planting chufa for turkey's

[ARO]

i have read and heard a bunch of times that turkeys love chufa tubers, just wondering if anybody has actually planted a food plot specifically for turkey's using chufa?

would like to get some first hand feedback.

[ncboman]

haven't tried chufa but I know a lot about growing peanuts. ;D



You main problem will likely be deer eating the vines to the ground way before you thing about nuts. Deer love peanut vines over all other crops around here.



Standing water is a nono as the tubers will rot, so you need well drained land ... and you probably need land plaster (gypsum) at planting to keep the soil loose around the nuts.

Peanuts are already coming up around here. I'll get some pics of young plants and post later.

[ncboman]

peanuts sprout and grow readily.



these have been up for less than a week. As you can see, they grow fast.



This is the stage deer can really hurt them as they will snip them to the ground but usually the deer don't really get after them until a little later, after heavy dressings of fertilizer have been applied and the vines take off.

Once the plant is of some size, it can outgrow the browsing except in extreme cases.

[freedomrules3]

thats pretty cool, i love peanuts every now and again . one of those things that once ya start eating them its hard to stop.

heres a site about chufas that sells seed and starters , it has a little info if ya hit the blue links at the top.

www.chufa.com/chufas.htm

[ncboman]

Salted in the shell, fresh from the roaster, are the absolute best.

When I was a teenager I had a job roasting peanuts at one of the local plants. After I learned the basic roasting deal I went to the salt in shell section and roasted em there. Never ate so many peanuts in my life. ;D

Usually working in a food processing plant turns one's taste for the product but not so with peanuts. I still love em.

[BillCartwright]

ARO,

I've had a hard time getting chufa started myself. Not the easiest thing to get started from what I've learned. When it did get started, the deer absolutely destroyed it, never giving it a chance to take off. I wish you luck. I had to give up on it. At least on the 2 properties I tried it.

[txm]

I have planted chufa on three occasions and under three different conditions.
The first time was like Bill said; the deer ate it before it could produce tubers.
The second planting was rooted up by hogs.
The third was successful because it was fenced from the animals until it matured.
I did have to disk it for the turkeys to discover the tubers, but once they figured it out they scratched it out themselves.
They do like it.
I quit using it because it was too much trouble and cost to fence it.

[ncboman]

I am in what's known as the peanut belt and soil conditions are ideal. I think on the clay land much of Ky has, they may be difficult to get up, even with gypsum. I think they may grow well on the eastern shore where much of the land is sandy.

here's some interesting info;

peanuts

[freedomrules3]

translation :
peanuts may be lots easier to grow than chufas and may even be better in the long run

[ncboman]

I don't know about how well they will do in a food plot situation even if the deer didn't wipe them out.

The farmers here monitor them closely and spray at the first sign of mildew, rust, insects, etc, esp after rains. Mildew and fungus can go thru a field quickly and I've seen it hurt crops when not stopped quickly.

I think sunflowers may be a more realistic crop for turkey.

[BillCartwright]

Interesting comment there boman about sunflowers. Any reason behind it? Reason I ask is that is what we are doing this year in several areas specifically for turkey. I ran into a guy out west that swears by sunflowers for pulling and holding turkey in an area.

Millet was something else that should be good for turkey. Yet, last year we had 3 fields totalling nearly 45 acres planted in millet. We figured the turkey would tear it up in late winter and early spring. With the mast crop we had last fall and what seemed like the maples dropping nuts, the turkey did not hit it much at all. Now quail is a different story. I'm not giving up on the millet just yet, since I feel the abundance of mass affected its appeal.

[txm]

I am not sure as to what type of sunflowers you are talking about but I have a few observations as to there use in my part of the world.
If they are native sunflowers they tend to ripen in Sept and Oct. and are utilized more by quail and doves than turkeys.
Mast crops are dropping at that time and the turkeys prefer them.
By the time that the mast is gone the smaller birds have eaten most of the sunflowers.
On the plus side the deer don’t bother them.
On the negative side ranchers and farmers hate them and spend big bucks trying to kill them.

In our area the seed type sunflowers are eaten by smaller birds before they drop where the turkeys can get them.
In some areas of the state they are grown as a commercial crop and enough acreage is planted to out feed the smaller birds and the turkeys do use them in those cases.
If you can grow chufa it will last much longer as food than sunflowers.

[ncboman]

First couple of years I tried a food plot I had sunflowers in the mix and had turkeys on the property. Damned deer hounds caught a couple of em though so I quit with the sunflowers and the way I was mowing wasn't helping either. Dogs could slide down the mowed streaks and come up on the turkeys so fast the turkey couldn't escape. Cover off the mowed path was so thick the turkeys would get hung up trying to run and the dogs had their way. I'd find the results from time to time.

I planted the peredovic type which are suppose to be high in oil but I had some mammoth sunflowers mixed in too. If I were growing sunflowers in a plot, I'd sure mix mammoths in as they produce a lot more seed and all types of game love em.

[txm]

We have to be careful not to plant turkey food plots near heavy cover.
The coyotes and bobcats find these as easy ambush locations.
Locations that use supplemental feeding stations need to put them in as large an opening as possible.
The predators learn to hide in ambush near all of the feeding locations.

[txm]

Another point for any of you that use tooth wear to age deer and live in sandy peanut areas.
You can add about 1-2 years to the age chart
.Tooth wear is speeded up from eating peanuts with sand on them.