Anyone get out and start working on your plots yet?

[tunrevir]

I took the opportunity to get out in the woods the past couple weeks to work on my plots for the upcoming year. Right now I have the soil prepped and ready for spring planting on some of the more established plots and have worked to open up some new ground to add more plots to my land. The new plots are going to be quite a bit of work to get going as they were in fairly weedy areas. Here is what I am thinking. I scraped back the dead weeds to expose the ground roots and soil. I plan to wait until I see the weeds start to grow and then spray them with roundup and then will wait a week or so and go back and reinspect the area and add a second coat of roundup if necessary. Once that has been completed and it appears that I have rid the plot of most of the new growth of weeds I plan to disk and then till the area and then wait a couple weeks and hit it with roundup one more time to kill off any newly emerging weeds. At this point, I should have my soil samples back and be ready to add lime. My question is do you till the lime in? At what point after you have limed and got your ph in line do you plant? I am looking forward to working these plots this summer and trying to establish some additional forage for the critters in the area. Has anyone tried staking black poly over an area to kill weeds? I am just wondering if this would work so I didn't have to use so much roundup. Any thoughts or comments would be welcome. Most of my plots are 1/2 acre and smaller.

Tunrevir~

[creepworm]

Till the lime in. It needs to come in contact with soil in order to react with it and raise the pH. If it is not tilled in, it will only neutralize the pH on the surface, where it will do no good.

Also, the reaction of the lime can take anywhere from weeks to years depending on the size of your liming material. If the pH is borderline it most likely won't be a big deal but if it is real bad it could be.

[Scott K]

I started prepping a new plot, about an acre. I spent the weekend cutting about 100 trees. And now I will spend the week recovering from cutting 100 trees. I plan on going back up and finish cleaning up the branches and stuff in a couple weeks.

[tunrevir]

I went out this past weekend and worked on opening a few more spots and am excited to get planting this spring! I think I am going to work a few different types of seed into each plot to get a little more variety in each area. Should be a fun spring.

Tunrevir~

[Scott K]

I went out this past weekend and worked on opening a few more spots and am excited to get planting this spring! I think I am going to work a few different types of seed into each plot to get a little more variety in each area. Should be a fun spring.

Tunrevir~

What did you end up planting? I dont plan on getting my seed in until mid July.