2017 Habitat Season Opener

Finally!  That was a long winter.  Well, I made the trip up to get going on spring projects.  I took Friday off and made the trek up Thursday night.  Had a number of things to get done this weekend.  This is the first time I went up right at the intersection of winter and spring.  The snow was pretty much gone, but the ground still frozen.  It was extra special given there were also no ticks or mosquitoes.

First big project was to get a bunch of lime and fertilizer down.  I had picked up 500 pounds of Waukesha coarse ground dolomitic lime.  Also picked up 250 pounds of gypsum for various projects, and 100 pounds of potash to push the K on the Todd plot as well as the new clover seeding.

I was able to get all of that spread on Friday after a long battle with the sled and doing it by hand.  Can't complain too much though, it was good exercise.

There are a couple things going on that I'm excited to see.  I'm testing sections of the clover trail to see how they do with a good shot of sulfur from the gypsum.  I hit the new seeding that is coming south outta the Todd plot, as well as a portion of the new seeding from the fall of 2015.  That one came just fantastic and I'm hoping to push it further by plugging at least this hole in the nutrient bucket.

I stopped just short of our freezer up there because that's a good mid point of a very good stretch of that planting.  We'll see how that turns out as spring goes on.  I'll also post those pictures over to the Clover Trail page once green up arrives.

So where did the lime and the rest of the gypsum go?  That's all meant for the oaks around the Slice North food plot.  After some walking around, I mapped out where the new plot edges will be in this plot.  This is going to be broken out in it's own page called Acorns in Clover.  I'm banking on four major inputs to stimulate acorn production in these oaks around the north plot.  Those four inputs are pretty simple.  They are lime, sulfur, sunlight, and reduced competition.

As you can see from the picture, there is still some work to be done cleaning up the rest of the competition, but that will be done before the end of May.  The big idea for this weekend was to get the lime and gypsum on the ground and soaking in before the trees began to wake up for the year.

The last big project for this trip was to get some fallen oaks cleaned up by the road screen areas.  There were two big trees that needed to go, and thankfully, the neighbor came and helped get it done in exchange for the wood.  He probably pulled 2-3 cords of solid white oak out of the deal for about 5 hours work.  These trees needed to go so I could get through those spots with the rest of the trees I ordered this spring.

That project got done and that was about it for me.  I was shot.  I took the brush and repurposed it for road screen and tree protection along the ditch.  You can also follow the road screen project on it's own page as well.