crp planting

[forgeblast]

We began to think about the CRP or CREP program for our property when we bought our place about 7 years ago.

this is a good example of the type of land we enrolled. It is marshy so its a chore cutting it, plus in pa the winter seems to grow rocks, i have spent a lot of money fixing blades and mower decks because a rock pushed up. This area was covered in brambles, it took me 3 years of cutting and hacking with a machett and pruners to get it cleared. What you see now is after clearing, planting a cover crop (whitetail institute no till clover) and mowing for 2 years.

shows the grid that i sprayed on the ground. its 15x15, could have gone 20x20 but went with the 15x15. I sprayed it using roundup and a couple of old broom handles connected with rope. I would put the broom handles in a line and spray down trying to cover about 1 foot on each side of the line. (I have heard of people spraying the whole thing!!! and killing all the ground cover, not the right way to plan it out).
Once it was grided out i would spray every now and then to keep the grass out of those spots and to kill any of the weeds on my list of noxius plants that the program gave to me.
I had a contract that spelled out exactly how many trees to plant, the what kind was up to me. there was a limit of 6 apples so that people are not planting orchards.
the 5' oak stakes were bought off ebay, a guy gave me a nice discount if i bought 120 of them.
the 5' tubes tubes were bought from Itasca Greenhouse, for me they had the lowest shipping and price.
Out of my own pocket and not covered i bought from Forestry Suppliers' inc 4' blue x tubes and 100 pine stakes to cover the shrubs that i planted. I have a bad deer brouse problem, along with voles. not putting in the tubes would be like throwing away those plants.
My trees were bought from lawyer nursery (excellent company will only buy trees from them anymore), and cold stream farm (hickorys only) Cummins Nursery (apples)
My plants include
25 butternut, 20 black walnut, 20 pin oak, 20 swamp white oak, 6 apple (enterprise and goldrush to cut down on spraying) 25 hickory, 10 american cranberry (highbush), 10 elderberry, 10 blueberry, and 20 hazelnut.

shows the tubes in action.

Overall the planning was pretty easy since it was spread out over a couple years. The actual planting is what was hard. PA's soil is not condusive to digging holes. I have, once i can get the stone from where i planted, probably enough to finish one stone wall i was working on. I did not get all 1 yo bare root plants, some of these were 3-4' trees with really healty roots, which meant a bigger hole and more rocks. I did put a scoop of peat moss in the bottom of each hole, and limed the top when i was done. I will be putting some bone meal around each one in the next couple weeks. I am trying molemax/vole remover to keep them away.
Once I have the apples come in I will take all my reciepts and get my cost share for the plantings/supply.
When gas was 4 dollars a gallon it really pushed us to do something for a marshy part of our property that was slowly being eroded by water from a runoff creek and from just runoff. here you can see the run off.

Our requirments now are to mow for the next two years and spray for weeds and then we can let it go.
I am really excited to harvest some of the berrrys/nuts and will be putting an archery stand right in this area.

 

[EddieWalker]

Interesting.

Are you receiving an annual payment for being in the CRP program? I've read that allot of people are getting out of it in order to farm there land because of the crazy prices corn was getting, and as a result, other crops were increasing in value because so many people had gone to growing corn. I've also read that the govenrment wasn't enrolling any more acerage in the program becaus they were out of money.

It's a beautiful location!!!

Eddie

 

[beenthere]

Being out of money has no effect on what the Gov't pays out.

 

[forgeblast]

Actually we do recieve a payment for the next 15 years, we can opt out at any time. Since we are a tributary of the chesapeak bay, as far as running out of money for our program the feds wanted to make sure its fully enrolled and have tried to get more acres enrolled in the program. I actually recieved a signing bonus....
Up here they advertise as "farm the best CRP the rest". This area was a bramble marsh, what could grow there is multiflora rose, voles and rabbits. I wasnt going to farm it, even the grass if i did want to use it as a pasture was a lot of sedges and moss.
I have seen some increadble transformations, when crp is combined with cattle fencing, and stream crossings.
Conservation Reserve Program
has the article about 1.7 billion for crp.

As i said in previous posts, I choose the trees for its products (nuts, berrys) and for the timber value. This program helped cost share something i was going to do anyway.

Thanks eddie, its a real nice spot, you can see my neighbors pond in the background and its stocked, plus a lot of nice deer hunting in our area, and most days we have flocks of turkeys running around.

 

[forgeblast]

I recieved the apple trees from cummings nursery in ny, and wow nice size and shape. I have it all planted now and just sent my paperwork in. From sending it in they will send someone out to make sure the planting was done correctly and then in about 30 days ill get the money back. I am so glad this is planted i keep worrying about a hard frost like we had last year, but the tubes should protect most of the trees. The high bush cranberry, were so large that no tree tube would fit around them, so i had to cage them in. I really cant say enough about the suppliers i used. Great people all around.

 

[TripleR]

Very nice, CRP is a lot of work, but often well worth it. As mentioned, due to high crop prices a lot of people in my area are putting their land back into production.

 

[forgeblast]

My area that I planted was washed out and eroding fast. It was an area that I broke 4 blades and 3 spindles cutting due to hidden stumps and rocks.
I will have to post a current pic of it but already its doing its job. This was the last year of me spraying around the tubes but I will still spray to control invasive weeds.
The deer have been using it to bed down and the growth I have on some of my trees is impressive. So far I have been very happy with the results.

 

[1fastbob]

We have 800 acres CRP in the backyard here. It is all in grass. It's hilly and there are several different types of soil. Tried to grow wheat on it in the late 70's and early 80's but, wheat was only fair to poor. It's been in the CRP program since 1982 and we just renewed the contract for another 10 years. Now I have to plant 5 acres of food plot. That is why I traded my 2001 Agco ST30 for a 2012 Kubota L4600. It can be lots of work.