I may try taking a tiller down there and seeing what I can do with it. I may just frost seed this winter and spray some herbicide in the spring.

I am probably more disappointed by how much weeds I have growing in them. I thought with hitting twice this Spring with Gly that I would have gotten most of them.
 

bowhunter1023

Owner/Operator
Staff member
48,879
274
Appalachia
Have I mentioned a dozer yet?!? :ROFLMAO:

You're doing the best you can and that's all you can do man. I've been fumble-fucking through various habitat projects on our farm since 2005 and as my dad would say: "it's always something"! The hard work is the fun part of the process. In a few years, you'll roll up on the plot and it'll be ready for its cover shoot for NAW!
 
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giles

Cull buck specialist
Supporting Member
Next year will be a different ball game. Do the turnip idea and bring all those nutrients to the top of the soil. Frost seed the hell out of it and forget about this slow down.
 
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Well, the family and I got started on our habitat work for 2019 a day or two early. Went down this weekend and got all the chainsaw work done at camp that we wanted to get done for the year. We widened out the one plot a little, widened the entrance across the ravine to allow equipment access into the plot, cleaned up the logging road that ran onto the neighbors property a little to join up two of our logging roads (this will allow equipment all the way to the bottom of the hollow), and also made a short path so that we can have better hunting access into the one stand from the road instead of access thru the property.

Lastly I have had trouble keeping the spinner spreaders going on my feeder so I made it into a gravity feeder.
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Well I got both plots frost-seeded today before the rain got too bad. Hopefully it works out better this year than the previous 2 years. My plan is to keep mowing and probably June or July I am going to hit with Imox to try and kill alot of the other stuff. Alot of the stumps are starting to rot, but still got another year or 2 before I could even think about tilling. The 1st plot has a decent amount of clover in some spots. I put down Ladino clover and put it on pretty heavy. These plots are probably around 1/3 acre each and I put 6lb on each. I also had some crimson annual clover left from last fall so I put a couple of pound of it in each plot as well. I wasn't planning on planting the crimson again and I figure it may help give the ladino some cover. It will die out this summer anyway.

If this doesn't work this year, I am just going to photoshop a food plot in these pics and be done. >:) Really hope it works this year as I have put more time and money into these food plots the last 2-3 years than any other plot I have done only to have them not do much.
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My son and I made the trip down the camp this weekend to do a little turkey scouting since youth season down there is only 2 weeks away. Heard quite a few birds on Saturday morning, but not much this morning. I am sure the rainy, windy morning today didn't help. Got alot of stuff starting to sprout in the plots. It just popped thru the ground so can't tell for sure what is clover and what is weeds. Also got the first outside fire of the year in on Saturday evening with the warm weather.

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Well I got the plots mowed off this weekend. They are looking really good and the clover is pretty thick. Going to spray them in a week or 2 with imox. Only downside is I got the Kubota stuck in a ravine. When I went to use the come-a-long to get it out a torrential thunderstorm hit and then it really made the ravine a muddy mess. Finally got it out but it was a bit of an ordeal.
 
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