How do you guys measure your plot size for fertilizer, lime, seed rates? Do you just guess, step it off, use a range finder? I think I need to get a little more precise on my sizing so I am not wasting or shorting my plots of fert, seed and lime.
Dad has a wheel that came over on the mayflower. Every turn is 10 feet. It has a counter on it so we just have to remember what number we start on. NO reset on the counter…..
I saw Todd use his GPS by driving the perimeter. Not sure what unit he used, I’m sure he’ll chime in when he sees this.
I’m not sure how accurate this is, but seems pretty close.
http://www.daftlogic.com/projects-google-maps-area-calculator-tool.htm
Most handheld gps’s have an area calculator. Mine is a garmin and my guestimations were so far off it is embarassing 
. Bob also posted a link a while back where you plot points and it connects the dots and calculates the area. Let’s not make this a locker room joke but I bet you think they are bigger than actually are 
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I owe a big thanks to Bob B. for linking one of his post to this. Goolge planimeter. Yeah, I don’t know how to link 
so maybe he’ll chime in but if you search “google planimeter” it will come up. Simply search for your plot area like you would on google earth and click on the perimeters of your plot and it calculates your area. Awesome tool! Pretty darn accurate too. Thanks again Bob! 
I have used a 300′ tape, a wheel, survey maps from land sales, and the planimeter. They all seem to do pretty good. You can run the ‘same’ line over and over on plowed ground with a cheap small wheel and get different results (The large metal Rod wheels work well). The tape works pretty good, planimeter works pretty good as long as you know your tree line over hangs ect. All give you a pretty solid idea. I rely on the land survey results for spreading my fertilizer and pull the tape to disect my larger plots into small plots for seed quantities for my mixes.
There is an area calculator in the Wisconsin GIS mapping site. I just zoom into my plots and calculate.
I was playing around with this site today. Same one you were using Brady?
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