I had hoped to have some of my native prairie burned this year, but my management choices last year made it difficult. The farmer that rents my pastures was running out of grass in September, because of a long, hot summer, so I suggested they fence in 20 acres of prairie (that was burned 3 years ago) to graze with the adjacent pasture. This piece hadn’t been grazed for 50 years or so, and several acres were an impenetrable mass of brome that I hoped the cattle would graze down hard. As it turned out there was so much old dead in that area that they failed to make much of a dent in the thickest areas. They did , however graze enough on the rest of the pasture to remove burning as a management tool this spring. On the hayland that was burned four years ago, I decided to make hay for our horses because our forage was also short, so there was little left to burn there either. However, there were a couple hills too steep and short of forage to be worth haying, and these were left. Though they weren’t worth haying, there was plenty of dead forage from last year to carry a burn.

So in the end we burned three small areas, the largest about an acre. I had been disappointed in that particular hill the past couple years, as there was hardly enough forbs blooming and making seed to be worth walking over to gather. The lower slopes were brome and Kentucky bluegrass (Poa pratensis), and the top was more blue grama (Bouteloua gracilis) with the bluegrass. There were a few black samson (Echinacea angustifolia) on the top, and a few roses (Rosa arkansana) and onions (Allium stellatum) towards the base of the hill. I thought that a couple more things would show up and was hoping to try an idea of spraying Roundup over the burn regrowth in a couple very small areas of the brome and then carpet bombing native seed over the top.

When I saw this, these pictures being representative of much of the hill, I figured I would come out in 2-3 weeks to try out my idea. Though the burned clumps indicate a native bunchgrass, likely needle and thread (Stipa comata), nothing that I saw indicated what I came back to two weeks later. Here is a smorgasbord of offerings of what the hill looked lie 3 weeks post-burn:

There’s more, but you get the idea. These pictures have two things in common: they are all about 5-10 square feet, the area I was going to kill with Roundup, and the fact that it would be very stupid to spray Roundup when this diversity is staring me in the face. The next step will be in another week to two, to see if grass diversity matches forb diversity, and to see how many new forbs I find. I have 20 so far.

A final interesting picture:

Our hills have always had some of the easternmost examples of this cactus. It is only found on extremely xeric, south facing slopes, and growing up I would have bet that I could count all the cactus we had on my fingers and toes. Four years ago I accidentally started a fire in early April that denuded 30 acres of prairie, and showed me that I had many more cactus than I assumed. Here is another example. All together there are probably 10 cactus carcasses on the south facing crest of the one acre hill. Four years ago I thought that I had probably killed my cactus, and instead found that I had stimulated a burst of new growth. This burn was over a month later, about the 15th of May. We will see what the effect on cactus is this year. All in all, the burn was a success, a small success in size, but a success nonetheless. Every year is so different; there is always so much to learn.