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.