Prairie Restoration Project

[jeffinsgf]

I've got a difficult piece of this earth. My ten acres is underpinned by limestone that, in some ancient time, was an elaborate coral reef. In places the soil is deep and reasonably fertile. 2 feet away a chunk of limestone will break the surface, and an attempt to unearth it will reveal that it is tied directly to the earth's core. It is, what the geologists call a "glade", bedrock exposed or nearly exposed in large areas. Needless to say, this makes the concept of "yard" a tough one to bring to fruition. I battled that dragon successfully for about an acre right around the house, but grew weary of mowing the patches of grass that covered the 4 acres between the house and the road. Even at it's best it was boring, like every other wide expanse of mono-cultured lawn. At it's worst it was patchy, weed-prone and brown through most of the summer. Eight years ago I called in the Missouri Department of Conservation to look at my 5-acre woods and give me some advice on thinning and maintaining it. We talked for a brief while about the woods, but the agent was much more interested in my open field. He suggested I kill the fescue that had been planted decades ago and sow the area with native grasses and wildflowers, plants naturally adapted to the whims of weather that we have here in the Ozarks...soggy one year and powder dry the next. What followed was a few months of break-in for my new tractor; grading, raking, discing and sowing. Since then the area requires my attention just once a year in the late fall when I burn it off. The first few years were disappointing, but I was ready for it, having been warned by the Conservation agent. The last few have been increasingly rewarding, and this spring cool temperatures and ample rain have worked in concert to create quite a show.

Here are a few photos I snapped this morning, after a heavy dew and just before yet another rain.

 

[Baby Grand]

That looks great!
Amazing the difference between how a population of different types can yield superior results to a population that's uniform in type.
You see the same thing in corporations 8^)
Are those gourd bird houses on the pole?

 

[GGB]

That's really looking nice! Wild flowers really catch your eye, and help mask the areas that haven't filled in yet. But yours looks to be well on the way back.

I also am trying to restore several acres back to native grasses, hopefully to be able to bale it in the future. The area I'm doing was once a pasture with very thin topsoil and it really wasn't feasible to try to make it a lawn. And as much as I enjoy mowing, I just don't need that much practice! So the only reasonable option in my mind was to try to go back to natives species. The previous owner had dumped piles of trash in multiple locations which further complicated the situation. After cleaning up the mess, I contacted our local Soil Conservation office just for advice on what to plant and found out they had a cost sharing program that I could apply for, with no guarantee that my ground would be selected. I got lucky, and did get selected so that helped with the cost, but I would have replanted even without their participation. They mentioned that for just a few dollars more that they could add native flowers to the seed mixture, and I decided to do that just to make it interesting while it was starting to come back.

It's taking every bit as long as they said it would and as I expected (3-5 years), but it's well worth it. I knew it would take several years to really come in, as we had put about 50 acres into the WHIP program at our farm. You ought to have heard my Bride and my favorite MIL howl about how bad it looked for the first couple of years! Frankly, it did look lousy for the first two years. But now they remark about how nice it looks, especially when the flowers come out. Last year, not so much because of the drought, but I'm betting this year will look pretty good.

In my case, I brush mow it in February or March, and then burn it off a week or so later when it's dry. I'm working on getting some Johnson grass under control, but a little glycophosphate (Roundup) should take care of it once the Johnson grass is tall enough to use a weed wiper. Last year was so dry, that even the Johnson grass didn't get tall enough to use a weed wiper. Another option may be to let my neighbor put a few goats out in the areas with Johnson grass, as I understand they really like the young shoots. So it's taking a little effort to get it back to where I'd like to see it, but a lot better that trying to finish mow over what was originally a cow pasture (very rough). It'll never be a golf course, but that's not what I want to see. If that was the case, I'd have bought a lot on a golf course!

So thanks for sharing your pictures of what should be a very nice entrance to your home.

 

[jeffinsgf]

Are those gourd bird houses on the pole?

Thanks for the comment. No, they're not gourd houses...they're plastic imitations of gourd houses. For some reason, I never get any martins, though. Maybe I should take down the plastic and hollow out some gourds!

 

[jeffinsgf]

GGB,

I've still got a couple stubborn patches of Johnson grass, too, and the fescue is migrating back in a little from the ditches in front of the house. It's a battle, but not near the fight that mowing would be! My patch is mostly wildflowers with some native grasses. I've been told that fall burn favors flowers and spring burn favors grasses. I did the cost-share thing, too, though in the end it turned out to be a pittance compared to what I spent.

 

[Dr_Zinj]

Limestone eh? Any good fossils in it? (We're not counting the ones walking around on top of it. /wink )

 

[jeffinsgf]

Haven't found any good ones. I'm a SCUBA diver, and it is interesting to see how certain outcroppings look just exactly like patches of reef. 'Fraid the only identifiable fossil is the one walking around.

 

[GGB]

Interesting about the fall burn vs. the spring burn-I hadn't heard that, but I do recall something about planting late in the fall, so I'm wondering if that was possibly to help promote the flowering plants? When I first was trying to get it planted, the weather didn't cooperate at all. First it was too wet to burn, then too wet to plant, and we finally got it done late spring that year. And as you've seen, it doesn't look very good the first year anyway. But now it looks so much better than before, and it should just get better with time.

I looked into a herbicide specifically for killing just the Johnson grass, but it was about $400 for a 20 ounce bottle-ouch! But it only takes about 1ounce per acre, so at that rate, I'd have enough for several applications. But if it worked as well as I would hope, I'd be left with a lot of expensive chemical that I wouldn't use.

We don't have a Johnson grass problem up at the farm (thistles are a different story), because the cattle take care of them. So I'll try the weed wiper here as soon as the Johnson grass is tall enough unless I can get my neighbor to bring over the goats! If neither works, I'll try to find the specialty herbicide as a last resort.

 

[dave1949]

Very nice!