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Little River, TX | This might interest some, but I found it really interesting.
Today I started the planting of grass in what will be a filter strip. Designed to stop the float trash from crop land and rough ground from drifting onto my hay fields during the irregular flooding.
Planted Eastern Gammagrass, Texas Sue Eastern Gammagrass to be specific.
Planted with an old corn/cotton planter, looked like the old Blackland Planter, except this has packing wheels that drive the planter drive. .
A two row planter. No opening disk or planter shoe, just the steel plates to protect the seed as it drops. The two units are on 27" centers. Not what I would have picked, but there is toooooo much rust involved to change the width. Besides it is a borrowed planter. A planter already set up for Eastern Gammagrass planting.
It has been 60 years sense last using a row crop planter. I was in college than.
Now as long is the seed is deep enough but not tooooo deep. If there were no malfunctions that I missed in my ignorance. Maybe we will have two rows of Eastern Gammagrass stumps catching the depris floating down the KATC Ditch. About 5,000 acres drains down the KATY Ditch and the "ditch" is no where large enough to carry all that water in the channel.
This is just the latest attempt to contain all that float trash coming our way.
This will be temporary at best. The boundary fence with our neighbor has some fence post with only a foot of post still showing above the "Dirt".
Everyone around was willing to provide advise. I figured I needed only 12 pounds to plant the filter strip. It is NOT going to be a pasture. The willing advise insisted that I would need 30 pounds of seed. When I was finished I had 17 pounds of the 30 pounds of seed to put back in the sack. Most of the area was planted using only one planter with seed, and using 108" row spacing.
I will plant an annual sweet clover in the whole strip. If there is no sweet clover I have some 3 year old alfalfa seed I can plant as a cover crop and nitrogen source.
My willing advisors have a list of native legumes &c to plant, but this is not designed to be a native pasture but designed to be something that I know will grow, HERE.
May try some Alamo Switchgrass on the West End where the water comes on to the this farm.
Well I have that out of my system. | |
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Something new to me,
