Field Process

[Kubota-monkey]

I looked out on our field today and noticed there was still piles upon piles of small rocks, the largest ones no bigger than a size 9 shoe. However, the rocks are ever present. I did my best raking and raking over and over to get rid of the rocks and a large construction company who was dumping fill in our field seeded it before i could fully scrape away all rocks. I have a few questions... The grass is perrenial rye and has started to take root this spring as they planted it last fall. The grass however is groing in patches and the soil seems to gravely to really allow the field to take shape. The constrcution comapny had also scraped the topsoil before they put in the fill and then spread the topsoil back over the fill. The depsressing part is that the topsoil seems to have all but washed away and left the gravel underneath in quite a few spots. Heres the blunt and the short of it... What should I do to get this field growing?

The Ben from MA /w3tcompact/icons/cool.gif

 

[RobS]

Ben, I'm not sure I can really help you. I've just planted perennial rye and I've got very sandy soil with some gravel. I pick the bigger rocks as they show and don't worry about the rest. I don't plan on finish mowing this area, just keeping it under control with the rotary cutter a few times throughout the summer. It sounds like you must have some slopes if the topsoil is washing away? My land is pretty flat, but I've heard of using clean straw or biodegradeable netting to keep things in place until the vegetation gets established. Maybe some of the other slope enhanced members can help more /w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif

 

[Billc]

Ben, maybe I can help. I'm way down in GA but have a similar problem to yours, except my soil is different. What isn't rock is baked clay. Forget about trying to dig a post hole though this stuff in the summer. You'll go through a box of shear bolts.

We worked on two patches of ground last year. Picked up tons of rock by hand. Would pick the rocks up in 5 gallon buckets and dump them into the loader. When the loader was full we'd dump it. Can't begin to tell you how many loads we dumped.

Anyway, last fall, after a lot of prep work, we put out a lot of fescue. I put out fertilizer too. It sort of grew from the end of Oct. to March. Nothing great, we were pretty dissapointed. Then my neighbor cleaned out his chicken houses. I had 80 tons spread on our place. Within 3 weeks grass shot up all over the place. All of a sudden we were visted by the grass ferry, lots of thick, green grass everywhere. The chicken manure made all the difference in the world.

I have been told that if you put out chicken manure you'll get tons of weeds. I talked to the guy who owned the chicken houses. He said the only reason a person gets weeds is that the weed seed was already there, the chicken manure just makes it grow.

I didn't get a lot of weeds. Most of mine was beautiful grass. I am due to spray 2-4-D this week, but that is normal for me to control the weeds.

Hope this helps.

Bill Cook