2011 Corner Lot Review

A few things regarding our corner lot prairie restoration for 2011. First, our prescribed burn (March 19) was one of the earliest that we've done. We started late in the day and despite the really dry fuel conditions, the relative humidity rose sharply as the sun set and made it hard to finish. At the lower (southern) end of the site, burning was really successful but as we moved north toward White Lake Road, we found more shade and the burn was less efficient. Timing the burn is always tricky and it's hard to resist taking advantage of good dry sunny weather. In the future, I think we'll need to be more patient and try timing later burns to suppress canada goldenrod and canada thistle. This will also help improve the presence of warm-season plants like big bluestem, indian grass and butterfly weed.

Second, Canada thistle is still prevalent in this prairie, yet I don't think it has really spread as rapidly as I originally thought. It is rhizomatous and able to spread and occupy large areas as a single clone, but I think the Canada goldenrod is giving it some healthy competition. So, controlling it with herbicide and/or cutting during the bloom period will still be a priority, though it can be spread out over the next several years without affecting the rest of the prairie's development. Keeping Canada thistle from going to seed will be the major challenge. It is a short-lived plant, so keeping it from reseeding might effectively reduce its occurence over time despite the fact that it spreads vegetatively underground.

Gray dogwood was very prevalent when we began work on this site, though with our annual burns, we've managed to reduce its occurence as well. A lot of experts warn of the danger of not eliminating rhizomatous shrubs such as gray dogwood and sumac due to the fact that they can spread rapidly and usually do with prescribed burning. Yet this varies from site to site and is not a particular problem with the corner lot. Small shrubs add vertical structure to a prairie too which is beneficial to certain ground nesting birds. So my opinion is keep it, but keep an eye on it too. In an effort to reduce the size and "wildness" of the cottage native plant gardens, we removed several of the big plants and transplanted them to the corner lot, locating them in the swale along Highland Hills Drive. These included boneset, ironweed, soft-stemmed bulrush, sweet flag, blue vervain, marsh blazing star and one prairie dock - pretty much everything that was there. These plants are flourishing at the corner lot and even flowered this year despite the fact that they were transplanted during the peak of growing season which typically is unsuccessful. The swale was a good spot for them because they would receive ample amounts of water naturally and survive any late season dry-spells. Our one prairie dock suffered a minor setback due to the fact that this plant has a substantial taproot, making it hard to transplant. The original basal leaves died in August, curling up and drying out, yet in late September there were a new set of leaves emerging. It will be interesting to see how it does. Prairie dock tends to establish slowly enough as it is, so I'm sure it will be several years before we see flowers. It would probably be advisable to plant more seedlings of this plant just to increase the chance of survival.

Dad made a few sweet purchases at the Six Rivers Native Plant Festival on September 17th. He managed to purchase two American Chestnut saplings!! These are extremely rare to find and the survival rate is quite slim due to the fact that the chestnut blight supposedly still exists on oak trees, so we'll see what happens with them. All we can do is be optimistic and treat them with extreme care. Maybe the annual fires will help suppress the existence of blight and help the trees mature and become strong enough to resist it. Perhaps the trees could survive long enough to produce chestnuts and start the next crop of trees, creating a perpetual crop of new seedlings? I managed to pick up a couple of rosinweed (Silphium integrifolium) seedlings from American Roots this year too, so we'll get those established on the corner lot as well.

Our shoulder experiment went pretty well for the first year too. In May, dad sprayed the shoulder with glyphosate killing most of the vegetation along the road where we want to get prairie grasses established. Some Canada thistle and sweet clover managed to escape the chemical warfare, but the grass we planted grew fairly well in the spaces between. A few plants even went to seed despite the crappy soil used to fill in the shoulder when White Lake Road and Highland Hills Drive got paved. It's hard to really know how much of it germinated and survived the hot summer (we had several weeks of 90'sish weather this summer) and it definitely looked sparse. All I know is that the shoulder at Pinefield filled in quite well with indian grass and big bluestem (that shoulder is in it's second growing season), so we'll just have to be patient, keep the invasives from flowering and continue to annually plant this area with more grass seed in order to get it really established. I think it will do fine. All the experts claim that big bluestem and indian grass are "clay buster" species, meaning that they can establish in hard, heavy soils like the fill dirt on the shoulder. The nice thing about the hard soil is that it is nutrient deficient, which reduces the amount of competition that occurs there, leaving the site open to lots of sunlight which is good for the native grasses. So it'll be interesting as always to watch this site continue to develop!

"Experimental wedge" - 4 year review

2011 marked the 4th growing season for what I call the "experimental wedge". This is a tiny little corner of Lily's Prairie where I experimented with planting prairie seeds in an unconventional way and didn't quite know how it would eventually work out. Looking back now though, it is very clear that this was not only my most successful method of prairie reconstruction, but also the quickest and most effective way of converting old cool-season hay fields into a diverse native tallgrass prairie. Picture below shows the area before restoration began.

Today the experimental wedge is dominated by two native warm-season grasses; indian grass and big bluestem grass. The old hay fields at the south end of Pinefield Farm, along White Lake Road, are classified as dry-mesic prairie for the most part (there are some areas where water stands for extended periods in the spring and therefore are classified as mesic and wet-mesic). These two native warm-season grasses would have been dominant in a dry-mesic Michigan prairie, and so is considered a success from that standpoint. I also planted wild bergamot, stiff goldenrod and butterfly weed in this area to add a little extra diversity, but I'll admit, my first objective was to eliminate the cool-season grasses and get the warm-season grasses established before I really added forb's to the mix. Picture below to the right shows the planting during the burn before we seeded the area.

In the second and third growing seasons (2009 & 2010), wild bergamot and stiff goldenrod really had a presence in this planting. Indian grass was the first to establish seed heads (a couple plants set seed the first year), but big bluestem is gaining momentum and the two are starting to balance out now. This year, wild bergamot had been reduced to about a quarter of its original presence, and stiff goldenrod is overabundant. Butterfly weed flowered during the third and fourth growing seasons, but the grasses are too thick now and it had trouble competing with their height for sunlight. I'm starting to think that this area would have almost been considered mesic, because even with the slope, the soil can hold significant amounts of moisture and is considered very fertile. Grasses would have outnumbered wildflowers in terms of quantity (not species) in a tallgrass prairie, so having the two grasses dominate seems appropriate. Picture below to the left shows the planting at the end of the second year.

The experimental wedge started in the spring of 2008 when I removed an old goat and chicken pen that I had assembled 10 years prior. After removing the fence, I wanted to redesign how the prairie transitioned into the yard area and so spent time designing and experimenting with different mowing patterns to create the edge of the tallgrass prairie. Once I was happy with the outline of the prairie, I decided to experiment with the corner closest to the barn and get some prairie plants growing so that I could further visualize future prairie reconstruction areas and start to understand the behavior and scale of the tallgrass prairie. I knew that the cool-season grasses would be aggressive and difficult to control against a warm-season dominated planting like a tallgrass prairie. Therefore, I experimented with a herbicide application that focused the most destruction to cool-season plants during a time of the growing season when they are most vulnerable. I sprayed the planting area of the experimental wedge with glyphosate, a non-specific herbicide, at the end of May, 2008. This is a time of year when conditions are warm during the day, cool at night and there is ample rainfall. Perfect for the growth of cool-season plants. After about two weeks, the plants in the wedge were all dead and brown, acting as a perfect fuel for a prescribed burn. This burn which took place in early June, removed all the dead thatch of the cool season grasses and prepared the soil for planting. By now, the nights were getting warm and the daytime temperatures were getting hot - perfect for the germination and establishment of warm-season prairie plants. Immediately following the burn, I planted a heavy amount of indian grass, big blue, wild bergamot, stiff goldenrod and butterfly weed. The wildflower seeds had been cold-moist stratified over the winter in my fridge, so they were ready to grow as soon as I planted them. Everything established quickly and has made for a very successful planting method. Picture below to the right shows planting toward the end of the third growing season when big bluestem has gone to seed, but before the indian grass has matured.

I truly attribute the success of this planting by the ruthless attack against the cool season plants early on, which reduced the competition for the prairie seedlings during their first couple of growing seasons. After they get established, they are able to hold their own and compete effectively against the non-native plants. The only reason why I didn't continue to use this method for the rest of Lily's Prairie was due to the heavy use of chemicals and the difficulty of burning a large area in the middle of the growing season when the weather is unpredictable. I opted for a more organic method of converting old hay fields into native grassland. More experiments will be required in the future to get good results without the use of poison chemicals. The only threat that I see now is the spread and growth of canada goldenrod (which is native, but was not planted) against the native grasses, so this will be interesting to watch over the next four years... Picture below to the left shows the big bluestem dominating in the fourth growing season!

Lily's Prairie, 2nd growing season review

Watching Lily's Prairie develop this season (second year) was a lot of fun, mainly due to the anticipation I've had in reconstructing a prairie in it's location. Lily's Prairie is located along the road at the base of the driveway where it is very visible to the public. This is essentially the most visible prairie on the property and because of this, has a special importance as an educational tool for other large lot property owners who feel overwhelmed by trying to conventionally manage (manicure) every square inch of their land. Prairie reconstructions are just one method of land management and can help property owners retain an open landscape without the costly and unproductive use of turf grass.

A prairie reconstruction in its second growing season doesn't typically blow your wig off in terms of color and diversity, but is probably as exciting to watch develop as any prairie due to the fact that you are completely responsible for its success. Lily's prairie like all of the others is an experiment. Preparing and planting a prairie reconstruction is one of the most difficult and variable environmental planning tasks there are. Soil variables, available moisture, land use history, existing plant species, proximity and quantity of invasive plant species and current land uses all contribute to the complexity and success of any prairie planting. In retrospect, this planting could have been far more successful with a different approach, but once you start you don't really want to go back.


Aside from a few aggressive plants, I think this prairie is developing quite well. Spotted knapweed, sweet clover, canada thistle and swallow-wort are the most problematic weeds in our neighborhood, but somehow we've managed to keep these invasives out of Lily's Prairie for the most part. Cool season grasses such as smooth brome and timothy are still dominant in this prairie as they were before we started. Continued late spring burns or fall burns followed by early spring glyphosate treatments will be required to suppress the cool season grasses and give the native wildflowers and warm season grasses a competitive advantage during establishment. All future burns should be immediately followed by seeding with native wildflowers, keeping in mind to plant species to their specific moisture zones.

Some beautiful plants that have established well this year include but are not limited to; yellow coneflower, golden alexanders, black-eyed susans, yarrow, new england aster, cup plant, tall sunflower, blue vervain, indian grass and pasture thistle. Getting the warm season grasses established is crucial to eliminating the cool season hay grasses and promoting diversity.