Seeding in the Snow
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esterday we were “gifted” by our lovely Mid Mo weather with snow. It was about 65 the day before.
So I was going to go to Columbia’s first farmer’s market of the year. But because of the snow, I realized that my Pops would need my help seeding. Plus the market would have been miserable, though the farmers wouldn’t have minded me bothering them.
So if you look to the right, you can see that below the house there is a strip cut through the forest. That is actually a power line that has probably been the only bit of land that had been maintained for decades, apart from the fields that had been rented years ago.
Last fall the folks at Co-Mo Electric Cooperative came with two four-wheelers and sprayed the powerline to kill off all the saplings that were sprouting up. At the time, we were a little bummed but realized it was an opportunity: we could seed in our own wildflower and grass mix on the dead ground.
So my father bought some great grass seed and two wildflower mixes which include plants like Butterfly Weed, Cone Flower, asters and larkspurs. Hopefully we get a lot of those up, but my dad is more interested in some of the warm season grasses.
The beauty of seeding in the snow is twofold. First: you get to see exactly where you’ve hit and while it snows, it covers where you’ve been so that if you need to hit it more than once you don’t have the old seed sitting there to confuse you. The second is that it holds the seed really well and when it melts it helps drive the seed straight into the ground. (And by the way, with this kind of grass, the cold doesn’t damage the seed.)
We would have used something a little more mechanical to seed, but that power line cuts straight up and over a our steepest hills so the less we drive over it the less rutting, and that means less erosion. Plus we didn’t have the right equipment in when it snowed, naturally. So my father, sister and I broadcast by hand. We staked out nine sections and measured out how much seed each section received. Then we mixed the seed with sand to aid the throwing and make us more accurate. Once we got out there we’d walk our section over throwing with one hand and holding a bucket with the other. After we made one whole pass, we came back with a second bucketful and repeated the process.
I’ll update you when it comes up. While you wait: below are two pictures taken from atop our tallest hill looking north and south.
Power Line looking North
Power line looking South
