REALLY NEW foodplot

[Prof.Kent]

When ever I want to plant new trees or make a foodplot around here I have to clear the forest first. So I have; about 1/2 acre next to my deer orchard. This summer I need to hire an excavator to remove the stumps (up to 24"dia). Removed were Ash, Poplar, Red Maple, Burr Oak, and some Ironwood. I know how it goes now that I did it once already to create my New Orchard. See my New Orchard Project from Start to Ready-to-plant.

Next will come bulldozing the stumps out of the food plot, digging a water retaining ditch/pond on one side (no place to drain water to). I think I'll bury the stumps with the sand from the small pond.
The process goes like this:
1. Lumber the trees off. Remove from site. I gave my trees away just to get rid of them. Treetops and small trees can be left where they fall for the Bobcat to pick up and move. If the treetops get in the way of the tree cutter, it's his problem.
2. Use an excavator to pull the stumps and shake some of the dirt out. My excavator was hired at $150/hr and took about 7 hours to clear 1 acre of stumps ($1120).
3. Use a bulldozer pushes the stumps out of the new field.
4. Use the Bobcat with a root rake to rake the soil; this breaks up the remaining roots, pulls them up,to be pushed into piles.
5. Bobcat and dozer costs me $50/hr; $1700 for 34 hours. Bigger equipment is cheaper in the long run. Use a Bobcat and or Bulldozer to push the Stumps and roots aside. It costs more to haul them away or bury them.
6. Pick up roots by hand. Every time it rains more roots are exposed. Frost-heaving over winter does the same.
7. Rent a PTO tiller to chew the ground up because the forest floor is really hard-packed. This also brings more roots to the surface.
8. Pick up roots by hand. Rinse. Repeat. After one winter the remaining roots rot fast.
6. Lime and fertilize soil.
7. Plant clover/turnips or whatever.
8. If you plan on mowing the food-plot/orchard with a lawn mower, you will be picking up roots for another year.

Has anyone started an orchard "the hard way" before? Got any tips or experiences to share?

 

[yoderjac]

My first concern when creating a new plot is minimizing the harm I do. If you get the right operator, a dozer can work, but with many operators much of your topsoil will end up in piles. I prefer an excavator with a thumb so you can pick up sumps and shake the dirt off. It is more time consuming. Most compression occurs from operating heavy equipment when soil is wet. If it really needs relieved, I'd consider a sub-soiler. The less you do that bring sub-soil to the surface and buries topsoil the better. If you use a tiller, I would set it very high. I typically lift mine so high that it barely hits the top inch of soil.

When you get a chance, google Ray the Soil guy from NRCS. He has some very good videos explaining how we often do more harm than good with tillage. Start with the infiltration video. It is a real eye opener.

Most of the crops we plant for deer don't require deep tillage. If you don't till more than an inch and do so infrequently, you can build OM from the top down and tree roots from the forest will just rot over time under the ground and produce more OM. Tillage introduces O2 increasing microbial consumption of OM.

Soil test are good for a new plot and of course you will lime and fertilize accordingly. If you are starting to plant in the spring, I'd start with buckwheat and in the fall start with Winter Rye. These both tolerate poor pH and infertile soil giving your amendments time to work. Deer use both.

Thanks,

Jack

 

[Prof.Kent]

My first concern when creating a new plot is minimizing the harm I do. If you get the right operator, a dozer can work, but with many operators much of your topsoil will end up in piles. I prefer an excavator with a thumb so you can pick up sumps and shake the dirt off. It is more time consuming. Most compression occurs from operating heavy equipment when soil is wet. If it really needs relieved, I'd consider a sub-soiler. The less you do that bring sub-soil to the surface and buries topsoil the better. If you use a tiller, I would set it very high. I typically lift mine so high that it barely hits the top inch of soil.

When you get a chance, google Ray the Soil guy from NRCS. He has some very good videos explaining how we often do more harm than good with tillage. Start with the infiltration video. It is a real eye opener.

Most of the crops we plant for deer don't require deep tillage. If you don't till more than an inch and do so infrequently, you can build OM from the top down and tree roots from the forest will just rot over time under the ground and produce more OM. Tillage introduces O2 increasing microbial consumption of OM.

Soil test are good for a new plot and of course you will lime and fertilize accordingly. If you are starting to plant in the spring, I'd start with buckwheat and in the fall start with Winter Rye. These both tolerate poor pH and infertile soil giving your amendments time to work. Deer use both.

Thanks,

Jack

Thanks Jack. I'll look into that information.
I understand not wanting to disturb the soil much. The dozer was used to roll the stumps out of the field. So the most damage was done pulling the stumps out. Had to do that though. And had to root rake the soil or my lawn mower would be ruined. But I kept 80% of the topsoil intact at the top. Top soil was about 12" deep. All yellow sugar sand below.

 

[yoderjac]

Wow! I can only dream about 12" of top soil!

 

[Prof.Kent]

LOL. I didn't say it was great topsoil. But it is a mix of organic matter and sand. Gray instead of yellow when dry. A hundred years of leaves.

 

[yoderjac]

Topsoil here is very thin. That is likely why it is a pine farm not agricultural. Historical erosion, logging equipment, ...

Folks with good and deep topsoil can get away with a lot more abuse than those of us on marginal soils. My topsoil has a lot of clay content. The upside to that is that lime and nutrients move more slowly through it. It also retains moisture pretty well. On the down side, the pH is quite low and with low OM, can crust easily. It doesn't take much to compact it if I get equipment on it when it is wet. Many of my food plots started as logging decks made years before we bought it. On some, weeds would not even grow when I started to reclaim them.

I just purchased a small parcel about 10 minutes away for a retirement home. I had a soil scientist come out and take core samples in the part that was pasture to assess it for a drain field. The top soil there is over a foot deep and rich with organic matter. My guess is that it was cleared over 100 years ago and probably not touched with a plow. Other than grazing and mowing, I doubt it was touched. I'm excited to see what will grow there. This parcel is not large enough for wildlife management but it will be interesting to see the difference in growing stuff.

Thanks,

Jack

 

[Natty Bumppo]

Nice work. I am in the picking up sticks and rocks and stump pulling phase. I am going to do just what Jack mentioned and hire a mini-excavator with a thumb to pluck the stumps and shake off the dirt. I do not like the look of piles of stumps and debris on the edges of plots, so I think I try to have him bury the stumps.

 

[Bowsnbucks]

Any chance to burn the stumps ?? We burned some of our stumps (from clearing some pines and maples) in the middle of one of our plots. The ashes make great fertilizer. Just a thought, FWIW.

 

[Natty Bumppo]

Any chance to burn the stumps ?? We burned some of our stumps (from clearing some pines and maples) in the middle of one of our plots. The ashes make great fertilizer. Just a thought, FWIW.

I may try that in one of my plots. I have a massive brush pile to burn this spring. I think it may get so hot that yes, I can burn some of the smaller stumps. I've found though that with very big, freshly pulled stumps is that they take forever to dry out to the point that they'll burn...years.

 

[Livesintrees]

Anytime you run a dozer to push roots and stumps around, you spin around countless times in the work area. You end up pushing the majority of your good soil off the side. Is it possible to leave the stumps in the plot and plant around them

 

[Prof.Kent]

Nice work. I am in the picking up sticks and rocks and stump pulling phase. I am going to do just what Jack mentioned and hire a mini-excavator with a thumb to pluck the stumps and shake off the dirt. I do not like the look of piles of stumps and debris on the edges of plots, so I think I try to have him bury the stumps.

I don't like the looks of piles of stumps either. They don't burn well with dirt caked on them. The next time I'm digging a hole and burying the stumps above grade. Then I'll have a hill AND a pond. The line of buried stumps will be screening cover between the food plot and the road.

 

[Prof.Kent]

Anytime you run a dozer to push roots and stumps around, you spin around countless times in the work area. You end up pushing the majority of your good soil off the side. Is it possible to leave the stumps in the plot and plant around them

It hasn't been my experience that the dozer pushed the soil off the side. Lots of track and compacting of soil no doubt, but tilling with a PTO tiller solved that problem. If the ground is really flat, and the stumps are cut really low to the ground, it might be possible to do no-till or hand broadcasting foodplot planting, but if you're planning on mowing the area with a lawnmower...nope!

 

[Prof.Kent]

I may try that in one of my plots. I have a massive brush pile to burn this spring. I think it may get so hot that yes, I can burn some of the smaller stumps. I've found though that with very big, freshly pulled stumps is that they take forever to dry out to the point that they'll burn...years.

Agreed. I think the 11th Commandment was "Stumps shall not burn." ALso really big and hot fires will kill the good, living soil for years.

 

[H20fwler]

Nice project Prof Kent.

The ground I put my bigger orchard on was an overgrown old homestead that the buildings where long gone from. There were a few big honey locust a few medium size walnut and a couple big mulberry...along with hundreds and hundreds of little walnut and locust. I killed off the big trees first cutting down and making brush piles and firewood, the little trees I hacked and squirted for two years before I killed the bulk of them and cut them off.
I was a little concerned about the bigger walnut trees dead roots bothering my fruit trees but the stumps are over fifty feet away from any apple or pear trees in a spot we are thinking about maybe putting a cabin up someday. One of the locust trees was really big 28" plus and the bottom twenty feet of the log is still where it fell, even if I could manage to cut it up I have no way to split it. Two mulberry are still up for now, my wife put an old glider under one so she can sit and enjoy the scenery in shade.
It seemed about every other fruit tree we put in we would dig up some type of harness ring a piece of old plate or a clay marble, the dirt on the homestead acreage is deep rich loam.

 

[Bowsnbucks]

Good points on burning stumps. Most of the ones we burned were not huge, and had been laying around for about 4 months. Rain washed the soil off - they looked pretty clean. But the 1 big pine stump and 1 big oak stump guys drilled holes in them and poured diesel in them to soak in for a week before the piles were lit. I'd say we cheated. They didn't disappear completely, but were reduced by about 80 to 85%. The smaller stumps burned up. ( Most of our stumps were left in the woods where we cut the trees, so stump sprouts could take off. ) We didn't make new plots like you guys are.

None of us thought about the effects of fire heat on that spot's soil in the field. We had corn growing right next to the burn spot and it seemed to grow OK - it made ears. But I don't doubt the heat from the fire killed off some good microbes, fungi, etc. We didn't plant right IN that spot, so I have no idea if anything would grow there.