Planting Dates

Planting dates change across the country. You can not go by what the dates say on the bag of food plot seed you bought.

The question always pops of this time of year and its “when do I plant my Spring summer food plot” I must get this question 100 times a year. The fact is it’s a hard question to answer because I don’t live where you live. Only you know best when the correct time to plant is and I will go over that in this blog.

Instead of asking what date should you plant, you should be saying to yourself ok what is the current weather conditions and when is my general last frost for my area. For me here in MD my “last” frost is generally around May the 15th. Now am I going to plant on that exact date no. That is just a general time frame.

My second property out in western PA that last frost date will be a couple weeks later. So I will be looking to plant in that general time frame. The reason I bring this up is because usually when you buy food plot seed it will have a seed tag on it. On that tag it will give you a time frame to plant such as April-June. Well that is a huge gap in time so when the heck do you plant.

April where I live could be 30 degrees and snowing. April where you live could be 70 and sunny. So that’s why I refer back to only you know when to plant. A simple google search will tell what the general last frost date is in the area you live.

once you have that general last frost date figured out the second thing you need to look at is the soil temp where you want to plant. These food plot seeds we plant in the spring and summer love heat. Seeds such as buckwheat, sunflowers, soybeans, iron clay peas, egyptian wheat and so on love heat!

The biggest fails I see from others is planting to early because people get excited and want to plant something. That is a great thing but you need to wait! otherwise you could plant the seed may germinate because you have a few warm days and then you have a frost and everything dies then you blame the seed and the company for it failing. I see this over and over and over. So please wait!

Those dates on a food plot seed tag again is just a general idea. They can get you going in the right direction but it boils down to you planning things out a little more.

Spring and summer food plot programs are a great way to help feed deer and other wildlife in areas that are limited on food. Improving the habitat should be your number 1 goal so deer have quality woody browse and fall food. Food plots are a supplemental program. Natural browse is the backbone to all healthy deer herds.

For a example here in the north east “Maryland” I will looking to plant around 3rd week of may if I was planting buckwheat or soybeans. In western PA I will be planting sometime around first to second week of June. There is a time and place for everything!

One last thing. Planting to early the food plot seeds will take longer to germinate which means weed seeds have time to grow faster then your food plot seed. That means weeds could out do your plot. If you Just wait to plant later in the season before a rain the food plot seeds can germinate quickly so it can smother out the weeds. less weeds more volume of a food plot you get!

PEACE!