Select Your Location

Select your food plot location that has good sunlight. This mix can be seeded in a clean seed bed or an existing annual or perennial food plot to thicken it up.

Test Your Soil

Taking a soil sample to test the soil pH and fertility levels several months before seeding your food plot is the most beneficial action you can take to ensure success. Take soil cores from various locations in the field to get a representative sample of the field and select the plants/mix on the soil sample submittal form. If the species in your mix are not on the form, please write them in the box on the submittal form. Soil samples can be sent to any university soil testing lab or commercial soil testing lab. You can reach out to your local extension service and view the King’s AgriSeeds Soil Sampling Procedure factsheet for more information.

Apply Recommended Amendments

Once soil tests results are received, observe the recommendations for growing the food plot this year. Apply the recommended rates of lime to adjust the soil pH several months before planting, if possible, to allow it time to increase the pH. If you plan to till your plot, working in the lime may help it to adjust pH quicker. Applying lime without a soil test may lead to poorer production due to pH levels outside of the optimum range. Optimum soil pH for most crops is 6.2-6.5.

Apply the recommended rate of fertility per the soil test report as well. Applying fertilizer based on a soil test recommendation can help you to apply needed fertility without under or oversupplying these inputs. Fertilizer can be broadcast on the surface or worked into the soil with shallow tillage.

Interseeding

Eye Candy can be interseeded into existing stands of fall plantings through conventional methods, like a using a seed drill (see No-Till Seeding below), but it can also be seeded through frost seeding. Eye Candy should be sown at 6-8 lbs/acre or 0.14-0.18 oz./1,000 sq. ft.

Frost Seeding

Frost seeding is the act of using the freeze-thaw cycle to work the small, dense clover seeds into the soil with time. This only works well for smaller, dense seeds like clovers and chicory. Best results are achieved when daytime temperatures are in the 40’s °F and nighttime lows in the 20’s °F. Frost seeding works best when there are about two weeks of this weather which occurs from late January to early March, depending on your location.

Conventional Seeding 

Prepare the Seedbed

If you are starting a new food plot, seedbed preparation depends upon site location and availability of equipment but the most common is to disk the soil to loosen up the surface and kill the plants already there. If you do not completely kill all the undesired plants with tillage, you may want to spray the area with an herbicide prior to planting. If planning to no-till the seeds, herbicide will be needed to control the weeds first.

Kill Existing Vegetation

If you decide to spray, be sure to use an herbicide that will complete the task. If you are looking to kill all plant vegetation in the plot, a non-selective herbicide (glyphosate) would work best. If you are trying to kill only grasses, an herbicide selective for grasses (such as clethodim) should be used. And if you only want to kill broadleaf plants, an herbicide selective for broadleaves (such as 2,4-D) should be used. Herbicides tend to be less effective when used at cooler temperatures because the plants are not actively growing.

Smooth the Surface

After working your seedbed, pull a cultipacker, drag, or roller across the plot to smooth out the surface and create a firm seedbed so that good seed to soil contact can be achieved.

Spread the Seed

Spread seed evenly across the area by hand or with a spinner spreader. To ensure your seeding rate is correct, seed a small area of a known size and use a weighted amount of seed that should cover the area to make sure your spreader is calibrated correctly. If you have some left or run out adjust your spreading accordingly.

After spreading the seed, you want to lightly incorporate the seed into the soil about a 1/8” deep. This is done best with a cultipacker to press the seeds into the soil. You do not want to move a large amount of dirt or it may put the seeds too deep to germinate.

No-Till Seeding

If you have the ability to plant the seed with a no-till drill, you will want to run it through the large box and calibrate the drill to put out 6-8 lbs./acre (more info on drill calibration). Set the drill to plant the seed at 1/8" deep.

The Berseem clover is an annual and will come on a little faster to provide earlier growth while the perennial white clovers and chicory will fill in a little slower and provide forage for years to come. Interseeding this mix into small grains planted the previous fall or thinning clover stands is a great way to increase the forage available for the wildlife.