Land clearing in Bulverde

Cedar, oak, and shallow limestone

Comal County is in the Eastern Edwards Plateau. The country is stony hills, steep canyons, and shallow soil over limestone. Cover is grassland, juniper and oak woodland, and live oak or mesquite savannah. Ashe juniper, honey mesquite, Texas red oak, and yaupon are on the regional plant list. Stream corridors can hold bald cypress, pecan, hackberry, and sycamore. Ranching is the agricultural use Texas Parks and Wildlife names. Rainfall on this eastern side of the plateau is the wetter end of a range that starts near 15 inches in the west and passes 33 inches in the east.

The clearing job is usually cedar and brush among oaks you want left standing. Mark those oaks before a mulcher works the thicket. Where the canopy is live oak, a fresh wound in late winter or spring is an oak wilt risk, not a cosmetic scrape.

Rock in the soil

NRCS maps this ground in the Comal and Hays Counties soil survey. The leading units are Comfort, Brackett, and Rumple complexes with rock outcrop, on slopes of about 1 to 8 percent, and steeper Brackett complexes up to about 30 percent. Comfort is a very stony clay. Rock outcrop and rubbly in the map unit names mean bedrock and coarse fragments are part of the ground. Deep Houston Black clay is in that same two-county survey, and it is not the usual Bulverde pattern. A carrier on this rock is slower than one on a flat field, and some outcrop is simply walked around.

Oak wilt timing

Where live oak is in the canopy, follow Texas A&M Forest Service guidance. Do not prune or wound oaks from February through June. The Forest Service includes land clearing and cedar clearing among the ways an oak gets a fresh wound, and it says to paint wounds immediately in every season. Sap beetles move the fungus and are most active in that window. Red oaks can die quickly after infection. Live oaks more often pass the disease through connected roots.

Floodplain permits and the recharge zone

Bulverde's code, article 3.07, requires a development permit so work conforms to the flood damage prevention rules. The application asks for the FEMA panel, whether the work is in a special flood hazard area or the floodway, and the extent of any change to a watercourse. The Edwards Aquifer Authority publishes a Bulverde quadrangle that draws recharge zone and contributing zone. TCEQ's San Antonio regional office covers Comal County. Check the map viewer for the street before you treat the lot as recharge or contributing zone.

What to settle on the walk

Selective clearing and forestry mulching match juniper and brush among oaks. Walk the slope, the trees that stay, and the way in from the road before the scope is set.