TOPIC: Prep for fall seed planting

last weekend was very busy. I put a crew together and we cut a acre that was heavily overgrown with Rhododendron in our woods. Thankfully it was nice and cool that day, it didn't get above 75 degrees F. You may remember that I had cut a piece this size a year and a half ago. That took me quite a while; this time I employed college students to make up a small crew. We ran 3 small saws, and I had two of them paired up with one runnig the saw, and one piling.

We decided to use the lap to make a border fence to keep the deer out. Gonna put gates in in a few locations, however it'll still be open at the base. Not real sure what to do about deer-proofing it entirely, however on my Patch One [this is what I'm calling Patch Two] there are several deer paths in and out of it.

!st photo is of the entrance we cut in. which is off the bottom.

Please note the height of the Rhodendron; some if it was 12 feet tall. Our deer fence is cut rhodo entertwined in the living rhodo at the edge. there was no path here, this is all been cut moments before this pic was taken.

Next photo is across the base of Patch Two.

If you note in the previous photo, you can sorta see the height of the rhodo.

This next one was taken and shows some of the crew busy with the work. This area is 2/3rds of the way up Patch Two.

Besides being the humble historian and taking photos, I was the saw repair king, soil sample guy, and gypsum spreader par-excellance. The saws performed admirably, we had a Sthil, a Homelite, and a Poulan going all day. The Sthil performed the best... however every saw had to have the chain reseated at least half a dozen times with the small limb work. The rhodo is just freaking stubborn.

this photo is the other side of the area. Look closely at the right side of the pic, you can see the deer fence we've built into the border. It's about 7 feet tall, and made of tough rhodo limbs.

The leaf clutter is about 3\" thick. It'll be a lot to rake when I plant in a couple of months, however it should be worth it.

Here's some of the guys coming down at the end of the day. I had projected that all of this would take the crew 6 hours. The reality test was 8 hours, with breaks and meals. I provided hydration and meals for the crew.

Once all the saws stopped at the end of the day, I heard something coming from the remaining trees: \"Ooohhhh - Ahhhh... no more rhododendhron crowding us!!!\"\"

There will always be more to do to prep for planting, to manicure it enough to where I'm happy with the place. Gotta put in water brakes, do some soil amendments, rake and scatter planting, and take out the stumps of the rhodo .. some were not taken \"to the nub\" like I wanted.

I was pretty happy with the day's accomplishments, tho.

Man that looks like a lot of work whitjr, good idea getting help. Looks good, hope that spot grows some nice sang for you.

Wow Whitjr...

Now that is a lot of work to get ready for planting.

I definately feel blessed to have lots of acres that I can go and just rake back a few leaves and plant seed.

I hope all of your hard work pays off nicely !

TNhunter

Whitjr,
Man I'm tired from just looking at the photos, I'll have to say, you are dedicated.
Really hope it pays off for you.

rootman

I appreciate the positive comments, guys.

If my results are similar to the results from patch one, then things should be OK. Doing the soil amendments doesen't bother me.... I mean look at Hzu's operation, Wildgrown's operation, and Harding's operation... They are bigger than most, and do something similar - on a 'way larger scale of course.

Our inspiration [me and my buddy Cameron] is to have some nice augment of retirement income in a few years. It's a big incentive to do it right! I might not be able to trust my retirement from the State given the way things are going w/ our US economy.

I'll be sending out the initial soil samples tomorrow. I took these before spreading 120 lbs of gypsum. I went ahead and spread the gypsum as the initial reads from soil samples [from Patch One} were incredibly low. Don't figure that it'll hurt anything to do that. I'll follow that with a throuogh spray of that seaweed deritive prior to planting.

TNHunter: I gotta say that there are moments that I wish I could just rake leaves and plant to!