Big Shed
18th April 2007, 10:23 AM
A little while ago I made some reference to direct seeding in a thread started by Grunt where he asked for advice on rabbit control.
I was then asked by another forum member for more details, and promptly forgot all about it. Sorry Cliff:rolleyes:
So, some background first. We live on 25 acres in Central Victoria, are retired and this is our "tree change". The land we are on used to be part of a soldier settlement block which was sub-divided about 7-8 years ago. It is granite country and can be quite treacherous in winter, it will turn to slush without warning. However that hasn't happened for a while as rain is something we haven't seen for a while!
As part of the soldier settlement scheme the land was cleared for grazing, mainly sheep, and some cropping was also done. Next door to us is about 5000 acres that is still being farmed, again mainly sheep and some crops such as oats.
There are some large trees left on our block, which has a gully running though it, mainly River Red Gums.
The rest of the land has no trees, and a lot of onion grass (read weed), phalaris and cape weed.
As I grew up in the city and am originally an industrial chemist by profession, later a computer consultant, I had zilch experience of what to do with 25 acres. We spent the first year here living in the shed and building our own house.
During this time we joined Landcare and started to learn a bit what is involved in living in the country on acreage, quite an eye opener!
Also during this time Landcare organised a tree planting day on our place, using the inmates of the local women's gaol on day release. This was the start of our revegetation project, which is still ongoing.
This first planting used seedling grown by our Landcare group in Hiko trays, the one with 40 round holes, from seed collected by the group.
We used milk cartons as guards, and we quickly found out that they were not high enough to keep the plants safe from the local hares. We replaced most of the milk cartons with LEAN guards, the plastic sleeves over 2 wire frames type. You have to pick your time for this as the soil does a good impersonation of concrete for a good aprt of the year. During winter you can bury the frames to their tops without even trying!
The following year I planted out 1200 seedlings, back a back breaking task. I had prepared the ground by cultivating strips using my Kubota tractor and Kubota 1350mm wide rotary hoe. This cleared the strips of weed, broke up the heavily compacted soil (those sheep have a lot to answer for!) and made it a lot easier to plant the seedlings and put in the guards. This was done in June 2002.
The idea was to plant a mixture of native trees and understory, to eventually have a native seed orchard, for further propagation. This became more important as we were successful in getting a grant from Powernet SPI for the purchase of a direct seeding machine (I'm getting there Cliff:2tsup:). These machines are made in SE South Australia and cultivate the soil and plant the seeds at the same time.
Picture 1 shows the machine behind the ute in our "top paddock", the other side of the gully..
Picture 2 A closer view of the machine, here being filled up with a mixture of native, indigenous, seeds.
Picture 3 Another view of the machine
Picture 4 This shows the plough disc that does the "scalping of the soil.
Picture 5 The "plastic forest" is clearly visible in the background on the other side of the gully. These are part of the 3000 seedlings planted so far.
to be continued....................
I was then asked by another forum member for more details, and promptly forgot all about it. Sorry Cliff:rolleyes:
So, some background first. We live on 25 acres in Central Victoria, are retired and this is our "tree change". The land we are on used to be part of a soldier settlement block which was sub-divided about 7-8 years ago. It is granite country and can be quite treacherous in winter, it will turn to slush without warning. However that hasn't happened for a while as rain is something we haven't seen for a while!
As part of the soldier settlement scheme the land was cleared for grazing, mainly sheep, and some cropping was also done. Next door to us is about 5000 acres that is still being farmed, again mainly sheep and some crops such as oats.
There are some large trees left on our block, which has a gully running though it, mainly River Red Gums.
The rest of the land has no trees, and a lot of onion grass (read weed), phalaris and cape weed.
As I grew up in the city and am originally an industrial chemist by profession, later a computer consultant, I had zilch experience of what to do with 25 acres. We spent the first year here living in the shed and building our own house.
During this time we joined Landcare and started to learn a bit what is involved in living in the country on acreage, quite an eye opener!
Also during this time Landcare organised a tree planting day on our place, using the inmates of the local women's gaol on day release. This was the start of our revegetation project, which is still ongoing.
This first planting used seedling grown by our Landcare group in Hiko trays, the one with 40 round holes, from seed collected by the group.
We used milk cartons as guards, and we quickly found out that they were not high enough to keep the plants safe from the local hares. We replaced most of the milk cartons with LEAN guards, the plastic sleeves over 2 wire frames type. You have to pick your time for this as the soil does a good impersonation of concrete for a good aprt of the year. During winter you can bury the frames to their tops without even trying!
The following year I planted out 1200 seedlings, back a back breaking task. I had prepared the ground by cultivating strips using my Kubota tractor and Kubota 1350mm wide rotary hoe. This cleared the strips of weed, broke up the heavily compacted soil (those sheep have a lot to answer for!) and made it a lot easier to plant the seedlings and put in the guards. This was done in June 2002.
The idea was to plant a mixture of native trees and understory, to eventually have a native seed orchard, for further propagation. This became more important as we were successful in getting a grant from Powernet SPI for the purchase of a direct seeding machine (I'm getting there Cliff:2tsup:). These machines are made in SE South Australia and cultivate the soil and plant the seeds at the same time.
Picture 1 shows the machine behind the ute in our "top paddock", the other side of the gully..
Picture 2 A closer view of the machine, here being filled up with a mixture of native, indigenous, seeds.
Picture 3 Another view of the machine
Picture 4 This shows the plough disc that does the "scalping of the soil.
Picture 5 The "plastic forest" is clearly visible in the background on the other side of the gully. These are part of the 3000 seedlings planted so far.
to be continued....................