2010 RECAP - corner lot project

With February pretty much out of the way and spring right around the corner, I've started thinking about what to expect this season from our corner lot project. We had a lot of success in 2010 and should be pleasantly surprised when things start growing in 2011.

On the corner lot, which was added to the roster in the early part of 2010, we conducted a very successful prescribed burn in March. Immediately after the burn, we went to work rerouting an old drainage ditch that ran along the west property boundary down towards a hardwood swamp area that leads to Duck Lake. Our goal with the ditch was to reconfigure it to meander through the lower end of the corner lot more naturally like a stream. By doing this, the ditch looks more natural and dissipates water more effectively, reducing sediment pollution in the hardwood swamp. We also planted a few white pines and caged some nice oak saplings on the site to provide visual screening to the nearby residence.

Throughout the growing season we noticed a variety of native wildflowers that had sprung up due to our burning and weed management activities. Among them were Culver's Root (pictured), Fringed Loosestrife, Joe-Pye Weed, Boneset, Butterfly Weed, Thimbleweed and Saw-tooth Sunflower.

From our lakefront native plant garden at the Cottage we were able to produce a lot of seed from some of the more significant and rare native species. The nice thing about growing them at the Cottage is that there are no large herbivores (ie, deer) to damage plants during the growing season, so we get a lot of seed from these plants (over-nutrified water from White Lake helps the plants grow like they're on steroids too!!). Cottage grown plants include Blue Vervain, Turtlehead, Marsh Blazing Star, Great Blue Lobelia, Cardinal Flower, Ironweed, Soft-Stemmed Bulrush and Tussock Sedge. We were fortunate enough to plant a lot of this seed before our last snow storm hit. The snow will help work the seed into the soil as it melts in the spring and will (hopefully) satisify any cold-stratification requirements that the seed needs for germination.

I'm currently working on getting our burn plans finalized for this season and will hopefully get a chance to finish the bridge and do some more brush removal before the ground thaws.