At the Ranch – Whitetail: Annual versus Perennial Food Plots

If you’re just getting into the food plot game, you might be hearing the terms annual food plot and perennial food plot and you might not know what the differences are. In this video I want to touch on the differences between annual versus perennial and how you should know where to plant what. Essentially, an annual food plot is what you’re going to plant every single year. You’re going to till the ground, you’re going to kill weeds, you’re going to put a new seed every single year. Usually an annual food plot definitely has something like brassicas, turnips, and other things that you’re going to plant every single year. Typically, I like to have these in smaller food plots. Right now I’m standing in a really small kill plot where we have planted brassicas, and this is definitely gonna be an annual food plot. However, we might change it up and put something different here every year depending on how things progress.

On the other hand, a perennial food plot is something that you plant and then every year comes up the same, so you might only plant it once every four years or so. A very common perennial food plot is going to be something like clover, and we have a couple plots that we planted in clover this year. In the first year, typically, they won’t come up as well. Whereas an annual plot will usually come up right away. Once I put down a perennial food plot like clover, it requires less maintenance and you don’t have to put new seed or re-till it every year. Instead, you’re just maintaining the plot so you might just have to mow your clover plot in the fall or the summertime, you might need to spray some selective stuff to kill the weeds, but it should be less time consuming and less work than an annual and having to replant seed every year.

When I’m kind of thinking of where to plant annuals and perennials, I like to have my annuals as my small plots and my perennials be bigger clover plots or something along those lines. If it’s harder to get equipment into a new area, plant that as a perennial because then you don’t have to get the equipment into your plot every single year to plan or work it. These are a couple things to be thinking about between annuals and perennials. Personally, I like to have a mix between the two and I would suggest you do that as well. So if you’re thinking about where to plant annuals and where to plant perennials, these are just a few of those tips to keep in your head and hopefully that will help you with your food plot preparation.