Watching the weather forecast show a 40% chance of rain every few days for 2 weeks and getting not a drop, was not good for the newly planted windbreak, or my belated spring sowing. It was great for mowing the wetter areas and tilling though. Below is a picture from where I hope to build of the newly tilled and mowed area.
The newly planted hedgerow trees took a beating, even with me driving around with a IBC on the tractor folks watering. I probably lost some 15% of the newly planted trees to the dry heat and will need to fill in the gaps next year. The budding orchard fared better with me watering more frequently.
I have now added a 40x200ft tilled area to use as my first year seed nursery. For all the now tillers - yes, I am hoping to just do this shallow and initially.
I mowed the long grass down with the rotary mower at a really low level, then used a 72" rototiller set shallow (about 3-4") and tilled the grass and clippings in. I rushed the tilling to planting as it was early June already and I was concerned heat would just burn some of the seedlings when hot dry summer arrived.
There a few things I will do differently next season, when I plan on doubling the nursery size to facilitate next years plantings while this years continues to grow.
1) I did not leave enough time between tills for the grass roots to dry out enough. Although tilled, some have sprouted again. A extra week between tills would have given more time for the grass to die completely.
2) Mulch - Although I tilled in all the grass, I have not had time to make compost or decent mulch (wood chips need some time). Clay soil needs large amounts of mulch to stop it turning to brick. For now I am just using hay - but a layer of compost would have been great
3) Weeds - yes, there is going to be many - one seems to be predominate already. A cover crop to suppress weeds and add even more organic content would be better.
4) A hiller or bedder is something that save a lot of time
So the plan for next seasons nursery will start this season. Probably during the hot dry summer and perhaps even get 2 cover crops in before spring planting.
Then yesterday we had 40mm of rain in 1 day and rain the forecast again almost every day this week. Great for the seeds, seedlings, my budding orchard and wind break trees, but that much will make doing any heavy work difficult for a few days, except some of the higher ground.