METHODS OF REESTABLISHING BUFFALO GRASS 



15 



BROADCASTING SMALL PIECES OF TURF 



Broadcasting on recently cultivated land and packing afterwards 

 has been shown by results at this station to be a practical method of 

 reestablishing buffalo grass only with favorable rainfall. 



Resodding by various broadcasting methods has been tried since 

 1929 (fig. 10). In the first trial the sods were cut with a sod cutter 

 in shallow strips about 2 inches deep, chopped into small pieces with 

 a spade, and broadcast by hand. Each piece represented a surface 

 area of approximately 1 square inch. Certain plots were double- 

 disked before broadcasting and others afterwards, all being firmly 

 packed with a corrugated surface packer or roller as the final opera- 

 tion. When weU-distributed rains followed, most of the sods renewed 

 growth in excellent condition, with the difference in plots decidedly in 

 favor of disking before broadcasting. About 1 acre of sod was used 



Figure 10.— Buffalo grass in 1933 on an area broadcast by hand with small pieces of sod in 1929. 



to 9 acres of land, and the ultimate spread was the same as that for 

 4-inch cubes spaced 3 feet apart. The final surface of the grass was 

 smoother on the broadcast than on the transplanted plots. 



In 1930 a manure spreader was successfully used in broadcasting 

 the sods. At first they were cut into small pieces, as for broadcasting 

 by hand, loaded on the manure spreader, and scattered. This dis- 

 tributed the sods rather evenly over the freshly cultivated ground, but 

 shook most of the soil off the roots, causing the grass to dry out 

 rapidly. To overcome this difficulty and to eliminate the task of 

 chopping the sods into small pieces, shallow strips as large as could 

 be handled conveniently with a shovel were loaded onto the spreader. 

 The spreader reel broke the sods into small pieces without shaking 

 so much soil off the roots and scattered them rather evenly over the 



