| Click on the photo for a larger view.
(Photos are arranged from oldest to the most recent.) |
Planting grass seed |
Planting grass seed |
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| Planting Alamo Switch (the following 10 photos)
A bit of background --- not a farmer of any
kind. Know my way around tractors and stuff from plowing snow in
Vermont. Bought this place because of the possibility of restoring
an old neglected set of fields around the house. High and sandy with
a bit of low lying area that is about 4 feet about the water table.
I've been able to recover the fields to a decent level and replace
most of the lower cotton field with your switchgrass. Simply took my
old Kubota and put a small tiller on the back...and turned all the
cotton debris into the ground. Dragged it level and over seeded with
and hand spreader containing your Alamo. Then dragged a screen
across it followed by a weighted sheet of plywood to get good
seed/ground contact. This was in May 2004. About 4 weeks later I
could see the grass coming up among my crop of weeds. When the grass
was about 6" high I hand spread ammonia nitrate (50-60 lb. per
acre....and simply stood back. |
This was the old field when I took over the place. |
Tilling the field in the winter to get rid of the huge moundings needed for cotton production. Turned as much of the debris as possible into the soil. |
Setting the field up for planting. |
Installing the fence line... switchgrass to the left. |
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Switchgrass and weeds to the right side of the fence. About 3 weeks after planting. |
This is what I'm taking down now. The higher grass is along the fence
line where I didn't cut it last summer. The lower was cut in mid summer 2005. This coming year I'm letting it go all summer.....the quail call it home! |
That's the ROPs on my tractor. |
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