Theo,
I like the idea of mixing up the grass blends. I plan on inserting native grasses in the blend, similar to the balance of the areas adjacent. IIRC, the warms we used were blue stem, switchgrass, and Virginia rye. We used Timothy in our cool season blend and it came in well. When the time comes in the spring to plant grasses, I will run it by my NRCS guy and the seed vendor that provided the WHIP seeding for all the other areas.
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Ryan,
Thanks for your input. The balance of the dam is in good shape with existing vegetation and one full season's worth of native grass and forbes growth. I don't want to shoot myself in the foot (again) and disturb a success story by scraping it up. We are gonna borrow topsoil from other areas of the property, scrape it up into his dump truck, and place it with the rubber tired excavator. I like the drain tile idea, but laying in a very short berm (I'm talking 3" - 6") that tapers back down to the existing grade of the roadway struck me as the simplest, natural method of diverting rain water. My biggest fear was creating an awkward "bump", but the more I think about it, we can groom it to blend right in. If we are going to go thru the time to build these run-off channels, I defintely want to make sure that they get ALL the business. The berm (or drain) would get it delivered. I'm going for the berm this round. The plan is two-fold. a) stop the growing erosion channels by focusing the run-off into prepared channels; this will minimize further extensive damage until spring. b) come back in the spring and do what I should have done the day the equipment left when the pond was completed...seed and mulch. Thanks to you, my friend, I have made a good contact with Conn-Tech....the geotextile guy that provided the beach matting. I reached out to him a few weeks ago to ask him about the straw matting. Yep; he's got it. The rolls are 6' wide and each roll covers 100 sq yards. They cost $50 each plus a nominal dely to a yard in our area. We will scratch up the remaining topsoil, fertilize and seed, and roll out the straw blankets.
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Geedub
I can't regrade as noted in my reply to Ryan. Why does it lean that way? It does and it doesn't. The roadbed was excavated as close to level as an expert dozer operator can do. Dams settle and soils migrate with rain. It only takes fractions of inches to make water run one way or another. I know now that dirt work is not an exact science. Quite frankly, had I handled seeding the entire zone correctly in the first place, we probably would not even be discussing it. But, here I am.
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Thanks again, guys.