Cleaning out dams at the moment when the silt is dry it is light and fluffy How do i use it best!?? Compost? spread on fields? Other ideas??
When we clean out a dam we cart it back up the hill and scatter it over the ground it came from. Hopefully now with our emphasis on permanent groundcover we will have less silt to contend with but its hard to keep a full groundcover on the cropping paddocks.
All my raised beds (Cut off tank rings) are about half filled with dam silt , topped up each planting with product from my big worm bins . Holds moisture really well my "soil" around the house is shallow then about 500 to 700mm gravelly rock so the silt beds are a big help through our dry season . Usually have two rings full of strawberrys , so I would save some in a pile you will use it , it will have a lot of broken down organic matter in it (algae , animal manure , ect) , excellent resource .
we're short on good topsoil here, so i would use it to build that (add some clay, sand and organic materials). then use it to fill in a low spot, top it with coarser materials to keep it from getting moved around too easily, put some seeds of cover crops in, mulch it lightly, keep it moist until things sprout, fill in any bare spots with other plants.
When we had the dams cleaned at Purple Pear Farm we deposited the silt at the top of the slope in a endeavour to have the nutrient slowly make its way back down via the pasture grasses. It has worked well and the berm we created persists to this day as an observation deck for sky watching.