Food Plots · Field Notes
You have limed and fertilized that plot for ten years. The response keeps getting smaller. It is probably not the fertilizer.
The first couple of years you put a real program on that plot, it showed. The clover came in thick, the brassicas made it to frost, and you could see the difference from the stand.
Now you are eight or ten years in. Same bag, same fall pass, maybe a heavier rate than you started with. The plot is fine. It is just not better, and the thin spots are thin every single year.
Here is the part worth sitting with. A lot of what you put down is still out there. It did not wash away. It is in the dirt, and the plants cannot get at it.
Why it is down there and they still cannot reach it
Most plot ground is acidic. Field corners, woods edges, ground that got cleared and never limed properly, that is the land plots end up on, because it is the land nobody was farming.
In acid soil, phosphorus does not stay available. It binds with iron and aluminum and sits there in a form roots cannot take up. You can have plenty of phosphorus in the soil and a plant that is effectively starving for it.
So you add more. And most of that ties up too.
That is the loop a lot of plots are stuck in. Lime is what breaks it, and once the pH is where it belongs, the question becomes how much of what you apply the plant is actually able to use.
Where this actually fits
Once your pH is right and you are applying the correct nutrients, the question becomes how much of what you apply the plant actually uses. Agronomists call that nutrient use efficiency, and it is the one number that has held up best in the humic literature.
It matters more on a plot than almost anywhere else, because a plot is a field crop. Most of the research on this is field crop research.
Nitrogen use efficiency across 78 field studies on farm crops, with nitrogen uptake up 17%. The same fertilizer, more of it reaching the plant. Ma, Cheng & Zhang (2024) · Agronomy 14(12):2763
Average root dry weight across a meta-analysis of 81 studies and more than 700 data points, a bigger root system to take up what you put down. Rose et al. (2014) · Advances in Agronomy 124:37–89
That is the whole proposition. Not more fertilizer. More of the fertilizer you are already buying, reaching the plant.
Read this part
What it will not do
It will not replace your fertility program. It is a soil conditioner, not a fertilizer. Run it alongside what you already put down, never instead of it.
It will not fix your pH. If your plot is acid, you need lime. Nothing in a jug substitutes for that, and applying this first is doing the second step before the first.
It will not do much on good ground. The response in the literature shows up in low organic matter soil. If you soil test, lime on schedule and have been building that plot for years, expect less.
And we are not going to tell you what it will do for your deer numbers. We do not have data on that, so we are not going to claim it.
Rates and what it costs
Plot guys are running it at about 44 fluid ounces per acre to start, and dropping to around 22 ounces per acre for maintenance. It tank mixes with liquid fertilizer.
- Start rate
- 44 oz / acre
- Maintenance
- 22 oz / acre
- Gallon covers
- ~2.9 acres
- Cost
- ~$14.09 / acre
One pass, on top of the program you already run.
Get Humic+, gallon $40.99Free shipping, no minimum
Prefer to order on Amazon? Same jug, listed here.Why we made one
We farm in Laurel, Delaware. Fourth generation. We ran into the same wall on our own ground that you are running into on yours, feeding the crop and ignoring the dirt, and watching more fertilizer stop moving the needle.
So we started feeding the soil instead. We used it on our own ground for years before we ever put it in a jug to sell.
Not by next weekend. By next season.
Get more out of the fertilizer you are already buying.
Get Humic+, gallon $40.99128 oz · covers about 2.9 acres at the start rate · free shipping
Prefer to order on Amazon? Same jug, listed here.Fourth generation · Laurel, Delaware
Sources, Ma, Cheng & Zhang (2024), Agronomy 14(12):2763 · Rose et al. (2014), Advances in Agronomy 124:37–89.