What to plant in summer food plots for deer

Last updated 2026-07-26

what is a food plot, and why does summer planting matter

A food plot is a planted patch of ground, usually somewhere between a quarter acre and a few acres, put in specifically to feed deer and other wildlife and to give hunters a place to watch or hunt over. It's not the same as a farm field, though the equipment and agronomy overlap a lot. Most plots run anywhere from 0.25 to 5 acres depending on how much open ground you have and what your goals are, according to guidance from university extension wildlife programs ^[1]. Summer planting matters because deer nutrition needs shift hard once spring green-up fades. Lactating does need protein to make milk, bucks need protein and minerals to grow antlers, and native browse in a lot of the whitetail's range gets tough and fibrous by July. A well-timed summer plot of soybeans or cowpeas can run 20 to 30 percent crude protein in the leaves during the growing season, which beats most native forage by a wide margin ^[2]. The catch is timing and heat tolerance. Plant a cool-season crop like clover in July in Alabama and you'll watch it burn up in two weeks. Plant a heat-loving legume too early up north and a late frost kills your stand before it establishes. Get the species and the calendar right together, or you're wasting seed money.

when to plant food plots for deer

Deep South (TX, LA, FL, GA)	Late March to early May	65°F+
Mid-South (TN, AR, KY, VA)	Late April to late May	60-65°F
Midwest / Upper Midwest (IA, IL, WI, MN)	Mid-May to mid-June	60°F+
Northeast / Upper New England	Late May to mid-June	60°F+	These are general windows, not guarantees. Your local extension office publishes frost date tables for your specific county, and that's a better source than any national chart, including this one. Soil temperature matters more than the calendar date for germination. Soybeans and cowpeas want soil at 60°F or warmer at planting depth, sorghum and sunn hemp like it closer to 65°F. If you want a plan built around your zone and your soil test instead of guessing off a regional chart, that's exactly the kind of thing a Custom Food Plot Plan is built to solve. It's a one-time $99 planning service, not a subscription, and it uses your soil results and location to build a species and calendar recommendation. Your soil test lab is still the authority on lime and fertilizer rates; the plan gives you the planting strategy layered on top.

The short answer: it depends on whether you're planting a summer annual, a fall annual, or a perennial, and where you live. Summer plots go in after your last spring frost date, which ranges from early April in the Deep South to early June in the northern tier states and Canada ^[3]. Fall plots (brassicas, cereal grains, most clover establishment) go in 60 to 90 days before your first fall frost. Here's a rough national breakdown for summer annual plantings: | Region | Typical planting window | Soil temp needed |

do deer like clover, and is it a summer option

Yes, deer favor clover heavily, and it works as both a spring and summer forage once established. White clover (Trifolium repens) and red clover (Trifolium pratense) are two of the most planted food plot legumes in North America because they're perennial (white clover) or biennial (red clover) and they keep producing tonnage through the growing season if managed right ^[4]. The catch: clover establishment itself usually happens in early spring or late summer/early fall, not mid-summer. Once it's established, though, a good clover stand feeds deer all summer long and comes back the next year with minimal reseeding. Clover crude protein commonly runs 25 to 30 percent in vegetative growth, competitive with soybeans ^[2]. Mow clover through summer to keep it in a vegetative, high-protein state and to knock back weed competition. Most extension guidance recommends mowing to 4 to 6 inches whenever growth gets much taller than that, roughly every 3 to 6 weeks depending on rainfall ^[4]. Clover is drought-sensitive compared to deep-rooted legumes like cowpeas, so in a dry summer it can go dormant and brown out until rain returns.

do deer eat sorghum, and does it work in summer plots

Yes, deer eat forage sorghum and grain sorghum, both the leaves and, once mature, the grain heads, and it's a legitimate warm-season food plot option, particularly in drought-prone regions. Sorghum is far more drought tolerant than corn, needing meaningfully less water to produce a crop, which is why it's a Southern Plains and Midwest staple where rainfall is unreliable in July and August ^[5]. Sorghum works two ways in a plot. Grain sorghum left standing gives deer a fall and winter carbohydrate source once it dries down, similar to standing corn but cheaper per acre and more drought tolerant. Forage sorghum (and sorghum-sudangrass hybrids) gets planted thick as a summer screen and browse crop, and deer will hit the young leafy growth hard, though the tonnage isn't as protein-dense as a bean or pea. One real caution: sorghum and sudangrass can produce prussic acid (cyanide compounds) in young, stressed, or frost-damaged growth, a documented risk in livestock grazing guidance from land-grant extension programs ^[6]. It's mostly a livestock grazing concern rather than a deer food plot concern since deer browse selectively and don't consume the volume a grazing cow does, but it's worth knowing before you plant it thick and call it done.

what should you actually plant in summer, species by species

Soybeans are the workhorse. Forage or grain-type soybeans planted in 3-acre or larger blocks (smaller plots get hammered before they can establish) give deer high-protein browse from June through pod drop in fall. The tradeoff is deer pressure. In areas with high deer density, small soybean plots get eaten to the dirt before they ever get tall. Extension research generally recommends plots of 3 to 5 acres minimum for soybeans in higher-pressure areas to survive early browsing ^[7]. Cowpeas (iron clay peas) are more forgiving than soybeans on smaller acreage and tolerate heat and poor soil better. They're a good choice for plots under 2 acres where soybeans would get wiped out. Lablab is similar, a vining tropical legume that handles heat and drought about as well as anything you can plant, and it keeps producing into early fall. Sunn hemp is a less common but useful option, especially as a nitrogen-fixing cover that also gets browsed. Chicory, technically a perennial forb rather than a summer annual, holds up remarkably well in hot, dry conditions and pairs well in a clover blend for exactly that reason. What NOT to plant in summer: brassicas (turnips, radish, kale) and cereal grains (oats, wheat, rye) are cool-season crops. Planting turnips in June is close to pointless in most of the country; they bolt, get bitter, or just fail to bulb in summer heat. Save those for the late summer to early fall planting window. For a broader look at species selection across all seasons, deer food plot seed breaks down more of the options, and food plot seed covers blend strategy in more depth.

when to plant turnips for deer (and why it's not a summer question)

Turnips go in the ground in late summer, not summer proper. Most extension guidance puts the window at 60 to 90 days before your average first fall frost, which lands most of the country somewhere between late July and early September. Plant turnips too early (June, July in most zones) and the heat causes bolting and poor bulb development; plant too late and they don't have time to size up before a hard freeze. Turnips are a fall and winter food, not a summer one. Deer often ignore the bulbs and leaves entirely until after a hard frost sweetens the starches into sugars, a well-documented pattern in brassica food plot literature. That's a good reason not to judge a turnip plot's success in September; wait until November or December when deer actually start digging. If your goal is summer nutrition, skip turnips entirely and put that ground into soybeans, cowpeas, or a clover blend instead. Save the brassica planting for your late-summer fall plot rotation.

when to plant oats for deer

Oats are a fall planting, typically going in 45 to 60 days before first frost, similar timing to cereal rye and wheat. Most of the country plants oats sometime between late August and early October depending on latitude. Oats are a cool-season annual; they germinate fast, green up quick, and deer hit young oat shoots hard in October and November, but they have no place in a summer plot rotation. One small nuance: in the Deep South and parts of the Southeast, oats can sometimes be planted in very early spring as well, since winters are mild enough that a spring-seeded oat crop can mature before summer heat kills it. But that's a narrow window and not a true summer planting strategy either way. If you're trying to build a full-season plot calendar and figure out which crop goes where, that's a good use case for a planning tool rather than guesswork; a Custom Food Plot Plan maps species to your specific frost dates for exactly this reason, and it's a one-time cost rather than an annual subscription.

what are deer's favorite foods, and does it change in summer

Deer diet preference shifts with the season and what's available, but research consistently shows a strong preference for high-protein legumes, tender forbs, soft mast (fruit), and agricultural crops when available. In a foundational deer nutrition study from the Noble Research Institute and multiple state wildlife agencies, whitetail diets are described as highly variable by region, season, and forage availability, with legumes and forbs generally preferred over grasses and woody browse when both are on offer ^[2]. In summer specifically, deer key in on high-moisture, high-protein green browse: clover, soybean and cowpea leaves, forbs like ragweed and pokeweed, and any available soft mast such as blackberries or early apples. Acorns and hard mast don't factor into summer diets at all; that's a fall phenomenon tied to oak drop timing. Regional agency deer management guidance (state wildlife agencies publish these lists for hunters building plots) generally ranks the following as high-value summer forages: soybeans, cowpeas, clover, lablab, chicory, and alfalfa where it grows well. Corn and sorghum matter more in fall and winter once grain matures and dries down.

do deer like honey, and does it belong in a food plot

No, honey isn't a food plot input, and there's no wildlife agency or extension guidance recommending it for deer. Deer don't naturally forage on honey in the wild, and using it as bait or attractant runs into the same legal problems as any other bait: most states regulate or outright ban baiting and supplemental feeding for deer hunting, with rules varying sharply by state. Some hunters ask about honey because of "honey hole" terminology or confuse it with mineral licks and molasses-based attractants sometimes sold for deer. Molasses and sugar-based products are a different category from actual food plot forage and typically fall under bait/attractant regulations rather than food plot rules in most state hunting codes. Before using any mineral, salt, or sweet attractant near a plot, check your state wildlife agency's current baiting and feeding regulations. Some states classify mineral sites as bait, some don't, and rules change year to year. Your state fish and wildlife agency's hunting regulations page is the only source to trust here, not a forum thread or a product label.

how do soil test results change what you plant in summer

Your soil test tells you pH and nutrient levels, and both directly affect which summer species will actually perform. Soybeans and cowpeas, like most legumes, do best in a pH range of roughly 6.0 to 7.0; below that, nitrogen fixation from the plant's root nodules drops off and yields suffer even with fertilizer applied ^[8]. Extension soil testing labs (Texas A&M AgriLife, Penn State, University of Tennessee, and others) run these tests for $10 to $20 per sample in most states and return a report with recommended lime and fertilizer rates specific to your soil and crop choice. If your test comes back with a pH under 6.0, which is common on wooded, previously unmanaged ground, lime takes months to fully react in the soil. That means a fall lime application often doesn't finish adjusting pH until the following summer's planting, so testing early (the previous fall or very early spring) matters more than most first-time plotters expect. Your soil test lab's specific lime and fertilizer recommendations are the authority here, not any generic number in an article like this one. Follow their report over any blanket rate you find online.

how big should a summer food plot be, and what equipment do you need

Plot size depends heavily on local deer density and browsing pressure. As a rough starting point, extension wildlife programs generally suggest food plots should make up somewhere around 1 to 5 percent of total property acreage for a mixed program of annual and perennial plots, though this varies a lot by region and goals ^[1]. For a single summer soybean or cowpea plot specifically, aim for 2 acres minimum in moderate-to-high deer density areas; smaller plots get browsed down before the plants can establish a root system that can handle grazing pressure. Equipment-wise, summer annuals are more forgiving than a lot of hunters expect. A no-till drill is ideal for legumes since it maintains seed-to-soil contact without disturbing your existing seed bank of weeds, but a broadcast spreader followed by a light disk or cultipacker works fine on a smaller budget. Soybeans and cowpeas plant at a depth of about 1 to 1.5 inches; too shallow and birds/heat get the seed, too deep and they won't emerge. For more detail on matching plot layout and equipment choices to your property, food plot whitetail and deer food plots both cover setup basics, and deer for food walks through species selection from a slightly different angle if you want a second frame of reference.

Frequently asked questions

Do deer eat sorghum?

Yes. Deer browse young forage sorghum leaves and eat mature grain sorghum heads once they dry down. Sorghum is more drought tolerant than corn, making it a solid choice in dry regions, though young or frost-stressed sorghum can carry prussic acid risk, mostly a concern for livestock grazing rather than deer browsing.

Do deer eat clover?

Yes, heavily. White and red clover are among the most preferred food plot forages for whitetail deer, running 25 to 30 percent crude protein in vegetative growth. Clover works as a spring, summer, and fall forage once established, though it establishes best in early spring or late summer, not mid-summer heat.

When should you plant deer food plots?

It depends on the crop type and your region. Summer annuals (soybeans, cowpeas, lablab) go in after your last spring frost, generally April in the South to June in the North. Fall annuals (brassicas, cereal grains) go in 45 to 90 days before your first fall frost. Check your local extension office frost date tables for exact windows.

Do deer like clover more than other food plot options?

Deer show strong, consistent preference for clover compared to grasses and most woody browse, and it ranks among the top food plot legumes alongside soybeans and cowpeas. Preference shifts seasonally though; in fall, deer often key in on brassicas and acorns instead, so clover isn't universally the top choice year-round.

When should you plant oats for deer?

Oats are a fall crop, planted 45 to 60 days before your area's first frost, typically late August through early October depending on latitude. They're not a summer planting. In mild-winter areas of the Deep South, a narrow early-spring oat window sometimes works, but that's the exception, not the rule.

When should you plant turnips for deer?

Turnips go in 60 to 90 days before your first fall frost, usually late July through early September depending on region. They're a fall and winter forage; deer often ignore the bulbs until after a hard frost sweetens the starches. Planting turnips in summer heat causes bolting and poor bulb development.

What is a food plot?

A food plot is a planted area, usually a quarter acre to several acres, seeded specifically to provide supplemental forage for deer and other wildlife and to give hunters a place to observe or hunt. It uses standard farm agronomy (soil testing, lime, fertilizer, seed selection) scaled down to wildlife management goals.

What are deer's favorite foods?

Deer generally prefer high-protein legumes and forbs over grasses and woody browse when both are available: clover, soybeans, cowpeas, and native forbs rank high. Preferences shift seasonally; acorns and other hard mast dominate fall diets, while soft mast and green legumes matter more in summer.

Do deer like honey?

No, honey isn't a natural deer food and has no place in food plot planning. It sometimes gets confused with molasses-based mineral attractants, which are a separate product category from plot forage and often fall under state bait/feeding regulations, which vary by state and should be checked before use.

What's the best summer food plot crop for small acreage under 2 acres?

Cowpeas (iron clay peas) and lablab handle browsing pressure and heat better than soybeans on small plots. Soybeans need 3 or more acres in most moderate-to-high deer density areas to survive early-season browsing and reach maturity; smaller soybean plots often get eaten down before establishing.

Can you plant clover and soybeans together in summer?

Not typically as a mixed stand; soybeans are an annual that gets harvested or browsed down by fall, while clover is a perennial you want to persist. Most planners keep them in separate plots, using clover as a permanent stand and soybeans or cowpeas as a rotating annual plot elsewhere on the property.

How hot is too hot for summer food plot germination?

Most summer legumes germinate fine up to soil temperatures in the 80s Fahrenheit, but extreme heat combined with drought stresses young seedlings regardless of species. The bigger practical risk in most regions is planting too early into cold soil (below 60°F), which causes poor germination and seedling disease, not excess heat.

Sources

1. Mississippi State University Extension, Food Plots for Wildlife: Typical food plot sizes and general planning guidance for wildlife plots
2. Noble Research Institute, Forage Quality and Deer Nutrition: Crude protein levels in legume forages like soybeans and clover during growing season
3. NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information, Frost/Freeze Data: Last spring frost date ranges across US regions
4. University of Tennessee Extension, Clover for Wildlife Food Plots: White and red clover as preferred perennial/biennial food plot legumes and mowing recommendations
5. USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service, Sorghum Production: Sorghum drought tolerance relative to corn in production regions
6. University of Georgia Extension, Prussic Acid Poisoning in Livestock: Prussic acid (cyanide) risk in young, stressed, or frost-damaged sorghum and sudangrass
7. Mississippi State University Extension, Soybeans for Deer Food Plots: Minimum plot size recommendations for soybeans to survive deer browsing pressure
8. Texas A&M AgriLife Extension, Soil pH and Legume Nitrogen Fixation: Optimal soil pH range of 6.0-7.0 for legume nitrogen fixation