Food Plots and Soil Health Ask Me Anything with Dr. Grant Woods

0:00 Grant great to see you thanks for joining. You know it's a little bit of a maybe danger to say ask me anything you know so if we get relationship advice questions man I'm handing those right over to you. You know political religious questions you know we can we'll maybe jump into that but no we're here to talk about food plots specifically cover crops and soil health and really Grant that's what brings us together. You know I remember a number of years ago you stopped by the farm and you know I first met you. We shared that common drive to regenerate God's creation that's part of both of our mission statements and I think that's part of what makes us such a great partnership is that we're really aligned on the values of regenerating God's creation for future generations and that's both the land as well as the people and through that you know our communities as well so we appreciate you know you end all of your episodes with you know take time to get out into creation and most of all take time to listen to The Creator so just really appreciate that.

1:08 Yeah and likewise Keith I've always really appreciated and valued your mission statement and how y'all conduct business and the ability to cooperate with someone where you have total trust in the good of all of us users in mind is rare these days and so this is a very comfortable relationship for all of us here at Growing Deer and one we enjoy right because who doesn't like playing in dirt and planting different things and seeing if deer eat them don't eat them or how it turns out. I mean gosh that's fun man. That's you know I couldn't really design a better job description for me anyway.

1:44 It is and you know I've been to your Proving Grounds a number of times and it's just always impressive to me you know. I mean the deer the pictures of the deer the deer that you harvest are impressive but to me it's not nearly as impressive as what you've done with that soil or maybe I should say what you've done with your rocks. You know literally folks if you haven't been to Grand Place you know he's farming on a worn out old Ozark Mountain side hill and you look at a lot of the stuff around there and that's still what it is but he's built fantastic soil because he's following these principles of soil health which the release process is built on so as we go through these questions we'll kind of bring in you know some of the soil health principles we'll talk a little bit about you know which of the principles is at work here and why some of these things are working so I think we'll be able to you know interact and splice in some of the concepts as we go through the question so I guess if it's all right with you Grant I'm just going to jump in and ask the first question most of these are going to be directed to you but I'll certainly comment on any of them as we come.

2:57 The first question from Sean he's saying on a strict no till rotation a summer and fall release blends you know should he be burning those plots to remove residue you know particularly the sun. You know it can make a pretty big thick stock you know how often do these annual plots need to be burned. You know you show a lot about burning perennials and getting rid of cedars and controlling brush do we need burning as a tool in the annual food plots. You know I'm sure there's a case but actually I want that soil covered. I want the on the ground I call it duff you know residue whatever that dead plant material that really as you know Keith holds moisture in keeps those soil temperatures in a moderate rate both not too cold not too hot and is food and cover for all those beneficial microbes and insects that really drive the system you and I are really fond of.

3:51 So I think some people worry about that. That question seems to stem from planting through there and if you're broadcasting into a standing crop and then crimping or terminating somehow that's just more cover for your seed and if you're using a no till drill and I say this kind of jokingly but if you're combing right next to your scalp and your long hair is tangled your comb still goes right next to scalp and that's the way a drill does under a really tall crop even a tall sunflower or something so there's some cases and we do burn off little small habitat plots in the back where we're not getting a tractor drill and there's duff and leaves from the surrounding oak trees whatnot but our big plots that's rarely rarely a good option.

4:34 Yeah I would agree and you know in fact somebody just asked me this question the other day about burning on annual plots and I said you know there's three main problems with burning on annuals. You know on the perennials that's a different story because you've got well established root systems properly timed that's it it encourages that stuff to come back quicker with an annual you've got to start over so number one you're just removing that residue which can expose your soil to wind and water so erosion.

5:02 Is a big problem or a big issue there. Number two, generally most of these plots, the things that they're shortest of is carbon, and when you burn that smoke that you see go up is mostly carbon, and so you're losing a lot of carbon when you do that. And then number three, if you get hot enough fire you will smoke a lot of your microbes and the biology. You know, and now it might just be in the top one or two, but that's still going to set things back. So I would agree with you, there may be certain issues or certain situations where you'd need to burn in the annual plot, but I think it could be pretty rare. So yeah, figure out just how to get the seed to soil contact when going from one prop to another.

5:48 Great. You don't mind, I'll add one last quick thing. You know, if you burn it and you turn it black, then you go broadcast the seed, and it doesn't rain, you know that soil temperature can literally get 140, 150 degrees or more when it's black, and that could actually harm or kill, terminate those young seeds. So if you're like, she got a little small hideaway in the background, it filled up with Oakleys or whatever, and use fire to clean that off, there you want to broadcast those seeds right before, right before rain, excuse me, or they're probably gonna get toasted out there.

6:18 Yeah, that's right. Rick is asking about, is there a negative, what would be wrong with planting the fall release in the spring? He's got a shorter growing season, so he's wanting to just plant once, and it's drier in the fall. So can he plant that fall mix earlier in the spring and get it to work? What do you think about that?

6:42 You know, that's probably not the best idea. Lot of those species in the fall release, food plot mixes are designed to be planting with shorter day length, that's kind of how their nature works, and they might mature or make seed even before winter gets there. There's just, you're kind of going against the biology of some of the plants. And I think Keith could talk to this more than I can from his cover crop side, but some people mix in both spring and fall seeds in one blend. That's not something we really promote or not for food plots, but that's a possibility and maybe a potentially a future blend for you know those way Northern food plot guys.

7:19 Yeah, no I would agree. And you know, the fall release, all the whole fall series is primarily cool season species, which you know can tolerate some heat, but they can tolerate heat much better when they're young and then they're growing into shorter cooler days. That's way better than when you plant them, you know, say you plant them in April. They'll grow really well for a little while because you know they're shorter cooler days, but now you're growing into longer hot days. And what happens with the cereals? Well, number one, you know, like things like Rye, which is a true winter annual, it has to vernalize, it has to get cold enough to go somewhat dormant before it triggers that plant to give you its full growth. And so if you don't have that cold snap, that cold period to trigger that dorcy, that break, that vernalization, then it will never grow properly. And things like oats that don't need to do that, they're looking at Growing Degree Days. And so what we've seen when we plant oats in April or May, they grow really, really fast. They don't get very tall because you have so many more Growing Degree Days in June and July than what you'd have in September and October. So they go through their life cycle much, much quicker, and they may only be half as tall before they're heading out. You just don't get the growth, you don't get the things to work.

8:46 So if you're really tight on growing season, and I know there's a question in here about you know from Wisconsin, you know, where the growing season is short, there's probably some things you can do. You may not have time to plan a full summer release and a full fall release. There's probably some things you can do to plant your fall release a little earlier, you know, maybe mid-July, because you know if you're further north and you plant mid-July, you know it's not that long before your days start getting shorter, your evenings are cooler. I can see that working. You know, in the summertime you might just consider just a quick crop of you know something like buckwheat, relatively cheap. You can plant that, let it grow for four or five weeks either terminated, or if you got a lot of deer, they'll probably terminate that for you. You can do something simpler, cheaper, that you know is only going to grow for four or five weeks, and then transition over to your other one. So I would look at things like that rather than taking something that's designed for the cooler weather and trying to force it through the hot weather.

9:49 Well, here's a really relevant question, Grant. We were talking earlier about how dry it is down in your area. We caught a little shower here today so that really helped us. But man, we've been here hearing from lots of people how dry it is out there in different areas. So JB is saying I live in the middle of the Sand Hills in.

10:06 Kansas, I've tried your fall mixes several times but I've had limited success. Only thing that seems to work in this sandy soil is straight Rye. I parked the disc several years ago and use a crimper with good success. Drills in a seed, those are all good things. We're very lucky to get any sufficient rain closer than four to six weeks apart. So here's this question: do we have any plans to work on a mix that is really drought resistant?

10:32 I'm going to really let you run with this, but I'm going to say I'm not aware of any great forages that grow with no moisture. It just takes moisture to fill up those cells and make plants grow. Now there are some that are more drought resistant than others, and that's really for Keith. Keith knows these plants much better than I do and all the plants out there and all the different areas. But I think you're doing a good thing in those really tough soils. I had one last thing: I have a lot of clients with real sandy soil with limited rain, and they may plant Sainfoin, Rye for deer, Rye a time or two and start building up some organic matter and improving those soils. Then when they do catch a rain, you can hold more moisture. You agree with that, Keith?

11:15 Yeah, I do, because there's a lot of factors in what we would call drought resistance. Some of it certainly is the genetics of the plant, but a lot of it has to do with the biological interactions between the plant and all of your soil microbes. And if you're in a sandy soil, you have very little biology out there. It's going to struggle because you don't have that biological interaction. When we first started Green Cover back in 2009, the previous year we had done a set of experiments, some trials with soil moisture probes in the soil, and what we saw, and we've seen this repeated with other demonstrations and other experiments, is that the diverse mixes used moisture far more efficiently than anything did in monoculture.

12:06 And so what that tells us is that in a monoculture situation, it's a highly competitive environment because every plant is exactly the same—same root depth, same canopy height, same nutrient water needs. It's extremely competitive. But in a mixture of things, now I have this Rye plant, this pea plant, this buckwheat, this radish. Now we have different plants, different rooting depths, different canopy heights. So if you can get a mixture established or growing, it's going to be more moisture efficient. And then, as you said, as you build carbon, as you build residue, now when it does rain, you can hold more moisture. That's one of the biggest problems with sand: it just simply doesn't have moisture holding capacity. But as you know, Grant, as you build your organic matter levels and you've gone from what, probably 1 or 2%, to 7 or 8% on some of your fields, every percentage of organic matter holds another acre inch of water, which is 27,000 gallons. And so just think about the water storage that you have now. It has to rain in order to get that, and you have to get it in the ground, but if you can't hold it, nothing else really matters.

13:23 And so, you know, JB, I would say that we can certainly choose things like Rye, which is very drought tolerant. Sorghum, Milo, would be one of the most drought tolerant of the summer species. Cow peas are really good in that as well. We can choose things that are the most drought tolerant plants that we know of, but that's only part of the equation. We got to get that soil building it up. We have to get the biology out there, and you know, just start creating that environment because those soils were built over centuries with these diverse prairie grasses growing out there. And so it can be done, it's just much slower in a dry, brittle environment like that. And even in areas, you know, Grant works in a lot of areas that traditionally get a lot of rainfall, and they're hurting. What do you see, Grant, in some of these areas that typically get a lot of rainfall but now they haven't? Are they hurting? How resilient are some of those? What are you seeing there?

14:29 Yeah, you know, those folks like Chris Barry, whatever, that have had at least three or four years of good rotations of diverse covers and building great soil, man, they slid through this drought so much better than their neighbors or than I even expected. The pictures, Chris sends, are just shocking to me. And so improving soil and having your soil able to hold more water, like Keith says, and I think I first heard this from Keith many years ago, but it's not how much rain you get, it's how much you keep or how much infiltrates and stays in your soil there in the root zone. And it's amazing what just 12 inches of rain a year can do on really good soil and how little 60 inches of rain will do on bad soil.

15:18 Here's a good one from an anonymous attendee: how do you bring calcium back up to the root zone? Should I be adding lime? Should I be doing tillage? What should you be doing in this situation?

15:32 Well, let's don't till—that's not going to help us. I'll answer it easy. Let's not do tillage. From a lot of deer hunters, I get a lot of questions about liquid calcium, and there's a lot of research on this. It could be used maybe for micro situations, but the bottom line is calcium's kind of heavy. If your pH is really getting down there pretty low, it's going to take some pounds, not gallons, to really turn that pH around.

15:59 Don't you agree, Keith? Yeah, it will. You know, there's it's true that you have to do tillage to get your calcium into the soil when you have no biological activity in your soil. In a dead conventional system, yeah, that probably is needed, and that's where a lot of those recommendations come from. But if you've got earthworms, man, those earthworms are moving soil, distributing things, bringing things up, taking things down. If you've got any earthworm activity at all, I think you can spread lime on top and they'll get it worked in, they'll get it moving for you.

16:37 Here's the other thing I always remember this again from our early days, probably the first five years of green cover. Ray Ward Laboratories, Grant, you're very familiar with them—they're just 60 miles from us here. We've worked with Ray on lots and lots of different projects. He has a farm a couple hours away from us, and he did an experiment one year and planted two cover crop mixes in the summer after wheat harvest. One was mostly grass mix with other things in it, but the majority grass, and another one that was a majority broadleaves. Then he tested both the soil as well as the plant material from those two mixes. There was a significant difference in the calcium levels. The broadleaf plants typically have tap roots, deeper roots—they brought up lots more calcium than grasses did.

17:36 So I guess one of the things, if you think you've got a lot of calcium that has leached too low, I would plant a heavy broadleaf mix—things like sunflowers, cow peas, things that have those deeper big tap roots. Radishes would be really good here. Go a little heavier with the broad leaves, let them bring that up. Now you can't have 50 head of deer out there. I'm just amazed at some of the pictures that you send where not a single sunflower ever survives because they're great at bringing up some of those deeper nutrients.

18:10 So heavier broad leaves and grasses will definitely help cycle that. But yeah, if you're real low on pH, number one: stop putting nitrogen fertilizer on because that drives your pH down. And number two: you can add some lime and you do not have to till it in as long as you've got biological activity out there, is what I would say.

18:34 Keith, I think this might be a really great place just to interject, if I may. You know, if you've been planting our blends and you're getting limited progress, please, please, please, everyone out there, please have a utilization cage in every food plot. Just a basket that deer can't get their nose in, and see how tall the crops are getting where they're not being browsed versus outside where there is browse. Because if your crops are what I call lip-high—from when you're planting to when the season's over, they still not got over an inch or two high—the roots never got much development either, and you're not going to get the benefit of someone who's getting a bit more growth.

19:14 Yeah, and Keith has taught me it's okay to have a plant or two in your blends that aren't as palatable so you can get those soil health benefits while you're attracting and feeding deer. Yeah, it's a fine line to walk between wanting to feed the deer but also wanting to feed the soil.

19:37 So what percentage of the people who are planting food plots would you say have a utilization cage? Way too low. I don't know, 10%? Way less than 10%. Less than 10% have them was a better way to say that. Even clients of mine that have become friends that I know and I kind of heckle a little bit about it, I don't know. Folks, this is pretty easy construction to build a little cage out of something you got around. They're the most valuable tools. Guys, I get like, George finally put one up, light bulb goes on, you know, they say, 'Oh my gosh, I need to harvest some does or plant more acres of plots,' or you know, 'I got to find the balance in here.' Yeah, so I think they're one of the most important tools for food plot farmers there is. I would rank it up there or even over a soil test. I mean, they're just so important. Yeah, and it doesn't have to be.

20:26 Anything fancy. I mean I've seen some of yours, it's just some chicken wire with some posts and you know, you can use, you know, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to put one together. And you know, so it's almost no cost and not a ton of effort, especially if you put the effort into making one, remember where you put it from, so you can go out and utilize it again. You don't have to build a new one year. So yeah, no, that's great.

20:50 Going to move to a little bit different subject here. David is asking, this is a more of a tree question, so he's seen your episodes about double girdle hack and squirt and some of the newer herbicide mixtures to use. So his question is, well, see, you know what, maybe talk about some of the new herbicide mixtures for the hack and squirt method as well as the girdle and squirt. What he doesn't have a good hold on is when, you know, what month or what season is each technique most effective?

21:24 Okay, well, just real briefly, the ratio that a really good friend of mine, Dr. Craig Harper, Tennessee Martin University, came up with after a bunch of research—I'm grossly oversimplifying this—is 50% Garlon, G-R-L-N, 3A, not Garlon 4, Garlon 3A, 40% water and 10% Arsenal AC. And none of these are really new chemistries, but the combination is relatively new. And you want to mix the Garlon and water, then the Arsenal, because if you mix Arsenal and Garlon, it'll make a gel and you can't really use it, and you build messy.

21:59 So hacking squirt is simply making an incision with a hatchet or machete or something into the tree's cambium or tree circulatory system, and putting just a small amount, one trigger milliliter of that herbicide in the tree—one hack for reach three inches diameter—and that works best on most tree species when the leaves are fully formed. So let's call it June, whatever, depending on where you are, until the species of the trees you want to control—those leaves start changing colors. Other words, the sap is not moving the same right.

22:28 And girdle and squirt is just simply taking a chainsaw—I got a really light steel electrical saw, the battery lasts a long time because I'm not making firewood. I'm cutting through the bark. So you're not working that saw very hard. And making a girdle around tree, it doesn't have to hit exactly, but they have to overlap, so there's nowhere where the circulatory system has not been damaged. And then you squirt that, not full, just barely missed it in there, of that same recipe in girdle and squirt, which year round, you know, dormant or warm.

22:58 And one last thing I want to say about that is, great question, this is not like spraying a tuft of grass in your wife's flower garden with Roundup. You're spraying a fair amount of product for, you know, a few ounces of a plant with girdle or hack and squirt. You may be terminating something that weighs a ton or more with a couple of milliliters. So oftentimes it's weeks, months, or even the following spring green-up before you see that tree, you know, dropping leaves and obviously in the dying process. So you got to exercise a little patience when it comes to that.

23:30 Yeah, yeah. Going back, Sean's asking a question here, kind of a follow-up to what we were talking about before with balancing building soil versus growing deer. And he says, is that the case of sun hemp? He had his summer release had 10 foot tall sun hemp, which we, you know, we've seen some pictures of that. He could find no sign of deer browsing it, whereas they were eating the other components of the summer blend. Sun hemp is one of those things that some people love it, some people don't like it, because it gets so tall on them. What, well, first of all, talk a little bit about, you know, deer do, do deer eat it? And number two, if he's got 10 foot tall sun hemp, what do you think's happening out there?

24:15 So I think that's just about the same as radishes or turnips, if you will, common term. Some places deer love them, some places deer don't touch them. Deer are what I call concentrate select feeders—actually a lot of scientists use this term, came up with it—which basically means they eat the best in their range and ignore the rest. They eat the best. They don't get bored like we do. Boy, I don't want McDonald's again tonight, you know? They eat the best, ignore the rest. So in your area, if you had a pretty good crop, then sun hemp might be lower on that preference pole, and it's allowed to grow more and do more work in the soil, pump more nitrogen, all that. Other places, I see a mowed sun hemp off.

24:51 So it's a good component. When it gets so tall, it can be a pain, and Keith has been working on some maybe alternatives for that. But it has served a great purpose in our blends. And at my place, it's even different. Some years, boy, I mean, Keith's been here, they mow sun leaves as high as they can eat. By the way, folks, those leaves generally tested about same as alfalfa. It's pretty high quality forage. And in other years, when I've got a lot of really high quality forage like you, I don't, they eating this stuff, they not eating this stuff. But I know in the back of my mind it's always helping the soil. So I'm okay with it. And I too wish it wasn't 10 feet tall. I think he's working on something for us there.

25:34 Yeah, so there is a plant called mini sun hemp, mini red sun hemp. We had it in.

25:38 Our plots this year, you know it'll may still get six feet tall at full maturity but it looks like it's leafier and so the deer are never going to eat the sun hemp stem but they're going to browse those leaves off. And so what happens, I think, is if they don't get out there and start browsing those leaves early and that plant has 100% of its leaves, I mean that is a photosynthetic machine and that thing takes off and really grows. But if they're pinching a lot of those leaves off early, then that sun hemp plant has to grow new leaves before it can photosynthesize and it just really slows the whole process down. So if they're out there early browsing on it, it's going to stay shorter, whereas if like Grant said, if they're getting that nutrition that's in those leaves from other sources and they're not hitting on that, that plant just takes off and wants to go.

26:37 We had this mini sun hemp ordered last year. It's grown in Thailand, which is a long ways away, and you know, if you watch the news, you know how much of an issue shipping is, and especially that really needs to come through the Suez Canal. Well, that's where those Houthi pirates are holding up a lot of these ships. It just simply was not logistically possible to get that load of sun hemp into the country this year. So we're working on it now for even next summer because it just takes that long. You can't grow these things successfully for seed here in the states, and so we have to get that imported from other places.

27:20 Even when it gets that tall, it's doing great things for the soil. It's a legume so it's putting nitrogen in the soil, but it's also got a lot of carbon in that stock. And you know, if you have a roller crimper and you can knock that down, it's going to provide a lot of long lasting cover residue for your soil. If you don't have a crimper, just find something to drag across that, lean it over, knock it down the best that you can. I don't know that I would try to mow it. That could get ugly trying to mow ten foot tall sun hemp because it could really wrap up on your mower and stuff. It's better to just try to knock it over somehow.

28:05 Grant, have you successfully rolled down tall hemp? Well, you have to wait pretty late, right, because it stays viable and the crimper only terminates plants in that flowering stage. But what we have done, Keith, is mow it. And don't give me nasty looks here, Keith. We set our deck a little higher because if you mow it short, that sun hemp stalk can be stout and you might get a flat on your tractor. So no one likes that, so we set our deck so when a tire hits it, it's just rolling it over. It's not getting on top of it. Anyway, so like two feet high, yeah, foot and a half something like that.

28:44 Food plotters don't have as big of tractors as Keith has. And if you mow it higher, it doesn't tend to wad up. We've had zero issues versus if you're mowing a number six hemp or something, that could be an issue. But if you mow it higher, for whatever I don't understand the physics here, but we've not had any of those issues. But you need to plant first, folks, whether you're broadcasting or drilling. Plant first because you put all that tonnage on the ground, it's going to be really tough for the seeds to get contact with soil. So you plant first and then mow if you're going to use that option.

29:14 Always do that before, whether you're mowing, whether you're roller crimping, whatever it is, because that's the best chance to get that seed down to the ground for sure.

29:24 Okay, great. So here's a good question. This will be a fun one. Tim is asking if we can explain how and when each seed in the fall release germinates and when they come out of the ground, how do they provide quality food through March of next year? Do some germinate and go dormant? Let's talk about families of seed that's in the fall release. The super fall, you know, why do we have the different things in there? Some of them are better early, some of them over winter, some of them don't. Let's just spend a little bit of time talking about that because we spend a lot of time talking about what should go in there and what quantities, what ratios, because each plant does have a purpose.

30:08 Keith and Cotton and Zach and I and even others at times will have these big conference calls or in person. We got all kinds of spreadsheets and stuff. Well, if we do this, or do we need a half pound of this? It's not just, hey, we got some seed here folks. It's a lot. It's a brain game for a while. So I'll start off with just small grains, which are grasses: wheat, rye, oats are the common ones. Everyone's familiar with them and they're pretty hardy seed. I like to say, boy, put a little moisture in the back of your pickup, they'll germinate. They're going to die after a while, but they'll germinate and grow.

30:45 A good basis for food plots because you can count on them. They're pretty drought hardy. We talked about that earlier. They're going to grow. Deer kind of have a little bit of a preference, that's why you see us having a bunch of different stuff and blends. They tend to eat the oats first, and then the wheat, and then the cereal rye. But the cereal rye, why we have it in there, is really cold hardy. So when it gets really cold for any of us, you know, north of the coastline here, that rye grows down to what, 28, 30 degrees. That once it's established and it's green as a garden, doing good, and those deer are going to be nailing it. And it also has a big root system and a lot of cover to crimp and stuff like that. So again, every plant has a design or a purpose. And that's kind of small grains. Then we have legumes. Deer love legumes, almost all these I can think of, and they make nitrogen for the next crop. So we're going to have some clovers or alfalfa, depending on what you buy and where you live. Your mission stuff like that. We may have something that's not going to make it through, like sunflowers. I get a lot of questions: why would anyone put sunflowers in a fall blend? Well, we know they're never going to make a seed head, folks, but they're relatively inexpensive, keeps the price down, and deer love sunflowers. So if we can put a big seed so German quickly, pretty drought hardy, so we put some sunflowers in there, just a couple pounds, and get deer head down in your food plot right in front of the hunter right off the bat. Who doesn't like that? So again, there's a purpose for all these. And I like Keith saying the families, all these different groups of plants, and then within the groups we work on oats. May freeze out up north or something. How many pounds of oats do we want in there versus wheat? Always a beardless wheat, nothing, you know. And cereal rye. There's a lot that goes in these blends. It's not just.

32:28 And that's where Keith and his team are so strong, because I don't, I'm sure I'm not supposed to say anything, but you know, they deal with enough cover crop seed to plant, you know, the Western third of America or something like that. I don't know how many acres, but it's a bunch. So the facilities are huge. And so they have all this experience from the production side that we food plotters get to take advantage of. And that's what, that's a huge attraction to me.

32:56 Well, you know, we'll ship 30 million, 35 million pounds of seed out every year. You know, so we're covering, you know, probably close to a million acres, you know, give or take. It's a little hard to know, but yeah, we cover a lot of area. So we get to. And then it's all over, you're right. You know, we get to see a lot of different situations, and you're exactly right. You know, the diversity is out there for a reason. And like you said with the summer release, it's the same with the fall ones. You can plant the exact same mix, exactly the same time, every single year, and it will look like a different mix every year because you have different weather conditions. Sometimes your soil's going to be different, and that diversity, you know, resilience comes from diversity. And you need resilience because you don't know what the weather conditions are going to be like. Is it going to be really wet? Is it going to be really dry? And you'll see even within your field, you'll have different things expressing here that weren't over here. Well, that's telling you something. Now, what is it telling you? We're not sure. It's a little hard to know, but it's probably telling you something about compaction. Probably telling you something about the mineral or the nutrient composition of that soil. It may tell you, you know, you may see deer browsing some areas of a food plot much harder than others because again, they've taken in nutrients differently because of the difference in soil conditions, the different biological interactions. There's so much we don't know. To me, that makes it super exciting because we are still learning a lot of different things.

34:32 Now we also have peas in the fall release, and again, those are a high protein, high nitrogen type product. And then I think there's radishes in there. You know how much deer love the radishes and turnips and brassicas like that. So kind of a little bit of everything. But yeah, we definitely want it to overwinter, the rye particularly, because great weed control and great forage. You know, it'll green up before anything else. And you're right, rye will photosynthesize all the way down to 34 degrees, which is incredible. Nothing else does that. That's why it's green. And if you're 34 degrees, sun is shining, that rye is taking in carbon out of the atmosphere and it's putting it into the soil. So you're literally building your soil all year round. It's not slowing down. Well, it slows down, but it's not stopping. Like wheat kind of tends to go brown, brownish, during the winter time. Oh, that means it's not going to photosynthesize till it wakes up and breaks dormancy. So different, different.

40:41 I'm going to plant another 10 or 20% per acre to help compensate for not all seeds making good contact soil. You don't want it get caught on a milkweed leaf or something where there's really no chance to get that root down to the soil. So plant a little bit heavier and right before a good rain will help compensate for that situation.

41:03 If you're broadcasting into that thick mat or all of that residue, have you ever after broadcasting dragged a harrow or just anything to shake everything? Because when you shake that, it's going to help those seeds find their way down. Gravity is going to take them down. Have you seen anybody do that successfully just dragging an old harrow or bed spring or something?

41:30 I hear about that a lot. I'm so opposed to soil disturbance that, to be honest, I sold my last soil piece of equipment except a no-till drill and a griper over 20 years ago. I've been no-tilling for 20 years, folks. So I'm sure that would work. I myself would rather, if I could, up my planting rate a little bit and wait on that rain. Everything think about waiting on rain. If it's dry, the seeds not growing anyway, right? It's just sitting out there reducing its viability day after day for a lot of reasons or getting consumed by a squirrel or rodent or a bird or something. So but yeah, that would work.

42:09 Lot and lot of us, we don't know the scales. Are we talking a quarter acre food plot or a 10 acre food plot? So you got to be realistic and use your management situation for what you're dealing with. And I think Keith and I would both agree to release process. Virginia bag takes a bit more thinking or management than just discing and planting. But the results, like in my place, folks, I'm not adding any lime fertilizer, very very little herbicide. To put it in scale, I'm split by county line. Counties are pretty big in Missouri. Stone, that's how rocky is Stone County and Taney County. And our county record before we started doing all this was a 131, now not all deer registered but back in the day if you killed a big deer, you know, you want to brag about a little bit. And we have killed and had our hands on, not just estimating off camera, 170 inch deer. So our habitat work, our food crops are making a difference here. And that's what I'm going for. Not all 170 inch deer, but allowing deer to express their full potential. Healthy deer is what I'm after.

43:15 Yeah, yeah. And I would agree with you that we don't want to see soil disturbance, but sometimes we can see some residue disturbance if you can do that. So what I would recommend is, if it's a small plot, go out there broadcast and then find something, an old bed spring or just anything, hook it behind your ATV and do half of the field or do 30 feet. Don't do the whole thing because then you don't really know if it helped or it hurt or it made no difference. But do part of it because now you just did an experiment. You just did a trial and now you can watch and see. Yeah, you know what? I like the way that worked. That wasn't that hard to do. And I think I got, you know, X better, or, you know, 20% more seed here but not here. And then put a flag out there and watch that. It's not that hard to do some of these experiments. You just have to kind of think through, 'What would happen if?' and then go do it. But don't do the whole thing or you don't ever learn because you can't see the difference.

44:20 Yes. Logan has several questions here. This is a really interesting one. I'm interested in because I really don't know the answer. He's asking, is cotton a preferred food source for deer in your opinion? I've gotten a lot of mixed answers about this. I wanted your professional opinion. You know, I was just working all across the South last week. Cotton's one crop that farmers never worry about deer damage. They just really, it's kind of thorny. If you never been around cotton, it's kind of thorny, sticky. It's not a real pleasant plant to go, you know, rub your hand up a stalk or something. So no, cotton's not. Now, some people feed maybe the very cotton seed meal stuff like that to deer, which can have issues because it can actually reduce the testosterone level in deer. So you don't want to be feeding that right for the rut. Or you could actually reduce the viability of some of your bucks out there. But cotton plants is just not an issue. And I remember early on in the summer, you know, that first version of summer release, I think we put some okra in there. Okra is in the cotton family. And yeah, it turned out to not be very palatable. Now they'll potentially eat the okra pods, but that's a pretty small part of the plant overall. We pulled that out because it just wasn't accomplishing the goals.

45:38 He's also asking a question about mineral. Have you had experience of deer not using mineral sites even though they're plenty of deer regularly traveling?

45:46 Through the area, do you think cattle blocks versus powdered mineral makes a difference? I don't think they're consuming that finding that by their nose, so I don't think powder or cattle block. I think it'd be more the composition. Those blocks, a lot of cattle blocks of course have a water-based adhesive to hold it together, right? They squeeze that in the press. They make them squeeze it in the press. You look close, you see the lines where they pressed it there, so it's going to be the content of it.

46:13 One thing I will say, and the cattle guys have found the same way: if you have really diverse crops out there or really diverse natural habitat, deer won't go to that salt much. And a lot of cattle farmers have really, you know, they may have used to have a budget of two, three, or four thousand dollars a year just for mineral for the cattle. They've cut that way down or even stopped it because their cows are eating such diverse mixtures of plants.

46:37 Just one last thing there: two major universities have done research about deer using minerals and does it increase antler size, because really that's the question everyone's got about minerals. And neither study has shown adding minerals or supplemental minerals to make any difference in antler size. It's a great thing to put out if you're not in the CWD zone, get pictures of deer. Certainly when plants are growing really rapidly, they have a lot of moisture content. Deer are coming for the salt, not the other minerals necessarily, but salt. And you're going to get pictures of deer there.

47:08 Interesting. Now I know in the cattle world we see pretty regularly that as soil health improves, the plants are accumulating more minerals from the soil because the minerals are in the soil, but the plants can't get them without the biology. So as the biology in your soil improves, the plants will get more minerals, and then when the cattle eat that, they consume less free-choice mineral because they're getting what they need from the plants. Do you see that with the deer also?

47:39 Probably see it more because deer are more selective, picking plants based on what they need more than cattle, which are big grass eaters. So I think they can find those minerals even easier. And I'll share this with y'all: Queen Anne's lace is an invasive exotic, not really invasive, not from America, and it's considered a weed everywhere. And I never, never heard, never saw, never even knew deer ever touched it. And just by chance, a buck I was after, late summer antler starting to harden, deer needing calcium, and a buck I was after just happened right in front of a camera picture. Walked up to a Queen Anne's lace and took two or three big leaves off there. And the next day I went and pulled several leaves and sent them to a lab right there. The next plant over, you tried to get same size, same height up the plan, all these things. And at that season, at that particular growth point of that plant, Queen Anne's lace is extremely high in calcium. And deer, through photoreflection in their eyes and their nose and all these things, that buck knew that plant was really high in calcium. He had not read the books that deer don't eat Queen Anne's lace. And he was just, you know, nailing it because he needed calcium at that time.

48:50 Well, that's the concentrate selectors and they try really hard to find what they need. Yeah, and I think that's a great point that it's important to plant these food plots, you know, like what we're talking about, but it's also important to have some areas where you just let native vegetation grow. Some of that may be weeds, what we call weeds, but there's going to be times when that's going to be a valuable food source or a valuable source of nutrition for the deer as well.

49:18 Absolutely. Yeah, so you know, don't get caught up or tied up in that. Yeah, Robert's asking a question. He says he rents the county no-till drill, and you know, like a lot of counties, they probably don't maintain it very well. It's kind of worn out. Doesn't get a lot of penetration, but it does kind of plant neat rows. Is that worth it if it's not getting that very good penetration, or should he just broadcast?

49:45 Yeah, Robert, I started out renting drills, but Tracy and I couldn't afford to buy drills to start with. And my land was literally so rocky. I remember this so clearly. I didn't know what I was doing. And someone gave me some soybean seed. It was all orange because it was treated. I would never have that on my land now, but back in the day, and I would plant by looking down and seeing those orange seeds in a row. They were literally laying on top of the soil, but I certainly got contact with the soil versus broadcasting, where I may not have. So I do think what you're describing is better than broadcasting in a lot of situations.

50:18 Yeah, no, I would agree. And I've seen your soil. I would never rent you my drill, you know. Everything's hard on equipment. Yeah, so it's no wonder some of these drills are pretty worn out going over some of those rocks. You know, we're here in Nebraska. The glaciers never made it here, you know? We've got really nice soils.

50:42 Only rocks that are out there are the ones that man has put out there through, you know, foundations, Limestone foundations or something. So we're very fortunate, very blessed with that. We're thankful for that.

50:55 We're kind of coming up on time here, but we do have time for a few more here. Horus is asking a good question because of the intense heat right now. He's asking are there chances to damage seed viability when the food plot seed that they're ordering is in transit to them, you know, especially when it leaves our place and it gets on a truck and it goes to this warehouse and then it goes to that warehouse and by the time they get it is there a chance that that can be damaged from the heat. I mean, you know, you ship 30 million pounds a year so you're infinitely more qualified than me to address that, but I, you know, as a practical person, seeds been shipped every year for a long time and I never hear of that.

51:43 Horus, that is a good question. It's certainly heat can damage seed for sure. When the seed leaves our warehouses, it's not cold—we're not keeping it in cold storage—but it's probably in the 80s. To really hurt the germination of seed, you're going to have to exceed probably 130 to 140 for an extended period of time. Typically, heat itself isn't nearly as harmful as if it's heat combined with moisture, and that's almost always when we have heat damaged seed. It's always because somehow that seed got wet—maybe it got harvested wet and put in there and it never dried out, maybe somebody left the bin lid open or the roof leaked or something. It's almost always heat that's caused from moisture and now that seed is starting to swell and things are starting, you know, the biology is starting to come alive. That's generally—a dry heat isn't nearly as hard on seed.

52:50 I don't know that we've ever really seen an issue with that. You can store seed in the desert Southwest under hot but dry conditions. You know, they found seeds in Egypt that are centuries old and still viable because it's dry. But you go down to Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Florida—man, I would not want to keep seed very long down there because it's that humidity combined with the heat that really hurts things. So I don't think, you know, even if it takes a week to get to you, it's not collecting enough moisture in combination with the heat to really be an issue there. But certainly when you get it, put it under cover somewhere, keep it as shaded as possible. Just have good ventilation. Make sure you have ventilation. You know, you wouldn't want to put it inside of a Poncix type trailer where the heat builds up and then it can't escape. So just if you take care of it like that, I think you'll be okay.

53:58 Well, Grant, do you have any questions for me?

54:03 Keith, I'll just say I've really learned so much from you through our years of partnership and super blessed to have that partnership. So I think I will share with people that Keith and I and Colton and Zach are always looking, I think maybe globally, certainly in many countries for better options. But there is no magic bean. There's not one plant that's inexpensive and drought resistant but grows with its feet wet and cold hardy but can take the summer heat. And that's one really big reason I've always liked blends because you can cover multiple bases with different plants. And Keith has refined that approach way more than I would have ever got on my own.

54:49 Yeah, it's always fun to, you know, we just had our summer field days here a few weeks ago and we've got 10 different plots of things that we look at and are always evaluating. And Grant, you know, I think every year that we've worked together you've always got some sort of an experimental blend going. Some years it's like that was a good idea, but you know what, that didn't work. And then, you know, like last year we tried the Ash anomman and it's like, man, you know what, that seed's kind of expensive, but man does it really work. We got to figure out how to find more of that. So I would say that's a big success story. Maybe that's a kind of a good story to close on, maybe just talk a little bit about that. You know, Ashami—it's American joint vetch is what it is, but Ashami is the scientific name—because people are going to be able to see that in some of the more premium summer blends next year. But just talk briefly about that plant because it is an exciting thing.

55:54 It's semitropical or tropical, goes expensive as Keith referenced. I had to nudge Keith a little bit to get him to try it up there. But it's real slow to start, so you would not want it by itself. I mean, you're going for the first three weeks, gosh, where's all that seed I paid for, and then it kind of gets going.

56:11 Slow and that's where the other species and the blend are coming on. But right now, even now we're almost in September where I am we've been hot and dry. Last week we had 100 plus degree heat index every day and deer is still head down. I've been, and Keith and Cat and Zach, pictures look at this deer head down to my food plot and it's reaching below to Milo head. It's eating some Milo, too, reach and below, getting that Ashen Omni, which has just really impressed me on my rough rocky soils. We've had some of our best friends try it also. Keith and I, and it's going great in a lot sandy soil, my rocks, you know, some clay. So we're going to certainly be incorporating more of that in the future. Again, it's spicy so in some of the more premium blends. But if you've got a lot, I'm going to tell you right now if you've got a lot of deer and not a lot of acres of food plots, my land's deep, we're kind of limited where we can put food plots and you want to that deer expressing its full potential. Asham is a legume, it's high in protein. It's pumping nitrogen soil and Zach and Colton were here recently. We pulled up some plants, but kind of hurt me because I want the deer eating them and the roots, you know, we're nodulating, we're making nitrogen in really harsh conditions. So yeah, I'm super impressed with that and super excited to work with the green cover crew to really tweak those blends and get that right, you know, not too much because it is expensive, but just enough to cover the feed we want. And I will say confidently I'm producing more pounds per acre with it, and by far in harsh conditions than without, and it's done a great job of suppressing weeds because it gets kind of matty thick and it's really, I'm a fan.

57:50 Yeah, and you know, and again this is, it's so cool to be able to see the great diversity that God put into creation, you know, when he created all these plants, because the reason that it seems really slow at first I'm convinced is because it spends the first part of its life growing down. It's growing a root system. It's established in itself. So when it gets hot, no problem, I've got deep roots. I'm pulling up that moisture, you know. I'm, I can handle it. And we see other plants like that, you know, the fixation clover, Bona, fix a little bit like that too. It's kind of a slow starter because it's growing a root system and then when it takes off and goes, man, it hits the afterburners and it really goes. And so you need some plants that take off and go really fast and aren't going to last till the end of the race, and then you need something that starts slow so they can come on at the end. And that, and again, that's the beauty of a diverse mix because you can get both.

58:52 Yeah, well I think we're up against our time here. I want to respect everyone's time. I appreciate everybody who has logged on and listened and all the folks that will be watching this on our YouTube channel down the road. We hopefully provided some good information. I know we didn't get to everybody's questions. We'll have to do this again. Grant, I enjoyed it a lot. I always learn a lot in visiting with you and you know from the comments and comments that people make. And that might just be a little bit of a plug: if you aren't part of the green cover food plot Facebook group community, reach out to us, we can get you added into there. That's a great place to ask these questions. Grant, I know you're on there answering questions a lot. Colton and I chime in once in a while. But the beauty of that is that you have other food plotters helping to answer the questions because that's really where the deep knowledge is. It's the guys that are doing it. So if you're not part of that community, reach out to us, we can get you connected there. You can ask your questions on there and let the community answer it because it really is a community of people that make it work and make it happen. So fun to see those ones that have, you know, I don't know, six, eight different comments below it. There's really good community or interaction in a kind, polite way. It's one of the few—it's the only Facebook group I'm part of, except our own of course. And it's, you know, there's just no naughtiness there. A, we wouldn't allow it, and B, it's a really good group of people that care about deer, creation, and plants. It's just really a comfortable group to be part of. And it's refreshing to go on social media and not get bogged down with all the yuck that's happening out there. There's plenty of that. This is just for, you know, getting your questions answered and making comments. Don't be afraid to put on there, 'Hey, me, I did this and wow, you know, this is great,' and you know, and people will go, 'That looks great,' and you know, post pictures of the deer you harvest. That's what it's there for.

1:00:56 Encourage you to join that if you haven't yet. We can certainly get you connected with that. So Grant, thank you so much. Jonathan, thank you for running things in the background. Thank you, everybody, for joining and we hope to do this again sometime soon. Enjoy creation, everyone. Good night.