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.
Guineas work good, too. They’ll eat up ticks, fleas, mosquitoes, snakes. And unlike chickens, they will leave your garden alone.
Hi.
Napalm the area, you will be glad you did.
Sorry. I’ll go sit in the corner.
5.56mm
HaHa! When I saw it was Robroys woman, I said to myself, “Dayum, I don’t want to tangle with that lady.” Then I read the tag line.
How do you get cancer from roundup?
You might be surprised what a local excavator would charge to just stop on his way back from a larger job with one machine and do a half-day’s work. Might be better that renting a skid steer for two day plus delivery and pick up.
When I have long-term leased a Bobcat it is to avoid the intermittent manual labor that would require three guys for a day a week. One laborer foreman, properly trained, can do all the minor clean-up, perimeter prep and trash removal with a Bobcat and then hook up a spinning broom attachment when the paving is done.
Most of my job-sites were five to fifty acres so, I agree, if all you want is a gravel drive perimeter cut back small machinery if available will do the job.
Rent one for a day.
A lot the next street over from me in Florida was cleared using a $680,000 John Deere machine that has a spinning jet engine turbine like set of blades that cut through big trees in just about a minute.
In about two hours half an acre of Florida jungle was turned into mulch.
My next door neighbor had a guy come in with a Bobcat. In two hours all the small stuff on a 60-footx100-foot area in the back fourth of his lot was in a pile. It took another half-hour to put in in the back of a hauling truck.
2nd on the goats. A family member bought an overgrown farm and cleared acres of undergrowth that way.
And it don’t take long, either. They are voracious eaters of any plants and even bark!...................
As several have already pointed out, there are different types of livestock that will keep the understory cleared out by grazing on it. If the term “understory” is unfamiliar to you, that’s the low growth, the bushes, low tree branches and the like. Keeps the forested area shaded but open beneath. In subtropical and tropical climates, if left unattended such areas become impassable, like a green wall. If you want privacy, you can leave some of it strategically on property lines, but generally you want that understory cleaned out. It’s habitat for varmints that you don’t want such as snakes.
Tim Allen? Is that you?.........................
Inhaling smoke from burning poison oak or poison ivy will hospitalize you with serious breathing difficulties, but even exposure to skin is a very bad idea. You’ll get the rash just as surely from the smoke as you will from contact with the plants themselves, if you’re among the majority who have an allergic reaction to it. I’ve never experienced it, even after playing in it with friends as a child. Those friends all got it, I didn’t. Sort of odd because I had all manner of other contact dermatitis as a child, just not that one.
A lot of folks have recommended heavy equipment. I want to reiterate that I’m looking to be more surgical and strategic with the removal. I don’t need to clear any substantial trees. Any trees that I do need to remove will be taken out with a chainsaw and a stump grinder.
My neighbor has a front loader and takes down giant oaks with ease. I’m not looking to clear a swath, I just want to open up the land.
D-9
“Tim Allen? Is that you?.........................”.
I’m not from the afraid-of-my-shadow generation (Tim’s from the show biz generation).
I also disabled the kickback thing on the chainsaw, and also have the blade cover always retracted on my portable circular saw, and also change receptacles and switches without turning off the power.
Needless to say I disabled the interlock that stops our riding mower when you get off the seat, and another interlock that won’t let you go backward without holding down a button.
I do, however, usually use a second jack when crawling under the car.
Only accident I remember having is picking up a soldering iron by the wrong end. Geez the thing came without a wrong end guard.
Oh, and I text on two phones at a time while driving. Just kidding about that. I don’t carry a phone.
Roundup Poison Ivy Formula is my favorite for fast kill. It’s a mixture of glyphosate and trichlophyr. It’s expensive, but you can make your own by buying the components separately at Home Depot. They have their own generic glyphosate, and Ortho’s poison ivy killer is trichlophyr.
That said, herbicides with glyphosate in them will kill anything they touch, good or bad, and if there’s any good grass underneath or alongside the weeds, it will kill that, too. You will have big ugly burned spots.
For ongoing weed management and control of big nasty weeds or weed trees, I like a product called GrazeOn Next. It’s a serious agricultural toxin that’s formulated to be applied via a boom, but you can mix it up for a personal tank sprayer. It takes longer to work but it kills things dead dead dead, and spares any grass. I like it because animals won’t be injured by eating treated vegetation after it dries. In other words, goats are fine, but they may not tear up the root system of every weed, so you may have weeds reappearing after the goats have gone home to whoever you rented them from. The herbicides kill weeds all the way through their root system.
Good luck. I’ve been there and am still fighting the good fight against overgrown woods, invasive multiflora roses, poison ivy, and bamboo.
I own a 160 acre farm in east Texas. My advice would be to sell whatever timber you don’t want by contacting a timber company or agent and tell them you want it “thinned.” This will make it easier to get rid of the other underbrush you don’t want by mowing and under burning.
don’t seed with rye if you expect to have any livestock or if you have neighbors with livestock. They won’t appreciate the seed spreading on the wind - at all. see: rye staggers
also, you might want to invest in a pair of snakeguards for your legs. No telling what critters are hiding in the tall weeds/downed logs.
goats are the best bet but males will challenge fences more aggressively and keep you busy. And, you’ll need to walk your land looking carefully for plants poisonous to goats (including those ‘rich’ in copper which is lethal to goats and sheep) before you contract to have them brought over. You’ll also need to work out with the goat tender whether he’ll pick them up every night or whether you need to shelter them securely each night, meaning to supplemental feed, water, securely shelter and keep free from predators. Each goat is worth a couple hundred dollars, so you don’t want any dead ones on your watch.
If you use vinegar as a weedicide, use the 20% agricultural vinegar not supermarket 2% or 5% vinegar, which won’t work. Lastly, burying the debris over burning is usually best. Dig a big hole, throw in a good helping of ag lime and pile the dirt over and in a year or two when the hill has subsided you’ll have a perfect garden spot with better water retaining capacity than sand.
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