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Diversity Pockets

DOR

DOR

Life Member
Slowly getting my improvements in place. When I bought this chunk in 2020 it was a long standing (50 years +) of cow pasture and limited cover. I frost seeded the existing bean stubble red irregular shaped area (west side of trout stream) in RC Tecumseh (about 5 acres) last week and the plan is to start diversity pockets in the blue circles in the next few months. The green in the NW is existing switch and the smaller green area below that is a planned food plot. TThe blue in the SE corner is switch I planted last year. The stream corridor gets a good deal of pressure during trout season as it is a blue ribbon trout stream.

What would you plant in the pockets? You can see the other markers where I have some fruit trees planted (pears, apple persimmon chestnut etc) and i am missing a good deal of markers for other trees/shrubs I have planted.


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If you don't do weed control with your switchgrass, you will naturally have pockets. Pockets of what's in the native seed bank, even better..

My personal preference.

What I've found is these new RC varieties can keep up well with a lot of weed pressure, especially when summer planted. Except for dense pockets of foxtail however. Since you've planted earlier, your weed pressure will be higher, but I doubt an issue.

Tree tops, or cut cedar trees, can be dragged out for the switch to grow up through as well. Good quick cover.
 
I like it!!! U do some TSI yet?
I really like shrub plantings as part of a plan & that would be a year out …. U do getting darn good funding on that. I’m doing one this spring where we put up 8’ fence around it. Just poly fence. Pretty easy & cheap. Million other ways to do that though.
Looks darn good. Few small clover plots in there too. U already way ahead of the average farm. Planting trees, shrubs, natives & doing Tsi are all gonna be game changers
 
Lightly discing some of the switch can release weeds also,i am doing more of mine this year.problem with shrubs is burning NWSG anywhere close to them.Looks good
 
DOR said:
Here is some pics of our diversity pocket planting day. Had a great crew, a dingo and really nice trees from the nursery. Knocked out 350 trees in about 3 hours. Just need to protect them now. The pic of the bar is from the nursery! WI knows how to keep workers happy!
Diversity pocket planting photos
Click to expand...

Nice pics! Fun project!


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habitat said:
Only issue with pockets in NWSG like that is if you decide to burn
Click to expand...
I thought of that. I have a stand that I burned, and after I did that, it got so thick it's almost impenetrable. I think just letting go should fit the bill. We will see I guess.
 
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