TOPIC: Paging K_duce to the yellow courtsey phone! a thread for you!

Latt- I have experienced the same rains. the intensity of these storms made my very gald that I put in rain brakes at the bottom of each bed. My first beds are lateral to the slope, not verticle; across the slope not up/down the mountain. I used logs 5\" or greater to put at the base of each bed ain a continuous line to keep everything in place. there was certainly enough deadfall to do this without cutting the first tree.

Even so, I see that on nearly all of my beds that the top leaf clutter has migrated to the logs there. Lots of exposed ground where the leaf clutter had been placed before. Perhaps I won't have the problem that has ytou justiflyingly concerned. I'd be worried about my 4 lbs of seed, and you have 20 lbs in!

K_Duce-- Nice photos... dogs look very happy. I didn't see you with your feet in the pool, tho.... LOL

A leaf blower may work to blow the leaves off even if they are wet.

Kduce,

Nice looking branch and water hole there...

Being from Middle TN and having worked in a job that took me all over the state I am quite familliar with west TN as well.

Most of West TN is - as my Grandma always said - flatter than a flitter !

And the creeks over there are mostly just sort of muddy/sandy ditches with steep banks.

Your spot there looks more like what we have over here in Middle TN.

Very Nice !

I live on the highland rim area of Middle TN and there is not much flat land at all - just hills and hollows and almost all of our creeks are hard/slick rock bottom type creeks.

Here is a pic if a nice water hole I rested at a while last year while hunting seng.

I also have a couple of 40-50' water falls back behind my house which are very nice.

TNhunter



PS - around here when we start hunting seng down a hollow at first the creek may be gravel bed and then as you get on down the hollow there will be a nice steep drop in elevation and hard rock bottom will start showing up in the creek and large rock outcroppings on the hillsides too.

When you get to that point that the rock is showing up (and is not far under the soil) that is when the seng usually starts showing up too.

I expect the calcium levels are getting right at that point for seng. I found some huge 3 & 4 prongs just up to the left of that little hard rock waterfall in that pic.

TNhunter

Tnhunter, nice pic, yeah im probably middle tn, on the western portion of the highland rim. Lots of Hills and valleys.

I have to rake, as my woods have a lot of oak trees. Not good, but you farm the land you have, not the land you wish for.

What I found is - just raking the oak leaves off did help some, but the ground is drying out faster. Next year, I'll try mulching the raked leaves and blowing the mulch back out. I have noticed that some of the 2-3YO plants seem to be better about poking up through leaves than seedlings. Hopefully, as they get older, I won't have to rake as much.

I'm also contouring my plantings, using fallen branches as breaks. Erosion is like cancer, once it starts, it doesn't stop.

johno

I agree with you on the fact that older plants find their way through the leaf mulch easier than seedlings do. I have found that seedlings struggle to make it through the mulch if it is too thick or if it is matted and wet.

Two yr olds seem to find their way through the mulch a little easier. I usually have a few matted problem areas in these beds. But 3,4,5 and older roots have no problem finding their way through the mulch even if it is matted down. But I mostly have maple trees with very few red oaks.

In your case it may a good idea to chop up the leaves with a mower like Latt mentined earlier. Just for the first yr when you plant the seeds. By the time the root reach their third year, I don't think they will have much of a problem getting through the mulch.

classicfur

so I climbed back up to check on things this past weekend. All rootlets are up, and look pretty good. And there's like a 5000% increase in seedlings showing up!

However even with that increase, I expect that in two weeks that will tell the tale on how many of all the seedings will be up. There's plenty of room in my seed beds for the rest of them to come up.... just need some warmer weather to come along consistantly..