After the emotional heights of the last two posts discussing my health history and issues, we return to more prosaic matters. How is my restoration going at the end of the fifth year after the original seeding? How has it changed over the past year; what do I think it can become, and what have I done this year to help it reach its potential?

First, the view from above, the big picture evaluation: The restoration continues to improve and become more diverse. The majority of the plants one sees are clearly from the original seeding in June of 2019, the seeding that was very disappointing in its distribution of seed across the 100 acres. Obviously, seeds from that seeding continued to germinate and many more plants became established in the second and third and even the fourth year. Areas that appeared barren in the summer of 2020 now have many plants obviously attributable to the original planting. However, that doesn’t mean that I haven’t benefitted from all the seed that I subsequently spread the next two years, responding to the disappointment of the terrible stand I saw in 2019 and 2020. There are only about 35 species that were in the mixes that went into the drill in 2019. I have now found about 130 native species on the 100 acres, and while a few are opportunistic travelers that have come from nearby pastures and roadsides, most are due to seed that I spread in several passes from the fall of 2018 to the fall of 2021. And, as I have written in the past, now that there will be a permanent easement on the restoration there will be an opportunity for competition and natural selection to decide what the composition will become. My job, which is clearly ongoing, is simply to provide the materials and management which allows these processes the latitude to work; for example: if porcupine grass is to become the dominant grass of the mesic swales (something I see in the relict prairies) I damn well need to get a beginning population of porcupine grass in those environments. Only then can it start to compete and increase; that potential has to come from somewhere.

Thus, I spend a lot of time wandering the restoration, both on my ATV and on foot, looking closely to see what species are growing in the different environments out there, and basically trying to visualize what is missing. Not everything is visible, at least not obvious enough for me to notice every year. In 2022, a year with good summer rain, it seemed new species were popping up everywhere. Many plants which likely had established in 2020 or 2021, finally bloomed in 2022 and became large enough to see. I identified many new species that I had not yet seen in the restoration. 2023 was a hot dry year, and many types of wildflowers failed to flower, or had a greatly reduced number of flowers, though there might have been just as many plants. While I have become proficient at identifying vegetative growth of many plants, I will overlook much if there are no blooms. This means that I don’t want to overreact to one year’s observations. I will, however now list a few of those observations, and then do some speculation. The observations:

1. I identified 10 new species in the restoration, which will be added to the original list I did a couple years ago, several of which are natural expansions from the nearby prairie, weedy species, if you will.
2. I saw many more examples of a number of species, notably leadplant, pasqueflower, meadow rue, mountain mint, prairie dropseed, silky aster and prairie smoke.
3. Conversely, I saw less of some species, notably blue lobelia, alumroot and early figwort. This might be real, or it could easily be a response to a prolonged period of hot, dry weather from late spring into early August.
4. Once more I transplanted about 750 seedlings of 12-15 species and once more I had poor survival, likely due to the stressful weather of early and mid-summer.
5. A significant portion of the transplanting was supposed to turn into a study comparing different sources of some of the milkvetches I am trying to increase. Neither the situation nor my ability to follow through with notes and documentation were up to the task and I have dropped the idea, though I continue to want to add plants of several species of milkvetch.
6. I am, however, applying for a Small Farmer/Rancher Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education (SARE) grant with Ben Lardy, where the bar measuring research results is much lower than academia, and hope to use it to jump start my new plan to use the restoration as a “living seed bank”.
7. Returning to the drought theme, I was unable to gather seed from the restoration, even of species which I had gathered in the past, because the amount of seed produced was very low. Good fall rain, however, has set up much brighter prospects for next year.
8. Good fall rain has also started a large crop of new wildflower seedlings, likely from seed that was produced on site last year. Survival into next year is not assured, but I am very optimistic that I will be gratified by what I see on the ground in the future.
9. Canada thistle is still the bane of my work, but I was very happy with the results of both the spot treating with herbicide, and with the simple competitive effect of the native plants, some mowing and the summer drought. The fall rain clearly rejuvenated the thistles, however, and I am still facing almost existential questions on management on the two newer restorations, where less native plant competition has allowed the thistles free play to thicken and spread. Similar observations hold on wormwood sage, but it is a less serious matter as wormwood doesn’t form the competitive patches that the thistles do.
10. These observations will inform future management, especially on the two 20 acre patches seeded in 2020 and 2022. I have been gratified by the amount of native forbs which have withstood the herbicide treatments applied in the past on the original restoration, which means that I can consider treating the worst patches with Milestone herbicide on the later restorations, those patches where I doubt that the thistles will allow establishment of the desired natives, It may necessitate some future re-seeding of sensitive native forbs, but I don’t have to feel I am engaging in scorched earth warfare if I spray some areas.
11. And I am definitely going to continue adding new seed, especially to areas that get burned to allow seed to get to the soil, this fall and next spring. This will likely continue as long as I am able.

If all this seems like micro-managing a large complicated system for which I have few guidelines, all I can say is that I agree. The Hippocratic Oath says, “First, do no harm,” and I am running the risk of making additions and modifications that are counterproductive, or at least unnecessary. Yet I keep coming back to the permanent easement, and what that demands of me. How can natural selection cause the landscape to develop richness and depth, or do the best job feeding birds, bees and microbes, or sequester the most carbon, and build the most resilient interconnected plant community if I haven’t supplied the entire spectrum of colors on the palette? How can meadow rue or slender milkvetch or silky aster fill their slots and do their jobs if there are none to begin the task? There are remnant prairies nearby to give me an idea of what some of the possible answers are, but as the climate changes the right answers to problems will change too. A beautiful, productive restoration that provides many ecological services with 30 species now might be woefully insufficient to the challenges of 20 or 50 or 100 years from now. To provide 130 species might not even be enough, but it’s a damn sight better than 30 species. And I am 68, not 28, so if I am going to be doing something I better get to it. Even though I may not know what is best I think I can figure out what is better than what I now have. And if I have success on this 100 acres I have plenty more land to work on, starting with the two 20 acre patches seeded in 2020 and 2022. The business author Tom Peters says, “Ready! Fire! Aim!” It is better to do something you can evaluate and modify than to wait until you know what you should do. That day may never come.

Thus, I hope to get some seed spread this fall. I have already given Dr. Lora Perkins, my friend with the greenhouse space at SDSU, batches of seed of about 20 species from which she will start seedlings in early 2024 for transplanting into the restoration. I also just received a summary of species in seed batches gathered by a new collaborator, Levi Waddell, which includes many species that I do not yet have. I will spread some on the fall burn now, and if I am lucky we will get more spread next spring and I will see results in the future. Ben has gotten a start on burning about 40 acres this fall, and perhaps 20 more next spring. Though this year’s work is not yet complete I am developing plans for next year. If not now, when? Or as we would say to each other in college on a Friday night, “Lets do something, even if it’s wrong.” And maybe there will be wonderful new things to report at the end of 2024.

Finally, what do I think it can become? That is a loaded question. My hopes and expectations seem to change every year as I think of new possibilities. The hope is that it can exemplify what is possible, of what some planning, management, persistence and yes, some cash, can do to tease out the maximum ecosystem services possible from an unproductive piece of farmground. My expectations aren’t quantifiable, at least not yet. However, I think it can become more; I think it can become better; I passionately believe it can become spectacular! What fun it is to chase those goals!

P.S. Earlier in this post I referenced porcupine grass as an example of a species I needed to become more common and more generally established on the restoration. This afternoon, after finishing the first draft of this post this morning, I spent an hour flinging the little spears around the 2-3 acres that Ben has burned so far, an appropriate site for porcupine grass as it turned out, and not an area where I have yet seen any. A small step, but it will be great fun to come back to that area in the future to see if I accomplished my goal.