12/19/2021 – Wayne Maples began excavation of wildlife pond just north of Rangers field; aka the old garden.
12/25/2021 – Measured locations and used Google Earth to compute areas. Also took pH readings in the bowl and the black topsoil. All was 6.8 – 7.0 that is likely due to the Driskell’s liming the field the past years and adding more lime this season.
- Area of pond to planned water’s edge – 0.2 ac. (8,295 SF)
- Area where top soil was spread – 0.76 ac (33,083 SF) minus 0.2 = 0.56 ac of area to be seeded.
12/26/2021 – Wayne moved in the dozer, leveled topsoil, dug out clay from the bottom & lined edges with the hard clay. Then leveled it with the dozer.
12/27/2021 – Leveled the wet topsoil to some extent then cleaned up the ditch from the new pond to the blueberry bushes.
12/28/2021 – Spread winter ryegrass along ditch banks
1/8/2022 – Wayne finished grading the area. Spread the ryegrass seed and 13-13-13 per the paragraphs below.
The spreader did not have the output as expected based on the calculations below. Had to raise it to 6 and even then went over the inner circle and the perimeter twice.
Ryegrass and fertilizer plan
Ryegrass for forage crop is to be spread at 15-30 lbs per acre as recommended here. Buy a half-sack and spread 20 lbs.
Apply 13-13-13 at 1 lb of N per 1,000 SF.
- Application area – 33-8=25 ksf
- 1/0.13 = 7.7 lbs of 13-13-13 contains 1 lb of N
- 7.7×25 = 192 lbs of 13-13-13 required = 4 bags
Mix 5 lbs. seed in each sack of 13-13-13.
From the Spreader page here: Lever Setting 4 = 297-74 = 223 lbs per acre = 5.12 lbs/1000 SF in gear 1H at 540 rpm.
That setting did not work out as too low. See paragraph above this section.
