Garden and Food Plot Update

Weeks of 95 degree weather have taken its toll.  The pumpkins are starting to wilt and the melons aren't looking too happy.  I've been watering and spraying with fungicide but they're still in distress.

But I'm still getting some production.  The zuchinni keeps going and for the first time in a few years, we've got some corn.  I have tried corn about five times and have only actually eaten it once.  I have lost previous attempts to deer, drought, and weeds.

This year, the challenge is bugs.  I haven't been spraying for bugs so I share the harvest with the bugs.  I don't mind as long as they let me have some.

It actually looks pretty good - I think we'll try it tonight.

This cantalope didn't make it.  The vines are looking pretty stressed but there's decent looking melons that should be ripe soon - hope that they make it.

Both the cantalope and watermelon fruit looks good but the vines look like they're dying.

Watermelon (pumpkins infringing).

Lots of pumpkins but some of them are distressed.  There are 4 or 5 varieties and some are holding up to the weather better than others.  The white tape is a deer repellant.  I got into growing pumpkins because the deer didn't bother them too much.  Since I discovered this deer tape, I've been experimenting with other things that the deer might otherwise eat.

I planted the fall annual food plots this weekend.  This is the "Driveway Stand".  The main part of the field (green part) is soybeans.  I planted brassica and turnips in the dirt strips.  These stay green later into the fall providing deer winter forage.  In addition to eating the greens on the turnips, the deer are supposed to dig up the root bulbs in the winter after the other food sources disappear.  I'm not sure how well it will work since the soil is pretty heavy clay.

These are the forage soybeans that I planted in the spring.  They are warm season deer food.  I was having trouble with annual weeds in my plots (galinsoga and lambsquarter).  The weeds were choking out just about anything that I planted.  I was advised to try Roundup Ready Soybeans and it worked well.  The deer love them (notice bare stalks) and whenever the weeds start to take over, you just spray the field with Roundup and the beans are the only thing that survive.

To prepare the fields for planting, I plowed up the strips about a month ago.  Here I am disking the strips to break up the soil.  This is the old John Deere.

Next, since I've been having trouble with the annual weeds, I spray the fields with a product called Prowl.  It stifles the weeds.  Then I drag the field with a chain drag to work the Prowl in and compact the soil.  Then I spread the seed with a broadcast sprayer.  Notice the temperature on the trail camera - 94 degrees.  It was hot.

This is a plot by the orchard. The majority of the field is in soybeans but I just planted the brassica and turnips in strips around the edges.

This is a plot by the pond.  The ridge top is in a clover and chicory mix.  A new lower field (to the right of this picture) is in clover.  These strips in between were planted in brassica.

This is the same plot by the pond.  The view is from up at the stand looking down at the new field.  I was racing to get the planting done because a thunderstorm rolled in at about 7:00.  It dropped about 0.3" of rain (which we needed and helped with the planting).

This plot is by the firepit.  It was all in sunflowers earlier this year.  The sunflowers have gone to seed and are still standing on the far side of the plot.  This plot was planted in brassica.  There's alot of ragweed mixed in with the sunflowers.