CEREAL GRAINS

Cool season Cereal Grains form the backbone of most fall (or harvest) food plot strategies. All are annual but they overwinter and then mature and produce grain in spring. They grow well into the winter before becoming dormant and the tender green shoots, which continue to grow after multiple frosts, make them very attractive to deer when many natural foods have been killed by frost. Tecomate uses premium cool season grains in all their products, including a special grain called triticale. Triticale is very nutritious and stays green and palatable longer than most grains. It does not go dormant until temperatures are into the teens, offering season long “green” in many parts of the south. In spring, cereal grains “green-up” and produce the heads that are harvested for grain. These spring crops, though not particularly attractive to deer, hold soil to prevent erosion and improve soil characteristics when mowed and disked into the soil before planting spring plots.

TIP: Cereal Grains are browsed by deer much more readily when they are well fertilized. Keep an eye on the color of your plot, if it is not a dark, rich green (about the shade of surrounding pine trees), it would probably benefit from a light application of fertilizer.

TIP: As cereal grain grows it becomes progressively more course, tough and less palatable throughout the season, and less attractive to deer. This is the main reason Tecomate blends rely on varieties such as sorghum and triticale which are more palatable in the late season. Plots planted at the optimum time will be young and tender at the peak of the deer season.

Cereal Grains include: oats, wheat, sorghum, rye, triticale, millet,

a Guide to Plants | Cereal Grains | Brassicas | Legumes | Blends | Forbs