Badgerfowl's habitat projects

[badgerfowl]

Had the farmer who rents our field plant 50 lbs of clover, winter wheat, and 15 lbs of GHR last July. He cut the field sometime in the last couple weeks. Looks pretty good now.

 

[badgerfowl]

I tried a throw, mow, spray and pray strip here with a cheap BOB mix I got at menards. Biologic maximum I believe.



We managed to miss most of the rain this morning. I'd be surprised if we got more than a 0.1". That seems the way this year is going. We are still pretty dry for this time of year.

 

[Bowsnbucks]

Nice looking trees and plots. We have Centennial and Kerr at camp & they're growing well for us. Just got first fruits on the Centennial this year. It's in the ground 3 years.

Your soil must hold some water if your clover is that lush. Do you need to add much fertilizer to get it looking that good ?? Lime ??

 

[badgerfowl]

Haven't done anything with it in regards to fertilizer or lime. We've got about a foot of good topsoil with sand underneath. It's the river bottoms so we can get really wet. A couple years ago almost the entire field was wet.

I fertiliz and lime my little micro clover plots in the woods and they are looking great. Didn't get pics of them as the bugs were horrible.

The centennial I planted this spring set a bunch of apples. I thinned some with sevin but still need to pluck the rest off. I might leave one or two just for the fun of it.

 

[SD51555]

BJE380 would probably trade you some rain for sun.

 

[scott44]

Looks good!

 

[badgerfowl]

Here's my HP mainly (w/ a couple HW and WWW) screen I planted using cuttings in 2011 and 2012.

This pic is from April 2012.



And here it was on saturday 6/27/15.



It's finally screened the entire southeast corner of our field, which was the goal when I started. Pines were added behind it in 2013 to form a permanent screen down the road.

 

[badgerfowl]

I throwed, mowed, sprayed, and prayed 6/20/15 a strip of biologic maximum. Dumped 0.6" out of the rain gauge a week later. Looks to be pretty good germination. Hopefully the heavy thatch keeps things moist. Timely rains wouldn't hurt either.

 

[badgerfowl]

5th leaf Freedom on EMLA 7.





5th leaf Liberty on EMLA 7.



Lone apple on 4th leaf Hudson's Golden Gem on B118.

 

[badgerfowl]

Couple shots of the clover planted last July.

 

[SD51555]

Well done! I bet yer critters are enjoying that setup.

 

[scott44]

Everything looks good Badger, that screen is filling in nicely.

 

[badgerfowl]

Thanks! I still have to thin it a little bit. I have hundreds of trees in there. Will probably cut off some next year and let them sprout like crazy. Hopefully make it even thicker. I should throw some fert at the pines to give them a boost.

 

[wiscwhip]

I throwed, mowed, sprayed, and prayed 6/20/15 a strip of biologic maximum. Dumped 0.6" out of the rain gauge a week later. Looks to be pretty good germination. Hopefully the heavy thatch keeps things moist. Timely rains wouldn't hurt either.

That is a great looking thatch layer badger! I know your soils were far, far better than ours in the first place, even though our properties were less than 10 miles away from each other, but it still really bums me out that my old man would insist on plowing stuff like this under year after year, because that's what he saw the "real farmers" do. :mad: I couldn't get him to understand that they were real farmers and they had real dirt, not a beach. Our south plot was worked so many times that the makeup of the soil was changed. Those sands are quite friable and the sand particles were actually shattered and became smaller and more dust like than when we first opened that ground in 1981.

 

[badgerfowl]

Thanks! I'm planning on doing a couple more like it at some point in July when it looks like a good rain is coming. Forecast looks dry coming up so I'll just keep spraying areas I'm planning to plant this way. I am planning on getting a drag next month and trying a minimum tillage plot with WR, oats, peas (maybe), clover, and GHR. That will likely get done 1st weekend in August.

 

[badgerfowl]

Made it to our place on saturday to plant some more throw and mow brassicas and spray for future ones.

Kerr crab looking ok after clearing the weeds around it. This is the only one w/o a weed/moisture barrier. It's closest to the low area so I let it go w/o one to see what happens. Seems fine so far.



Still haven't picked anything off this centennial. Will probably just let it be.



5th leaf Freedom with some apples.

 

[badgerfowl]

Area between my apples was planted w/ clover but got overtaken with grass so I started over and am hoping brassicas will suppress the weeds next spring when I plan to frost seed clover here. Planted these july 4th weekend and only recieved a couple tenths of an inch. Was surprised to have some germination from that.





This spring I frost seeded a few pounds of medium red clover in this area. Kind of forgot about it and never looked at it close until saturday as I was walking through it planning to spray the entire thing for a brassica planting. Was surprised to see a bunch of red clover hidden among the other stuff. Decided to only spray a small strip and let the rest be.

 

[badgerfowl]

Strip of biologic maximum planted last month. Not much rain after germination (<1") but we got some decent rain sunday night so I'm expecting this to make a nice jump in the coming weeks. More chances in the next week also.





Ground level appears pretty moist under the thatch layer, even on a hot, dry day.

 

[bueller]

I'm always jealous of your apple pics ;). Judging by how it looks now, in mid-July, that strip of maximum should do real well for you.

 

[scott44]

Red clover for me seems to be the easiest to frost seed and get good results.