Seed Mixture: A Flexible Crop for Wildlife and Soil

Mixed annual plantings of grasses, legumes, and broadleaves can provide numerous benefits to the wildlife and ecosystem on your farm or ranch. The overall health of that ecosystem is vitally important when trying to achieve your goals and objectives. 

Fall is a great time to provide a supplemental food source for wildlife. Many beneficial cover crops and forage crops are sold as wildlife food plot mixtures, which are designed to provide a diverse diet to a targeted wildlife species. These mixtures can benefit a host of wildlife including deer, turkey, quail, and dove, but can also create food for pollinators, songbirds, bees, and others.

Often, a mixture will contain an assortment of grasses, legumes, and broadleaf species which producers can use to address several resource concerns. Additional legumes can be added to increase nitrogen fixation within the soil, and additional grass species can create more residue that will break down and increase organic matter.

These mixes prove that diversity creates stability! Best of all, the diverse mixtures can also support the underground “wildlife”! The root exudates from the wildlife plots are food sources for populations of soil microbes that regenerate the soil ecosystem and supply life to the above-ground flora and fauna. 

Pictured is a diverse cover crop seed mix of both warm-season and cool-season plant species including sorghum sudan, proso millet, sunflower, mungbean, iron and clay cowpeas, wheat, oats, barley, Austrian winter pea, hairy vetch, sweet clover, and daikon radish.