When any minerals are being mined out of the ground in Colorado, land reclamation is a necessity to prevent flooding and property erosion. This is a picture of a straw blower and a job we competed today in a mountian area they mine minerals to make concrete mix.
When a mining company makes a deal with a landowner there is usually some stipulations in the contract to replant the native grass and restore the land into similar or like condition after mineral extraction has taken place.
When you are done it looks something like this. I took a few pictures of the process so you could see exactly how you drill seed and crimp straw to grow native grass.
When we showed up this morning it looked like this.
After loading the seeder with native grass seed it's time to get in the tractor and drive. The first row of the seeder has some metal disks that create a chisel in the rows and a place for the seed to drop into. Little tubes extend down from the seeder and disperse grass seed into the rows the disk just made. Right behind the tubes is a row of rubber wheels that close the rows and bury the seed just a little.
After you plant the seed it looks like this and it's ready to get the straw bales blown onto it.
The straw blower is a cool machine. You feed the bales into it and a series of chains basically shreds the straw bale and shoots it out the tube in front to the area you aim. Wind is a BIG FACTOR when trying to put this stuff in the right place. The person handling the shute has the ability to move the shute up or down and side to side with a 360 degree range of motion on a swivel seat perched up at the top of everything.
The straw is launched out over 50 yards and blown all over the dirt area over the top of the freshly planted seed. This helps with moisture, earth erosion and seed germination.
At the end of a full day it looks just like this. The last step is to drop the seeder and replace it with a straw crimper. The tractor now has to go back over everything and the crimper pushes the straw into the earth so that it wont blow away the straw and especially the new seed. Now with a little moisture, some sunshine and a little help from mother nature this area has been fully reclaimed and soon there will be native grasses growing here again and you would never know it happened!