Summer Flood Reseeding

Our summer flood went down just about as quick as it had come up, leaving behind another path of destruction, albeit pretty minor this time.  We ended up losing some rough on the left side of 9 and 17, and the right side of 15 and 18.  All the areas were really of no concern because since I have been here in the last 2 years we have never really had any grass down there anyway!

The really difficult part about getting some grass to grow in those areas is that we don't have any irrigation that hits them, except for the left side of 9.  While all of those areas have been seeded before, all that has ever really come up in them is a stand of knotweed, plantains, and some dandelions.  Our best chance of getting some good turf down there was when we reseeded them in the spring of 2012, but it turned out to be such a dry spring that nothing really took well enough, and the knotweed choked out whatever came up anyway.

This spring, after our first flood went down, we spent most of May spraying all the weeds that popped up in those rough areas in anticipation of being able to seed them as soon as the ground was dry enough.  However, most of May and June turned out to be entirely too wet to put a seeder down in them anyway.

With the hot and dry weather this week, those areas just now became dry enough to get our seeder in there.  We put down an incredibly heavy rate of perennial ryegrass, which is without a doubt the fastest germinating and establishing seed we can use.  Unfortunately, perennial ryegrass most likely won't survive our winters here very well, but in all honestly most of those areas will die in another flood again in the near future anyway.  It would just be really nice to have some grass down in those rough areas for the rest of this year.

Andy seeding the right rough on 18

Amazingly, in one of my many treasure hunting efforts with a wire
tracer and metal detector, I found an old quick coupler buried on the
mainline on 17, so we have been running a hose and sprinkler down
in the left rough on 17.

The left rough on 9 has two heads that irrigate it, it also though just
took a really long time to find the buried valve for it.

Also, with the river back in its bank, we were able to get the river pump back out.  It was still a little higher than we usually put it out at, but running the pumps on 14 gets old fast, so we sent it back out!  We had some small mechanical issues to work through with the pump once it was out, but with our nifty new floating dock it is as easy as walking out to the pump, pulling it out, and fixing right there on the spot.

River pump repair has been exponentially easier this year
with the floating dock.