How to Plant a Food Plot Without a Tractor

• Test the soil early. Lime works slowly on the surface without tillage, so apply it months ahead; disking it in would speed it up (Alabama Extension).
• Kill the existing vegetation. Missouri Extension lists glyphosate at 1.5–2 quarts per acre and planting about two weeks after spraying; Illinois Extension suggests a burndown about a week before planting. Avoid herbicides with soil residual, which can stop your seed.
• Clear the thatch. Rake it off, or where it's legal and safe, burn it: Alabama Extension notes the ash covers the seed and holds moisture. Seeding into sparse dead vegetation can also work, because it shades the soil and keeps it moist.
• Broadcast just before rain. Use a hand or ATV spreader, in two passes at right angles. Moisture is what gets seed to germinate.
• Get the seed onto the soil. Drag a section of chain-link fence behind an ATV, run a cultipacker, or mow standing dead vegetation over the seed. Arkansas Extension found that a poor, weedy seedbed gives only about a third of normal emergence.

Small seeds that only need contact with the surface do best: white and crimson clover, chicory, brassicas, and cereal grains such as cereal rye, wheat and oats. Cereal rye is the most forgiving of all.

Large seeds such as soybeans, peas and corn need to be covered. Broadcast onto untilled ground, more of them are lost to birds and poor soil contact, so raise the seeding rate if you try it.

To add clover to an existing plot with no equipment at all, broadcast it in late winter onto frozen ground or a light snow. Freezing and thawing work the seed into the soil. Virginia's wildlife agency gives February 15 to March 15 as the window there.