No doubt I would rather have the rain of 2015 so far than the droughts of 2012 and 2013.  But the rains have posed a challenge this year in getting food plots sprayed.  Three separate times I’ve tried spraying only to get rained out each time.

An unintended experiment took place however that I learned from.  Two weeks ago I started spraying my soybeans on a morning before heavy rains were forecast…not by choice but because it is literally the only time I had available.  I started spraying and finished about 2 hours later and it started raining pretty hard about 20 minutes later.  So, I had a range of over 2 hours to about 20 minutes before rain.  The result…as expected!  The first plots to get sprayed had very good control of weeds tapering off quite dramatically around that one hour rain fast mark.  The last plots to get sprayed with only 20 minutes before rain showed some signs of weed control but many of the weeds were coming back strong.  The pigweeds which I always have trouble with seemed almost unharmed in the later plots.  I try to never allow weeds to reach maturity and seed out.

I often get asked about spraying late into the season.  The concern is running over the food plot and killing wanted plants.  While this may happen, letting weeds mature and seed out is a much worse scenario.  Soybeans will generally bend over but many will come back…my advice is to always spray even if you sacrifice some wanted plants.

You can barely notice where I sprayed these soybeans. Most of the plants that have been run over will make it but the pigweed I was targeting will not.  The cereal grain type plant you see is some winter rye that made it past my first spraying.  This field only had 20 minutes before it rained after spraying with glyphosate about 2 weeks ago.  The beans here are about 12-14 inches high.

Soybeans seeded in winter rye (planted last fall) always do great for me. The winter rye seems to help the beans get out of the ground weed free and also helps with browsing from deer.

This spring, I top dressed my clover and alfalfa with a high potash fertilizer.  Now is a good time to mow these plots to keep them clean of broadleafs that may be coming in.  Mowing also helps these plants regrow more tender foliage that deer prefer.

An interior clover plot that needs a good mowing.

My cameras this time of year are on the most preferred food sources…beans and alfalfa.

I saw one really nice buck this past week in velvet so the cameras came out in force!  Not a lot of useful information to obtain this time of year but its fun to see what’s out there.