Last Minute Fall Food Plots

Sometimes…..most times, life gets in the way of our best intentions.  Often, fall hunting season sneaks up on us, and we’re left out in the cold without that lush green fall food plot under our stand. With a few weeks left until the season opener here in Iowa, there is still time.  

If you’re just getting to those fall food plots, here’s a quick 4 step process to get them started with the best odds of success prior to the Archery Opener.

1. Choose a spot with limited ground cover (no tall weeds) if possible, and spray the weeds with an extra healthy dose of your favorite glyphosate containing product.  If there are extremely tall weeds, you’ll struggle in the following steps, and you may need to mow the area first to get a good kill.
2. Come back in 7-10 days and prep the area for planting.  If the weeds were short, you can likely get by with a heavy harrow to remove the grass and expose the soil. For the ultimate low budget experience, use a heavy rake in this step.  For thick, heavy grass / weed covered areas, you’ll ideally want to burn off the grass before running the harrow over. Compacted soils will do better if you can run a disc over the area at this point.  The hard soils will prevent roots from penetrating otherwise.  However, it isn’t necessary in all cases.  In dry years, I prefer not to disc whenever possible.  This is a judgment call.  
3. Buy bulk bags of Winter Wheat, Rye, and Oats at the local co-op or feed store. Broadcast your seed at a rate of 2:1 of the recommended ratio when drilled.
4. Compress the seed into the soil.  A cultipacker is ideal, but on a budget, you can simply run over the seed with an ATV or UTV to push it into the dirt.

With a little luck and a good rain, you’ll get some good seed to soil contact and be hunting over young fresh green sprouts the first week of October.  Obviously, there are many other tools and methods that can improve your odds of success with fall food plots, but when you’re in a time crunch, this method can work well.  Best of luck this fall.