Chris_T
Member
I read the threads about smoothing out pastures, but I have a slightly different question because I’m considering a similar project, but don’t want to go all the way to bare earth.
My wife and I recently built a house on 11 acres. The land had been sitting for a couple years, but previous to that it was part of a hayfield. Because of a significant amount of alfalfa it is also home to numerous pocket gophers who’ve sent up little mounds of earth for years leaving the ground fairly lumpy and bumpy.
We’ll probably take several years to bring everything around to the way we want it, but in the short term we’d like to smooth the ground BUT without eliminating too much of the existing vegetation. I don’t mind a moderate level of disturbance, but I don’t want to eliminate everything. We’re fairly windy and very fine-sandy soil and we don’t want to live in perpetual sandstorm. Several options come to mind and I’d like input or additional ideas.
We could use a homemade drag similar to what one might use on exposed earth (telephone pole/I-beam/etc. with a chain-link skirt), but my thinking is that in order to smooth things enough it would eliminate too much of the vegetation and do so randomly in patches.
A second possibility would be a drag harrows (spike or tines) which would break up the lumps and bumps, but might also be too aggressive
A third thought was similar to the harrows: landscape rake with gauge wheels set very shallow, possible removing alternate teeth.
Other ideas?
If we were to go with the second two possibilities we might have the advantage of a consistent level of vegetation removal that could be mitigated by over-seeding. (At present I’m thinking over-seeding grasses in the alfalfa-heavy areas which seem to be greener and more productive – presumably because of nitrogen-fixation – and a clover or sweet clover with the appropriate symbiotic innoculant in the areas that look like they could benefit from an N-fixer)
Any and all ideas are welcome!
Chris
My wife and I recently built a house on 11 acres. The land had been sitting for a couple years, but previous to that it was part of a hayfield. Because of a significant amount of alfalfa it is also home to numerous pocket gophers who’ve sent up little mounds of earth for years leaving the ground fairly lumpy and bumpy.
We’ll probably take several years to bring everything around to the way we want it, but in the short term we’d like to smooth the ground BUT without eliminating too much of the existing vegetation. I don’t mind a moderate level of disturbance, but I don’t want to eliminate everything. We’re fairly windy and very fine-sandy soil and we don’t want to live in perpetual sandstorm. Several options come to mind and I’d like input or additional ideas.
We could use a homemade drag similar to what one might use on exposed earth (telephone pole/I-beam/etc. with a chain-link skirt), but my thinking is that in order to smooth things enough it would eliminate too much of the vegetation and do so randomly in patches.
A second possibility would be a drag harrows (spike or tines) which would break up the lumps and bumps, but might also be too aggressive
A third thought was similar to the harrows: landscape rake with gauge wheels set very shallow, possible removing alternate teeth.
Other ideas?
If we were to go with the second two possibilities we might have the advantage of a consistent level of vegetation removal that could be mitigated by over-seeding. (At present I’m thinking over-seeding grasses in the alfalfa-heavy areas which seem to be greener and more productive – presumably because of nitrogen-fixation – and a clover or sweet clover with the appropriate symbiotic innoculant in the areas that look like they could benefit from an N-fixer)
Any and all ideas are welcome!
Chris