I'm clearing about an acre of rather dense woods. I'm mostly removing honeysuckle and small saplings and raking up and burning all the deadfall and leaves. When finished I want to be able to get through it with a small tractor and brush hog. Should I sew any grass or ground cover? I'm not smoothing the woods floor enough to use a finish mower but I plan to go over it several times a year to keep the honeysuckle from growing back.

I wouldn't plant anything. Usually when an area is cleared, all sorts of plants pop up that weren't able to compete with the brush. Give it a year, you may be surprised. If you eventually decide to plant something, find some natives. You don't want to create any new monsters to try and control.

Agreed. I would assume dry tree leaves are your ground cover. As you see green, identify and take specific action if you need to. I think trying to add ground cover would complicate your work of ID'ing undesirables. At least a year or two.

I don't know how much different your site is from mine. If you had honeysuckle or greenbriar that you mowed, you may have to go after the roots. I don't get too much volunteer seedlings where I have tree leaves.

If you then have areas that look all clear, some shade ground cover might be native ginger , mayapples, or anemone- just some that spread for me in full shade with trees.

I'm not trying to identify anything (I don't think). I believe I will just clear it and brush hog as often as needed this summer. Then I'll see how I want to handle leaves next fall. I know I don't want to be raking and burning every year like I am this year.
Here's some pics of the project. First one is what the valley looked like when I started. The second is after clearing the north hillside and the flat bottom. The hill I'm working on now is the south hillside (across that valley). The last pic is how the north hill and valley look now.

Instead of raking and burning all the free fertilizer and weed-inhibiting mulch your trees give you, just leave it where it falls. If you have leaves that are a problem in other places add them to your woods as more mulch. Removing that cover is just about the worst thing you can do as far as the health of your trees.

I was going to suggest the same thing. The trees depend on that mulch to survive in a wooded area like that. All that turf is nothing more than competition for nutrients and water. It looks gorgeous like that but isn't good for the overall health of the area. Getting rid of the honeysuckle though was a great idea and the woods will appreciate you trying to keep non natives limited in numbers.

I would just count on regular mowing (shredding) to keep things under control.

You could run a few goats.

Goats eat brush and trees, even bark. Sheep eat grass. Choose wisely.

My subdivision bylaws won't allow either goats or sheep. It's a shame because a kid will eat ivy too

and little lambs will

kwinch said: I'm not trying to identify anything (I don't think). I believe I will just clear it and brush hog as often as needed this summer.

I would be trying to identify what I had!!!!!
Mowing & bush hogging can quickly eradicate desirable understory.

I think a more targeted response should be looked into.

kwinch said:

I love this view.

Here is a pic viewing the west end of the valley. I cleared all the small stuff and then sewed K31 Fescue. The trees left were bigger and further apart than on the far hillside. I'm considering doing the same on that hillside but I'm not going to have a Bobcat come in and clear the roots and small saplings like I did in the valley. I can mow the valley with a John Deere X304 which is kind of a small garden tractor/mower. I'll have too many stobs on the hill I'm clearing now for the John Deere. I have a 5 foot finish mower for my old Ford Jubilee tractor that I might try to use. If that doesn't work well I'll get a brush hog.

This all depends on what your goal is. If you want a park like transformation, you're doing pretty well on your own, although I can't see how burning is good for anything. My recommendation here is to have multiple kinds/varieties of grasses, not just K31, so you not so vulnerable to climate change, pests or diseases. I would suggest adding some red fescue, Pennsylvania sedge or at least a different variety of tall fescue.

Alternatively, some of us prefer a diversity of life that would be native to your area. This would be a different kind of ecological system that supports many more kinds of life above and below the ground.

My Dad did essentially the same as you, back in the mid 1950s. He cleared the understory of native oak woods and replaced it with sod that he cut from a natural meadow cow pasture 10 miles away. Obviously, there must have been many kinds of plants, including different grasses in it. I was born in 1959 and as I became plant savvy in my teens (early 1970s), I would find many wild flowers native to that understory (not the meadow) growing in what was then almost exclusively Pennsylvania sedge. That old cow pasture was still there (full sun) and when I roamed it I would find little bits of the sedge, but mostly other grasses. My point is that with different kinds of plant materials available, the ones that are best suited will grow best, and be the most pest free, disease free, and carefree for you.

There's a reason that there's a ditch at the bottom of the hill. Removing all the roots and unidentified plants doesn't help with stabilizing the topsoil on slopes. Get much rain up there?

My reaction was similar to Leftwood's - what is your goal?

Some of us abhor the concept of replacing the understory with turf.
Turf isn't good for trees, and has few redeeming qualities.
https://www.populationmedia.or...

I like the look of the leaf litter under the trees, and would not want the job of removing the natural mulch in favor of that grass.

There are so many wildflowers that are normal under the trees in Missouri... destroying them in favor of grass makes me very unhappy.

My initial goal was to remove the honeysuckle, briars and vines that climb all over the trees. I'm not about to try to dig up the roots of those and I don't want to be doing this again when they've all grown back. So I want to be able to mow with a brush hog to keep that stuff from growing back. The additional problem is there is so much deadfall. I have to remove it and burning is the easiest way. I have to rake the leaves in order to find the smaller dead limbs etc that would tear up the brush hog. So while I'm raking them up I'm burning as I go. Next year I may let the leaves lay as long as I can go over them with the brush hog set a little higher. I don't like the idea that I will get some soil erosion so I'm considering sewing fescue to hold it better.

Keep in mind that as the trees grow there will be less and less sunlight available for plants underneath them. Grass has a very high light requirement and will eventually thin out, opening up for various shade tolerant weeds.
You might be better off letting the vines grow back a little and treating them with glyphosate or triclopyr to kill them permanently. Then let the other stuff fill in. You may not need the mowers to maintain the area.