Now that it's spring and officially food plot season in many part of the country you may be wondering about tackling your first food plot this spring or later into the summer. It might be overwhelming to think about all of the things you need to do a food plot and also the money part of it. Let's face it most of the common hunters don't have thousands of dollars to spend on get a food plot planted properly. 

Lets keep this simple. All you have to do is get the ground black and throw some seeds on the ground right?  For the most part yes! 

Tractors, seeders, drills, disks, packers etc are very expensive. But you don't have to go out buy this stuff. Renting and or borrowing is they way to go for small first time food plotters. Our local Ag Implement dealer rents small tractors and tillage equipment  at a very reasonable price. Rental came out to about $75.00 per food plot. Basically you only need to get the ground worked up so don't worry about the fancy grain drill or planter. If you spray the plot to kill the weeds and grass before you work it up you can get away with an ATV and smaller implements.

All this hard work should come with some kind of guarantee right? Well maybe not but doing a soil sample is like getting a fifty percent guarantee that you will have a great food plot. You will still need rain! But even on a budget the soil sample along with the proper fertilizer/ lime will be the best guarantee for your plot.

Once the ground is prepped all you have to do is spread the seed. You don't need a planter to do this. Any hand seed spreader will work fine. It is though a good idea to bump up the amount of seed 10-20% if you are broadcasting your food plot.  Broadcast the seed to the correct amount per area and you should be good to go.

Corn, soybeans, oats ect. will have to be worked into the ground deeper that lets say small clover seed. A disk or some type of a drag can be used to work in the larger sized food plot seeds. You want corn to be at least 1" inch deep and soybeans should have .5" - 1" depth into the soil. Basically just do the best you can it will germinate.  Now lets say you just picked of a bag of Frigid Forage Wild Game Buffet or another type of seed blend that is very small. There are two ways that you finish up you small seed food plots. You can either have the ground worked up so it's nice and fluffy and spread the seed right before a rain and let the rain pack it into the soil. Or spread the seed and pack it in yourself. A Cultipacker works great and fast or you can simple use a light weight ATV and drive up and down the plot using the ATV tires.

This Frigid Forage Big N Beasty food plot was done with just an ATV and a Ground Hog Max disk.

Let us know if you have any other good tips, questions, concerns or ideas