Here is my latest project. we had the emerald ash borer come through and decimate our ash trees. So we went in and cleared all the dead ash out of a n area the size of roughly three acres. then I went in and frost seeded on 25 pounds of cave in rock switch grass seed. next step will be to use atrazine to set back weeds for the year and allow the switchgrass to grow. I will be re planting roughly 125 fruit and oak trees into the area with the switch. I will keep you all posted on its development as the year goes on. I am excited to have a block of cover like switchgrass! deer love the grassy spots I have developed for them. this is the first one of any real size. Will keep you posted. Here is some photo's for your enjoyment! This is a brushwall!
Looking good man.....can't wait to see you reap the benefits of all your work Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I727 using Tapatalk 2
Keep us posted for sure! Id love to bounce ideas off you sometime for similar projects if this one goes well.
Quick update, have finally gotten some nice weather and got to work getting the brush cleaned up. frost seeded the CR switch grass in march. Now I have the brush piles all up to creating preferred bedding areas in the switch grass once it is established. Got the majority of the brush moved around so I can do the chemical burn this weekend! Then just need to plant the tree's! I can't wait to see my kids shoot some big deer around this spot in a few years! Here is some photos! a tip to building a bedding spot. use brush piles and pile the brush on the upwind side of where you want the deer to lay. This way they can lay with their back to the brush, the wind will usually be at their back and they will face down wind, they love these spots and they are easy to create with a chain saw and some elbow grease! overall picture of the bedding area i am creating. I want this to be a fawning / doe bedding area that the bucks check everyday during the rut.
Great thread! We are planning to do our first switch grass plot this year. We have a big overgrown field that adjoins our sanctuary that we will till up and plant. There are enough crab-apple trees around in there as well so it should provide great bedding similar to what you are creating. Can't wait to see how yours turns out!!
Here is a quick update: The cave in rock has come in nicely! it is round knee high looks to be establishing well!
I've never used this variety of switchgrass...here we use Kanlow Switch a lot for marshes and erosion control in bottoms. Really like the look of switchgrass and it's handy for duck blinds. Learn something new everyday, I'm going to try some of this here, one of my usual seed companies handles it so looks like I'll try frost seeding some later on...I have severl places it would be perfect!
covey the key is weed control, if you have an area you want to do it in I would suggest going in in the next month or so and killing it off with glysophate, then you have a pretty weed free seed bed for the seed to take hold in. good luck
Looks great, I'd like to try this in some spots where honeysuckle has taken over in my woods. Switch grass have to be reseeded annually?
Nope switch is a perennial cave in rock gets up to six feet tall and stands through snow. It is excellent cover, but is very tough to get established. It will be absolutely necessary to kill everything off with glysophate in the fall, then frost seed it on in February. It needs a few years to get ahead of the competition but once it does it will out compete and choke out weeds. I would kill with glysophate in the fall, frost seed in the late winter, then spray atrazine if you can get ahold of some the first week of april. Atrazine will help to supress the weed seed in the ground for a year. allowing the switch to take hold. I am not sure if all switchgrass is resistant to it, but it seems to have worked with the CIR. good luck! if you do some online research there is some pretty good info out there on forums about this topic. Just have to put the time in researching how to do it.
Here is a few photos of the CIR switch grass year two! most, I would say the patch is now 85 percent switch, It is really taking a hold well this year! some of it is over my head. Seems to be working well! Anybody else growing some new cover with Switch grass? I loved watching the deer disappear into this only to re appear on the other side a half hour later last fall!
