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.
- 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 end of day 3:
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