In this video, we’ll use a food plot seeder to plant a food plot in a small spot of land tucked back into a tree-lined area in Southeast Kansas. We’ll be planting a mix of black oil sunflowers and iron clay cow peas, a tasty warm season legume. It’s a great combination for two reasons:

One: Deere, turkey, and other wildlife really go for both these plants.

And two: The sunflowers will grow tall, sturdy and straight, and the cow peas, which grow as a vine, will use the sunflower stalks as a support system to grow on.

Now that’s setting the table for a wildlife buffet.

Planting this food plot is a perfect project for a Frontier FP2208 Food Plot Seeder (US CA).

It combines an adjustable gang of notched discs to penetrate and disturb the food plot soil. Two rows of S-tines that break up clods and prepare the seedbed. Two seed boxes with electric drop-seeder and scatter plate. A chain-drag to cover the seed. And a roller for good seed-to-soil contact and to level the seedbed.

So, with one machine you can disk, cultivate, seed, cover the seed, and level the seedbed, all in one pass.

It also includes a seed rate calibration chart and seed flow control adjustment. You can determine the correct amount of seed per acre you need, where to set the seed dispersal rate, and what ground speed to maintain, all based on the type of seed being used.

Along with the food plot seeder, we’ll be using a John Deere 5075E Utility Tractor (US CA). It has 75 horsepower (55.9 kW), along with a standard 12F/12R PowrReverser Transmission. We’ve added an H240 loader (US CA) we can use for lots of other jobs, and it also adds ballast to the tractor to make sure our tractor and implement package is properly balanced.

We also added a John Deere Quick Coupler (US CA) to the tractor, which makes hooking up all kinds of implements as easy as possible, because you don’t have to get off the tractor to attach compatible implements to the 3-point hitch.

The spot where we’ll plant our food plot is about a third of an acre, surrounded by dense trees with a creek running along the north side. It’s perfect – out of the wind and secluded. The wildlife will really find it appealing. Even though this plot has never been planted with anything, there’s a lot of thick, low vegetation on it now. So we’ll keep the chain drag rolled up and out of the way. Despite the thick vegetation, the notched disks and two rows of S-tines do a great job of disturbing the soil and preparing the seedbed.

Even though we could do this all in one pass, we’ll prepare the seedbed by going over this ground a couple times before planting. First, going east and west. Then, going southwest to northeast, or at a slight angle to the first pass.

For planting, we’ll be using 10 pounds of sunflowers, and 10 pounds of the cow peas.

We’ll plant them separately because the seeds are such different sizes, and need to be planted at different rates. For the sunflowers, we’ll set the gate opening on the seed boxes at 5.5, and for the cow peas, we’ll set it at 3. The electric VersaSeeder keeps the seeds flowing smoothly and evenly out of the seed boxes. They fall and hit the adjustable scatter plate, which allows the operator to set the angle of dispersion.

In our final pass, the disks and S-tines churn and prepare the seedbed, the seeds are dispersed directly onto the seedbed, and the roller presses them into the soil, creating great seed-to-soil contact.

From start to finish, this whole project takes less than 90 minutes.

This Frontier Food Plot Seeder and nearly 600 other implements, are available only from your John Deere dealer, the place to go for advice and equipment.

So remember, for implements that help turn your tractor into the workhorse it was built to be, think Frontier and your John Deere dealer.

And lastly, always read the Operator’s Manual before operating any piece of equipment and follow all operating and safety instructions.