wtnhunt Posted February 23, 2010 Report Share Posted February 23, 2010 Seems we had issues last fall with what we suspect as baiters on at least one neighboring property and that pulling deer off of us. Baiting is not legal here so we will continue to use food plots, but may have to make some adjustments. Anyway looking at potentially planting an area between .5 and .75 acres of corn and leaving it standing for our season, maybe run some lanes in it just before season. A portion of that ground has had beans in the past a few years back and the area borders the woods and a clover plot. Not really sure which would work out better for a food plot though. Would think sweet corn would be more attractive, but to my knowledge there is not a variety of rr sweet corn, rr would have its advantages because we are not about to attempt to weed a half to three quarters of an acre of corn. So thinking a rr variety might potentially end up with more available standing corn during our season. Any suggestions on what corn would do well? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
toddyboman Posted February 23, 2010 Report Share Posted February 23, 2010 IF you plant corn i would say go with the RR option...so you can controlling the weeds would. Are you going to mix anything else in with the corn? Or is going to be a corn only fp? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wtnhunt Posted February 23, 2010 Author Report Share Posted February 23, 2010 Are you going to mix anything else in with the corn? Or is going to be a corn only fp? Planning on corn only for this plot. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
joeaveragehunter Posted February 23, 2010 Report Share Posted February 23, 2010 There was a thread on protecting food plots here that went on about corn and bean plots that small. I don't know what you deer density is but someone had some pics of a corn field decimated by deer and it was about an acre. Just something to think about. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
toddyboman Posted February 23, 2010 Report Share Posted February 23, 2010 (edited) What I did this year was a mixture......I had a 1/2 acre size plot and mixed RR beans and RR corn. The deer and turkeys seemed to like it. They could go into the corn for some cover to feed on the beans all year. I did this because corn only feeds deer when the plan matures and produces ears. So the deer won't be using the plot until late fall/winter. The beans however provide forage basically all year... from the green leaves to the actually beans. It seemed to work well for me.... The last thing to think about is the size of the fp. As I am sure you know deer will mow down a 1/2 or 3/4 acres size fp in a few days. Mine lasted ok until the snow and supper cold temps arrived......then it was over with in a few days...... Edited February 23, 2010 by toddyboman Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wtnhunt Posted February 23, 2010 Author Report Share Posted February 23, 2010 Good points. Before crops around us come out the deer have so much available food is not even funny. We have a one acre and 1/4 acre clover plots in that same field where this corn would be being planted, so it is not like the deer won't have some sort of food right there close by. Typically does use that clover nearly year round for afternoon feeds, past couple years we have suspected baiting going on behind us and have had some things said and also noticed some things that kind of reinforce that. I could be wrong but I think giving them corn in a plot will help a couple ways, when the crops around us come out and our corn is still standing the deer will find and likely also use that corn, timing for that could be great for us for archery and around the youth hunt and possibly even into our ml season. When the baiters are dumping their corn we will have legal corn here on our property where the deer will also have some cover. I may consider planting beans with the corn, don't know yet. Don't know if it is because our density is maybe not really all that high like it is in some places or if it is the abundance of food, but we have not had overbrowsing problems with smaller plots in the past. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
layin on the smackdown Posted February 24, 2010 Report Share Posted February 24, 2010 Maybe plant a buffer of soy beans around the corn....After all the crops come out by you, you may want slowly begin to harvest the corn...Deer love to stand/feed in the cut areas, and rip the ears off the standing corn....providing the beans is just a back up and also a buffer to keep them off the corn until they need it...Just a thought...whatever you do, i suspect it will be a good food plot any way you look at it... good luck Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dogdoc Posted February 26, 2010 Report Share Posted February 26, 2010 I'd go with RR corn. Maybe add some eagle beans with the corn. that way they can feed on the soybean forage in the spring and have corn and beans in the fall/winter. good luck todd Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BBR12 Posted February 26, 2010 Report Share Posted February 26, 2010 Sounds like you have good ideas. You can spray all corn I think with atrazine(sp). You could check with someone more knowledable. It may be more cost efficient than RR, but with less than an acre probably won't be too much difference. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LETMGROW Posted February 27, 2010 Report Share Posted February 27, 2010 A couple years ago we planted a buffer of soybeans around our corn. It seemed to work pretty well but some of the corn did get eaten when it was 4-5" tall. [must have been tender] Last year we planted about 5 acres of corn [ rr ] but we double rowed the planting. Instead of the normal 30" rows we moved over and planted again to produce 15" row spacings. We sprayed the corn plants at about 3 weeks old and again at about 5 weeks old. My sprayer is ATV mounted so after that the plants were tall enough I didn't want to chance damaging them with another spraying. As it turned out spraying again wasn't really necessary. The close row spacing appeared to shade out weed competition quite effectively. In retrospect, I may have gotten by with only 1 spraying for the season. We are planning to do this again this spring. We had a real good looking plot with large ears of corn. Perhaps more open space of 30" rows would have produced larger plants and ears but every plant had 2-3-4 ears on it. This wasn't the best year up here for growing corn either. After looking at some farmer's crops I really didn't see much difference in our corn than theirs. In essence we doubled our land use and production as well as provided some good cover in the fall. We left the corn standing and are seeing continued use even now. Lynn Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LETMGROW Posted February 27, 2010 Report Share Posted February 27, 2010 While talking about planting corn We plant our corn with a corn planter. While much has been said about broadcasting corn seed, we have found it doesn't work well for us. Where we are located we have a huge migration in the spring and early summer of Canadian geese. The year before last we broadcast a couple acres of corn seed as an experiment. When the corn plants emerged the geese found them and litterly pulled them out of the ground and ate the corn seed leaving the newly formed plant to die. We also found crows doing the same thing. Last year we watched the planting of drilled corn closely and found only a very few plants violated. Just thought I'd pass this along. Lynn Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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