Edible Food Plot Plants

Bouncing along the overgrown road leading to camp, you think about the extra-thick venison steaks in the cooler, a cut from last year's buck.

- Luke Clayton

They'll make a tasty first-night meal for you and your fishing buddies. However, in your haste to get to camp, you left the potatoes and onions on the kitchen counter at home.

No problem. Tasty substitutes for both are growing at the edge of a deer food plot near camp. These are not conventional garden vegetables needing watering, cultivation, or fertilizer, but hardy native plants. One of them provides supplemental feed for the deer, too.

I learned about these plants at Calquhoun Farms in north Texas. The owners, Billy and Sharon Kilpatrick, raise much of what they eat and that includes Jerusalem artichokes and Egyptian walking onions, the two plants I added to my deer food plot. Both are perennials that, once established, produce a bumper crop year after year.

The name Jerusalem artichoke is a bit misleading. The plant has nothing to do with artichokes. It's a sunflower family member. It commonly grows 6 feet tall. The flowers are much smaller than most sunflowers but with plenty of seeds for birds and small mammals. "Sunchokes" also make excellent forage for deer that browse on the shoots as the stalks grow.