I stopped starting reclamation with seed mixes and started with water. One morning on a 2.3-acre well pad outside Farmington, we ran a laser level at first light and cut seven shallow swales on a 3.5% slope with a rented mini-excavator. When a 0.8-inch monsoon hit that week, the temporary flow meter at the culvert dropped from 27 gpm to 10 gpm, and a sheet of brown water turned into quiet puddles tucked behind the third check dam. What surprised me wasn’t just less erosion; the land woke up fast. Infiltration tests went from 0.4 in/hr to 1.1 in/hr in five months, and we cut water truck runs from 3 to 1 per week during establishment. We ripped compaction to 18 inches, set coir wattles where rills wanted to form, and used a quick CN pass in QGIS to target a curve number drop from 86 to 80 — nothing fancy, just disciplined slowing, spreading, and sinking. By fall, sand dropseed and fourwing saltbush held where runoff used to scour, and we needed 30% less seed by area than the adjacent control. My bottom line: start with water, and the land will follow.
We moved to water-first too — laser level, shallow swales, then seed after the first soak. On 3–4% slopes we’ve had best luck with ~35 ft spacing and 6–8 in depth; curious what spacing you cut on that pad and when you broadcast after the first event.
Same here — handling water first flipped our success rate. On a 3–4% pad near Bloomfield we ripped compaction, cut seven 6–8 in swales about 35–40 ft apart, pre-wet twice, then seeded after a monsoon; did you tie yours into a rock spillway or just feather them out.
One small tweak that helped us: toss a few handfuls of straw or chipped slash at each swale outlet before the first rain to blunt that first pulse and keep the berm from nicking out. After the first soak, we only seed the wetted footprints and wait one more rain for the shoulders.
Quick check that saved us: before the first storm we dump two 20-gal trash cans upslope of each swale and watch the path - if it wants to jump the berm, we cut a 12-18 in wide, 1-2 in lower spill notch to hand overflow to the next swale instead of sending a rill down the slope.