Prepping cleared land for a pasture

[Sniggle]

I purchased a 6 acre parcel adjacent to my current lot, and just had 3.5 acres rough cleared for a pasture.

The area was a mix of cedars, black walnuts, hickory, white oak and other stuff....some areas were really thick, others no so much.

Added to the clearing, there was a large pile rocks, clay and dirt that was dumped on the parcel when my development was built. By large I mean 80 feet by 30 feet by 10 feet, or approx. 3000-sq. yards. This pile had to moved approx. 200 feet and dumped into an old dry cow pond and then levelled. All total, I paid $9000 for the work to be done by a local contractor with a large tracked CAT. That was fun to watch.

Now I face a 3.5 acre dirt patch with lots of roots, small stripped trees, deep ruts that I must prep for seeding at the end of march.

I will post some pictures soon. I am really enjoying running the box blade through the area:-)

[EddieWalker]

Sounds similar to what I'm working on. I know our climates are different, so plant types wont match up, but what are you going to plant there? Have you done a soil sample? I'm going to get some sample bags from the Ag Agency this week and mail off some to see what I need to add to my soil. The areas that I removed the dirt from haven't seen daylight in over 60 years. That's whent he US Army built a rifle range there and piled on the dirt that I'm removing.

Good luck with the box blade. Before I had my other tractors, I ran around the the teeth down on the box blade to break up the ground realy good, then draged a log with some cyclone fence on it to smooth out the dirt. It worked allot better that way then just trying to do it with the box blade.

Eddie

[wushaw]

Sounds similar to what I'm working on. I know our climates are different, so plant types wont match up, but what are you going to plant there? Have you done a soil sample? I'm going to get some sample bags from the Ag Agency this week and mail off some to see what I need to add to my soil. The areas that I removed the dirt from haven't seen daylight in over 60 years. That's whent he US Army built a rifle range there and piled on the dirt that I'm removing.
Eddie

Yea when I started showing some daylight to some areas I had some pleasant (Bluebonnets) and some not so pleasant suprises sprout like Sand burs...What a pain it is to get rid of these.

[chh]

If you don't have a harrow or piece of fence to drag over the dirt to smooth it, chain onto one of those cedars you had dozed out and drag it around. A large one with wide branches works best and will do a surprisingly good job of smoothing.

[AKfish]

Well... my climate won't ever be like your's!!! And you've got plants there that I won't even ever see in the greenhouse's up here. But I've been doin' the same thing up here that you're doin' there, right now.

I put together some cyclone fencing (left over from the dog pen) and wired it up to a couple of 2"x6" 's (sandwich) topped it off with some old tires (weight) and cinder blocks on the 2"x6" and drove around and around with it chained to the back of my tractor --- lot's...

But, before I got to that stage, I had to get rid of the little stumps and roots and leftover scrub willow, wild roses, etc.

So, to get rid of that stuff, I dropped the chisel teeth of the box blade as low as they'd go; tilt the box blade forward (won't fill with dirt) and drag up all the thicker roots, etc.

Anything left over after that treatment -- I raked up with my landscape rake and burned. Then I rototilled everything.

Then dragged everything real good, planted, fertilized, limed, packed it down and waited for it to grow.

I've got a couple of really good pastures, now. It took a bit of time to get there, though.

But it's worth every minute ----

AKfish