Weeds are bad news for a farmer. For us food plotters, they are a blessing in disguise. Most all of us have acres that are not in food plots but rather cool season grasses. Those type areas would be ideal to change to annual weeds since as they stand most are barren when it comes to wildlife.
While my initial experience with "weed plots" v. "food plots" was not necessarily intentional, as my first weed plots were really supposed to be food plots or switchgrass plantings...
I have been very interested in observing the wildlife on my farm as they relate to weedy areas. I now believe that weeds areas are as important aspect as anything else really in terms of creating high quality, diverse wildlife habitat.
#1. Quail seem to just blow up when there are plenty of weeds around. This, even though we have not really had a good dry spring nesting season in about 5 years. Not only do the quail like the seeds(food) from the weeds, they also need the mostly bare ground that is found underfoot AND the fairly decent overhead cover to protect them from hawks, etc. If we ever get a good nesting season I may have to retire from deer hunting and just go after Mr. Bob full time!
#2. Pheasants are also coming back strong on my place, I think due in large part to the weedy areas I now purpose to create and leave alone each year. I had three young of the year roosters in the yard of my cabin a couple of weeks ago and I was as happy seeing them as any 10 point buck on the farm, because I "knew" they were there due to continued habitat improvements that we have been making.
#3. Deer also frequent the weedy areas and since this is Iowa Whitetails I thought I better throw that in there.
I now plan on devoting at least 2-3 acres per year just to annual weeds. I also place these areas adjacent to other bird/wildlife friendly crops and plantings like switchgrass, EW and milo. So it is hard to say which feature is more to cause for the increased bird numbers, but I am very happy to say that we will be loading the shotguns later this fall and chasing down a few of those "weed eaters".
To create weedy areas I have alternatively done one or more of the following activities:
1. Mow the CRP and then use Roundup to kill the predominant brome and then just let nature take its course and whatever grows, grows.
2. Mow and then disk lightly to get some bare soil and then let nature take over.
3. Do not mow first, but then spray a light dose of RUP in the fall to mostly kill brome.
4. Burn the brome CRP in the early spring and then let it grow back which will produce some diversity OR burn first and then spray RUP about 2-3 weeks after the burn to really kill regrowing brome.
5. Leave a portion of the previous years rye crop stand through the spring and early summer. I believe this provides nesting/fawning cover and then in say mid-July, go in and flatten it and/or mow it. This avoids killing the new born creatures of the year, but also leaves enough weed growing time in the back half of the summer to get some interesting things growing too.
The key thing in all of these strategies is to kill the brome, if not 100%, at least 50%. In my mind, brome is as bad for quail as the Farm Bureau is for deer!
It does seem to me that depending upon the time of the year that you perform some of these techniques, spring/summer/fall, you will tend to get different weed species dominating a given area the next growing season. So I try to mix it up some and do a little bit in different seasons of the year just to hopefully create more variety.
I am sure that I still have much to learn in terms of providing the best weedy habitat possible, but I can also say that even if you screw it up, you can still come out good by allowing/causing weeds to dominate certain parts of your landscape.
