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Not crazy at all.This may sound stupid Art, but a 8'x8' pattern and I hope to transplant every other tree at a later date to specific areas. Crazy?
You have had 3 tuff growing years as I had 7 acres of CP25 planted 3 years ago and the NRCS determined it failed and will do a replant this fall. The remaining CPR I have was planted a year earlier with no drought and got well established and has done very well despite the drought. With the trend of dry weather and my sandy soil the NRCS office recommend planting in the fall so I could capture all of the spring rains. I was suppose to replant last fall but with no farm bill I got delayed a year.
Depending on your mix the cool season grasses should show up starting now and your warm season grasses will dominate starting in mid-late June. Warm season grasses are exactly that, they need heat like corn to grow. Did you have your grasses drilled or were they broadcast? With this drought I would not even try broadcasting as my drilled NWSG failed. What time of year did you plant your NWSG and did you get rain from the time the NWSG would of germinated to 4 leaf stage? I would think you would need average rain for at least two months after planting to get them established in Sandy soil. Many of the NWSGs are bunch grasses and you should see small clumps of grasses showing up.
IF you have weeds start to take over the plot I would mow every time they got over a foot tall. If the weeds are really bad you can spray a broadleaf herbicide like 24d which won't hurt the grasses but will kill your forbs. I sprayed 24d on my 7 acres 2 years ago to control the weeds and what grasses were there did better but it did kill most of my forbs. Only about 25% of my 7 acres was successful so this year I will spray and mow my field to prep for a dormant replant in late October.
Hear yah there!
Edit: We are getting a huge rain here in Hatfield at 2:45am. 1-2" it looks like. I just got done hand broadcasting 200lbs of seed into these beans last night. Wish I would have gotten the other plots done. Just ran out of gas carrying a five gallon pail around!:eek:
Animal? Hardly! Stupidity is more like it!
I dam near had my arm fall off lugging a 30lb pail of seed for 2 hours up and down 2 fields! Dragging it through the beans trying to get it done was a killer!