I am in the process of trying to get a food plot established this year but I am running into road blocks. I've tried getting permission from the farmer to access his field drive to get equipment down to my property but he has denied my multiple requests. I asked if he would be interested in disking the area for me with his equipment ( which I would obviously pay for ) but once again he has no desire to help me out at all. I went there this past weekend armed with a rake and to see if I would be able to just rake up the ground. Well after an hour of working and seeing very little progress I thought of doing a burn. I have asked questions in another post about doing burns but I didn't ask this one. If I do a burn am I able to take up the dead burnt grass and plant my seed right on top of the soil? Or will I still need to do some form of roundup to kill any potential emergence of weeds? Any suggestions are appreciated. Keep in mind any thing I do needs to be carried in by hand up the hill roughly a quarter mile. Thanks
if there has been grass there, most likely it will be sod-bound. i've not seen any clover do well in this situation. unless you can get the ground worked up somehow, you will be wasteing your time imho.
A say grass but I wouldn't call it sod ... It's knee to waist high prairie grass. I was able to take it up but it just takes time.
sod-bound means the massive root system that gets all intertwined under ground. grassy areas ARE sod-bound!!.
I burned out a patch of reed canary grass a few years ago and tried to get a rear tine tiller in there to tear the roots out. That machine in those roots kicked my butt. I made it a half a pass before I decided on an upland plot.:D
You are going to have to kill the grass. Burning will help get seed to soil contact which will help greatly in the germination rate of the clover, but your only real option looks like chemical to kill the grass. Roundup will kill pretty much anything, but you are going to have to wait a little while to plant that clover I would think. Another option would be to just plant it and let the clover compete with the grass this summer. Some clover will establish this year, then kill off the grass with Clethodim, which will not hurt the clover. Re-seed this fall or frost seed this winter to get the plot full of clover. Grasses are tough on a clover plot because they will chock out the clover eventually.
Like Skywalker said, roundup is your best option if you can't get any machinery to the plot. If you do both roundup and burn, you will for sure kill the grasses, and have the ash as a fantastic fertilizer. After that, a walk-behind tiller may work to eliminate the now-dead roots, and put them into the soil as compost. However, if the sod is too thick, A walk behind tiller may be ineffective.
Walk behind tillers are relatively cheap to rent, and if there is any sort of walking trail to the plot you could easily push it to the plot.
Rent a walk behind rear tine tiller from Home Depot or a local rent-all. Like Skywalker said, burning will help but that grass likely will keep coming back. What I would do is burn it if I could, wait about 2-3 weeks and then go in and spray it all down with round-up. Get the rear tine tiller in there and make it right. Front tine tillers like what was mentioned above will tear you up faster than it will tear up the sod.
