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Wildlife Grain Sorghum

DeerHunter3

DeerHunter3

Member
Need opinions on whether or not the wildlife grain sorghum would be something that would be 6' tall to screen a food plot? I would have preferred Egyptian wheat but the local seed source did not have any available.

Any help is greatly appreciated.
 
"WGF Sorghum Seed - Wild game food plot sorghum, or milo, is an early maturing sorghum seed reaching mid bloom at about 40-50 days after emergence. WGF Sorghum is great for spring and summer food plots for deer and game birds. WGF Sorghum is bird resistant which keeps migrating flocks of blackbirds from stripping it in late summer. A mature plant will be 26-30" tall..."

Most grain sorghums are not as tall as you might want for a screen. You may be better off with a cane/forage sorghum variety if a screen is your goal.
 
Is it too late to plant sorghum? We just had a 15 acre field killed off and 12 acres planted into cp-25 prairie grasses. The remaining 3 I was thinking sorghum with a clover border around it all. I just didn't know if it's getting a little late for that?
 
We planted the PF sorghum blend last year in a couple of plots (mainly for pheasants) and in many places it was 6' tall and would've made a good screen. But yeah, it was planted much earlier…like late April. Good luck.

NWBuck
 
I use a soybean/ tall milo mix from Welters that gets 6' tall, and makes a good enough screen. As cold and wet the weather has been, you would be good if you can get it in now. Charts say plant after may 20th for our area of Iowa. Ground temps above 60-65 degrees.



 
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Wow, 6x6, that is a nice looking field. Could you share the details on how you prepped the ground and planted it, etc?

I really like the looks of that field and where our little area of the state had few, as in very few, pheasants a few years ago, we now have "some". And I think "some" could be made into "a few" with better habitat like that.
 
I grew some pheasant forever blizzard buster last year and it got to about 8' in some places. Didn't do anything to special to plant it. Tilled the ground, lightly seeded, tilled lightly and cultipacked. Only threw about 50# of cheap menards fertilizer on it when it was about a foot tall. I only did about a half acre.
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bowhunter87 said:
I grew some pheasant forever blizzard buster last year and it got to about 8' in some places. Didn't do anything to special to plant it. Tilled the ground, lightly seeded, tilled lightly and cultipacked. Only threw about 50# of cheap menards fertilizer on it when it was about a foot tall. I only did about a half acre.
Click to expand...

Interesting...did you fight any weeds due to the tilling? Also, I would be curious to hear how you "lightly seeded"...did you broadcast that? From a bag seeder or from an ATV? What rate in terms of lbs/acre?

Also, did you kill the sod/grass before tilling?

In your picture, it looks like you got a nice stand, did the seed heads fill out nicely?
 
I only sprayed with 24d so the foxtail was pretty bad in places. Just tilled it, I think it was turnips the fall before so that helped. I am trying some me too lachlor 2 with it this year and using a little more fertilizer. Looks promising and I can already tell where I missed some spots with the spray. I used the red over the shoulder bag spreader and put about 10-15 pounds on about a half acre. From what I read the easiest thing to do is over seed it. I thought about doing corn but I don't think my tiller would work that into the soil the next year as easily.
 
What's the best way to seed sorghum? Don't have a drill. Can I broadcast it then till it in and cultipack it? I'm just looking for a plot a few pheasants will roam in
 
We planted ours just like you would turnips. Till, cultipack, broadcast, then cultipack again. Turned out great for us.
 
Easy to plant. Disc/cultipack work great if can't drill. Drought tolerant. Lots of N. Like actual N of 50 minimum ACTUAL to 150 max ACTUAL per acre. I'd add p&k if u are going to plant here again in future.

Side note- be careful using Metolachlor (dual II) with any sorghums, milo or EW. U need to have coated seed. Concep 3 is the coating from syngenta that it needs to be treated with to b resistant. Otherwise u are looking at basically atrazine alone for ur residual & 2,4-d if u need to hit broadleafs later.
 
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The side note was good above. I couldn't find any info on the generic me too lachlor 2 I got from rural king, much cheaper than dual 2. It is labeled only for corn but the seed I have from PF was concept treated so I figured it would be OK. It seems to have worked fine if anybody was wondering the same thing.
 
Perfect! yep- u got the "good stuff". So nice to get the treated seed. If folks "forgot" to get the Concep 3 treated sorghum and used dual, generic dual, warrant or all those equivalents- it would likely kill most or all the planting and u would have zilch, nada or little that came up. Just remember that. If in doubt- do not use dual. Work the soil up- spray with round-up and heavier atrazine. (I still use roundup even when I work the soil to kill straggling weeds that survived) In a few weeks u will likely see some weeds but hopefully minimal. Especially minimal if u applied atrazine at high rates with heavy water volume. If broadleafs r extremely bad- 2,4-d BUT most cases -sorghums or milos grow so quick they will blow past the weeds if minimal. Good luck!
 
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