Weighting the pros/cons of 2nd year food plots vs weed pressure

C

cyclonenation10

Well-known member
I've traditionally been a huge fan of leaving ours food plots go fallow in year 2 (especially corn), as you get a great flush of annual weeds for brood rearing, etc.

However, with weed pressure as tough as it is here in Eastern Iowa, it's become an uphill battle in most of our plots to keep the weeds out when we go to plant.
Letting herbicide resistant weeds like water hemp take over and go to seed in year 2 makes the weed battle awfully challenging the following year.

Trying to weigh the pros and cons here, and I'm just kind of stuck. Leaning towards replanting all of our plots each year to give us a fighting chance against many of these noxious weeds, but wasn't sure what anyone else had expereienced?
 
Yeah, I think I'd just keep up with the plot as a general take. Good timing on the post - I just got my second year plot planted yesterday.

Would you let some plots go fallow and plant some? Would that be the idea?

I like the idea of ragweed, milkweed, foxtail, etc for the birds but I don't love it vs providing standing winter food especially if you have some forb/weed diversity around the area. I had my first "plot" I ever planted disked and it turned into ragweed and milkweed galore. It was beautiful umbrella-like broadleaf cover for the birds that year. Not sure how how yours is looking at the moment, but it's too late to disk it and let it go at this point.

What do you normally do for spraying/planting plots?
 
So our general philosophy is to plant about half our plots each year, and leave the other half go fallow, so we always have fresh plots (food) and second year plots full of weeds (great brooding, etc.).

For example, our one property is about 115 acres. We have thee, 3 acre food plots. Corn, Sorghum, Sunflowers. I would love to just plant half of each 3 acre plot each year, and leave the other half fallow, but I think it's just going to introduce too much for weeds.

Right now, I'm using S-Metolachor as pre emergent on corn, sorghum, and sunflowers. For corn, I usually just spray 2x with glyphosate, though have used 24d early on before. Sorghum I may use 24d early on, and then First Act for grasses (this is DoubleTeam Traited Sorghum). For sunflowers, I just sprayed imox (clearfield variety) and may follow with clethodim in a couple weeks if there is much for grassy weeds.
 
Gotcha gotcha. If it's me, I'd let my pollinator areas do the brood rearing work and keep on top of any noxious weeds in the plots. I haven't been all that on top of marsetail on my property, for example, and it's in the CRP a bit. Maybe you aren't having a similar issue, but containing where you want weeds and where you don't is a tough game 😅

Maybe you were light for brood rearing cover in the past since I think you're going into year 2 of your CRP now? But now that the CRP should be going strong with native forbs here on out, I might lean toward just planting half of your plots in a form heavy brood rearing mix and leaving it alone since you're leaving half as that cover that in your plots currently with the rotation or you could just plant it all to food. I'm not so sure the fallow year for the plots recharges the soil that much. Maybe a cover crop in the fall until you replant the next year in the spring would benefit the soil even more.
 
As with agriculture, it is good to rotate crops with different growth seasons and types. If, as you indicate, you have several food plots it would be wise to do a row crop, small grain, legume rotation of some type. This would help break the weed cycle due to the different tillage dates of the various crops. Worth consideration.
 
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