Food plot seeding rate calculator

Worked example: bags for a small plot

Two acres of oats at the preset 90 lb/acre, in 50 lb bags, is 180 lb of seed. That is 3.6 bags. Round up and buy 4. Example only — punch your acres in the calculator.

Set Mix to oats (the rate fills in at 90), Acres to 2, and Bag size to 50. Leave lb / acre alone unless the bag says something else. Calculate shows 180.0 lb and 3.6 bags.

Pure live seed (PLS)

The number on the front of the bag is not always the seed that will grow. Pure live seed (PLS) is the live, pure fraction: germination times purity. Dust, other crop, and dead seed are the rest. If the tag shows a PLS rate, override lb / acre so you plant live seed, not the whole bag weight. Read your bag or the dealer tag. This page does not invent a lab number for you. It is the same idea as an extension how-to.

The presets above are bag-style seeding rates — pounds of product per acre — in the ballpark of QDMA and seed-bag labels for East Texas. If your tag is already in PLS pounds, type that PLS rate into lb/acre.

Broadcast or drill

The mix presets are ballpark broadcast rates. A drill usually takes less seed for the same stand — drop the lb/acre override if you are drilling. Clovers and winter peas want inoculant unless the bag is pre-inoculated and still in date. Follow the inoculant label. This is seed pounds only, not a soil test. Test the dirt before you push fertilizer or lime.

When to plant it here

Cool-season plots on this place — oats, wheat, cereal rye, clover, peas, brassica — need to be up before the first fall frost in Walker County. The Huntsville frost dates tool is the last-spring and first-fall freeze context. It is not a planting calendar. Time the plot off your bag and those freeze dates, then print the food-plot field sheet if you are walking the plot with a pen.