Week 7: Preparing the Soil for Food Plots
Soil preparation is vital to raising a successful food plot; a lot can go wrong in this step of preparing a food plot area. I contribute 30-50% of food plot failures due to poor soil preparation, soil to seed contact is crucial to starting a food plot in the right direction. As you seen in the video clip, with new site areas set your tillage fairly deep, this will contribute to deeper root penetration for our plants and turn under dead vegetation on the top soil for organic matter. With established plots, I determine tillage depth based on seed size. The majority of forage seeds are small and the average planting depth is around a quarter inch. This tillage technique will help us in seed placement, making sure we don’t place the seeds to deep in the soil. Remember, the smaller the seed the shallower the depth. Preparing the soil for food plots can be achieved with several types of implements, a disk, off-set disk or plow being the main implements for breaking and turning up the soil. A spiked tooth drag or culti-packer for smoothing out the soil to form a firm seed bed. Depending on the situation and soil type it may take a combination of these implements to get the best results. The main objective with soil preparation is to clear all vegetation from the area and obtain good seed to soil contact with a firm smooth seed bed.

Tillage Equipment & Tips:

Tandem Disk- Whether pulled by a tractor or ATV the disk is your main tillage implement used in soil preparation.  If you have heavy vegetation standing after completing a burn down (spraying glyphosphate to the plot area to kill off all vegetation) consider burning or mowing the area before disking. This will help you disk achieve better soil penetration and less trips across the plot area.

Off-Set Disk- is engineered differently than a tandem disk.  An off-set disk is great for establishing woodland plots and achieving maximum tillage in heavy vegetation.  This style of disk is especially effective in the ATV pull type models.
Off-Set Disk Tandem Disk
Spiked Tooth Drag - is mainly used for smoothing out the soil surface prior to broadcasting seed; you can also use this tool to cover seed.
Culti-packer- this tool is great for covering small seeds with soil after broadcasting. It can also be used to smooth out and compact loose soil after deep tillage a new plot area.