As some of you know I was a little late to play as far as food plots go and just scattered some oats and stuff and thats been well received and is now gone. Now that I am getting a small tractor and have the implements to play with , when would be a good time to start to sort out some planting for the winter when the critters could use some help food wise. Thinking of just turning it all over with a plow now letting it sit for a while to kill the weeds then run a disk over it a few times ready for seeding .... seeing something and when would be the question.

Plowing the weeds will make them come back twice as thick. What I was told by a friend 😆

You don't give an explanation of what you are trying to attract. Some pointers though on farming.

Plowing is used to turn under stubble to get it out of the way. Plowing also dries out soil. I don't know what your rain fall is like in that part of the country, but plowing here is designed to dry the soil so it will not sprout anything.
If you disc or dig plowing right away, you will pack the soil, it is why we used a spring tooth drag or pulled a disc tamper behind the plow to "seal the soil up" so it would not lose moisture.

You have to know your frost kill dates as you just can't grow a crop in a few weeks and expect it to produce seeds for food. Out west, winter wheat and oats are very attractive to elk and deer in the green stage, but that is because there is nothing else for them. For seed crops for birds and deer, around here they plant red millet and corn, because the snows we get break most things down, but this stuff will remain above the snow.
What I do is raise heirloom corn as it serves my purpose, and I can save the seed. I work with short stalk, 90 day corns, as the stuff you have is like 12 feet tall and 120 days.

Weeds are not all a bad thing, but if you start having problems, a pre application of Round Up will handle them as a pre emergence spray for your crop. You just have to figure out what you want to attract and then focus on a food plot to reflect that.

at this time of year you can start prepping your ground for fall plots. how you work your ground depends on what implements you have and the makeup of the ground, like good deep soil, rocky shallow soil, how it lays, hilly, flat....for fall plots its hard to beat a mixture of purple top turnips, daikon radishes. can even mix in some oats and winter wheat. your in Tennessee so id say plant around first week of august, in north Missouri where im at the saying is 25 of July wet or dry. if you have bare spots that didn't come up you can go back later and just throw out winter wheat to fill in any gaps. wheats cheap and easy to grow. I recommend seeding the different varieties of seed individually because the seeds are different sizes. figure out the size of the plots and fertilize accordingly. you can take soil sample and lime next year, it is important but at this stage of the game you just want to get something growing for this fall. I wouldn't buy commercial mixes, they're over priced. go to local seed dealer. the turnips and radishes are usually sold as cover crops. Good luck!

A lot of those "weeds" are deer browse.

For this year I would just like to put something in that plot to help the deer and turkeys through the meager times. Its mostly clay and a lot of rocks. Thats why I was going to plow it and start picking out the rocks etc. Trying to improve the soil . I am not going to use chemicals as it is close to the spring that gives me my drinking water.

Try oats. Deer love the crop.

Assume you are planting for deer and turkeys. Its nice to have some mechanized equipment to use. I helped a lot of landowners with food plots on their CRP fields when I was working (retired now) and even though those plots were geared for pheasants the deer really used them when the winter was tough. Lots of good advice above but keep the costs under control as it can get to be a "money/time plot" if you listen to all the deer experts and their exotic seed mixes. You probably have a good idea at what the animals eat during the time of year you are targeting for so if possible, split the plot to have 2 or more areas with single species in each one. Consider a rotation of 'wildlife foods" that compliment each other such as a legume one year (left for 2 or 3) followed by a grass type for 1 year. If your plot is large or long enough to split you can have a clover type for 2/3's and corn, oats wheat, barley or rye for the remaining 1/3. Planting times for most biennial clovers can be in the spring or fall and oats, wheat or rye can be in the spring or fall. Corn or sorghum is usually confined to spring/summer planting. Since your snow cover is pretty spotty the turnips, radishes, grazing brassicas etc., etc., would also work. Here we always try to have some food above our snow cover when the blizzards pile the snow in so corn is a staple. Again I caution you against too much, if any, mixes due to different seeding dates and growing conditions. Any weed control (mechanical or chemical) is a lot easier on a single species than applying it to a mixed seed planting. If trying to increase deer usage I always included a trip to the farm store for a mineral block as they again cost less than the "exotic" ones. Good luck with it and we will expect to see game cam picts of your success.................................... the mike

Spray it with round up . Wait 2 weeks disc don't plow. Sow wheat , red ear clover and turnips. when you think you have enough clover seed double it. Do it soon it will make in your area...... Oh yea pelletized lime and 10-10-10 fertilizer will boost it.BUT DONT ADD ANYTHING if the forecast is hot and dry !!!!!!!!!!!! it will burn ...

Now here comes the haters of pelletized lime. Please don't ask how much lime LOL LOL LOL

haha... I got a field I cant get a lime truck to and I just spread 8000lbs of pelletized lime last weekend on it. it was a lot of work getting it to the field, spreading was the easy part, got a spreader for the tractor. gonna plant the field in radishes and turnips. really the lime is prepping for next spring to plant soybeans

Thats for the advice folks. My old gadded was way easier. All Had to do was scrape the seaweed and barnacles of the hull once in a while. On the small farm I grew up on other than the kitchen garden all we grew was hay for the couple of cows we had. So this is all pretty new to me. I did help the neighbor out then once in a while he was a potato farmer so I got to plow and hill those and cultivate etc. i'll find out if I can still run a tractor in a straight line soon enough I guess.

Instead of planting a food crop I'd suggest work on improving the land you have.

Drop some trees and leave them for cover. Deer love to bed down in knocked over trees.
Drop the trees in winter, deer will eat the buds of most hardwoods.
Thinning existing woodlots is probably one of the best things you can do.
Open up the ground to partial sunlight so plants grow more vigorously on the ground where the deer can get to them.

encourage trees/plants that deer will benefit from. Oaks, Aspen, Hickory for example.

Lots can be done with existing land to encourage deer without resorting to planting a crop field. Food is one part of attracting wildlife, water and shelter are the other two. If your place has all 3 your golden.
Anything less is well less.

taters n peas--havin a rough time keepin them outta mine.

You could probably plant some soybeans but you better hurry. You will need some rain if you do. Some of the local guys just combined their wheat and will be planting soybeans trying to double crop here. Wheat is also a great food plot that can be planted in mid April.

I have mostly oaks and hickory on my 40 acres. The couple of plots that I cut free were mostly black berries interspersed with vines, just a tangled mess that a rabbit would have had a tough time getting through ... The trees that I cut down I left the tops in place just pushed them into one corner of the plot. Ant the bottom of it there is a small pond fed by a natural spring. The plot at the top Had clover in one half and oats in the other ( id did not plant them. Those are leftovers from the previous owner of the place. In the bottom lot I am planning to push the blackberry bushes and vines further back to open the sides up to the standing trees.. The reason that i was thinking of plowing the lot on the bottom is mainly to get the blackberry and vine root out as they are starting to grow again in places. and are 4 foot high at the moment. So brush hogging them and then plowing the chopped plant matter under was my plan for now. Then dicing it in intervals to cut up the roots further. As the spring is out drinking water as well I am not going to use roundup or other chemicals down there. I don't feel comfortable using them that close to my source of drinking water.

Also turnips are a good cover crop/food plot planted in early to mid August. Deer love them and the turnip makes a good void in the ground.

i think you are on the right track,Rome twerent built in a day.

a lot of my places have been re done in stages so to speak.

I have 3 different spots that I have just for the critters in effect. Close to the house I have a couple hundred yards and 20 foot wide strip where I planted sunflowers and corn just mixed and scattered and thats coming up fine even though its looks a bit patchy as I just scattered the seeds and did not plant rows. That patch will do for now and when the plants are reed up and eaten, I'll mow the rest down and make a seed bed for next spring to pant taters, beans and sweetcorn for the two legged critters here on the homestead. The other patch as I said is a left over from the previous owner and has oats and clover in it. I'll leave that one be for now ad clean it up at a later date as they just pushed the trees and saplings out of the way and left a complete mess behind on the sides that I want to even out a bit to make it look less like an abandoned construction site. And the third patch down at the pond is the one I am working on now. I am going to expand it once the new tractor gets here as it is way easier to do still like that with a bucket on a front loader than it is with a pick axe, shovel chain saw and weedeater .... don't ask me how I know that. I'll take some pictures of the plots and stick them in my camp Scuba thread or on here in a day or so. I do have a trail cam down at the pond patch and have had a lot of visitors down there from deer and turkey to bobcats, bear, raccoons rabbits squirrels possums .... well pretty much everything that lives in these parts I guess. This winter I am going to put a hurting on the predators down there ... mainly the song dogs.

Shrubs and vine type vegetation can be tough to control anywhere but especially in timber openings. Always encroaching for sunlight. Not worried if you would use a synthetic chemical at the manufacturer's buffered distance from water sources. There is even aquatic Roundup made for spraying cattails right in the water that is safe. Industrial vinegar (greater than 5%) used as a spray application, will burn back the leaf/vegetative matter of growing plants and can weaken perennials enough to winter kill. I'm sure there are some "organic" guys that can help you there if the constant tractor seat gets a little sore. LOL Still wanting to see those game cam pictures when they develop....................... the mike