A Prairie Summer

Watching a prairie mature is so rewarding. After years now of watching my prairie develop and respond to a series of scientifically-based management strategies, I understand how people can have the opportunity to embrace and become fully
entrenched in the restoration of the world we live in. Since the fall of 2006, I have spent countless hours learning the native and non-native botany of SE Michigan and understand how the natural environment, for millenia, managed to coexist in harmony outside the implications of the modern era. But there's much more to it than just the plants that make up an ecosystem. That's my next step... which is really kind of the fun part about learning these things from an informal standpoint. You begin by developing your own interest in one particular category which starts the snowball effect. This leads to another part of the matrix, then another, and so on.

For now though, I thought it would be good to highlight some of the great progress that has occurred on the farm this summer. April brought us great weather for our prescribed burn regime.
We burned "Old Mesic", the original prairie remnant on the property which has furnished us with loads of native seed and a really good example of a diverse prairie habitat. As a result of that burn, we suppressed the heavy autumn olive infestation that was threatening the area and managed to stimulate the growth of several native plants that had been flying under the radar for the past few years. These include; big bluestem grass (pictured above), prairie dock, ironweed (pictured right), joe-pye weed (pictured below) and a new bloomer for the year, white meadowsweet Spiraea alba. I was also happy to see that my cut-stump herbicide treatment of autumn olive was a huge success as there was no regrowth in the treated areas. The strategy here will be to continue with spring burns until the warm-season grass is a bit more established, followed by brush-hogging the previous years autumn olive growth to keep it in check. Additional seeding of culver's root, tall meadowrue, angelica, mountain mint, rattlesnake master, cup plant and foxglove beardtongue will also be an important factor in adding more early-blooming forb diversity to the site.


















More on the other prairies in the next post...