Dike Maintenance: Grading for a Much Smoother Ride

A make-shift dike grading apparatus

More consistent temperatures in the 60s and 70s (and fewer and fewer nights in the 30s and 40s) have prompted us to think dike maintenance and grass seeding. Just like in your back yard, spring and fall are the easiest time to establish and grow new grass. So we took this window of relative dry and forecast for continued spring-like weather to have several thousand feet of dike disked.

A neighboring farmer did the heavy lifting, but Roy and Julie did the finish grading with the MULE and some heavy-duty steel bar grating. The impetus for all of this work comes from the fact that it has been years (maybe decades?) since the tops of many of our dikes have been mechanically leveled. This made for some slow-going, bumpy driving tours. With the soil now moist and workable, the 3-4 passes with the disk could knock down the high spots and fill in the low spots. Roy then passed over the entire area another 3-4 times with the grating to break up any remaining clods and prep the soil for seed.

I'll be happy when I can report a much smoother ride!

We sometimes opt to use a towable spreader, but this effort was localized enough that a hand-crank was even more precise. Once the seed is down, we run over the entire area one or two more times with the grating to help ensure good seed to soil contact (you want contact without burying the seed). Then we cross our fingers for some light to moderate rain followed by lots of sun. If we can keep from being too cold or too wet, we should have seed popping within 10-14 days and a drivable dike by sometime in June.