Question about Sugar Beets/sunflowers food plots

So myself and a few of my club members have tried planting sugar beets and sunflowers this past couple seasons to no real avail. Does anybody else plant these and have success? If you do, do you have an advice?
 

sky hawk

Old Mossy Horns
Contributor
I plant sunflowers every year for doves. Never tried sugar beets, but I've done radishes and other brassicas with success.

Why those two plants? When are you planting them? How are you prepping the soil?
 

Deerherder

Ten Pointer
I tried sugar beets this fall & don’t think any of them came up, so I won’t do that again. Sunflowers are usually pretty easy to grow, so maybe the location you’re planting them in isn’t getting enough sunlight for them to germinate & thrive? I plant mine in tilled ground with either a hand pushed Earthway garden seeder or a JD 71 planter with soybean plates. They can be planted from 1/2” to 2” deep & come up. Plant them from April through July depending on when you want them to mature, which is about 90 days. I often just buy a bag of sunflower seeds from the dog food aisle in the grocery store or the bird seed section at Lowe’s/AgriSupply & throw it in the planter hopper with peas or beans. The only other thing I can think of, and I don’t want to insult your intelligence, but they have to be raw, not roasted seeds. A bag of David sunflower seeds is not going to germinate because the roasting process kills the seed. Any raw seed that you buy for birds should work almost as well as seeds from a catalog. Lastly, they are very sensitive to 2,4D and dicamba herbicides so if there are ag fields nearby that may be an issue. Very few broadleaf herbicides are labeled for use over the top of sunflowers so mechanical weed control is about your only option. No such thing as a roundup ready sunflower either.
 
Last edited:

lasttombstone

Kinder, Gentler LTS
I plant a Southern States spring mix that has millet, clay peas, buckwheat and something else and throw in some sunflower seeds too. I just disc the ground as best I can, broadcast the seeds and go back over it with the disc lightly. Some of the sunflowers make it but like 25 said, the deer love them at an early stage and unless you are planting a large field they probably don't have much of a chance.
 

sky hawk

Old Mossy Horns
Contributor
I tried sugar beets this fall & don’t think any of them came up, so I won’t do that again. Sunflowers are usually pretty easy to grow, so maybe the location you’re planting them in isn’t getting enough sunlight for them to germinate & thrive? I plant mine in tilled ground with either a hand pushed Earthway garden seeder or a JD 71 planter with soybean plates. They can be planted from 1/2” to 2” deep & come up. Plant them from April through July depending on when you want them to mature, which is about 90 days. I often just buy a bag of sunflower seeds from the dog food aisle in the grocery store or the bird seed section at Lowe’s/AgriSupply & throw it in the planter hopper with peas or beans. The only other thing I can think of, and I don’t want to insult your intelligence, but they have to be raw, not roasted seeds. A bag of David sunflower seeds is not going to germinate because the roasting process kills the seed. Any raw seed that you buy for birds should work almost as well as seeds from a catalog. Lastly, they are very sensitive to 2,4D and dicamba herbicides so if there are ag fields nearby that may be an issue. Very few broadleaf herbicides are labeled for use over the top of sunflowers so mechanical weed control is about your only option. No such thing as a roundup ready sunflower either.

That is some good info. There is no roundup ready sunflowers, but there is an equivalent - Clearfield sunflowers. Basically the same concept. A farmer just down the road plants them. He said they are very expensive, but worth it in the long run. That's for harvesting seed though.

Also, I learned the hard way that planting sunflowers later in the summer results in much more browsing by deer. Sunflowers planted in the spring when everything else is green get browsed much less at the early stages. I planted a smaller patch (~1/2 acre) later in mid-July to use for a late season (dove) hunt, and the deer absolutely hammered them. There were none left, and I had to just bushhog them down. By the time they come up good in August, the natural vegetation is drying out, and tender sunflowers become highly preferred.
 
Last edited:
Top