Bringing Back the Big Blue

In March of 2009, after three years of restoration in Old Mesic, it became obvious that autumn olive was going to remain a major problem in this prairie unit without some real competition.  I was really starting to wonder where the native grasses were in this prairie too, as many native wildflowers and sedges had returned after only three years of brush removal and prescribed fires.  But there were no native grasses.  Well that spring in 2009, I planted a hefty amount of big bluestem and indian grass seed in Old Mesic after one of our outstanding spring prescribed burns.  These are the two super powers of native grasses that would have historically occupied a mesic prairie in Michigan, so I was excited to reintroduce these important components back into our most pristine natural prairie communities on the farm.

Old Mesic, Burned and Brush-Hogged - March 2009

Old Mesic Looking North - March 2009

When I planted this seed, it was directly after our spring burns.  By the time these pictures were taken, I had already gone through and brush-hogged the standing autumn olive twigs which helped plant the seeds that had been sown by packing them down into the soil.  This probably helped with the germination rate of the seed that was planted and explains why planting seed in the fall is more successful than planting in spring.  Winter rain and snows help to drive the planted seed into contact with the soil which greatly increases germination.

Last summer (third growing season), I finally began to see the fruits of my labor.  At least a dozen big bluestem plants were identified in the middle of summer going to seed in Old Mesic.  These plants were still pretty thin last year, but our late spring burns that we just conducted should really help to provide a competitive advantage this growing season.  The fuel that these grasses will provide in future burns will really help to suppress unwanted woody plants too.  While it took three years for it to really show up, this just goes to show how hard it is to get plants started from seed in a mature prairie planting.  Patience is key!

Big Bluestem - Old Mesic, Summer 2011



Big Bluestem - Old Mesic, Summer 2011

Big Bluestem - Old Mesic, Summer 2011

Big Bluestem - Old Mesic, Summer 2011



Big Bluestem - Old Mesic, Summer 2011

Why Do You Burn?

The most often asked question I get is “Why do you burn?”  Now I am going to explain that bizarre mystery.

Today it is the first big day of spring. After a much warmer than normal March which jump started most plants and trees, it has been cool and dry in April. The ground is dry and everything living needs a drink. Today the rain arrived. It is in the low 70s and we are having pleasant, intermittent thundershowers which have caused all plant life to explode with growth. The corner prairie gets inundated with road water runoff when it rains and today about half of the site is underwater. Various prairie units have been burned from one to four weeks ago as you can see from Jake's blog. Now, it is a great time to observe new plant growth and to understand the growing dynamics of a burned prairie.





The first unit is the corner prairie which was burned four weeks ago. One week ago, Jake  and I sowed a wide variety of seeds that I had collected last fall. Both wildflowers and native grasses were planted. Note the amount of dead biomass on the ground before burning compared to the large amount of exposed soil as shown below.









 There is an excess of goldenrod on this site and some reed canary grass that is establishing new colonies. Burning allows me to see the quick growing reed canary grass colonies clearly and I have treated them with glyphosate to kill them. There is an abundance of bare earth after the fire, and I hope that the newly sown seeds will take root. 
           

                                                                                                              

The pictures show this site with its wide variety of hydrology due to topography (the low rear part of the lot is at the water table as evidenced by the cattails) and the periodic inundation created by the highway drain. Even in a modest rain like today, about half of the site is underwater.

In contrast is Lily’s Prairie. This site was burned three weeks ago and was probably the best burn we have ever had. Warm spring temperatures dried out the dead biomass and greened up the early season farm grasses that I want to eliminate. The burn was a hot and slow backburn that was very complete and exposed soil on the entire site. Burning the greened up early season grasses will set them back considerably and allow the slower growing native plants to get more sunlight.

Two weeks later we see very healthy clusters of Blue Lupine that stand proud of the stubby grass shoots and are loving the sunlight that is now available.  Compass plants are sending up their first basal leaves as well as Golden Alexanders.

Last week we pressed the calendar and burned some more of Lily’s Prairie. It still burned vigorously and completely but due to the amount of green grass, it was very smoky and I probably will not do this again (if the wind blew the smoke away from the road it would have been fine). Neverthless, it was a superb burn...probably will forget the smoke by next year.

In summary, warm temps dried out the dead biomass and greened up the undesireable species thus enabling the best quality burns we have ever had. Can’t wait to see how the plants grow....and that is why I burn.

Spring 2012 - Burn Overview

The winter of 2011-2012 will go down in history as one of the mildest winters in history.  Despite the fact that I spent all winter in Denver (where the weather generally stays pretty mild), reports of sunny weather, almost no snow and temperatures consistently above freezing back in Michigan were making me wonder what the hell was going on back in the old country.  For the month of March alone, 17 days were recorded with temperatures over 60 degrees; 9 of them were over 70 degrees and 3 were in the 80's!!  All this warm weather spawned not only a remarkably early spring, but one that stimulated the growth of both warm season and cool season plants simultaneously, making our prescribed burns a bit daunting.
Our burns started with the small savanna areas at Black Cherry Hollow on March 17.  Mom and Dad were able to burn the area along their driveway where a variety of native plants are being nurtured as part of the woodland's edge.  Wild strawberry makes up the majority of the remnant ground cover, however, a host of other savanna species have been planted here and provide an annual seed source for other restoration projects on the property.



The new savanna project on the back side of the house was also burned on the 17th.  In this area, Mom and Dad spent the mild winter thinning around the oak and cherry trees and removing gray dogwood, buckthorn, autumn olive, honeysuckle, bittersweet and variety of mesophytic tree species that wouldn't have historically occured in the dry, fire-managed landscape of an oak savanna.  Last year we planted big bluestem, indian grass, little bluestem, butterfly milkweed and wild lupine seed among other species to restore the fine fuels to this area for future burning.  The plan here will be to continue to monitor for invasive plant species while this area is expanded, connecting it to other small woodland openings on the property.

March 18th marked another great day of fire weather.  Dad was able to assemble a fire crew of conservationists from the area who wanted practice using fire as a management tool.  With hot weather and dry conditions, the group was able to burn the corner lot prairie (for lack of better name).  From the sound of it, this fire burned hot and flashy, but slowly as a back burn for most of it.  This will be good to see how it affects the abundance of goldenrod and canada thistle that thrive on this site.  This should also do a really good job at suppressing the woody vegetation encroaching on the site including gray dogwood, euro buckthorn and autumn olive.  The goal here is to continue with annual burning followed by seeding of native grass species.  The corner lot prairie is actually a really nice grassland remnant but lacks the warm season grass cover that we need to compete with aggressive species that occur there.  What's most interesting about this prairie is the variation in moisture zones that occur.  This site has dry, dry-mesic, mesic, wet-mesic and wet prairie zones.  The only thing that it lacks is a really sandy area for prickly pear cactus to grow in.



A week later, Mom and Dad conducted a burn on the large part of Lily's Prairie near the barn at Pinefield.  They did a fantastic job conducting a backburn across the entire site to help nuke the invasive cool season grasses that still dominate there.  Conducting late season burns like this is new for us, but an effective method for suppressing cool season plants which is our main goal for this particular site. This stands to be a very interesting experiment and only time will tell how effective this burn really was. What's most interesting about this burn is how much was actually consumed.  When there's a lot of green growth mixed in with the dry fuel, the burns tend to be a lot cooler and less effective at removing all the existing vegetation.  Despite how green this site was when it was burned, I would consider it one of the best burns of this area that we've had (even though it was only the third burn here).  When I visited a week later, the site was still devoid of cool season grass growth despite the rain and warm weather they had the week prior.  So far it looks great!









On April 6th when I was in town for Easter weekend, the three of us burned the roadside unit of Lily's Prairie as well as Old Mesic.  After all the warm weather that had occurred prior to my arrival, I was happy to see that we still had some burning opportunities left in the spring.

Two weeks earlier, Dad had brush-hogged Old Mesic, thinking that they had lost their window for the burn season.  In the weeks following, the weather cooled off and plant growth slowed down.  When I got home, we decided to take a hike over to Pinefield and check out how things were developing.  To my surprise, there was quite a bit of fuel left on Old Mesic, despite the fact that it had been mowed.  On top of that, the weather was fantastic for burning.  It was very dry, there was very little wind and it was very very sunny (not a cloud in the sky).  We then decided to give it a shot and just see how well it burned.  After mobilizing our burn equipment, we began burning Old Mesic.  Right away, it was very clear that we were going to have a great burn, so we kept it going and ended up burning the whole unit.  It was actually one of the best burns we've had on Old Mesic!







After taking a lunch break, we then moved our equipment up to the road and burned the roadside unit of Lily's Prairie.  This will be another great experiment with conducting late season burns on cool season dominated prairies.  The roadside unit was originally burned in the fall of 2009 when we had the fire department out to the farm for some fall burning.  Since then, it has continued to revert back to a thick stand of smooth brome dominated hay field.  However,  several good plants had started to develop from seed and plugs that we had planted in 2009.  I really knew that it would be a total loss had we not conducted this burn.  Even though this prairie was REALLY green at this point of the season, we had a lot of last years dead fuel to help with the fire.  I think the built up duff probably was keeping most of the good plants suppressed anyways, so they probably weren't as affected by the burn as one would think.  This will be awesome to watch develop this summer!





The next day, the three of us planted the roadside unit of Lily's Prairie.  We spread a tub full of big bluestem that Dad collected last fall, culver's root, yellow coneflower, black eyed susans, indian grass, mountain mint, hairy beardtongue, golden alexanders, rough blazing star and rattlesnake master.  All these wildflowers and the indian grass came from our own native plant gardens.