Buck Hollow Sporting Goods - click or touch to visit their website Midwest Habitat Company

Ideas for extremely sandy soils?

D

droptine37

Life Member
Most of the soil on our property is very sandy. I am talking almost sandbox quality sand. We are putting a majority of the very sandy hills into crp this spring. Has anyone had any success with foodplots in soils like this? We planted a mix of winter rye and triticale last year in one plot and it came up real good. We were thinking about planting soybeans this spring in the sand and then overseeding winter rye later in the fall. Does anyone have any advice for us before we plant soybeans this spring into these very sandy soils? Also, if anyone has experience with crp on sandy hilltops let us know what mixes and varieties have done well establishing themselves in these soils. Thanks
 
Sandy Soil farm

I have a farm in MN that is basically sand. We plant soybeans for food plots and short season corn. In both cases it really helps to have some rain, or the plots are very average. Another option that has worked well is sorghum. We had a beautiful stand of sorghum and the pheasants and deer used it heavily.

Wheat is a crop that grows well in sand. We typically harvest the wheat and the pheasants feed in the stubble. Not much of a deer attractant until the new shoots come up in September.

A brassica mix works well on sand as well, if you are looking for a whitetail food plot.

As far as CRP (switchgrass and wheat grass worked best on sand in my area)
 
Cereal rye (winter rye) does great on even the sandiest soils and is a fall planted crop that can also be tilled under the following spring to increase soil organic matter...or beans can be notilled into the killed rye.

Buckwheat is a summer annual planted in late May or early June that also does well on sandy soils...:)
 
The more organics you add to the soil, the better it will hold moisture so I would go with what Dbltree said to do.
 
Thanks for the replies. I am thinking soybeans with winter rye broadcast in the fall sounds good to me. Over time it will be interesting to see if we can change the structure of the soil as we till in the rye each spring. I also was glad to hear sorghum does well in sand. I would like to plant some sorghum for the pheasants that hopefully will start showing up.
 
Pumpkins? Joking, kind of, but we are going to try planting a few in an unused sandy corner just to see what happens. Have talked to guys that smash them up in the fall and let the deer go to town on em. might make unusual trail cam shot.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top Bottom