Y’all got’em planted yet?

[Willie T]

AG, Post Oak is a site indicator of either a tight poorly drained soil or a site with a shallow soil on top of a layer that keeps the soil from perking very well. In other words, when it gets wet to the point of saturation, it takes a while to dry out. Sawtooth needs a well drained site.
JTracyII, ph of 7 is neutral. Just below that is slightly acidic. If it's in the 6's or a little lower you should be OK.
Willie

[JTracyII]

AG, Post Oak is a site indicator of either a tight poorly drained soil or a site with a shallow soil on top of a layer that keeps the soil from perking very well. In other words, when it gets wet to the point of saturation, it takes a while to dry out. Sawtooth needs a well drained site.
JTracyII, ph of 7 is neutral. Just below that is slightly acidic. If it's in the sizes 6's or lower you should be OK.
Willie

Thanks WIllie,

I may have similar issues to AG though. I am right in the midst of the Cross Timber region, which as you probably know is dominated by a mixture of Blackjack, Post Oak and prairie grass. I had Eastern Red cedar all over my land when I bought it. They have been cut down and mostly burned. When the guy to do the perc test came out he told my builder that my land would likely not perc, and when my builder asked why he noted all of the Easter Red Cedar and the few Blackjacks on the property, and said when they are the trees primarily present it typically indicates heavy clay soil that doesn't drain well. He was right. I had to go with an aerobic, which has not been a problem at all. The area I planted these trees is on a bit better soil further down a hill than soil right around where I built. Anyway, thanks for your insight and I'll hope for the best, but I'll plan to plant a mixture of other deer enticing trees as well, such as a few more pear, persimmon, to ensure I'll have food for them.

I went with Hackberry around my house as my understanding is they are "one tough tree" and once established can do well on most sites. They also block wind fairly well and provide an abundant crop of berries. I am hoping they will entice the quail to hang out a bit more often on my property one of these days. I'll probably plant some Hazelnut trees/bushes here and there around the property for this reason at some point as well.

[Flyingm]

Yeah Hackberrys are tough. they also volunteer easily. Expect to see them up next to your foundation and your garden , etc.
I grew up with Hackberry trees along our house. It didn't take long before my father cursed them and regretted planting them.
Seems to me they suffered wind damage quite frequently as well. we eventually chain sawed the demons down. But, the volunteers kept springing up tears and years later.
Folks sold the house after about fifty years and those volunteer hackberry trees kept on coming. I still drive by the old place and still see Hackberrys coming up along the fence among the Lagostroms, and along the southeast corner of the house nestled amognst the water meter.
So, before warned. By the way, they did make for some decent firewood.

[AverageGuy]

Seems we have several on this board who are pursuing habitat work and we have had a good thread going here. I thought I would share an easy strategy that has worked well on my farm. I use a wide variety of grains and green browse food plots, but probably the easiest is to till up ground in July and plant ceral rye, tillage radishes and turnips. I mow the plot and then spray with roundup to kill the existing vegetation, then till it with 3pt tiller on my tractor. I get a fertilizer buggy at the coop and have them mix N, P, K, pelletized lime and Rye and Radish seeds and then spread in one pass. I then run a cultipacker over the ground and then hand seed in the turnip seed and cultipack it again. Done. Photos of the life cyle of this type of plot.

The plot in October 2017. A great deal of green browse tonnage for deer and turkeys and tubers for winter feed.



The Deer pounding the Radishes in Nov



Nice 8 pt cruising the plot in Nov



Same plot April 2018 when the rye is greening up. Note the Little Bluesteam cover at the edge.



Same Plot today with the Rye all headed out and native forbs blooming



View looking down. Lots of bare ground - Excellent Brood Habitat for quail and turkeys with Little Bluestem CRP bordering on 3 sides for nesting. In July I will till it up and repeat for another year then rotate to soybeans or corn. In the alternative a guy can spray and mow it in late august and overseed ladino clover and wheat, mow off the wheat the following spring and have a clover plot for several years ...



That rye/radish/turnip plot butts up to another plot which is a qtr mile long and 50 yards wide with Little Bluestem CRP along both sides and the far end. Last fall it was in soybeans and this year it is in corn. The long and narrow design creates a great deal more edge habitat where winter cover, nesting cover and escape cover are next to fall/winter food and bare ground for brood habitat. Much better design than square fields/plots as well as staying up on the ridgetop keeps soil erosion to a minimum.

I was hunting from an open air treestand over the plot on Dec 29th, 2017 in 3 degrees and snow and took a nice 10pt with my muzzleloader. While hunting I heard and saw quail feeding in the soybeans and watched a Coopers Hawk trying to feed on a quail. With one half mile of good tall warm season grass and then woody cover next to that it provides winter thermal cover, predator escape cover and food. I finished putting up a hot wire fence around this morning to keep the deer from eating all the corn plants before they have a chance to put on ears. I took the photo this morning from the same treestand.



Thought it might give some of you fellow habitat managers some ideas.

[Flyingm]

Outstanding! Thanks for sharing!

[AverageGuy]

Outstanding! Thanks for sharing!

You bet. Someone shared it with me once was how I learned it.

[Bigearl]

open source screen capture

Won’t be late no now! Started hogging dirty wheat standing next to this 2 acre plot of sunflowers already. Doves seem to have had a descent hatch this year and already have a hundred or two using this field. The first Saturday of September has always been one of, if not, my favorite day of the year!!

[AverageGuy]

Those sunflowers look good Bigearl.

Not sure how our dove season is going to go around here. Severe drought has caused crop failure and the Sunflowers are not going to produce filled out seed. None of the corn has produced normal size filled out ears and unless something happens very soon the soybeans will not fill in the pods either. A bunch of corn has been cut for silage due to no grain and needing a substitute for hay to feed cattle this winter. Our CRP has been released for haying and that is going on at a furious pace. If the season was open now a guy could shoot a few doves in the silage fields but with it a month away I am not certain if those fields will still be attractive by then. Might be a poor year for doves around here.

[Bigearl]

Sorry to hear about the drought AG. We all go through it. Droughts are the primary reason we’ve started leaving winter wheat standing all summer in our dove field. It’s not to hard to get a descent wheat crop and it will stand all summer in a drought. Using wheat along side say sunflowers and/or brown top millet has proven to be a good combo.

[LongHammer]

Sorry to hear about you fellas troubles. The drought here has all the doves in town. I have never seen so many mature white wings. Opening day here looks like it will be a 1 hour drive to the dairy and a 20 minute limit then Eurasians till it get too hot. I am already stocking up on ginger beer teriyaki sauce pineapple and bacon. Very few things I would rather eat than a whole mess of dove boobs.