One of my big goals for the fall, and really the year as a whole, was to take the opportunity, perhaps the last good opportunity, to improve the two 20 acre patches that have most recently been seeded by spreading a wide variety of species that I want to get established. The Huggett land that was seeded four years ago is filled in with perennial grasses (and Canada thistles) on the 3-4 acres of mesic soil, which will not allow much for new seedlings, though we hope to aid establishment of new plants by conducting a burn there during late April next spring. Most of the Huggett land, however, is xeric soils where it takes a long time to establish a complete ground cover, and I think the window is still open for augmenting with new species and larger populations of existing species. 2024 was a very good year for collecting seed on my xeric soils because of copious rain through almost the entire growing season (it suddenly shut off in early August after a very wet spring and early summer) and we have several species where gathering was only limited by the time we could put into it. The other 20 acre patch I am referring to was seeded two years ago, and has so far been a bit of a disappointment, with almost all the plants we see so far coming from the mix put in with the Day County Conservation District drill, basically the cheap seed of commonly used species, and very little is showing up yet of the gathered seed we spread by hand over the top. More will certainly show up in the future, but after two years there is clearly room for new seedling establishment. Here’s a before and after:
The first picture shows a “before” picture that is pretty representative. There are several thistle plants, the bane of my existence, a couple cool season grass clumps, a few forbs, a lot of annual grass residue and the grayer residue on the lower right is two year old wheat residue. The field had been mowed about July 15 to limit seed production from the thistles and other weeds with the unavoidable corollary that it limits seed production of the native forbs. It also means less of a jungle of combustible materials, making for an orderly and easily managed fire. The above picture is the back-burn, as you can see by the direction of smoke travel, but it was a comparatively sedate burn even when the head burn was lit. There was a four person crew, all with some experience, making for a safe and stress free fire.
And here was the result, a completely burned field. What stands out to me in this picture is the linear rows with residue divided by more barren areas. This goes back to the way it was seeded, into wheat residue. Where the chaff comes out of the back of the combine it was difficult to get seed to establish, especially where tire tracks pushed everything flat. Now, however, those same areas should be open ground for the seed that we spread this fall to have a welcoming home where they can germinate, grow and send their progeny into the future. Right now I am organizing both my seed resources and my labor to get this done before the snow falls, the wind blows and we are shut off from the field. Two years ago after the conservation district originally seeded this, my friend Roger Assmus came up about November 15 and we were able to topdress that year’s gathered seed before the real snow came in December. Last winter, the winter that wasn’t a winter, I returned multiple times in January and February to keep tossing seed around the brown, comparatively warm landscape in a different area that had been burned that November. With no assurance that this winter will allow me to do that again, I am trying to line up a seed throwing party before Thanksgiving with a group of SDSU grad students from the Native Plant Initiative lab to get it all done at once. That demands that I be ready to give them the appropriate seed and directions, so I will be busy this week preparing.
Getting anything “all done at once” is almost an impossibility, to be honest, for several reasons. Gathering, processing, mixing appropriate batches, and storing everything for the perfect day to spread seed is simply beyond my facilities and probably my attention span. Many years of wandering the prairies has taught me exactly where species grow in my prairies, and while there are broad generalizations that can be made as to groupings for mesic, dry mesic or xeric sites they don’t hold true when looked at closely. White penstemon (Penstemon albidus), prairie turnip (Pediomelum esculentum) and slender milkvetch (Astragalus flexuosus) would all be considered xeric adapted species, but their homes in my native prairies hardly overlap. Though it wouldn’t be wrong to toss them all into the same bucket it feels better to be more specific in seeding to get them established in the right sites. The penstemon needs to go on the most xeric ground, the prairie turnip can go on all xeric sites except the most barren where the penstemon will go, and the slender milkvetch is found on sites grading into dry mesic, the only one of the three that will consistently be found where smooth brome (Bromus inermis) is trying to take over. In other words, I feel most comfortable when seeding species individually to match the soils where I find them in the native prairie. It isn’t practical to do that with everything, but rather a goal to which I aspire.
Thus, today, I filled most of my car with the year’s gathered seed, drove up to my partner, Ben Lardy’s place, and laid everything out. I gave him a few species to process and add to seed that he had gathered, he gave me a few species to add to my supplies and my plan for next weekend began to come together. While I can’t expect the opportunity to spread seed through the entire winter again, I’m hoping for some nice weather in early December to finish what we will begin in a few days. I hope to have another post detailing our progress in 2-3 weeks. Until then I need to go back to work, which began a couple days ago.
I couldn’t wait for the big seeding shindig, so I took the opportunity of a beautiful late fall day to go begin spreading seed, specifically needle and thread (Heterostipa comata) seed. The messy wad to the left of my glove is what is left of three gallons of seed after I spread it across the 3-4 acres of xeric soils in the burned field. Seeding needle and thread is a laborious task as their awns are made to catch in the fur of an animal to travel and find a new home. When gathered and thrown into a container they aggregate into a tight wad from which small groups of needles have to be extricated and then thrown into the wind, Three gallons took about two hours to spread, and I have about ten gallons more to go, though much of it will go on the Huggett 20 next spring after it is burned. I also got some other seed spread, and will continue to do that every chance I get, preparing for the possibility my seed tossing party doesn’t happen. Life is messy and we have to roll with it.
As happens often in my writings, I will begin with some observations of a bountiful summer, and then down the rabbit hole of my more philosophical musings. First, a little look around.
This is a view of the south side of fairly steep gravel hill. You can barely call what’s under these plants soil. Last year at this time this landscape was mostly brown, the plants hiding after a hot and dry couple months. Not today. The majority of the flowers are whorled milkweed (Asclepias verticillata), which barely came above ground last year and made no blooms. Now, close to 1000 square feet are awash with milkweed blooms. After good fall rains and about 5″ every month since May, it’s a rich and varied environment. Right now there are four species blooming here, but that follows the 15-20 others that came before. Here’s another example:
These are wild onions (Allium stelatum) towards the base of a nearby hill. Last year I may have picked one or two onion seedheads near here, but this year there are perhaps 2-3000 circling this 1 acre hill. The same has been true of prairie turnips (Pediomelum esculentum), alumroot (Heuchera richardsonii), Pennsylvanis cinquefoil (Potentilla pennsylvanica) yellow flax (Linum sulcatum), two different penstemons (Penstemon albidus and P. gracilis) and many others. Many species of wildflowers became giddy with the glory of spring, and love was in the air (literally, with pollen blowing). Thus, it has been, and will continue to be, an epic year for seed gathering. Here’s one last picture of the native pasture where the first two pictures were taken:
There’s a lot going on in there, and many comments could be made about this. This is a slightly better site than the first two, but would still be considered a very xeric soil. You would not plant corn in this soil and expect to harvest ears. Yet it is a lush oasis in a year with rain, which goes to show the possibilities in an established prairie. Many species are elbowing each other for space, waiting for an opportunity., hiding in the shadows. Then a year like this comes along and all hell breaks loose. Over the past five years I thought I had identified where every standing milkvetch (Astragalus adsurgens) resided in my native prairies, perhaps 40-50 plants in total. This year I saw at least 30 more, as they felt safe to bloom and set some seed. The rainy year has allowed me to learn a great deal about my prairies.
One of the big question I have is simply: what all is really going on there if you add in birds, small mammals, insects, fungi and all the other life that resides here? Areas in the restoration on similar sites don’t really look like this, but like a pretty Potemkin village thrown together to fool the naive. While I am very pleased with the progress of the restorations, this thought has nagged at me for years. What has Dr. Frankenstein really created here? It’s alive, and it’s some sort of bastardized prairie environment, but is it just a pretty Boris Karloff? What have I really got here? Then, serendipitously, I read a blog post from Chris Helzer, a Nature Conservancy ecologist along the Platte River in Nebraska, where he answers what must be a common question to him. To paraphrase:: “Why do this? A restoration is not a true prairie. It doesn’t have the right plants in all the right places. It doesn’t have all the biotic relationships. It may have only half as much organic matter as the unplowed prairie. Is it worth it?” Chris’ aggressive reply, which I echo is, “Of course it’s worth it! We have taken marginal cropground and are producing a huge bucket of ecosystem services!” But it’s more than that. It is protecting, buffering and enlarging the prairie remnants around which it is placed. Eventually it will be a home for all the grassland species and all the deep relationships which will build over time. That doesn’t happen overnight. A restoration’s greatest value may be what it does for the life in the adjacent native prairies, but patience is needed.
I’ve been dancing around that thought in various blog posts lately, talking about border effects and enlarging populations of native plants to provide a deeper genetic bank to help the plants in the relict prairies. Chris stated the thought succinctly that the largest benefit of the restoration is what it does for the prairie remnants they connect and protect. That really speaks to me. I have four prairie remnant on my home farm, three of high quality which are intertwined with the restorations, about 100 acres. And my farm adjoins about 1000 acres of native grass to the west. Thus, my 200 acres of restorations are aiding and protecting over 1000. That thought really pleases me; I think we have something here. But there’s more.
Above is an area in the restoration with very xeric soils, much like the first picture from the native prairie. Though many of the plant species we have established are the same, it doesn’t look much like it, only improved by the pretty young woman in the picture. Yet, it is accomplishing a great deal and is steadily developing it’s own structure. What will it look like in 50 or 200 years? I would pay good money to see it.
My last point also goes back to Chris’ post, and to the picture above. The restoration is a success if it is accomplishing the goals which led you to do the restoration. I have been talking a lot lately about the goal of creating a living seed bank on my land, but there are other goals. Bailey Howard, the young woman in the picture, is a friend from the Twin Cities who is deeply interested in the world and how to do good in it. I was able to give her one example to consider, and because of our friendship we will likely revisit this and she will try to learn more. Earlier this summer I hosted eight students, mostly master’s candidates from the Native Plant Initiative lab run by my friend, Dr. Lora Perkins at SDSU. Some will likely join me in September to help plant seedling plugs or gather seed and gain experience and knowledge on my land. In two weeks the local Conservation District is coming as part of a tour of different aspects of conservation in Day County. None of these people give a flying you-know-what if this isn’t a perfect replication of what prairie should be around here, but there will be questions and conversations and observations and much will be learned. Education and outreach are stated goals of mine for this project, and I am relishing this success.
Finally, here’s what perhaps a third of the restoration looks like on some of the slightly better soils, aided by our rainy summer. Though it looks great, there are a lot of nits I could pick, and I still hope to add to the diversity here. Still, this is clearly a success and a joy to be in. I have been ill for a stretch, and my therapy today will be to go wander in the restoration. In that way, as well it is a success. Having a place where people can go to find solace is also a stated goal of this project. Every year I refer to my dodgy health and my uncertainty as to how long I can work at this. That’s fine, it’s just life, and I have to be humble enough to give up some things down the road. Yet today I am richly rewarded and feel very successful. And tomorrow we will get up, “strap em back on”, and see what wonders await.
This week I spent several hours during a couple visits just seeing what was coming in different areas of the restorations, including the Huggett ground, 20 acres a half mile north of the main restoration which was seeded in November, 2020. I have lower expectations and hopes for that land, partially because I have different goals there, and partially because it borders a neighbor on the north who is likely to allow spray drift to affect my planting. As a smaller piece of ground it is inherently more prone to edge effects, and perhaps not the best place to put my efforts. Still, a lot of gathered seed was spread there, and there are significant areas that might contribute to the seed bank project. Here’s a couple views of what the better half of it looks like now.
Of course, as I stated, this is the best half. There are areas that are blanketed in cheatgrass, and other areas in the richer soils which are filled with Canada thistles, both of which can preclude desirable natives from growing. Here is the plan to start to remedy this. First, there will be 25 cow/calf pairs that will go out there very soon, perhaps in a couple days. Even now, after three growing seasons, there is not a full stand of grass here. There are many bunches getting a start, but probably less than 25% of the ground has perennial grass cover. Much of the open space that isn’t covered in thistles has weedy winter annual grasses such as the cheat and foxtail barley. To be blunt, after three growing seasons some of it is still a bit of a mess. The cows will hopefully help hold down the annual grasses and start to provide a bit of additional biology with their manure, allowing more space for the perennials to expand. That is only the beginning, however. By mid-June the cows will be in a neighboring pasture, and I will hopefully get over this to spot-treat some of the worst thistles with herbicide, hopefully less than an acre of the thickest thistle growth. The downside of the herbicide, obviously, is that this is likely to kill some of the few forbs which have been establishing themselves with the prickly thistle neighbors. I will be conservative with herbicide, however, and try to only spray those areas where the thistles are so thick that all other growth has been shut down.
Then, I hope to allow this to grow the rest of the year undisturbed in preparation for a fall burn. We will try to do a fall burn, rather than a spring burn, for two reasons. First, a late fall burn, perhaps in early November, should kill the little winter annual grasses I don’t want. Second, this will prepare the ground for a late fall/early winter seeding with as much damn seed as I can get my hands on, the burn having disrobed the ground so seed hits soil, letting the oncoming winter overcome the dormancy of the seed, and allowing all this locally gathered seed to begin filling in the spaces in 2025. Thus, there are several moving parts that I am not totally in control of, such as the cattle and the fire, but it is reasonable to hope that between all of these activities I can make a significant improvement to the wildflower population here by the end of next year. In total, I have planted about 230 acres to native prairie plants, but I am really concentrating on the 120 acres in my southwest quarter. If I can get this additional 20 acres rocking, that will make 140 acres, all connected to truly native prairies in a 267 acre complex, and all that adjacent to several hundred acres of native pastures owned by a couple neighbors. Those neighboring acres, while not pristine, have at least a smattering of native forbs. This then enlarges the “island” of native plants, providing larger home territories for all prairie life, from sharptail grouse and marbled godwits to native bees and butterflies to native fungi and bacteria.
All this is a grand vision, which is a hell of a lot less grand when I allow my rose-colored lenses (that usually seem to cover my eyes) to refocus on the messy issues blocking this path to prairie nirvana. But what truly is nirvana anyway? Nirvana is ultimate enlightenment, the acceptance of both the tawdry messiness of life and the beauty of our attempts to spread peace and kindness in a chaotic world. It is seeing all of creation hooked together in a beautiful loop of activity. We are all on that path to nirvana whether we recognize it or not, as we just try to survive our busy lives. Who can I connect to in my part of the loop who might see these prairies as a gateway that helps them achieve their own peace, their own progression to nirvana? What will karma allow? Working on that is part of my path in 2024, to make progress in relationships that can use these prairies for their own future. We will return to this thought later, but for now I will leave you with a couple pictures.
The first picture is of a Pennsylvania cinquefoil (Potentilla pennsylvanica) in a native prairie, a humble little plant that is adapted to the gravel hills. I just planted 20 of them in the restoration, with many more to go. The second picture is of a small milkvetch (Astragalus sp.) which I planted as a seedling plug last year. While most of my transplants failed to survive a hot, dry summer, some made it through, and can further the vision of hills covered with wildflowers providing seed for others to do grand projects of their own.
I open this post, not with a picture from the area of the restoration that was burned last fall, and is the present focus of my efforts in the seed bank quest, but a picture from across the trail to the west on a neighboring pasture I don’t own, called the Maloney 80. All those clumps of last year’s grass growth are very instructive. They are all individual crowns of porcupine grass (Heterostipa spartea). I have written about this species several times before, usually in the context of what a pain in the rear it is to seed, because of the seeds (with their spear-like awns) tendency to form almost impenetrable balls from which small groups must be laboriously plucked to fling while seeding. This is not a common component of prairie seed mixes because of the difficulties first in planting, and then in harvesting, cleaning and storing seed. I have seen a couple vendors who sell de-awned seed, but the awn helps in the seed planting itself, twisting and pushing the seed into the ground naturally while wetting and drying, so it is considered helpful to keep the awns. It is obviously an important component of native prairies here, dominating the mesic areas at the base of the hills. The picture below of my glove after seeding some porcupine grass, illustrates the difficulties the awns create:
I have many areas in my own prairies which could have been the backdrop for the opening picture, but only scattered plants in various areas of the restoration. Though seed has been spread several times I doubt there are more than a couple hundred plants scattered in the restoration. While it is not impossible to access from vendors, as always, we can run into issues with source geography, and because it is difficult to farm, it is not a cheap seed to buy. For instance, I see that I could purchase an ounce, 680 seeds, for $12.00, or about 57 seeds for a dollar, and I would have to seed it separately by hand. If I were planting big bluestem or indiangrass from the same vendor I could purchase 1050-1100 seeds for that dollar, with the added benefit that those seeds would mix well with other components of the blend that I was planting. If you were a conservation professional working with a tight budget, and limited time, which would be your choice?
I go back to the opening photo, however. How can I not plant porcupine grass, hopefully a lot of porcupine grass, if I am trying to do a prairie restoration here? To buttress this thought I saw a presentation a year ago which referenced surveys done in tallgrass prairies 150 years ago where porcupine grass, not big bluestem or indiangrass, was listed as a common dominant species. I’m in sympathy with the stance that we can’t re-create an historical prairie, and should instead focus upon achieving the ecosystem service goals we desire. However, even considering some redundancy in ecosystem services provided by the different grass species, porcupine grass seems important to me. Thus, with the open winter we just experienced, I used a significant amount of time carrying wads of entangled porcupine grass seed around the bases of the hills that were burned, plus some adjoining areas, perhaps 50 acres, and flung out many thousands of porcupine grass seeds. I did some rough math, and I may have spread 50000 seeds. In 2-3 years I will find out if I accomplished anything. How many plants would be considered a success? Can I dream of 1000? One species in the list for the seed bank. We will move on to the next example.
Above is a small groundplum milkvetch emerging from its winter doldrums. Diagonally from its lower right side you see what looks like a black pen I lost in the prairie. It is, however, the remains of the black tube that housed a seedling grown by the Native Plant Initiative at SDSU. I then placed the tube in the ground to mark it so that I could return to water and observe the seedling. Over the past two summers I have planted about 1500 seedlings of about 20 species in an attempt to leapfrog over difficulties in establishing plants by topdressing seed. If all goes well I may get another 1000 planted this year. I have centered my activities on about 10 forb species which are more difficult to access than porcupine grass. My favorite seed vendor, Prairie Moon Seeds from southeast Minnesota, has only sold groundplum in packets of 75 seeds for $3.00, or 25 seeds per dollar, the past couple years. I have spread several thousand seeds that I have gathered over the years, and the result has been 50-100 plants, not bad, but not a population sufficient for the seed bank idea. Thus, I have also transplanted about 100-150 plants started in the SDSU greenhouse. Over the past winter I spent a couple hours methodically placing individual seed into bare soil in appropriate areas. I have only a vague idea how many transplants have survived, but I hope that 30-40 did. Add in a couple more years of work with both seed and transplants and I may have several hundred to go with the several hundred living in the adjacent native prairies. With that I would feel I had something. The goal is to get a population that not only is of sufficient size for significant seed gathering, but that has some genetic depth and the ability to maintain itself for a long time going forward. How big that population needs to be is unknowable, but if I had 500 plants spread over a couple hundred acres I would feel I had something important. As each plant will often produce 20 pods with 15-20 seed per pod the restoration might be able to produce many thousands of seeds which could be shared, a pleasant thought.
I will harangue the gentle reader on just one more species to show the range of decisions that the seed bank idea has prompted, heart-leaf golden alexander (Zizea aptera), in the lower right of the photo. This is a species I see in prairies in the area, though I have not noticed one on my own prairies. It is not difficult to buy at a comparatively reasonable price, 200-250 seeds per dollar. Thus, the quandary is how much effort to add it to the seed bank. So far, the population of perhaps 50 plants in the restoration, is entirely from purchased seed. More was spread on the latest planting a year ago, so I may have more soon. It seems reasonable to me to accept some plants from purchased seed in a population from which the majority trace origin to local prairies. I am no purist, and consider those plants a valuable addition both to the prairie itself and to the genetic pool. If the genetics is unsuited to this climate they will disappear and will not contribute to seed collected here. However, if I am promoting this as a repository of locally adapted genetics which can be used in prairie restorations in the area, I would be remiss to include this as an example. Those who want to add it to their seed mixes can purchase it from a vendor. It will be the same genetics as what I would gather, as I purchased mine from such a vendor. I will change my mind if I am able to access a batch of locally sourced gathered seed (which I hope to do) and I will be happy to make efforts to put it on the list of species to increase at that time. Until then my efforts are better used elsewhere.
To sum up, efforts this winter and early spring on the 30-35 acres that were burned have included the following:
Spreading 50# of native seed bought from my neighbor, Levi Waddell, who has a business gathering and selling native seed. This was only partially cleaned and then sold with chaff and residue, “in the dirt” as they say in the seed business. Thus, it’s not as impressive as it sounds, but it is still a helluva lot of seed. In addition I spread several pounds of cleaned seed from about 25 species from Milborn Seeds that had a source identified as within 200 miles from here. All this was spread by hand, trying to place seed in adapted sites. Millions of seeds are out there, nicely stratified after late winter snow and spring rain.
For a select group of species for which I had less seed, mostly seed that I had gathered, I did a more careful job, placing seed individually into the soil for several wildflowers with seed which is large enough for my beat up old hands to hold and manipulate. Species I did this for include textile onion (Allium textile), oval leafed milkweed (Asclepias ovalifolia), green milkweed (Asclepias ovalifolia), groundplum milkvetch, pasqueflower (Anemone patens),prairie turnip (Pediomelum esculentum) pale spiked lobelia (Lobelia spicata), downy gentian (Gentiana puberulenta) and a couple others I am likely forgetting. Seeds of the last two species are like dust, so were spread over appropriate areas as conservatively and accurately as possible, while the rest were spread or placed as close to individually as I could manage.
This week I will go to SDSU to check on progress of the seedlings being grown for me by NPI in the greenhouse. I plan for a significant amount, several hundred, to be planted in the burned acres.
Finally, I am already making plans for another 30 acres to burn this fall, to do this all again.
This is the goal, a small tableau set on the little hill in the middle of the restoration. When I blew this image up, the picture showed a minimum of 12, and likely 13 or 14 wildflower species in an area of about ten square feet. Achieving such diversity and density of wildflowers everywhere in the restoration is impossible, if only because of the competitive nature of the grass crowns on more mesic sites. That’s fine, but I aspire toward greatness. The beacon is always in front of me. The concept of the seed bank provides images and a goal I will strive to reach.
This is a term that I have bandied about the past couple years, one I wrote a bit about in a recent post, “The 2024 Plan”, and I think its time I more rigorously define what I mean by the phrase. To phrase it differently: What the hell is a living seed bank? And why am I trying to create one? I am far from the first person to come up with the idea of a seed bank, including a seed bank for prairie plants. Last year I received some seed from the USDA Germplasm Resources Information Network (GRIN). At the time I had plans to engage in a small research project with my friends at South Dakota State University (SDSU) to compare different sources of several milkvetches (Astragalus sp.) that grow in my native prairies. While I found that, on the one hand, I am unsuited to planning, creating an experimental design and following through on a field research project, I still learned something. The seeds, which came from Kansas, Colorado, Montana and Alberta grew into seedlings very different from those grown from my seed. While they may have been the same species they were not the same plants. Their phenotypes, the visible representation of their genetics, were distinct enough to make me wonder if they really were the same species. This is no revelation; many species get divided into several or many subspecies to reflect distinct populations. It drove home for me, however, that I needed to wrap my head around the concept of local adaptation. And then to take that realization further to realize that there might be a place in the world for multiple, complementary seed banks.
I have written before about my travails in receiving ill adapted seed from purchases I have made that were able to establish populations in the restorations and then disappear over several years as the hard winters or other factors took their toll. The blanketflower (Gaillardia aristata), which turned out to be from Colorado, that I planted had a very different phenotype than my natives; it was larger, bloomed earlier and had a gaudier flower. By the second year of the restoration I had carpets of beautiful blossoms, but by the third and fourth years most had died and there were only scattered survivors, likely complaining to each other about the horrible cold they had just lived through. Surviving plants may have been from purchased seed that had tougher genetics or they may have grown from seed that I gathered from my surrounding relict prairies which had the required genetics. Less dramatically I have had the same experience with alumroot (Heuchera richardsonii) and purple prairie clover (Dalea purpurea) other wildflowers common in my hills for which I planted both purchased and gathered seed.
It gets worse. Of the approximately 100 species of wildflowers that inhabit my rolling hills, I can purchase seed for about half from regional vendors. Very simple math reveals that about 50 species are totally unavailable from any source except gathered seed. When you add the opaque nature of the source of purchased seed it means that most prairie restorations created from that purchased seed are “dumbed down” versions of what a prairie could be. Some organizations, notably The Nature Conservancy (TNC) have tried to go down a different path starting from gathered, local seed, But a lot of seedings done by nonprofits and public agencies alike are assemblages of 30 or 40 easily accessible species, picked for a combination of availability, cost and perhaps the showiness of their flowers. What are we missing? In the largest context, what are we missing?
For one thing, we are missing plants that may have obligate partnerships with insects, fungi and other life. If the proper nectar sources aren’t available (think monarchs and milkweed) we will be missing their partners. Suzanne Simard has become famous documenting the commensual relationships between mychorrizal fungi and trees, coining the term “the wood-wide web”, showing that the whole is more than a sum of its parts. One plus one plus one, metaphorically, might equal four. or sometimes eight. Life is obviously a lot more complicated that our poor limited imaginations realize, Another thing we miss is redundancy; perhaps there are several species that do a particular job, who can fill a certain niche. However, if we only planted one of those species, and it fails to establish a population, we will miss out on that particular ecosystem service. If we only have a couple species of legumes planted, and they don’t establish good populations, the entire prairie will be short of nitrogen. If we lose our early blooming flowers the native bees have no food. If we don’t have violets we don’t have food for regal frittilary larvae. Some types of mycorhizzal fungi are likely specific to certain species. You get the idea.
It gets worse. I live in an area with native pastures. Because of hills and rocks and potholes, some areas have a lot of native pasture. There is a ridge between where we live now and the restoration that has perhaps 100-200,000 acres of almost contiguous native grass, but between overgrazing, herbicides and invasive brome competition there is a paucity of native wildflowers. The mostly native pasture that housed our little herd of dairy cows while I was growing up has less than 10% of the wildflower population it had back then. That large block of native grass I referred to is mostly a large block of invasive non-native grasses and a few weedy forbs, some native and some not. It is not prairie, just as the 50 acre pasture that I gathered pasqueflowers and dug breadroots on in my childhood is not really prairie anymore. This means that resupply of prairies from nearby native sources is often unlikely. While few of these species are endangered, or even threatened, they are not easy to get ones hands on when looking for a source to plant in a restoration.
My response is documented in this blog, 230 acres put back to grass, 140 acres of which have 100-175 species planted. I feel there’s more that can come from this little hill farm, however. If a significant barrier to prairie restorations is a source of adapted seed, it could be a repository of possibilities, not just for myself, but for others. If my seed, the genetic answers residing on our farm, are adapted to a 100-150 mile circle, a fairly conservative number, that gives an area of 31,400-80,000 square miles for which it could confidently be used as a seed source. How many acres of restoration can this supply every year? Not that many. However as a supplement to purchased seed, as a source for others to begin new populations, as a touchstone for others engaging in restorations and as an example of particular genotypic answers that evolution has devised to the question of “Who gets to live in the prairie hills in northeast South Dakota?” I think the value can be magnified, it can scale.
That leads to the obvious next question. How can I help it to be magnified, to scale, to enlarge beyond a couple hundred acres? I cannot build it into the GRIN network and database, which is nationwide. However, perhaps I can network with others in this backwater of the world to cooperate in the development of a true seed bank, or seed exchange. Pursuant to the connections that are yet to be established I have already begun work to continue to strengthen and diversify the forb component in my prairies, hoping to progress from it being “neat” that I have twenty or thirty plants of, say, slender milkvetch (Astragalus flexuosus) to having two or three hundred plants that can accomplish two related tasks. First, they can be a robust, self sustaining population which can develop in an evolutionary sense along with the plants in my native prairies. And then it can be a source of seed for other who wish to use it in a restoration or to enhance an existing prairie. That population can also be gathered to be part of a stored seed bank, which can be housed separately from me, and be available for further increase, or use in research. All seed banks need periodic grow out to renew the seed vigor of their collections. My prairies can be that source for what I hope becomes 100 or more species without the need to grow in a dedicated plot. In effect, it can be the seed bank, living and growing in the world to help, supplement and augment a traditional seed bank.
Thus, my choices of where to use my time and resources will be guided not just by the general ecosystem services that a diverse prairie as a whole can contribute, but by the sometimes unknown benefits of all the individual species. Though I may not know the benefits of humble plants like yellow sundrops (Calylophus serrulatus) or bastard toadflax (Comandra umbellata), I will attempt to gather, spread, increase and have them available as a seed source. I choose those two species specifically because I have not yet been able to increase them in my restorations, but I hope to. Because all resources, whether time, financial, energy or even space to plant everything, are by nature finite, I will still target my efforts to those species that are more difficult to get, and less likely to have a source within 150-200 miles from here. While those plants grow I can continue to explore how to take this show on the road.
It is only about 10 days since the seeding documented in the last post, but it is now spring, as evidenced by the iconic harbinger of the coming growing season in the northern prairies, the pasqueflower (Anemone patens).
Other than the pasques (only a few are just peeking out) it doesn’t look very spring-like, but there is some small, humble growth beginning to venture forth from the crowns where the growing points have hidden for the past several months. First, below are a couple crowns of prairie smoke (Geum triflorum), of which I found a great many small crowns sending out leaves. If May is kind there will be hundreds of these blooming in the restoration. If you look near the glasses there is another wildflower, perhaps a penstemon, which is also peeking out, and a little green at the base of some of the grass crowns, probably prairie junegrass (Koeleria macrantha) which grows early.
We have three or four species here: below the right lens of the glasses (left side) is field sage/sand sage (Artemisia campestris), a biennial which made this growth last October, fringed sage ( Artemisia frigida) to its right, and below that what I think are two different penstemons. To the left is probably white beardtongue (Penstemon albidus) and to the right is probably foxglove beardtongue (Penstemon digitalis). What messes with a poor biologist like me is that the basal leaves which grow directly from the crown (which the penstemon leaves are) are often quite different from the leaves that grow out of the stems as they develop. One needs to learn and remember twice as many leaf shapes to identify the plants. And to challenge my abilities even further in this photo are a couple small shoots in the bottom center just below the larger penstemon which will remain unidentified for now.
After that digression we can move on to the title topic, spring seeding. The snow which fell 8-9 days ago is almost all gone, with remnants in the draws. This means that all the seed that I spread 10 days ago were nicely soaked. There is now a 90% chance of gentle rain the next two days, so I decided to use a couple hours on a nice day to toss out a little more seed. I had a gallon or two of false boneset (Brickellia eupatorioides) seedheads that I had kept separate because it is too fluffy to blend well with other seed and just raised handfuls high to let it blow and wander as it would in the wind over the dry mesic area on the south side of the restoration. Then I took out an envelope of stratified textile onion seed I had gotten out of the refrigerator and did my best to plant all 250 seeds individually on the droughty sites where it is able to compete and grow. My clumsy fingers were unable to grasp and plant all the tiny seeds, but perhaps half were pushed gently into the ground while others might fall nearby, and I flung some over the autumn burned areas of gravel, areas very much like the soils in the pictures above.
This wasn’t a grand accomplishment, certainly. Between the wandering photography and the seeding less than two hours was spent, most of that trying to give each onion seed an opportunity to make its special contribution to the greater good. Yet I rarely lament a short stay or a modest addition to the prairie canvas. One never knows the best day, or the critical effort when it is made, just as one never knows what piece of advice or words of kindness will make the most impact on a child, spouse or friend. It is the cumulative effect, the weight, of all the gestures and the mindful attempts that one makes that can carry the day towards our goals. If some of my onions germinate this spring they will be hard to find, but if I do see some this year, or perhaps next, that will be another small piece of colored glass in the mosaic of this prairie and this life, and another reason to rejoice.
When I began this process I certainly didn’t anticipate adding significant amounts of seed five years after it was established. Intuitively it seems it should be fine, taking care of itself down the road by the seed it produces, allowing Mother Nature to heal herself. After reflection and observing restoration practices done by other entities I have a completely different opinion which is informing my present activities. First, this is not a natural environment comparable to prairies in the far past. Those prairies developed, and the characteristics of the different plants were evolutionarily honed by the disturbances of the bison, other native grazers, the pollinator populations of the time, the soil biota which had developed over time and overlaid by the “management” of the native peoples who inhabited the area. As there is no way to replicate that, I cannot replicate the environment which allowed natural regeneration. The best we can do is to make our clumsy attempts at grazing, fire and invasive species control and hope it recreates a facsimile of those shaping factors. Restorations, especially in mesic sites, tend to simplify to a small suite of wildflowers which can compete with the tall warm season grasses such as big bluestem (Andropogon gerardii) and indiangrass (Sorghastrum nutans), or the inexorable spread of smooth brome (Bromus inermis). They become pretty fields of reddish browns or expanses of grey brome stems every fall that provide only part of the ecosystem services we desire. They aren’t even great cattle pasture without diversity.
To make things worse, we are often not even sure which species are best adapted to site, We tend to blend a mix to be used over large areas, and we purchase seed which may have its origin hundreds of miles away. Then, to top it off, restoration sites are often isolated, so there is no additional source of genetic bench strength, whether through seed or pollen transport to keep each species meta-genome diverse and strong. Thus, many of the original species, especially wildflowers, wink out. If I want to provide the ecosystem services that come from a larger suite of plants I need to attempt to provide and nurture those plants.
I’m certainly not alone in these concerns. As I’ve gotten to know more conservation land managers it is a theme of concern. My daughter, Diane works for an engineering firm that does work in restoration, and told me their restoration manager assumes periodic topdressing of wildflower seed is needed to maintain populations. And in my perusal of a myriad of conservation websites I see many examples of continuing introduction of new plants and seed, both to introduce missing species and to buttress populations of existing species. Below is a blurry picture (it was very windy while I took the picture) showing both problem and opportunity inherent in a restoration. It shows the path of the drill six years ago when this was seeded. To the left one can make out faint lines from the drill dropping very small amounts of seed, while the strip through the middle is where the drill operator opened the drill wide open to get the seed to fall out and empty the drill. There is much of this over the restoration. Where the burned grass crowns are thick there is little besides grass, and the seed I just spread is wasted as it will have no biotic space to grow. To each side, however, there are more wildflower crowns and hopes for many more. This area received the seed mix I spread 10 days ago as well as the false boneset seed I spread yesterday. I am eager to see is my efforts have results, and hope to come back to this spot for continued documentation.
There’s so much to learn, and there’s so much to do. It provides a sense of urgency to Linda’s and my attempts to provide a structure for future management of both my restorations and Linda’s grazing system. The idea that we can “protect” land and then get out of the way to let nature take it the rest of the way to its best and most beautiful ends is not workable, at least not in prairie restoration. I have work to do on several fronts. I look forward to an eventful and productive year.
To keep with the plan of enhancing wildflower populations, with the goal of creating an area for others to use as a seed bank to collect from for their own use, I have used the open winter to spread more seed.
With apologies to Hemingway, I call this picture “The Old Man and the Seed” as behind me is 20 bags of seed. A couple are from my gathering days last year, but most were purchased from Milborn Seed, the local purveyor. Jason Tronbak, my contact there, had given me a list of all their native species with a South Dakota, North Dakota or Minnesota origin, and I purchased a group that fit my needs as presumably locally adapted seed. Though I had spread a lot of seed over much of 30 acres that were burned by my friend, Ben Lardy, last fall, mostly seed gathered by me and by Levi Waddell. a neighbor, I haven’t wanted to miss the opportunity that the excellent burn would give me to get seed down to black soil. Thus I purchased more seed, and yesterday I mixed up batches of 7-12 species mixtures for different areas that I had a particular desire to enhance. Here’s what the area looked like yesterday.
As you can see, there’s a little snow, only showing some of the burned ground, but nothing that impacted my getting around the site. Seeding in March is an ideal situation: the winter birds have very little time to eat the seed you fling out, you have the opportunity to access seeds from vendors that was harvested in 2023, rather than 2022 (which is what you get if you purchase seed in October), and best of all, the seeds have the opportunity to be stratified, immersed in the cold, damp period they need to overcome dormancy so they are prepared to burst forth as the weather warms. The above pictures were taken late afternoon yesterday. Here is what it looks like outside our house today at 1:00 PM.
We are 3″ into what is supposed to be 12-18″ of snow today and tomorrow. This means the seed spread yesterday, and earlier this month will be well moistened and stratified by the time the weather and soils warm up sufficiently six weeks from now. My daughter, Diane, texted how exciting it will be to see what comes up in May. That sounds pretty optimistic to me, but it should be possible to know if plants we find are from this winter’s seeding as I spread almost all the seed in areas which don’t have those species, and concentrated some of the seed along the edges of the burn where it will be easy to survey and identify anything new.
Here’s a map of the quarter section that has 120 acres restored prairie.
Though my hands are too shaky (as well as my editing and drawing skills) to make an exact representation of the seeding that I did, here’s an approximate representation. Zone 1, the blue oblong in the lower left, is an area of quite xeric, gravelly soil south and east of our old gravel pit. It has good diversity, but lacks some of the wildflowers in similar soils to the north and east. Thus, I put together a mix adapted to those soils with a few missing species as well as a couple others it already had.
Standing milkvetch (Astragalus adsurgens)
Pasqueflower (Anemone patens)
Hoary vervain (Verbena stricta)
Purple prairie clover (Dalea purpurea)
Textile onion (Allium textile)
Alumroot (Heuchera richardsonii)
Western wallflower (Erysimum asperum)
White penstemon (Penstemon albidus)
The blue area with the 2 in it is an area of slightly better soil, a dry mesic environment, which is one of the areas that got the full complement of seed from the original seeding by the Day County Conservation District, and has had much less gathered seed spread the last few years. This is an area that I particularly wish to enhance, so much of it received additional gathered seed last November, and was spread yesterday with:
Rough blazingstar (Liatris aspera)
Prairie onion (Allium stellatum)
Hoary vervain (Verbena stricta)
Maximillian sunflower (Helianthus maximillianii)
Purple prairie clover (Dalea purpurea)
Wild rose (Rosa arkansana)
Thimbleweed (Anemone cylindrica)
Leadplant (Amorpha canescens)
Later this spring this is also an area where I hope to transplant perhaps 100 of the seedling plugs being grown for me at SDSU.
The blue zone with the 3 is around the base of a highly diverse hill, plus a draw extending uphill to the south. The combination of competition from the grasses originally planted and herbicide treatments for some very dense thistle patches has caused less diversity in these richer soils. Thus, I am hitting this area pretty hard with seed. In addition to last fall’s seeding I have spread the following this March:
Canada milkvetch (Astragalus canadensis)
Mountain mint (Pycnanthemum virginianum)
Rough blazing star (Liatris aspera)
Meadow blazing star (Liatris ligustylis)
Canada anemone (Anemone canadensis)
Rattlesnake root (Prenanthes racemosa)
New England aster (Symphyotricum novae-anglia)
Wild Rose (Rosa arkansana)
Maximilllian sunflower (Helianthus maximillianii)
Purple meadow rue (Thalictrum dasycarpum)
False sunflower (Heliopsis helianthoides)
Prairie dropseed (Sporobolus heterolepis)
Porcupine grass (Heterostipa spartea)
Finally, there is a small area circled in blue with a 4 inside on the map on the south side of the pasture that was not burned last fall. If fortune is kind this year it will be burned in April and be overseeded with a mix approximating the mesic mix above, probably including a few more species. Over the next two days while we are kept inside by the weather I plan to get my remaining seed that I have saved for that area in a large container with a soil medium to stratify for a month so that there is a better chance of immediate germination should the burn occur. If we are unable to accomplish a burn I will likely spread it over more of the mesic areas which were burned. And if the forecast is correct that will likely be the end of the March seeding and the rest will have to wait until spring returns. If we are fortunate some of these areas will go from 15-20 species of forbs to 30-40 species from the various seed additions of last fall and this winter.
Returning to the topic of the restoration as a seed bank, I have a bit of an existential dilemma. What if no one is interested in using the property to gather seed? While I believe that Ben and Levi will be interested, whether governmental employees and nonprofit types are or not, and that really is good enough for me, I feel it worthwhile to consider this. What is the downside?
What I am trying to do is to build a restoration which is endowed with what might seem an unnaturally high population of a large number of forbs, of wildflowers. Is there really a downside??? Actually, I can think of a couple things. First, these fields, at least 140 acres, and perhaps 200 acres eventually, will also be grazed. Grazing will be integral to their management. The grazing, however, will be subservient to the seed bank. On the one hand, not all wildflowers are loved by cattle. Even diehard prairie loving grazers might balk at the group of plants that are poisonous, such as larkspur and locoweed, and other plants such as the sages, the Ratibida coneflowers and the goldenrods which are not loved by cattle. Grazing will also be limited by plants on the other end of the spectrum. Many wildflowers are cow candy, and I will have to limit grazing to allow those plants to make seed for us to gather. The other disadvantage is all mine: it will take a lot of money and a lot of work to achieve what I envision. It already has, and I am far from done.
But what a glorious journey to be on! How can a physically limited, boring old farmer like me have any more fun than this? Grandkids, I answer myself. But I will not neglect my grandchildren, and am not neglecting them even as I spread seed in the snow. This is a legacy for them and their children as well. I have visions of them coming 30-50 years from now with their children to learn and be amazed by the life that can grow in those hills. For me this is a path to transcendence. I can transcend my physical limitations. I can transcend the challenges of my damaged body. Hell, I can transcend this lifetime, with this project being the gift I give to the future. Yesterday I was out there in my parka flinging bits of life over those barren hills, snot dripping out of my nose in the cold air, putting my shoulder into the frigid wind as I turned my head away – and my heart was singing.
As I promised in the last post, an update is necessary to bring this plan up to date, and much has happened. First, Ben Lardy and I were unable to get the SARE grant for which we had applied, primarily because it didn’t really fit the criteria of what the review board saw as agriculture. Though we sincerely hope that we will be growing marketable seed, my overarching goal has little to do with making money, and a lot to do with maximizing ecosystem services provided by the restoration and the farm that it fits in. My honest evaluation that this would be a very difficult project to evaluate as a business case kicked it to the rear of the queque. Any money spent on this project will be mine, not from Uncle Sam.
Second, the winter that wasn’t has returned to a perpetual April, and I have been out to the restoration more times to spread seed, primarily on the area that was burned. Below are a couple pictures from a few days ago showing a couple things that the burn revealed. I will digress a bit in explaining the pictures before I come back to the 2024 plan.
This first picture shows one of many “mystery mounds” that were revealed. At first I wondered whether they were spots where the burned clumps had caught blowing soil, but I have abandoned the erosion explanation as not every clump of residue has a mound of soil around it. If erosion was the culprit the forb residue in the foreground would also have soil. No, it seems obvious we have a biotic explanation, perhaps a burrowing rodent (though certainly not a pocket gopher mound, of which there are many examples in the restoration). These mounds were obviously there before the burn, protecting the plant tissue within them from the fire. We likely have a species of vole or mouse who has excavated a small den or tunnel, pushing the sand to the surface. My wife is betting on ants, who make mounds in the prairies. I hope to look further into these in the future.
Above is a fun observation from a wider angle look at the burn. To the left are obvious rows with clumps of bunchgrasses that have burned lined up, while to the right there is no pattern. This goes all the way back to the original seeding, in which seed only flowed down the tubes to the ground intermittently, and large areas received little or no seed. Before the burn this pattern is far less obvious because Ben and I repeatedly spread seed to get coverage of all the soil accomplished. Thus, this summer all the area had similar grass cover, but the area which had originally been bereft of seed had an extra year of opportunity for my gathered wildflower seed to establish. The flip side of the equation is that the operator obviously looked in the drill box occasionally to find the seed had bridged and responded by enlarging the opening. This meant that where seed came out, a lot of seed was dropped, and stands filled in immediately, leaving little room for the locally gathered seed I spread to get a foothold. Much of that area is along the south side of the restoration, near the road, meaning the challenges I was facing were not obvious to passers by, a happy accident. By July one will have to look closely to see this pattern as the vegetation regrows and fills in. One of the main goals for the next couple years is to get some of the forbs from my locally gathered seed established in the area on the left side of the picture to increase the diversity. The nice winter weather has allowed me to spread a lot of seed over the burn, so we will see if we have any luck establishing new plants. The goal is to increase the forb diversity in the area depicted in the left side of the picture from the 12-15 species that were put in by the conservation district with their drill up to 30-50 species of wildflower, though I’m afraid the competition from the thick existing stand will mean I may waste a lot of seed.
However, this addresses a big question that many people are wrestling with. Prairie restorations often become dominated by two or three aggressive grass species and fail to provide all the benefits that were hoped for. How best does one manage holding on to or reclaiming the diversity that is desired? Many people are trying different methods; Chris Helzer and staff at the Platte River prairies managed by The Nature Conservancy have been using a mixture of burning, overseeding and grazing, and I am trying to model my attempts and experiments on their ideas.
Returning to the 2024 plan, I have been talking to a few of my friends in the conservation community about becoming part of an advisory board to help develop strategies to manage our restorations in the future. At one point we were even considering establishing a nonprofit geared towards prairie restoration, but right now we are thinking of just putting the land into a trust and managing it a lot like a nonprofit, putting income from the land back into its management to continue to achieve our goals for the land. We have an appointment with a local attorney who has experience in estate work next week to begin the process. The advisory board, which could segue into a board of directors, accomplishes several things. It provides a variety of perspectives which can help broaden my view of possibilities; it broadens the group of people who can use the restorations as an example for others; and it provides support for my daughters when Linda and I are gone, or not able to actively manage our land.
It seems a bit grandiose, a stretch perhaps, to bring in a board to advise and eventually make decisions on one little farm; on my interpretation of what a prairie restoration can be and can do and can represent, and then to expect that to radiate out to the greater world. There’s a little bit of hubris here, perhaps. I don’t shy away from it, however. If not here, where? And if not me, who? And if there’s a better spot, a better manager and a better example elsewhere, that is wonderful! I will gladly support that example. I will attempt to milk as many ideas, as much energy and as much education for others out of this little project on this little farm as I possibly can. I would be betraying my responsibilities to the world if I did any less.
I went to a field day near New London in central Minnesota last weekend. The owner, Ann Gustafson, who has become a good friend through my work with the Minnesota Land Trust, hosted staff from a couple nonprofits who are doing conservation work on their property under a grant from the state of Minnesota and the federal Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS). These organizations invited their members, and about 25 people ended up viewing, talking about and even helping a bit on restoration work on an oak savanna. Perhaps six or seven potential or ongoing restoration projects were represented and were both edified and inspired by the work being done by my friends. Those people may inspire their friends and neighbors, and the work on 300 acres may influence thousands more. How cool is that?! Their 350 acre property/ranch deserves a board of advisors to help them navigate the possibilities and the pitfalls, which can then inform and inspire others. Ann and her son Frank are doing pretty well on their own, but maybe I can help discuss how and why to put such a group together, and in turn learn some things to help me in my endeavors.
That’s what I’m doing and where I’m going this year. The previous post discussed my goal to use my property as a seed bank where other practitioners of prairie restoration could gather seed adapted to this area, and perhaps to contribute to a more formal seed bank, storing locally adapted seed, and growing out those selections as needed for those who might do this 20 or 50 or even 200 years down the road. And now I’m hoping to gather a group of interested people to help my daughters manage this into the future, and to amplify and spread the lessons and the possibilities we discover. This is turning into one hell of a retirement project.
And here is the goal, of course. This is from some of my relict prairie which adjoins the restoration, a hill of flax (Linum sulcatum) and black samson (Echinacea angustifolia) blooming after some good July rain.
I’m not sure I’m ready for a 2024 plan. With our lack of winter so far (I am writing this on January 5th) I was actually out spreading some seed on New Year’s Day, still tangled up in 2023. Here was what it looked like just before Christmas when I was putting out a large amount of seed, and it’s not much different now.
Supposedly it will finally get cold with some snow in a week or so, but this may have been both the warmest and least snowy December of my life, if not on record. While it may be natural variation caused by a strong El Nino, it reminds me of one of the goals from last year, which was diversifying the genetics of my restoration by bringing in materials from outside of the farm’s immediate area, preparing for a warmer climate. For some species that is easier than it might seem, as I have access to some prairies just 15-30 miles east of here which are 600-800 feet less in elevation. Those seeds genetic history was developed in a climate 3-4 degrees warmer than my restoration. Here is where I spread some of that seed recently.
Obviously, a burn finally occurred on about 30 acres of the restoration, allowing seed to soil contact and hopefully better germination and establishment. The first picture is a closer view of the gravelly hill in the middle where I have some of the best diversity on the restoration. The black clumps are where grass crowns are, and the fire makes this look very bare. While most of the 30 acres burned very completely, aided by a 15-20 mile per hour wind, the second picture shows an area that was not as charred, and the wildflower crowns are very visible. It was a very satisfying experience. The picture below shows what this area looked like a couple years before. While this spot was cherry picked for the diversity in a small area, it still lacks some of the wildflowers that are common on these hills. Thus, I am topdressing some seed, and hope to transplant some seedling plugs next spring. There are about 4-5 acres that I use as my area to show off, or hopefully to inspire others, and though it could be argued that my time is better spent on less diverse areas, I am trying to help this spot become a real showpiece. This picture is an unburned view of a spot on that hill from about August 1, 2022.
With that as the introduction, something I will return to, I will begin the grand 2024 plan.
Part 1. Business as Usual
Depending upon the day and my mood, I have considered 15-25 acres in the center of Zone 1 (in the picture below) which includes the hill which was burned, the core of my restoration. Begun by the accident of the inept seeding job that was done in 2018 by the Conservation District, which caused me to repeatedly broadcast more seed, and continued by the desire to have an area of spectacular diversity, much of my time the past 5 years has been spent upon this area. This has included spreading seed, planting seedling plugs, spot treating thistles and wormwood sage with herbicide, documenting its progress, and now getting a burn completed. Again, I hope this area can become an exemplary showpiece of what a landowner could do with a restoration. As the old saying goes, however, one damn thing leads to another. Surrounding this area, the rest of Zone 1, is another 20-25 acres, slightly less diverse, that also has received a fair amount of gathered seed (I recently identified 45 different wildflower species found here) and I have begun to spend more time aiding wildflower populations here. Below is a map of the quarter section, which shows a 40 acre native pasture with a pond in the northwest quarter, a 20 acre new seeding in the northeast corner and the original 100 acre restoration filling the rest. Zone 1 is the combination of the two areas just mentioned, 40-45 acres which have the most diversity and the greatest amount of species and total plants that come from my gathered seed.
Thus, in a sense, this part of the 2024 plan is simply to build upon the past couple years by continuing to enlarge the circle, so to speak, hoping to continue out from Zone 1 to create 80-90 acres of very high diversity prairie. This will include most of Zone 2 as well as the new seeding in the upper right, but not Zone 3. Zone 3 had such a bad thistle infestation in 2019 that I had it broadcast sprayed with herbicide to start over. The broadleaf herbicide which was used to kill the thistles also killed the few forbs which had made it through the drill, but left the grass untouched. I’m afraid that turning Zone 3 into a real prairie may await another manager. Still, even without Zone 3, turning 40 acres of high diversity prairie into 90 acres is a huge task, probably the work of the next several years. As always, I need to make plans that this work doesn’t fall completely on my flimsy shoulders, which leads to:
Part 2. The Next Step
Yes, one damn thing leads to another. The vision for what this land can contribute has grown over the past five years, It started with the traditional litany of ecosystem services (water quality, erosion control. wildlife habitat, carbon sequestration and recreation/hunting); progressed to the idea of it’s being a spot for the greater conservation community for research and education; and came to the goal I stated last year of its being a reservoir of native seed for others engaged in prairie restoration. Already, two years ago, some of my friends in the conservation community had come to my restoration to gather small amounts of seed to use on personal projects. That idea turned into my planting (with significant help) about 1500 seedling plugs of 20-25 species over the past two years (unfortunately, with two consecutive hot, dry Junes the survival is likely only 25-30%, still 350-500 new plants). The original thought had been primarily to help build populations of many of the wildflowers native to my remnant prairies to numbers that allowed more opportunities for continued cross pollination and their long term survival, but grew into the realization these enhanced populations could then be a seed source for others. I even attempted to begin a study of various seed sources of several species in conjunction with friends at South Dakota State University (SDSU) which foundered on the shoals of my poor ability to manage the project and the poor survival caused by the weather. Still, I expect that in 2-3 years there will be many more groundplum milkvetch, prairie turnips, green milkweed and a cohort of other wildflowers adapted to these stony, difficult hills up on the Prairie Coteau because of the transplants.
The next step needed resources. Thus, my friend Ben Lardy and I have applied for a USDA Sustainable Ag Research and Education (SARE) grant which would be used to purchase more seed and plants, hire help (mostly Ben and his wife, Kelli) and enlarge the geography by doing some planting on Ben and Kelli’s small farm 30 miles northwest of me. We will find out in February if we receive $25,000 to spend on growing the seed project. Ben would like the grant to help towards establishing a small business of growing and selling native seed, but my goal in the project is to keep expanding the populations of plants of the species I have targeted, and perhaps add 10-20 more. Already there is more demand for restoration seed than is available. Seed houses are in the perpetual quandary of all businesses of how to build inventory of a product for which the market is uncertain. Do you start with the chicken or the egg, so to speak. This quandary is greatly exacerbated by the difficulty of “gardening/farming” many of these wildflowers. In the end, a large proportion of restorations get planted to a group selected from 20 or 30 wildflowers that are comparatively cheap and easy to grow, mostly from sources far to the south or east of here, and ignore the 200 other species that lived in the prairies. My contribution would be to provide some of those species to those looking to create a richer, better adapted restoration.
Our grant would allow us to plant another 1500 seedling plugs grown for us by our friends at SDSU this spring, and do a business case comparing seed production from the surviving transplants to areas which are burned and then topdressed with new locally sourced seed. The hope is that we can turn this into both an edifying comparison and several thousand new wildflower plants of perhaps 50 species out in the restoration. I was really not sure I wanted to commit to such an endeavor, which will include much more documenting and record keeping, but I will be relying upon Ben once again (though I fear documentation and record keeping may also be a weak spot for him). I want to support him in his hope to build a business from this, which I believe would be good for the restoration community, as well as for Ben and Kelli.
I feel this, along with the tasks of general care of the restoration, will completely fill my year, but again, as I keep repeating, one damn thing leads to another, and there is a further step I am beginning to explore.`
Part 3 The Dream
I have already referred to this idea of a “living seed bank”, though so far it is mostly cheap talk. All seed banks, even those in a well secured vault in Svalbard (the home of a famous one), have to renew their seeds regularly. No seed will stay alive forever, no matter the quality of storage, so some have to be periodically removed from storage, grown carefully to guarantee purity, and their progeny put back in the vault. Within USDA there is an entity with the acronym GRIN which stores accessions on an enormous quantity of native seeds. The facilities are connected to small farms that are dedicated to periodically growing the samples to renew the vigor of the seed of that particular genotype. I use that term genotype rather than species because, realizing the variability within species, they have accumulated multiple samples of most species to reflect those differences. I received small amount of several samples of two species from GRIN that I was trying to increase last year, with the dual purposes of investigating differences between those samples and my gathered seed, and of providing some new genetic material for crossing for my local genetics. Though there were several different selections of each species, none was from within 500 miles of me. It slapped me across the face with the not-so-novel idea that the world is an enormous place, and each plant, much as we always say about each person, is a unique assemblage of genetics shaped by its environment. Each is a response to a labyrinth of pathways that produces a new miracle. Some of the seedlings that grew didn’t even look like the same species that I was used to.
So, how should I respond to that? This wasn’t a new concept, even to me, yet I was still amazed by the visual evidence of variation within a species there in front of me. I’ve gone on several times about “locally adapted seed” and how I want to secure a foothold for my humble prairie plants of the gravel hills. But past planting a few extra plants and tossing around a few more seeds, what the hell can I really do about it? I’m just an old, health challenged Don Quixote, tilting at my own windmill. This year is for trying to come up with an answer to that question. Essentially I want to learn how important the seed, that probably fits an area of 20-40,000 square miles, is considered by the conservation community. With that information I hope to decide whether to formalize the idea of the seed bank and to help build a business structure, whether as a non-profit organization or perhaps as a for profit business. While my set of botanical answers to this environment is likely no more important than others, it is still a discrete collection of those answers, and as such, can be a significant contribution to conservation. The world is an enormous place, but I will only be concerned with one corner of it, and perhaps only with the subset of species which grow in well drained and droughty sites. This could still mean 100 species. Perhaps that will necessitate a bit of triage which will whittle it down to 30-40 key wildflowers, those which both characterize these dry prairies and are difficult or impossible to access. Seeds would be harvested from my prairies, both native and restored, most used immediately, but some saved and put into some secure, controlled storage. Those seeds could then be doled out to entities or individuals for increase, and to use as they see fit. There would always be more seed to re-supply the seed bank from the periodic harvest of the “growing” portion of the seed bank on my farm. Various organizations have done the first part of this plan over the years, increasing selections from relict native prairies in restorations that they then gather for use in new restorations; I have not heard of any that also have a facility for longer term storage of some of that seed.
A big project indeed, even for 30-40 species. Yet you could say that I have made a start on it, a start that will grow should Ben and I get the grant. Partners would be needed of course, and one of my jobs this winter is to try to determine the true interest of others in the field. We need to find out if this fits into the category of neat, but not truly necessary ideas, that wither and blow away, or whether it strikes such a chord that I am inundated with offers to help develop the concept and use the seed. I may know more after some conversations with key players in the various organizations that do prairie restorations. In the meantime, I am happy just to continue to spread new seed and plant seedling plugs to make my restorations even better. Perhaps I will have a more complete perspective by this spring, and if I do I will post an update then. My first visit with an interested party/potential partner is tomorrow. I close with a picture of one of the wildflowers of interest, hoary puccoon (Lithospermum canescens). It is not a rare plant and has a range covering much of the central United States, and includes many plants in my relict prairies. It blooms early, when little else is blooming, likely making it important to insects in early summer. However, it seems it is difficult to propagate, the seeds are very difficult to gather, and I have yet to see anywhere it is sold. I could not even find it on the GRIN website. This is not something that I would consider trying to grow for sale at scale. However, it would be very nice to get enough seed to work with, and to have some seed from my geography in a seed bank that others could use. Its ubiquity implies that it takes care of its own propagation very well once it enters an area. Yet one more goal for the year.
Postscript: This was written several days ago, and I need to update it after my visit to Dr. Lora Palmer at SDSU, the potential cooperator I referred to earlier. She told me about a group she leads, composed of representatives from conservation organizations from several states, whose purpose is to evaluate sufficiency of native prairie seed, and to answer the dual questions of what constitutes “locally adapted seed”, and how much interest there is in taking steps to increase amounts of that seed. It seems that much of the research I was planning to do this winter is already in progress, and that I will have an early look at those results. The second part to the postscript is that temperatures have dropped about 40 degrees during the last 3-4 days, and some snow has fallen to be pushed around by the accompanying wind. My seed collection and spreading days are likely over until spring. Also, Ben and I failed to get the grant, so the quantity of seedlings I will transplant will be scaled back, but the goal doesn’t change.
The view out my window this morning, January 14, at -20 degrees.
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:
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.
I saw many more examples of a number of species, notably leadplant, pasqueflower, meadow rue, mountain mint, prairie dropseed, silky aster and prairie smoke.
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.
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.
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.
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”.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Speculations on Natural History
