Clearing ground for pasture

[ponytug]

Great! You are welcome.

All the best,

Peter

 

[paulsharvey]

That all makes sense. Thank you

Any new progess?

 

[LDR812]

Hi - I owe you all an update. Life got busy but I have stayed after the pasture work. We picked roots and "trash" out and dumped it in an old fire break ditch along one side of the pasture. Filled about 500 foot of ditch! I just kept disking it and picking up debrie. Must of run over it at least 6 or 8 times with the heavy disk. (There was a small section I turn plowed / disked that too.) In early august I used an old drop spreader too put 2 tons of lime down. I never did find a supplier for bulk - I just purchased "barn lime". Figured it was better than nothing.. I let it set and got a few showers on it. At the end of August I disked again real good. Then I broadcast spread 150 lbs of Handcock Tried & True spring and summer mix (I couldn't find any Sun Hemp seed).

After broadcasting I lightly disked it again just to try and bury some of the seed. I was maybe 1-2 inches deep with the disks. Immediately after I got the seed covered Idalia blew through - so it was good timing. Some of the low spots had some standing water for a few days but the next weekend there were only a few small spots that still showed standing water and the higher locations were moist - just about perfect i would think to germinate seed. It was showing micro sprouts.

2 weekends later had a pretty nice amount of sprouts and I was real pleased with what I saw. I wasn't sure if it was corn or what but there was a lot of that looked like corn (later figured it is sorghum), the deer vetch was showing and cowpeas + sun flows here and there and some more I couldn't identify. Since then we really haven't recieved much rain. The Deer Vetch and what I think is Sorghum are holding up ok. The deer have been on the Sorghum. Fingers crossed there was rain these past few days... I won't know until tomorrow when I can check on it.
I'm going to see what this does and plan to lime some more after the new year / then seed grass (bahia). It will need some more prep work, trash removal / leveling etc before next planting. Playing it by ear (or sight that is).
Thanks again to all that offered suggestions. I'll try to do better with updates.

 

[paulsharvey]

Glad to hear it is working. People underestimate how much organic trash is left in the ground.

 

[two_bit_score]

Looks like your hard work is paying off!

 

[super55]

With that seed blend you are going to get deer from miles around. Anything freshly sprouted especially sunflowers and cowpeas they mow down in short order.

Looks like a good blend choice. It looks mostly annual seeds except for maybe the clover but that would be a good companion crop for the eventual bahia grass since its a Nitrogen producer.

 

[Alan W.]

We get bulk lime at the quarry around here.
Dont know if you have any close to you.

 

[LDR812]

There has only been some light sprinkles for seems like a month. No water in the swamp bottoms around my property. Weird because up and down 301 all the ponds are full. I think my property has somehow been being missed by the rain. Pics from this last weekend. These first 2 are taken from the same spot - 1st pic is looking right which some of the dirt was turn plowed and all of it was disked heavily. The second photo is looking left and this side was disked pretty good also, but just didn't have the same outcome.

 

[LDR812]

Here are some random pics

 

[paulsharvey]

It looks good, and as the cover grows in, that should trap some moisture in the soils, and allow the faster break down of the left over roots/trash. If your area is as sandy as mine, the soil holds so Little moisture, if it wasn't for termites/ants, buried wood lasts a long time.