It was a Good Year

I’m beginning a potentially long post which might be a little disjointed, as various memories, which are unlikely to all come at once, inform the evaluation of the year. Be warned, my posts are invariably pretty nerdy, as that’s who I am. The overall gist, however, is that a great many wildflowers increased, or were at least much more visible in 2024, as very good rainfall from late April through the first week of August induced many individual plants of most species to bloom and make seed, surprising me with an abundance that may have been veiled by the inherent conservatism of many prairie species. Many summers the refrain is: “Bloom and spend energy making seed? I don’t think so; it feels a bit risky. Maybe next year.” This year the the song became: “I feel good! Time to make some seeds!” With that as the intro, here goes.

As an example of the above, one of the most noteworthy surprises for me was how many standing milkvetch (Astragalus adsurgens) I saw. In the restoration I had only seen one two years ago, and hadn’t been able to find it again last year. Standing milkvetch is one of the species I am intent on increasing, one that cannot be bought from any vendors in this region, and thus I was a bit disappointed not to see any in the restoration last year. This year I saw 7-10 in the restoration, all blooming and making seed. Some were likely from transplants the past two years, but small vegetative legumes look pretty similar, and the plants that I saw this year may have already been growing for a couple years, establishing themselves while waiting for the right year to become adults and procreate. This seems likely, as I had thought I knew every A. adsurgens plant in my adjacent native prairies, perhaps 50 in all, and was greatly and pleasantly surprised to see 2-3 times that many plants in those prairies, established in many more locations than I would have dreamed, many small plants only noticed because they were blooming. I gathered a lot of seed from them, a couple gallons, even while leaving a good percentage to enter the seed bank, and have the winter to learn how to shell them out of their little husks, and then can decide how best to use the windfall. Here’s a small transplant from 2023 that was not yet blooming this year, probably 2.5-3″ tall. The continuing theme that comes from this is that there may me much more to see of many species in the future.

Other notable species that showed up in significantly larger numbers this year in the restoration are prairie larkspur (Delphinium carolinianum var. canescens), northern bedstraw (Galium boreale), slender milkvetch (Astragalus flexuosus), prairie dropseed (Sporobolus heterolepis), porcupine grass (Heterostipa spartea), meadow rue (Thalictrum dasycarpum) and prairie onion (Allium textile). In the native prairies it started with a good bloom of pasqueflowers (Anemone patens), continued with both small penstemons (Penstemon albidus and P. gracilis), both puccoons (Lithospermum canescens and L. incisum), and both violets (Viola pedatifida and V. nuttallii), and progressed to acres of onions, hills of alumroot (Heuchera richardsonii), swales armed to the teeth with porcupine grass spears, narrowleaf coneflower (Echinacea angustifolia) scattered across every hill in both the restoration and the native prairies (for the first time I gathered Echinacea heads in the restoration, taking about 500 out of several thousand heads), and in late August and early September all species of asters Symphyotricum sp.), goldenrods (Solidago sp.), sunflowers (Helianthus sp.) and gayfeathers (Liatris sp.) provided a cornucopia of nectar and pollen for the bees.

The rainfall was a deal. After a dry winter, welcome showers occurred in April, too much rain in May, a short dry spell in early June which allowed some crop to finally go in and was capped by almost double the normal rainfall from June 15 till August 10. At that point we were perhaps 8-10″ ahead for the year. Though the faucet turned off then, the natives enjoyed almost unbelievable bounty. They knew what to do with it, too. Dry hillsides in both the native prairies and the restoration looked like prairies in good soil, and the areas of good soil in the restoration looked like Iowa. I hosted a tour put on by the Day County Conservation District and Ducks Unlimited in late August, taking a busload of interested people into the restoration in an area of decent, but below average soils, and it was difficult to communicate with the group with grass seedheads waving over our heads. Many people commented that I had the best restoration they had ever seen, and asked how I did it. While it’s a pretty good restoration, I shrugged and basically replied, “I just kept spreading seed for several years, and then it rained. Boom!” Below is what one of the gravelly hills, a soil too thin and poor to grow crops, looked like in late July.

Because of the large amount of seed to gather, my partner Ben Lardy and I were regularly in a quandary: do we gather specific species, hoping to get amounts that stood on their own for sale or use in a dedicated plot or do we just shovel in whatever we could find all together in big bags, and get the largest possible amount of seed per unit time invested, planning to spread it all on my project. I’m not sure it was wise or proper, but we leaned towards the former, meaning we now have significant (for us) amounts of a large variety of species, many of which we will need to experiment with to process and clean reasonably pure seed. Some of those species include the two penstemons, the two puccoons, the standing milkvetch along with two other milkvetches (Astragalus crassicarpus and A. flexuosus), a sled full of porcupine grass heads, a good sized tub of Echinacea heads, a container of alumroot seedstalks, and a small container of seedheads of Pennsylvania cinquefoil (Potentilla pennsylvanica). Some species need no processing, however, like the needles of needle and thread (Heterostipa comata) and tall cinquefoil (Drymocallis arguta) and I have begun the process of getting them spread on the 20 acres which were burned a couple weeks ago.

I have touched upon this topic before, but the question of how much additional seed to put out, past the original seeding, is a big one, both in terms of time and money involved and in terms of how best to accomplish it. It can seem a bit futile to bring out bags of gathered seed, that represent many, many hours of gathering, and then fling them into a very uncertain situation in the matter of an hour or two, hoping a few will grow. The plan this year was similar to what I did last year: to purchase a significant amount of seed gathered by my neighbor, Levi Waddell, and spread them after an area had been burned to remove the year’s growth and allow most of the seed to contact mineral soil. Last year the area that was burned had all been seeded five years previous, and while there was some soil showing, it was obvious that competition would be fierce for any seeds that would germinate. Below are a couple pictures depicting where I spread seed a year ago, the second picture just a close-up on the first.

While there is bare ground in areas almost all of the blackened clumps represent the crowns of plants that may have been 3-4′ tall with extensive root systems. Many areas that were burned, and subsequently spread with seed were more dense than this photo. Compare that to a picture from the 20 acres where I have been spreading seed the past week.

This is the 20 acres that were first seeded in the fall of 2022, have had two years to develop, and that was burned about 3 weeks ago. Thus, rather than competing with 4-5 year old plants, any new seedlings that grow will be competing with 1-2 year old plants at perhaps a third the density of the previous pictures. Rather than an exercise in futility, we have what I see as an exceptional opportunity to give all the seed I spread this fall and winter (and next spring, if necessary) enough biotic space to thrive. That is the hope and the dream, and the expectation, anyway. As I was repeatedly walking across the field throwing seed into the air all I could think was that I needed more seed to take advantage of this seedbed. This had the potential to be far more than a supplement to the previous seeding; it was a better situation for seedling establishment than I had two years ago in the original seeding, a gift that I needed to grasp and use. Thus, one of the stories of 2024 is the attempt to turn this 20 acres from a disappointing beginning, that I was assuming would never be as diverse and vibrant as the best areas of the 100 acres seeded in 2018, into a powerful addition providing buckets of ecosystem services and seed to supply new restorations. Below is a map I have used before of the restoration, the area where I have been spreading seed in the upper right, hoping it can become the diverse, productive habitat that Zones 1 and 2 are.

And what of the bounty of the summer we gathered, mentioned earlier? Some will end up here after processing and cleaning, some may go to help other areas and some may be grown into seedling plugs to be planted next summer. Though it is unlikely I will be able to spread seed throughout the winter as I did last year, perhaps there will be some opportunities to enter that portal to enchantment, spreading life back to where it once resided 130 years ago while enjoying the winter environment. I hope to reprise “The Old Man and the Seed” that I was able to act out last winter. If it takes an extra couple thousand dollars to purchase more seed to go with what I have gathered I will likely do it. How many more years can I do this? Will I have another opportunity this enticing? One never knows, so it is incumbent upon me to make the most of this chance.

So, what about the future? Besides me slogging along the next few years, with Ben’s help, picking at things. I have written earlier about developing a more formal relationship with the Native Plant Initiative (NPI) at South Dakota State University (SDSU). I hosted a group of students from the lab in July, along with their professor, Dr. Lora Perkins for a field day. Lora and I have been discussing a framework for formalizing that connection, including a probable research project on my land starting next year. I have written about that in the past, and significant progress will deserve its own post in the future.

Finally, this year has seen the beginning of a process I will describe in more detail in a subsequent post: What happens when I am gone? Who manages, improves, worries about, buys seed for, controls invasive weeds and documents the happenings on these prairies for others? Linda and I have invited several people with conservation experience to join us as an advisory board to help carry on the work. With the exception of Dr. Perkins they are all about our daughters’ ages (who are 36 and 39, and I think Lora is 50, still 19 years younger than me). Linda and I are very seriously considering forming a nonprofit, geared originally to support continued management on both my project and on Linda’s conservation grazing system (420 acres of native grass north of Milbank). The advisory board could easily segue into a managing board of the nonprofit. If fortune is kind, and funding can be found, it could perhaps look at prairie conservation more expansively in this neck of the woods, but to start we are concerned with building a model to aid our daughters on our land, a model which others in our situation might consider. We hosted two field days/conversations with the group, the most recent about six weeks ago in early October. While our daughters have an interest in our projects they don’t live here, and they have their own very busy lives. When we first visited with them about estate planning and the future of our projects they were a bit overwhelmed, but they are both firmly behind this path to aid them in the future. I will leave further discussion of this topic for a later blog post; this will be a big part of our winter’s work, and there should be much more to report on in the future.

So, once again, a helluva year. Any year I am on the topside of the earth and can be out in the explosion of life that is the prairie is a helluva year. Any year that I can host others at the prairie is a helluva year. Any year that I can learn new things, see new things, meet new people and show love to those I see is a helluva year. While I have my dark days, usually in conjunction with health issues (as we age we find there are an amazing number of things that can go wrong with a body), I always keep the light before me. And the light is not at the end of a train tunnel, it is shining as a beacon in front of me, leading me forward. That light goes to the future, beckoning me, taking me to the next day, If I am fortunate, it will include sunny days on the prairie to spend with the coneflowers again.

Plants of Central Point Prairies

First off, we have a potential change in title for the prairie complex that we are trying to build. Central Point is the township that I grew up in and where the prairies reside. This is in keeping with the theme that these are in many ways no longer my prairies. We have received a perpetual easement from the US Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) and it is now part of their refuge system. While it is on land that Linda and I own, and that will stay in our family when we are gone, in a tangible sense we have transitioned to caretakers, both for our children and grandchildren, but also all others who gain from its presence.

While I have elaborated upon many of the plants which reside on these prairies, and have typed up a list that I have updated, during the course of this year I will try to create something that is more than a dry list. It will discuss each plant’s prevalence in both the native and the restored prairies. I will allow myself digressions into thoughts and memories and hopes for the future. This post will be updated as new species are identified, as populations change, as I get relevant (or very cool) photos, or as something new is learned from observation or from others who know the prairies. I will make no claims for a complete list, as the world is a big place, and even my little corner can hold secrets that it may not divulge. And so I begin with a suite of 15 plants adapted to xeric sites, the gravel hills:

1. Pasqueflower (Anemone patens) Abundant on my native prairies with a population likely in the low thousands, with many on every hill. It is becoming more common on the restoration as more seed overcomes dormancy and more plants attain the size to push out blooms. I saw the first bloom in the restoration two years ago, a couple more last year, and then 20 or so this year, so I hope and expect that even more appear in future years. As it seems they need to establish for a few years before they have the ability or need to make seed, this implies that they are a long lived species. Some of my first prairie memories are of trying to keep up with my older brother Leon in the pasture south of our farm going out to pick the first flowers of spring for our mother. As a plant that makes its growth very early it can become thick in overgrazed native pastures where competition has been removed or held back. They are a humble little flower with no discernable aroma, but after a long winter they are shockingly beautiful. I have continued to gather seed when available, and am putting a bit out this spring, and will likely continue in the future.
2. Thimbleflower (Anemone cylindrica) Common, but scattered in the native prairies; I doubt there are more than 200 plants. Last year I saw perhaps 20-30 in the restoration. It can be very frustrating to seed as the cottony hairs which coat the seed create a ball of seed, from which it can be very difficult to separate individual seeds. That same characteristic makes them easy to gather as they remain as a coherent head for a long time after maturity. This was a plant I was hardly aware of until I began the restoration work.
3. Gray Goldenrod (Solidago nemoralis) Common in native prairies with my estimate in the low thousands. It is the only goldenrod truly adapted to the gravel hills, though other species are hanging in there so far in droughty sites in the restoration. Like all the goldenrods it tends to be an increaser in pastures as it seeds itself in well and cattle are indifferent to grazing it (though some clearly gets chewed). I have a fair catch in the restoration with several hundred growing.
4. Threadleaf, or Needleleaf Sedge (Carex diuruscula) Fairly common on the tops of the gravel hills, along with Sun Sedge (Carex inops). They are both humble little plants, western species which compete wherever the sod forming grasses like blue grama (Bouteluoa gracilis) allow them room. I have gathered a little bit of seed in the past, though none this year, and even tried to transplant a bit of sod which contained them, but as far as I know there are none yet in the restoration. As both species are strongly rhizomatous a little could go a long way when individual plants turn into expansive clones. I think as low plants that grow very early they are advantaged by light grazing, though they may disappear with heavy, repeated grazing.
5. Yellow Sundrops (Oenothera serrulatus) Common in my prairie hills on the most xeric soils, a small species of primrose. So far I have found only one or two in my restoration, which likely found their way on their own. Gathering seed is difficult, as the plant becomes hard to see as it matures, just another small brown bit of foliage. Ben was trying to keep watch on them to get some seed before it shattered, and I will be interested in whether we have some to experiment with. A member of a suite of about 10 humble early blooming forbs found in very xeric sites.
6. False Toadflax (Comandra umbellata) Sticking to the theme, here is another of the early blooming/xeric adapted forbs. False toadflax literally blankets areas of the gravel hills with tiny white blooms, It is very rhizomatous, so areas devoted to a limited number of clones can have a big impact. I have tried to transplant rhizomes before without success, so I worked diligently to gather the seeds this year, of which there are surprisingly few, with large seeds for a small plant, and I hope to either have the Native Plant initiative (NPI) grow some plugs, or just place individual seeds nicely in appropriate spots. With its aggressive ability to clone a few will go a long way.
7. Hoary Puccoon (Lithospermum canadensis) Also a common early blooming denizen of the gravel hills, though with an expansive footprint, more able to compete in slightly wetter, dry mesic environments, Hoary puccoon is another species that I have not so far gotten extablished in the restoration, and something of a priority for me. Seeds are not easy to gather, as they mature and drop as successive flowers bloom and develop over a period of several weeks. Thus, though plants are not hard to find, each plant may have only one or two mature seeds which are reputedly hard to germinate. We will see if fortune is kind this winter. It can sometimes be found in ditches and other disturbed areas, not that conservative at all. Seeds may have to go through a bird gut to be germinable, but if we can recreate a bird gut with a little sandpaper we may be able to get something to happen. It is likely persistent and able to spread naturally if we get something going. I also must mention that it has perhaps the most distinctive and appealing odor of any wildflower in the prairie. I no longer can smell much after all the cancer treatments and subsequent surgeries, but this was a bloom I used to wait for after a long winter, more for the aroma than the appearance, and I have fond memories of picking them and carrying a small bouquet around to bask in their fragrance.
8. Fringed puccoon (Lithospermum incisum) Once again, an early blooming resident of the hilltops. I didn’t realize how common they were until this year, when ideal May weather set up a bit of a superbloom just off the ridgetop of every hill. Seed set, which seemed very spotty in other years, was excellent, and Ben and I gathered a lot of plants. Just like it’s sister species above seeds develop and drop off as the season progresses, but rather than one or two mature seeds hanging on, it seemed more like six or eight per plant. They are occasionally found along fencelines, and in ditches, implying bird dispersal as an effective aid to their spread and germination. Ben and I will try to emulate our avian cousins and see if we can get more going in the restoration. There are several that I have seen there so far, likely the courtesy of sparrows travelling between the prairies and the restoration. This species was not really on our radar until we realized how much seed we could get, and we will take advantage of the opportunity.
9. Nuttall’s Violet (Viola nuttallii) For now, this is the last of the xeric miniatures that go together. The picture is of a clump I am about to dig in the native prairie to transplant into the restoration. Included with the little violets were some bastard toadflax, some Kentucky bluegrass, some needleleaf sedge (Carex diuruscula) and dormant blue grama (Bouteloua gracilis) and perhaps a couple other plants. This violet is more common in my hills than the normally common prairie violet. Like many of the plants in my xeric prairies this is more of a western species adapted to harsh conditions and short rations. The transplant failed, and I have none in my restoration, meaning I will try again next year.

10. Prairie violet (Viola pedatifida) Not all the violets in my prairies are the yellow flowered Nuttalls. There are prairie violets down towards the base of the same hills where the Nuttall’s violets carry the high ground. I have never been able to gather any seed, so I broke down a few years ago and bought some to spread, and now have some growing in the restoration. Ben was able to gather some this year, so we may try growing some plugs to transplant. As violets are the obligate food source for regal frittilary butterfly larvae, a federally listed species I commonly see in my prairies I feel some added responsibility to get more plants of both species going in the restoration.

11. Alumroot (Heuchera richardsonii) This is very common in my native prairies, with plants growing all the way from pretty xeric down through dry mesic. The seed is teeny tiny, little more than dust, so a little goes a long way. I purchased a little seed to begin, and had quite a few start up, but I think the seed source was to the south, as many died out the first couple winters. Plants will not bloom unless conditions are good, meaning I got to see just how common they are this year as most used the spring rain to push up blooms, and we gathered a fair amount of seed, literally millions in a few ounces. The trick of doing a good job with seeding them is that they will not mix with other seeds well, being so small. They grow in the same environment as several other small seeded forbs, so I may just mix them together and spread them separately from the main mix.

12. Slender Penstemon/Beardtongue (Penstemon gracilis) This is one of those small seeded wildflowers (both about 400,000 seed per ounce), and one that once again I gathered a fair amount of this year. I have many in the restoration, in a variety of environments. and it is a wonderful, pale violet burst of color in late May, just after the very first flowers like the pasques. All these early blooming hill flowers are likely very important to native bees and other pollinators. This is one of the 20 or 30 biggest successes, and one that I will consider gathering for sale in the future, especially if I am able to use this years bounty of seed to get a large number of new seedlings going.

13. White Penstemon/Beardtongue (Penstemon albidus) These begin blooming earlier than their brethren, the P. gracilis, while the pasqueflowers are still out, and I consider them another of the hardiest forbs, growing on otherwise barren areas. We gathered good amount of this as well, at least several ounces to perhaps a pound when we complete processing them. While they only occupy the most xeric 5-10 % of the prairies there can be hundreds where they occur. I have several acres of appropriate habitat in the Huggett prairie we will burn next spring where most of the seed will go. There are probably several hundred in the restoration now, and with some luck we will have hundreds more growing next year.

14. Pennsylvania Cinquefoil (Potentilla pennsylvanica) This is yet another small, humble early blooming species of the dry hills, mostly blooming in June. Once again there was a bumper seed crop we harvested, and it will likely go in with the other small seeded species for distribution on the more xeric areas. There are many in the native prairies, far more than I thought there were as they showed themselves by using the spring rains to bloom. I have some in the restoration, but hope for a lot more. Like the white penstemon, I think they are a short lived species that puts out a lot of viable seed, much like an annual, and that we could make very good progress in one year with luck. Below is a vegetative cinquefoil next to a false toadflax.

15. Downy Painted Cup (Castilleja sessiflora) Unlike many other forbs listed above, there are just a few in the native prairies, but the little seed we gathered the first year turned into thousands of plants in the restoration. This is a sister species to the red flowered Indian Paintbrush that is always in the pictures of mountain meadows, white flowered and very showy in its own way. It is a hemi-parasitic species, meaning it can grow independently, but thrives when there is a host plant, like blue grama, to borrow from. I have no idea how I ended up with so many in the restoration, but it is another species which we gathered a lot of seed from this year, and we should have plenty to gather in the future. The seed will likely go into the same bag with the Pennsylvania cinquefoil and the white penstemon for spreading on the most xeric soils.

I will close this batch of fifteen species (actually sixteen, as I combined the two xeric sedges) with pictures of a yellow sundrops, mentioned above, and the first pasqueflowers of a couple years ago. I already look forward to seeing my old friends again in five months, next April This winter I hope to add more pictures of other species, and eventually all of them as I take more pictures. And, I hope to get a couple more installments of plant descriptions up soon, though it may wait until the fall seeding is complete. I think I will go out to do some this afternoon.

Fire on the Prairie

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.

What Does Success Look Like?

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 that many 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.

The Living Seed Bank Part 3: Progress on Huggett’s

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.

The Living Seed Bank, Part 2: After the Burn

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:

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. 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.

The Living Seed Bank

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.

Beginning Spring Seeding

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.

Winter Seeding

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.

1. Standing milkvetch (Astragalus adsurgens)
2. Pasqueflower (Anemone patens)
3. Hoary vervain (Verbena stricta)
4. Purple prairie clover (Dalea purpurea)
5. Textile onion (Allium textile)
6. Alumroot (Heuchera richardsonii)
7. Western wallflower (Erysimum asperum)
8. 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:

1. Rough blazingstar (Liatris aspera)
2. Prairie onion (Allium stellatum)
3. Hoary vervain (Verbena stricta)
4. Maximillian sunflower (Helianthus maximillianii)
5. Purple prairie clover (Dalea purpurea)
6. Wild rose (Rosa arkansana)
7. Thimbleweed (Anemone cylindrica)
8. 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:

1. Canada milkvetch (Astragalus canadensis)
2. Mountain mint (Pycnanthemum virginianum)
3. Rough blazing star (Liatris aspera)
4. Meadow blazing star (Liatris ligustylis)
5. Canada anemone (Anemone canadensis)
6. Rattlesnake root (Prenanthes racemosa)
7. New England aster (Symphyotricum novae-anglia)
8. Wild Rose (Rosa arkansana)
9. Maximilllian sunflower (Helianthus maximillianii)
10. Purple meadow rue (Thalictrum dasycarpum)
11. False sunflower (Heliopsis helianthoides)
12. Prairie dropseed (Sporobolus heterolepis)
13. 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.

The 2024 Plan, Part 2

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.