Austin Delano | Originally published in GameKeepers: Farming for Wildlife Magazine. To subscribe, click here.
The choices are many. Picking the right plantings for your property is a daunting task, especially considering the dozens of seed and seed combinations out there to choose from. Everything from plant characteristics to soil type to climate and location have to be taken into account in order to make sure the plots are the best for your particular needs.
High-quality, well researched seed blends are what the folks at BioLogic are best at, and their proven line up of seed and management products are designed with the serious land manager in mind. These various seed combinations offer palatability for the deer, high production and high protein levels, which are all necessary for the herd to achieve optimum health, weight, and antler size.
Legumes are a fantastic summer food plot. They are very versatile and will grow in a wide variety of soil types for most every part of the country. Highly palatable to deer, legumes offer a wealth of protein and digestible nutrients. Legumes also offer the land manager a huge advantage since they produce their own nitrogen and are great soil builders. Lablab, Protein Peas, and Biomass Legume are all easy-to-plant blends that will provide superior nutrition all through the summer. All of BioLogic’s legume blends can also be sprayed for weed control with selective herbicides.
Another summer food crop that should be considered for your property is grain sorghum. Very simple to grow, sorghum is a solid choice where high whitetail densities will prevent other grain crops from living through the summer. Sorghum is more resilient and less expensive to plant than corn and competes extremely well with weeds that are desperately trying to invade. Grain sorghum is not only loved by whitetails, but most all birds including turkeys will readily use the seed once it matures. Some managers find combination plots of grain sorghum and a legume like lablab do really well together as the stalk of the sorghum gives the lablab an extra place to vine up and create more forage.
Part of a great spring and summer food plot comes in the form of soybeans. In fact, soybeans draw the bucks in the summer like a bee to a honeycomb. Easy to establish, they can grow well in the drier states just like sorghum does. The plant is also extremely good at extracting minerals from the soil that are greatly needed and used by the herd.
Very high in protein, the leafy parts of the soybean plant are loved by deer. During the summer, deer will only eat the leaves. However, if you have a high number of deer in your area, the plants may be totally consumed before summer even rolls around. So keep a watchful eye. Soybean plants are vulnerable to over browsing right after germination, so if a deer bites off the plant during the two-leaf stage it will unfortunately not grow back. Once reaching maturity, the soybean plants are resilient and can deal with the feeding pressure.
Sunflowers are an excellent source of protein, especially when it comes to helping the wild turkey population. This warm-season plant produces small black seeds high in oil content, and thrive in almost all locations. The Peredovik Sunflower can be grown by itself in strips or planted with millet and other annual grains. Taking around 100 days to mature, the sunflower provides the seeds for turkeys, quail, doves and pheasants. One thing to remember, however, is that if the deer density is high in your location and you haven’t provided them with a variety of other food plots, they will eat the sunflower plants when they’re young - effectively killing the plant. BioLogic’s WhistleBack blend contains millets, sorghum, and sunflower making it the ideal cover, nesting, and food-producing planting for game birds.
Again - protein, protein, protein. Mossy Oak BioLogic has a wide variety of spring/summer plantings to fit every wildlife manager’s needs. Invest in the best spring/summer food plots now, and make sure to give your wildlife the nutrition they need during the critical growing months.
To provide the wildlife on your land the very best in wildlife forages, visit https://plantbiologic.com. We understand why your land and critters are important to you and you can trust BioLogic to provide the highest quality, scientifically proven wildlife products available. For questions about spring/summer plantings contact Austin Delano at adelano@mossyoak.com.
