TOPIC: Planting this weekend, 5 lb.s

Photo I tried to post earlier is too big, I'll use another to get it done.

Resized photo I tried to post earlier...

Recovering the bed with leaf clutter. I'm about 1/3 into the day's work here.

Planting seeds... getting further up the mountain. Behind me you can see the rhodendron thickets we cleared during the winter/spring.

More seed planting, same bed.

At last, the last seeds from the five pounds planted that day! See the happy grin I have? It had taken us about 4.5 hours to get it done. We got in about 1/2 acre that morning.

There are about 12 more beds above us. Another 1/3 acre there... didn't replant these as had a much better emergance rate in those beds. If things work out better next spring, I can replant these in the barer places with transplants.

Whitjr,
Nice job and pics too. Looks like you really has quite a bit of underbrush to contend with. Did you do it with equipment or by hand? I wish you the best with last years planting and this years planting.
Latt

Whitjr,

You sure got me beat on planting speed.

It takes me about 45 minutes to double-rake plant a 5x50 (250 sf) bed.

At that rate it would take something like 6 hours to plant a pound, all by myself.

I thought I was doing OK for a 50 year old seng digger

If you planted 4 seeds per sq ft then each 250 sf bed would take 1000 seeds.

There is around 7000 seeds per pound, so a pound would plant 7, 250 sf beds.

5 lbs of seed would plant 35, 250 sf beds.

To plant 35, 250 sf beds in 5 hours, you would be planting 7, 250 sf beds per hour or one bed every 8.5 minutes.

Somebody would have to hold a gun on me to get me to work that hard and fast

Whitjr - you did a good job of clearing all of that underbrush, that was no doubt a lot of work, but sure made the planting easier.

PS - it is a good feeling to get to the bottom of that seed bag, but I always find myself thinking of ordering more. I have just a small amount left now from my last pound and I'm thinking of ordering anotehr pound for planting over the Thanksgiving holiday timeframe.

I hope you have great luck with your plantings !

TNhunter

Whitjr,

Thanks for the explaination, and the pics. Having your beds prepped had to help, but nonetheless, 5 lbs. of seed in that time frame is way more than this ol' body of mine will ever hope to accomplish.

I also cleared about 1/2 acre this past Spring and Summer. Working week-ends only, and using hand tools, it took me from early April thru Mid September. The big time killer on that project was grubbing out hundreds of saplings that wouldn't pull.

When I started planting in mid-October,I had my bed areas picked out, but not prepped.

Looking at TNhunter's post, I would say that if you doubled his times, that would be about my speed on the double (or more) rake, and then hand casting seed. In other words, I would be about 90 minutes on a 250 sq.ft. bed

Other than hand casting, I made 7 (5' X 20') 100 sq.ft. beds this year (my first) that I put seed in by rows. Now that went really slow, but I wanted an accurate seed count for monitering germination.

Just for experimenting, in those beds, I used seed from 3 different suppliers. And excepting gypsum, I used similar but different soil amendments.

In these beds, I raked off cleanly, and made 7 rows that were 8\" apart. The seed spacing was 6\". Thus: 280 seeds/bed. Planting depth was barely sub-surface. I walked each row down as I went, and then added the amendments. After soil amendments, I topped off with roughly 1\" of compost mixed evenly with shredded maple leaves, and then raked back over with the original leaf cover.

I kept records of seed supplier and amendments on these beds, so hopefully, this coming Spring, I will have some info to offer.

Here is a pic of one of those beds. This bed faces NNE, and as can be seen, it is well drained. The pic was taken with the compost mix down, and right before raking back over with the original leaf cover. ... In the foreground is my \"helper\" ... Her name is Penny. She's a good'un.

Bill

TNHunter-

I think your math is too crisp for my efforts. Nothing wrong w/ your math, I just don't think I worked that fast.
At least it didn't seem like that to me. Having the beds previously preped was a trementdous assist to getting it done. When I got tired, I was thinking of how I raked leaves to earn $$$ as a kid. Kinda kept me going. Also, the seed put down was a broadcast method....

Anyway, I was real sore the enxt day. Ibuprophen was my friend, for my... I'm 57... can't rake leaves like a used to!

BFB -

It took me about 35 hours of chainsaw work to clear the land we have been using. Did this over about 6 days, at about 5 hours each day, spread over several weekends. That's about all the saw work I can handle in one day.