Posted on 06/18/2018 7:33:15 AM PDT by rarestia
Calling all farmers, land owners, and gardeners... yours truly recently took ownership of 4 acres of property in central Florida and has some questions. I'm far from a greenhorn, but I'm learning new things and don't know what I don't know. Please bear with me and correct any misuse of terms herein.
Approximately 3 acres of my land is heavily wooded and was poorly maintained. My last 2 weekends were spent with a rented brush hog clearing the front acre of my property of undergrowth. Vines were everywhere, some as thick as 2 inches (diameter), and it made for very slow going. There were numerous dead logs and some dead trees are still standing. The rest was poison ivy, overgrown deliberately-planted bushes such as oak leaf hydrangea, and oak saplings.
After clearing, I'm left with a lot of thatch, leaf litter, and branches to clear, but I have my sights set on the future. What are my next steps? I could walk the acre and manually pick up the big stuff. I'll either burn, chip, or save felled lumber. How can I make the grounds arable for turf? Should drop a broadleaf herbicide to tame the weeds? Should I rent a power rake or a dethatcher? Finally, should I aerate and then overseed with bahia or rye?
My goal is to have the natural large trees remain intact with appropriate pruning for shade, some winding mulch pathways, and either turf or natural ground cover such as fern, vervain, or juniper filling in the space where a lot of the weeds and brush were previously. I understand this is going to be a very lengthy process, but with the proper machinery and patience, I believe it's all very possible.
My thanks to any and all FReepers who might be able to help.
Yes!
A bobcat with a forestry mulcher head.
I’ve been wanting one of these so bad for years!!!
Too expensive for me on a fixed income...
I know I can hire someone to do so, but I just want to actually drive this thing through my woods. What a joy that would be!
Also to the OP, consider chipping and piling up the smaller debris and composting it. After a year that stuff would be great to spread on the property to feed it back to the soil.
Goats. Get some...................
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Cleared 260 acres of overgrown, briar ridden, dense weed infested land. They cleaned out everything that they could reach on their hind legs. Started with 30 nanny’s and 2 billy’s. Three years later we had 183 goats and land all cleared. Back to the auction barn with all but 20 nanny’s....
There are actually some subtle and mildly sophisticated considerations about doing this, and I’m not going to suggest I know any of this from personal experience. I just happen to like stump clearing YouTube videos for no reason I can explain.
Some random thoughts:
One guy letsdig18 has some land clearing videos I have found somewhat instructive.
If you are going to bring in excavators or heavy machinery to take out stumps from wherever you’re gonna take out stumps, can the soil support the equipment without the machine sinking into the ground?
Are the trees you want to yank out of a species where they have great big taproots or can they be pushed over? If they can pushed over, you don’t want to cut them down so close to the ground and maybe not cut them down at all; an excavator can push over a shallow-root-ball tree and take out the whole root ball all in one shot. Then you chainsaw up the fallen tree once it has been pushed over.
You may want to plant some mustard or some other nitrogen-fixing ground cover to suppress the weeds and enhance the general fertility of the soil. Vineyard trick.
You *don’t* want to allow huge grass to grow because when you go to take it out via a means other than mowing, it take out lots of topsoil (which you might have a big shortage of anyway) and create huge masses of green waste that is not that easy to deal with.
The guys who operate this kind of heavy gear do not seem to like chippers that much, because you have to kind of handle every item one by one. They prefer to burn it in a giant pile. To make those burns work, you have to shake the dirt out the pulled-out stumps best you can, preserving as much topsoil as you can, then let those stumps dry out in the sun. They burn poorly if they are packed up with dirt in between the roots. To best do that, they get temporarily piled up in a line so they break the wind. WHILE they are drying out, this is when your weeds grow and potentially create an issue.
Hope this works out for you!
Only a week?!
I used my seattle sensibilities when I first moved here. I was in shorts and a t-shirt weedeating the stuff between the field and the woods and two weeks later had to go to the doctor. He looked at my legs and said, “Looks like we got a bug AND plant thing going on here.
I’ve since learned how to manage it, and it’s ok now that I know what to do.
And I spent the whole day yesterday clearing in blistering and humid heat, no problem. Bug spray, sun screen, plenty of water, and of most importance, a head band to keep the sweat out of my face. I actually enjoyed it.
They burn it in Florida. Legal or illegal. Seen it every time I’ve been down there. Push it into a pile and set it alight.
In New England the ticks are worse than poisonous snakes.
“if you are allergic to poison ivy”
and if you are not YET allergic to poison ivy/oak/sumac, you WILL be allergic after the 3rd exposure, because almost everyone is allergic by the 3rd exposure ...
We get a lot of tics here, but they take a long time to pick a place to bite you. By then you can find them. And the permathrin helps a lot.
I’ve heard the lyme disease risk is much higher there than in KY.
“He is in Florida...The deepest “ravine” in Florida might be 5 feet deep...”
LOL! I was thinking the same thing ...
bookmark
I use old 10” saw blades in my weed whacker.
Advantages: doesn’t throw cutting all over you, does larger stuff, uses little power from the motor.
Disadvantages: blade will scratch/cut things you accidentally touch.
Not dangerous to the operator but mustn’t swing the blade into someone nearby.
I’ve been handling poison ivy since I was a little kid and never once has so much as an itch. Not to say I don’t take proper precautions, but I don’t worry about it as much as most.
“Your method makes me think of my youth, and also, ticks, chiggers, copperheads, wasps, hornets, bumble bees, poison ivy rash, and other things that I got impatient with in Missouri.”
The Piedmont of the Carolinas is like that ... one reason I moved to Colorado ...
Why rent? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WI3Z1KGNBRo
They are delicious. Keep some nannies and will not have to mow either.
I’m not looking to bring in any heavy equipment beyond my John Deere zero-turn and whatever implements it can tow. I’m renting most of the “heavy” equipment, as buying requires a high initial investment for something I could complete in a couple months of rentals and never need again. I have neighbors with Bobcats, but I’m not looking to clear cut the property.
I just want to selectively prune and clear the ground cover to make way for more presentable and preferable landscaping.
Thankfully we have very few cypress trees. Those we do have are very large but drop needles in a confined area.
“You can even write “Organic” on the Roundup bottle with a sharpie”
Roundup (Glyphosate) is an organic chemical so you’re being truthful.
Burning is completely legal in my county and done pretty regularly. Problem is that I have SO MUCH to burn that settling alight the 8' tall pile I accumulated over the weekend would be like Burning Man in my backyard.
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