dirt/field prep for trees?

[Lycanthrope]

recently picked up a few acres sw of menoken a few miles, its pretty much virgin prairie and fairly rough. Any tips on getting this smooth and ready to plant . Ive heard as soon as you break the ground noxious weeds become an issue. Im planning to have trees planted around the outside by soil conservation in the spring but I need to prep the ground and dont wanna plant on uneven surface... Im thinking of trying to find a farmer with large implements to come in and subsoil, plow and disk but not sure if thats a bad idea... I dug down and theres a clay layer about 15 inches down that worries me, i want to break that up before putting in trees for sure. right now it hasnt even been cut so far this year ...

I would like to keep this area organic also if possible.

 

[Justin]

I would talk to the soil conservation district now for recommendations. FYI some soil conservation districts will not plant in native prairie unless maybe for around a house or building

 

[LBrandt]

I would spray with round up where you are going to dig then burn if possible gets rid of a lot of weeds and seeds before you dig and plant.

 

[NDwalleyes]

Worked with NRCS a lot on trees. Mow it. Have a farmer hit it with a disc several times. Maybe hit it with a joker if need be so it's nice and smooth. NRCS will want it like a garden, nice and fluffy. Clay is not an issue.

Make sure they do weed fabric, well worth the extra money.

 

[Lycanthrope]

Worked with NRCS a lot on trees. Mow it. Have a farmer hit it with a disc several times. Maybe hit it with a joker if need be so it's nice and smooth. NRCS will want it like a garden, nice and fluffy. Clay is not an issue.

Make sure they do weed fabric, well worth the extra money.

Yup, they are doing fabric. Pretty neat program they have set up working with the outdoor heritage fund, OHF will pay 60% of cost of trees up to 25k...

SC guy said all they NEED is it killed off, but he said results will be better if the ground has been worked, Id rather put in some extra effort now for better results down the road.

Also any of you guys have experience using a well for irrigation? I did some research and most of the well water in that area comes up 800ppm or higher TDS, pretty damn hard. Not sure if that would do more harm than good on plants!

 

[LBrandt]

Plants don't rust.:;:stirthepotHAHAHA

 

[NDwalleyes]

Yup, they are doing fabric. Pretty neat program they have set up working with the outdoor heritage fund, OHF will pay 60% of cost of trees up to 25k...

SC guy said all they NEED is it killed off, but he said results will be better if the ground has been worked, Id rather put in some extra effort now for better results down the road.

Also any of you guys have experience using a well for irrigation? I did some research and most of the well water in that area comes up 800ppm or higher TDS, pretty damn hard. Not sure if that would do more harm than good on plants!

You're going to need some sort of water, especially for the first 3 years. It's not mandatory, but you will end up doing a lot of replants otherwise.

The folks at NRSC or USFS have a diverse staff. Someone will know the answer to water hardness.

Became a huge fan of drip irrigation. Cheap to set up and uses way less water. If you don't have a well out there, a few hundred gallon tank on a trailer or truck with a small pump at 25 PSI you can water a lot of trees in a couple hours. Drive out, hook it up, drink a few beers and go home.

 

[Big Iron]

As mentioned above- Work up the soil and weed barrier. Pray for a wet spring 2019.

What types of trees were you thinking about planting?

 

[BrokenBackJack]

Don't forget if you just want to till wide enough for the fabric you can get a rototiller for the rear of a tractor and hit with that a few times and keep going deeper and you won't have to get a plow or disk from a farmer. We did it both ways and the tiller really leaves it nice and soft. Would do that way if i had to do it all over again. If you don't have one lots of people around Bismarck have tractors and tillers.
Yep water first 3 years when needed and that is over half the battle!
Drove by our farm a couple weeks ago (we sold the farmstead about 4 years ago) and man are those pines doing well. Guessing most are 12' high and some higher. Did the fabric and really cut down on the weeding. You will have to pull some weeds or spray roundup around the trees as some weeds will come up where they cut a hole for the tree.

 

[Auggie]

I'd try to disturb the soil as little as possible. So I'd work 5ft wide strips for the trees and work it in the spring. This will help you get out earlier in the spring if needed and also keep the weeds down. I would desicate it this fall and again next spring and mowing will help the residue (do after plants are dead/dying). It takes about a week under warm conditions for roundup to start working. It'll take longer during the fall. If you mow it too early, the roundup may not translocate.
I would not rip it as it's native, not compacted (the jury is out for ripping reducing compaction; it can increase the likeliness of getting stuck), and should be mellow. A small 2 bottom plow would be the best way to work it first. I've made dozens of passes on virgin food plots with various cultivators. Plows work. Then a tandem disk a few times and you should be good.

 

[Lycanthrope]

Planning to put black hills spruce and scotch pine on the outsides, some burr oak, honeylocust, and maybe sugar maples, northern hackberry and some shrubs, maybe juneberry, aronia and/or chokeberry. Gonna be around 11,000 feet total so Im not sure drip irrigation is doable. Do you install the drip line under the fabric, before the trees are planted? Im thinking Im going to NEED a tractor but there are no structures out there currently and I dont have room in my garage to keep a tractor either... What is an affordable, easy to construct structure that can be used to store small equipment?

 

[NDwalleyes]

Planning to put black hills spruce and scotch pine on the outsides, some burr oak, honeylocust, and maybe sugar maples, northern hackberry and some shrubs, maybe juneberry, aronia and/or chokeberry. Gonna be around 11,000 feet total so Im not sure drip irrigation is doable. Do you install the drip line under the fabric, before the trees are planted? Im thinking Im going to NEED a tractor but there are no structures out there currently and I dont have room in my garage to keep a tractor either... What is an affordable, easy to construct structure that can be used to store small equipment?

On top of weed fabric...After planting.

 

[Allen]

1. Clay, not something you can do squat about as it will revert back to what it currently is for tightness in no time. Leave be and choose your trees accordingly.

2. It would be amazing if you could do drip, and of course it's possible. It just may be more expensive and difficult to design than you are looking for as a project.

3. You break up that soil and you will have an explosion of every noxious damn weed you can think of. Yes, guilty as hell, I am.

4. If you still prefer to go the break the ground route. Here's what I would do.
a. Round it up.
b. When dead, mow it close to the ground.
c. Run a tiller over it, a disc kills stuff, but if you want soil prep and don't go down 6-8 inches, why bother?
d. Don't go fishing too much when it's hot out. It kills the damn trees. Mostly because you aren't doing your job of watering them. The pines and spruces are probably more drought tolerant than deciduous trees you're planting, but even they would like a little attention.

5. Organic? Buy a hoe and a good pair of goatskin gloves. You're gonna need them.

 

[USMCDI]

Do yourself a favor for later and get a tractor that can handle a 10-12' vibrashank and keep it black for at least 5 years. We have 40 rows around our yard and if I could do it over I would make them 30' apart and able to cultivate them both ways. We planted those rows when I was ten and you can't get through them today except where we pulled out a row of sand cherries with a D-7. Fuck the fabric, I say again fuck the fabric, it took me months with a backhoe to get rid of the shit and it killed more trees than it did good. A water trailer is your friend and the hell with the fabric, that shit lasts forever and there will be wormwood coming up through the holes cut for the trees in a year or so then the only option you have is to step on the weed and spray it, total pain in the ass. Your goal for the first 5-7 years is to keep the weeds out and maintain the soil. I'd much rather run a digger through there than fight wormwood and every other type of noxious weed on the planet. I could go on for hours about trees, I've probably planted a couple hundred thousand and it's a love hate relationship, think 30 years down the road!

 

[ktm450]

Did the same thing u did 4 years ago at my place. Only I didn't use round up, I used cornerstone plus from agri alliance in Bismarck. spendy but doesn't neutralize the soil. I mowed the grass down super low where I wanted my rows and then in the fall right b4 it froze I tilled it up with a tractor.. I went 10 feet wide with the tiller for all the rows. that way I cld put the fabric down and till on both sides of the fabric. Im a firm believer in the fabric! When spring time came and they were going to be there I went out 3 days prior to them coming and I sprayed and tilled the ground again. It worked good.. Now that the trees are good and growing, I have planted grass back again along the fabric to keep the dirt from eroding away.

Im not sure what kind of soil you have, but im not happy with my black hill spruce trees(neighbor talked me into them). They are not growing like my coloardo blue spruce, and the branches are super thin and they are a solid foot shorter then my blue spruce are. And its not like they don't get attention. lol My damn trees have been babied sense they been put in.. but the hard work is starting to show.

I don't have a dripper system but my neighbor does, and I really wish I would have put one in, still might. But his seems to work awesome and he doesn't have to stand there with a garden hose and haul a water tank around his yard..

Good luck and be prepared to spend your free time watering/weeding them.

 

[Auggie]

Did the same thing u did 4 years ago at my place. Only I didn't use round up, I used cornerstone plus from agri alliance in Bismarck. spendy but doesn't neutralize the soil. I mowed the grass down super low where I wanted my rows and then in the fall right b4 it froze I tilled it up with a tractor.. I went 10 feet wide with the tiller for all the rows. that way I cld put the fabric down and till on both sides of the fabric. Im a firm believer in the fabric! When spring time came and they were going to be there I went out 3 days prior to them coming and I sprayed and tilled the ground again. It worked good.. Now that the trees are good and growing, I have planted grass back again along the fabric to keep the dirt from eroding away.

Im not sure what kind of soil you have, but im not happy with my black hill spruce trees(neighbor talked me into them). They are not growing like my coloardo blue spruce, and the branches are super thin and they are a solid foot shorter then my blue spruce are. And its not like they don't get attention. lol My damn trees have been babied sense they been put in.. but the hard work is starting to show.

I don't have a dripper system but my neighbor does, and I really wish I would have put one in, still might. But his seems to work awesome and he doesn't have to stand there with a garden hose and haul a water tank around his yard..

Good luck and be prepared to spend your free time watering/weeding them.

Roundup does not neutralize the soil it has a very short residual effect. You can plant anything you want a week after Roundup has been applied. Cornerstone Plus is a generic Roundup (active ingredient glyphosate).

 

[Coyote Hunter]

Did the same thing u did 4 years ago at my place. Only I didn't use round up, I used cornerstone plus from agri alliance in Bismarck. spendy but doesn't neutralize the soil. I mowed the grass down super low where I wanted my rows and then in the fall right b4 it froze I tilled it up with a tractor.. I went 10 feet wide with the tiller for all the rows. that way I cld put the fabric down and till on both sides of the fabric. Im a firm believer in the fabric! When spring time came and they were going to be there I went out 3 days prior to them coming and I sprayed and tilled the ground again. It worked good.. Now that the trees are good and growing, I have planted grass back again along the fabric to keep the dirt from eroding away.

Im not sure what kind of soil you have, but im not happy with my black hill spruce trees(neighbor talked me into them). They are not growing like my coloardo blue spruce, and the branches are super thin and they are a solid foot shorter then my blue spruce are. And its not like they don't get attention. lol My damn trees have been babied sense they been put in.. but the hard work is starting to show.

I don't have a dripper system but my neighbor does, and I really wish I would have put one in, still might. But his seems to work awesome and he doesn't have to stand there with a garden hose and haul a water tank around his yard..

Good luck and be prepared to spend your free time watering/weeding them.

I agree on the Black Hills Spruce. We put Black Hills and Blue Spruce in our tree rows around our house. The first year was a drought and all the Black Hills Spruce died. The blue spruce did a lot better. They grow pretty well once they get established. Good Luck!

 

[Lycanthrope]

I agree on the Black Hills Spruce. We put Black Hills and Blue Spruce in our tree rows around our house. The first year was a drought and all the Black Hills Spruce died. The blue spruce did a lot better. They grow pretty well once they get established. Good Luck!

For some reason my wife doesnt like blue spruce... Anyone have experience with Norway Spruce?

Im thinking maybe I should have the whole area worked and replant with a pasture mix right away. A big concern I have is just smoothing the ground out, once its flat Im assuming it should stay fairly flat but dont want to get knocked around all the time trying to get around on that land.

Anyone have experience burning pastures? What are the rules and requirements to do that? Beneficial or no?

 

[MarbleEyez]

We planted 16,240' of tree's in May of 2017. We had roughly a 75% success rate on that planting, after one of the driest years on record. Had we not put fabric down on those tree's, we would of been replanting every single one of them this spring. Yes, the fabric has it's downfalls, but the good outweighs the bad by a long shot. Keep in mind that the big selling feature to fabric is weed control, but the moisture retention in the soil was unreal. Every hole we dug this spring was wet and loaded with worms.

This spring we put in a bigger planting, roughly 30,000' of tree's. They all have fabric. Unless I hire a kid full time in the summer to water tree's 5 days a week, there's no way a person could keep up!

All of our plantings will have fabric.

 

[Allen]

You can burn anything you want, if you own it. At a minimum you will want to call the rural fire dept to let them know your plans. If you talked nicely to them, perhaps you can plan a training exercise. They kind of did that with the airport earlier this summer.

As far as it staying smooth. Not a chance. Too many pocket gophers, badgers, rabbits, fox and other hole digging bastidges out that way. My land is rough as hell from them. I've thought about trying to smooth it out a bit as the it's pretty rough on the kidneys when out back on the tractor/UTV/pickup. I have a 6 ft tiller for my tractor but the experience I had with wormwood overtaking a small food plot I put in a couple years ago really keeps me from being overly excited about tilling anything. Actually, the couple acres I have broken up is going to get seeded back to grass this fall as I have most of the noxious weeds taken care of, finally.