Landlord's habitat improvements (I hope)

landlord

5 year old buck +
I don't know why this took me so long. I bought 50 acres back in 1985. It is mostly low and wet. Either tag alder or some form of swamp grass or sedge surrounded by mature hardwood of maple and oak, on the south border of Chippewa county, Wi. I have seen of got pics of at least one decent buck every year which is probably why I have not looked into improvements until recently. I ran across JIm BRAUKER's book on hinge cutting, and have been hooked ever since. I went down to Indiana this spring for the all things whitetail property walk with Jim Ward, then went to the expo in Madison and saw Tony LaPratt give a speech. I had a consultant walk my land and his plan will be coming soon.
My first job is to screen off my cabin from the rest of the woods, and I got a good start on that. I am changing my access trails to the outside property borders, so I started hinge cutting a screen for these trails and then planted 250 norway spruce into the screen. I have an old snowmobile trail and an area I cut for firewood that I will be turning into foodplots.415.JPG
 
Get out there now and try to identify and mark as many of the flowering tree and shrub species as possible, this will help you to know what types of things grow well and are already on your place. Things like wild crabapples and other types of fruit producing shrubs are easier to pick out of the surrounding forest and it also helps to ID them through their blooms.


On that same note, nasty invasives are easier to spot as well!
 
Welcome to the forum landlord. I'm looking forward to the updates on this thread.
 
Agreed! ^^^
 
Get out there now and try to identify and mark as many of the flowering tree and shrub species as possible, this will help you to know what types of things grow well and are already on your place. Things like wild crabapples and other types of fruit producing shrubs are easier to pick out of the surrounding forest and it also helps to ID them through their blooms.
X2. This is only the second spring I've had my property. I've found stuff the last couple weeks that I didn't know I had on my ground. Stuff that we do not have (to my knowledge ;)) on my pop's place only a mile away.
 
Welcome to the site.

I always say this to anyone who says they have just started hinge cutting. So if you know this already just ignore me. :)
Knee high hinge cuts block deer movement. Shoulder high hinge cuts allow deer to travel under them and bed. They don't inter mix for either purpose.

I learned this the hard way. :D
 
I sprayed the snowmobile trail with gly 2 weeks ago, and will be spraying the logged section this week. I have an atv but no implements so most of the work will be done by hand. I had a soil test 2 years ago at the UW stevens point lab. Here are the results: Soil Name Fallcreek The lime required for this rotation to reach pH 6.0 is 9 T/a of 60-69 lime or 7 T/a of 80-89 lime. I put 500lbs of lime on the logged section so far, I have 900lbs to take up this week which I will put on the old trail. Here is a pic of the trail before I started working on it.001.JPG
 

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wiscwhip, can you recommend a good book on wisconsin native plant identification?
 
Sorry landlord, no real help on a book recommendation. I use the Web for most plant ID's now. They usually have a few local Midwest and Wisconsin field id guides on the shelf if you have a Barnes and Noble nearby, but I couldn't begin to tell you which one to buy. CrazyED will have a good suggestion I am sure.
 
Get out there now and try to identify and mark as many of the flowering tree and shrub species as possible, this will help you to know what types of things grow well and are already on your place. Things like wild crabapples and other types of fruit producing shrubs are easier to pick out of the surrounding forest and it also helps to ID them through their blooms.


On that same note, nasty invasives are easier to spot as well!


^^^^ Do this every year and you will be amazed at stuff you find. Just this year found you can hide a 35 ft pear tree for 10+ years just 40 ft off a fence line. It had never bloomed before as it was triangulated by 3 elms that went kaput to DED a few years ago and finally got some sun. Being stuck in the middle of a mass of prickly ash kept the exploring to a minimum all these years too. A year or two after getting logging done is also a good time to see new blooms on stuff in the spring.

DSC01927 (Medium).JPG
 
wiscwhip, can you recommend a good book on wisconsin native plant identification?

Stan Tekiela has a few guides which are ok and are under $15 paperbacks. Trees of Wisconsin, Wildflowers of Wisconsin
Teresa Marrone - Wild Berries & Fruits

UWGB Confrin Center for Biodiversity - http://www.uwgb.edu/biodiversity/
UWSP Flora of Wisconsin http://wisflora.herbarium.wisc.edu/
 
I second the two Web pages, very good resources.
 
My all time favorite tree book is
John Laird Farrar - Trees of the Northern United States and Canada

It was obviously written with Canada as the main focus but has great coverage of the Lake States and the pics and explanations are superb.
 
For bloom times you might need to spread it out and look over a couple to several weeks. On my place its spaced about 4-5 days apart on the peaks for the following:
Wild plums and pears together
Apples and crabapples together
Chokecherry and Black Cherry together
and throw in hawthorne somewhere near the end too.
 
I looked over that soil test report and looked into the Fallcreek loam soil association as well. It looks like you will have decent OM, but the ph is very low and as you stated, lime should be your primary amendment for the next few years. 3,000lb per acre for the next 3 years should start you in the right direction. Until you get the ph up, your plants will struggle to absorb any fertilizer you put on those plots. Not saying to not fertilize, just that it will be tough on the plants to uptake what you do put down, so adding excessive fertilizer is a total waste, as it will be tied up in the soil until the ph gets higher. Lime, lime, and more lime. Once your ph get 5.5 and higher, you will see an increase in the amount of fertilizer that is available for plant uptake and use.
 
A couple other considerations with that soil. It is considered "Prime Farmland" in areas where it is well drained, so once your ph is up, you should have decent plots, especially on the higher ground. The water table appears to be very close to the surface according to the Web Soil Survey, so keep that in mind when planting into the lower areas.
 
I looked over that soil test report and looked into the Fallcreek loam soil association as well. It looks like you will have decent OM, but the ph is very low and as you stated, lime should be your primary amendment for the next few years. 3,000lb per acre for the next 3 years should start you in the right direction. Until you get the ph up, your plants will struggle to absorb any fertilizer you put on those plots. Not saying to not fertilize, just that it will be tough on the plants to uptake what you do put down, so adding excessive fertilizer is a total waste, as it will be tied up in the soil until the ph gets higher. Lime, lime, and more lime. Once your ph get 5.5 and higher, you will see an increase in the amount of fertilizer that is available for plant uptake and use.
I agree completely. I had a small garden plot that did very well after being limed. Fertilizer will be minimal this year, other than manure compost around some apples I planted, along with lime. OM of 3.9% is good??? I thought that was low. I was planning on putting buckwheat in the plots this summer to try an increase the OM. With the low ph I don't expect much, but I need to start someplace. The deer population is pretty good here, so I may get overbrowsed on the foodplots.
 
A couple other considerations with that soil. It is considered "Prime Farmland" in areas where it is well drained, so once your ph is up, you should have decent plots, especially on the higher ground. The water table appears to be very close to the surface according to the Web Soil Survey, so keep that in mind when planting into the lower areas.
The farms around here do pretty good, but I am in the swamp, 1000 is my highest elevation, which is probably less than 5ft higher than my lowest elevation that is not under water year round. When we were in drought I was doing good, but with all the rain the last 2yrs everything is wet again. I have a lot of vernal pools in the woods that never dried up last year.
I plan on having the tag alders mowed next winter so hopefully more light and growth will use up some of the water.
 
I agree completely. I had a small garden plot that did very well after being limed. Fertilizer will be minimal this year, other than manure compost around some apples I planted, along with lime. OM of 3.9% is good??? I thought that was low. I was planning on putting buckwheat in the plots this summer to try an increase the OM. With the low ph I don't expect much, but I need to start someplace. The deer population is pretty good here, so I may get overbrowsed on the foodplots.
An OM of 3.9 is great compared to the <1% some of us guys with beach sand deal with. Buckwheat will be your friend with ph that low, alsike clover may be your best fit until the ph comes up, as it can somewhat handle the lower ph and wetter soils better than med red or white varieties.
 
The farms around here do pretty good, but I am in the swamp, 1000 is my highest elevation, which is probably less than 5ft higher than my lowest elevation that is not under water year round. When we were in drought I was doing good, but with all the rain the last 2yrs everything is wet again. I have a lot of vernal pools in the woods that never dried up last year.
I plan on having the tag alders mowed next winter so hopefully more light and growth will use up some of the water.
So your soil is very much like BJE's place with the standing water in the woods. That will make it even more important to choose your future plot locations wisely.
 
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