My experience with Dwarf Essex Rape in Northern Maine is that the deer and moose aren't interested in it until it gets a good, hard frost a couple nights. After that, they hit it hard, and it continues to regrow and leaf out, although slowly, in temperatures as low as 17 degrees F and as late as late as early December.
Your food plot is off to a good start! You could have mowed your existing plot to about 1.5" or 2", and let it regenerate, maybe with an application of a high nitrogen or balanced fertilizer, if it needed it, to encourage vigorous top growth. Dwarf Essex Rape is used for finishing cattle and ranchers let their herd graze it, and then repasture their herd so the plot will grow back (growing season and rainfall permitting). For a late fall kill plot in the far north, get your seed in mid-July before a period of rain to get good germination. Good luck!
My experience with Dwarf Essex Rape in Northern Maine is that the deer and moose aren't interested in it until it gets a good, hard frost a couple nights. After that, they hit it hard, and it continues to regrow and leaf out, although slowly, in temperatures as low as 17 degrees F and as late as late as early December.
Your food plot is off to a good start! You could have mowed your existing plot to about 1.5" or 2", and let it regenerate, maybe with an application of a high nitrogen or balanced fertilizer, if it needed it, to encourage vigorous top growth. Dwarf Essex Rape is used for finishing cattle and ranchers let their herd graze it, and then repasture their herd so the plot will grow back (growing season and rainfall permitting). For a late fall kill plot in the far north, get your seed in mid-July before a period of rain to get good germination. Good luck!
Donald Ardell we do like to have it in different stages of growth. So we try to plant a two week rotation all summer.
I can't believe this name is real and there's not more jokes about it.
Very brave of you to grow rape dwarves in your own field. I suppose we must do so if we are to study them in captivity.
Just a note - maybe think about enclosing the field in 30 feet tall stone walls, probably at least 8 feet thick. Just to be safe.
Yes the dwarves must not escape, However they are notorious tunnelers.
U could just shred it down before it seeds out and it would grow back.