The latest addition to the Narem prairie restoration family is now seeded and put to bed for the winter. The Day County Conservation District came the first week of November and seeded the 20 acres with their Truax drill, using a mix of about 20 species I’d worked out with the Pheasants Forever employee who helps with seeding plans. Because of my experience and history at this they tend to follow my lead and work with me to get a mix that I want. Once the “official” mix of seed that has germination and purity tests went in I then began to augment the base mix with the hodgepodge of stuff that I have gathered and bought.

Here’s what one afternoon looked like. My friend Roger, a retired soil scientist, drove up from Brookings and we hand spread about 12-14 acres of the restoration with most of what is in the picture. Though we were dressed for worse, the weather turned out to be reasonable for November 20, with sun and just a moderate breeze to go along with the 25 degree temperature. We got a lot done, and with the dusting of snow it was very easy to see our tracks and the seed on the snow, so seed coverage was decent. Because the drill had already covered every acre completely there was no need for Roger and me to attempt 100% coverage. I would mix up each batch and divide it between two five-gallon pails a little over half full. With that we would cover about 1.5-2 acres. Thus, I could adjust the blend to match the soil type every couple acres. The gathered seed we spread was mostly forbs/wildflowers which I blended with some native grass seed I had purchased to help get a more even mix. I had spread 3-4 acres a couple days before and finished the last 3-4 acres a couple days later.

There are several species whose seed doesn’t “play nice” and can’t really be blended with the main seed mix. They wad up into balls that defy mixing and demand concentrated attention on them , picking out a few seeds at a time to spread – not an efficient way to get the seeding done, but the only way if I am going to have those plants in the restoration. One of these species is porcupine grass (Stipa spartea).

Take a look at this mess. I wrote about this several years ago and I believe I referred to a lump like this one as a “ball of spiny hell”. I haven’t changed my mind. Somehow they self organize as they shift in the container they rest in, perhaps induced by bouncing down rough section line trails. I don’t know how it’s done, but it’s pretty freakin impressive. To the right you see all the awns wound into a tight circle while the weapons, the spears, all point to the outside, like a phalanx of Greek soldiers under Alexander the Great about to do battle with the Persians.

I tossed out three pails of the porcupine grass, 5-10 seeds at a time, on all the mesic soils in the new restoration, plus a few acres of the old restoration which are without that species. That leaves about three more pails of seed. I am saving most of that for an attempt to augment the population in the original 100 acre restoration after the spring burn we hope to accomplish next spring. There is an area of about three acres of mesic soils in the 100 acre patch that has less diversity than the poorer soils (30-40 species rather than 80-100), and I am going to experiment on those acres to see if I can get some new stuff to germinate after a burn takes off the residue. I plan to purchase some mesic forbs to go with some that I have held back from spreading this fall, as well as some of the porcupine grass, stratify the seed in some vermiculite or sand in the garage at our place in the Cities, and then spread the seed, now with dormancy overcome and ready to germinate after the burn. If there is still too much residue interfering with seed to soil contact I may hire the neighbor to roll the area with a packing roller that all farmers have nowadays, to get the seed down to the ground. The big flaw in this plan is that there may be no free seats at the table for the new seed even after the burn. The root coverage of the various grasses and forbs, and their subsequent regrowth after the fire may mean that very few seeds get to germinate or new plants to establish. Thats why it’s called an experiment.

The other half of the experiment is to see what the burn does to the wormwood sage (Artemisia absinthium), an introduced sage that is the second most vexing weed in my restoration after Canada thistle. I have no hope that the burn will kill the sage, but wormwood starts growth very early, and I hope that burning off the new growth weakens the plants. The experiment area has perhaps the thickest stand of wormwood on the restoration, and at the very least, it will set the stage for me to use the gun on my ATV sprayer to do a very targeted job of spot treating, which will impact very few of the seeds that I spread, and very few of existing desirable forbs. A plan to do something similar went to hell last year because of health problems I experienced, but perhaps I will have better luck next spring.

In addition to the porcupine grass I spread several gallons of needle and thread grass (Heterostipa comata), a close relative of porcupine grass which also tends to ball up in an amorphous mass which demands patience to pull small groups of seeds with their twisting awns to spread. This was the first year that I was able to gather needle and thread, so I felt this was a great opportunity. Needle and thread is adapted to xeric sites, so I scattered their seed across the hilltops. I did the same with the pasqueflower (Anemone patens) that I had gathered and some locally sourced prairie smoke (Geum triflorum) that I purchased. I found an interesting new way to spread those two species. I wadded a combination of the two (they live in the same droughty sites) into a ball and repeatedly rubbed the ball against the rawhide strip in the palm of my leather glove. Seeds kept rubbing off and would drift away on the ever-present breeze of November. I did that on the xeric acres of the new restoration, some similar sites nearby on the 100 acre restoration and on the restoration a half mile away that had been seeded two years before. This had been a good year for gathering pasque seed, and I had enough to cover the hills on 50-60 acres.

In the end, after a tough start, it was a good and satisfying finish to the year. It had been an excellent year to gather 15-20 species that aren’t always available, and I had been able to get them out on the land where they can become contributors to the prairie. In addition, I saved back some seed of about twenty wildflowers to attempt to grow seedling plugs next spring that I can replant into the restoration. I even had visions of going out one more time to toss out a few odds and ends that have not been spread, but we are likely to get a good winter storm in a couple days which will end that illusory hope. And I end with a self-portrait of a silly old man (me) out spreading seed on November 29, on a day the temperature was 25 degrees (not bad) but the wind was 30 mph (colder than snot). I wrote a post a couple months ago with a title that began: “The fall of my dreams”. I don’t know if I accomplished that, but it was a damn good fall for a 67-year-old with my health challenges. I am very content.