Record Keeping for Habitat work

[Bowsnbucks]

I'm just picking up on the info storage / record keeping on our habitat work from the QHMG thread that was closed. Not any of the personal stuff !!

Diesel - You said you do most of the planning, research, lay-out of your camp's habitat work. I'm in that same position at ours. That's why I wanted to keep accurate records so we know what has worked and what hasn't. It's not just for after I'm gone either. We can use this info for the next 1, 3, 5 years and on outward. If a plot component isn't doing well in our soil, we can nix it for another plot try later. Conversely, if some things are kicking butt, we can keep using them in our rotations.

Same with fruit trees. I know we won't plant any more Whitney crabs for our camp. Slow progress and early dropper. It won't hurt to have it there, but we won't add any more. Also the lesson we learned on releasing old apple trees. Just add lime and let the tree do it's thing with no fertilizer. That process gave us lots of new growth and the tree put on fruit again. If we fertilized too, we would have had tons of vegetative water sprouts and probably no fruit. I followed what the apple experts on here recommended for releasing apple trees - and THEY WERE RIGHT !! So I recorded the process.

 

[Bill]

My record keeping stinks beyond what seeing I use on my drill for planting.

I wonder if that lime trick would work on an old released pear tree? I released on and left it. Getting some fruit but not great fruit.

 

[Diesel5610]

Well your post on the other thread kicked my mind into gear. I am going to come up with some kind of journal or workbook to record what we do on a yearly basis. I have kept a yearly file the last 4 years on food plot receipts and other stuff we have spent on the properties. I am going to expand that to guide someone through a year on our properties. Maybe breaking it down monthly activities or a checklist for that month. Anyone do anything like this?

I am releasing some old apple trees now. We will have to try the lime on them.

 

[NE PA QDM]

Well your post on the other thread kicked my mind into gear. I am going to come up with some kind of journal or workbook to record what we do on a yearly basis. I have kept a yearly file the last 4 years on food plot receipts and other stuff we have spent on the properties. I am going to expand that to guide someone through a year on our properties. Maybe breaking it down monthly activities or a checklist for that month. Anyone do anything like this?

I am releasing some old apple trees now. We will have to try the lime on them.

I am the solo person working on our property so it's easy to document my efforts. My log book is simple: 8x11 pieces of plain white paper. Each day I go to camp I write the date and add what work i did and what observations I made. It is fun to look back 2-3 years later to see what it was like before the trees were dropping fruit and to follow your successes and mistakes.
An example from last year:
5/9 sprayed sevin. Caterpillars everywhere. Apples in full bloom. Hops growing well, chest high
5/12 planted 550 plugs of balsam for and black hills spruce. Sprayed orchard again w sevin. Yates and yarlington mill still dormant.
And so on. It's fast to write down and a lot of fun to looks at a year or two later to see what things weee like on a given date.

 

[yoderjac]

I'd say my planning and record keeping for food plots was pretty detailed for the first 8 years or so. Over time, I've gained a feel for what works where and why. I do a lot less record keeping and planning for food plots these days. As I've started my move toward permaculture, most of my detailed record keeping is now focused on trees. I'm still learning here, and trees take many more years to yield answers than do food plots.

Thanks,

Jack

 

[Bowsnbucks]

Bill, post #2 - Diesel, post #3 - We haven't had any pears to release, so can't help you there. Our old apple tree was surrounded by white pines, so I knew the soil was acidic from all the needles. I also read on here that if you release an old apple tree, spread some lime around it to chemically " un-lock " the nutrients in the soil. Advice here was to NOT put down fertilizer after releasing because it would force lots of un-wanted vegetative growth.

Sunlight and lime did the trick for that tree. After years of very few blossoms and few apples, sunlight got us loads of blossoms and numerous apples. It's the only such experiment / experience I have with that method.

 

[Diesel5610]

Sunlight is usually what most old trees are starving for in my neck of the woods. The lime experiment would be cheap and easy enough to try when releasing a few thous year.

 

[TreeDaddy]

How much lime did you put down?

 

[Bowsnbucks]

^^^^ - Most of a bag of pelletized lime. It was a big old tree, and we raked the pine needles away from it as much as possible. I spread the pellets all around under the tree, out to the drip line.