Lewis Center Wildlands Rehab Study Setup: Day 3

Day 3: Tuesday 11/9/2011

As with the first two days, the weather was perfect again; a slight wind kicked up about midday. We had more cloud cover then we had for the first two days and a high temp. of about 55 F. The soil was dryer than it was during the first two days. Dr. Ken Lair, Jackie Lindgren, Matt Huffine, David Pike, about 20+/- JROTC students from a flight composed of sophomores and freshman, along with a handful other students that joined periodically throughout the day worked together to complete all the tasks started on Day 1 on Monday 11/7/2011 and continued on Day 2 on Tuesday 11/8/2011 which included:

• Hauling down and distributing the remaining plants, finishing auguring out and cleaning out the remaining holes.
• Providing each plant with its prescribed treatment by plot location (innoculum, teabag and/or zeolite column).
• Watering each planting location before and after planting.
• Affixing a rabbit guard and bamboo pole above each planting.
• Besides completing the steps outlined above, ones required for setting up the test plots that required 1 gallon plants, this group also spent time doing quality control for the work that was completed during the first 3 days of work.

Seed Bed Prep, Planting and Covering

• Tilling seed plot 1 and part of 2.

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• Racking and leveling/smoothing out the freshly tilled seed plots.

• Rolling the leveled/smoothed freshly tilled seed plots with a yellow water filled 250+ lbs metal roller.

• Segmenting the rolled seed plots into 3' by 40 foot seed beds bordered by 2' by 40 foot walkways using flagging and colored tape.

• Seed was carefully weighed out and put into paper bags.
• Placing a bag of seed in front of each 3 by 20 foot rolled seed bed.

• Seeding 20 feet of each 40 foot bed with a single species of plant (20 feet received a bare, untreated seed, the other 20 feet a seed coated with clay and microrizal innoculum and a polymer that attracts and holds on to water)

• Microrizal innoculum was spread out over the seed beds that received bare seed.

• Rolling seed beds after receiving seed and innoculum.

• Cutting 4 foot rolls of jute netting into 40 foot long pieces.

• Removing plastic guide tapes and flagging after seeding and rolling.

• Laying jute cloth onto each seeded and roll seed bed.

• Staking down each 4 x 40 foot piece of jute cloth using clear plastic biodegradable spikes.

• Repeating this seed bed preparation for the next 2 additional seed bed plots.

What the study plot looked like at the start of day 3:

What the study plot looked like at the end of day 3: