I’m not sure I’m ready for a 2024 plan. With our lack of winter so far (I am writing this on January 5th) I was actually out spreading some seed on New Year’s Day, still tangled up in 2023. Here was what it looked like just before Christmas when I was putting out a large amount of seed, and it’s not much different now.

Supposedly it will finally get cold with some snow in a week or so, but this may have been both the warmest and least snowy December of my life, if not on record. While it may be natural variation caused by a strong El Nino, it reminds me of one of the goals from last year, which was diversifying the genetics of my restoration by bringing in materials from outside of the farm’s immediate area, preparing for a warmer climate. For some species that is easier than it might seem, as I have access to some prairies just 15-30 miles east of here which are 600-800 feet less in elevation. Those seeds genetic history was developed in a climate 3-4 degrees warmer than my restoration. Here is where I spread some of that seed recently.

Obviously, a burn finally occurred on about 30 acres of the restoration, allowing seed to soil contact and hopefully better germination and establishment. The first picture is a closer view of the gravelly hill in the middle where I have some of the best diversity on the restoration. The black clumps are where grass crowns are, and the fire makes this look very bare. While most of the 30 acres burned very completely, aided by a 15-20 mile per hour wind, the second picture shows an area that was not as charred, and the wildflower crowns are very visible. It was a very satisfying experience. The picture below shows what this area looked like a couple years before. While this spot was cherry picked for the diversity in a small area, it still lacks some of the wildflowers that are common on these hills. Thus, I am topdressing some seed, and hope to transplant some seedling plugs next spring. There are about 4-5 acres that I use as my area to show off, or hopefully to inspire others, and though it could be argued that my time is better spent on less diverse areas, I am trying to help this spot become a real showpiece. This picture is an unburned view of a spot on that hill from about August 1, 2022.

With that as the introduction, something I will return to, I will begin the grand 2024 plan.

Part 1. Business as Usual

Depending upon the day and my mood, I have considered 15-25 acres in the center of Zone 1 (in the picture below) which includes the hill which was burned, the core of my restoration. Begun by the accident of the inept seeding job that was done in 2018 by the Conservation District, which caused me to repeatedly broadcast more seed, and continued by the desire to have an area of spectacular diversity, much of my time the past 5 years has been spent upon this area. This has included spreading seed, planting seedling plugs, spot treating thistles and wormwood sage with herbicide, documenting its progress, and now getting a burn completed. Again, I hope this area can become an exemplary showpiece of what a landowner could do with a restoration. As the old saying goes, however, one damn thing leads to another. Surrounding this area, the rest of Zone 1, is another 20-25 acres, slightly less diverse, that also has received a fair amount of gathered seed (I recently identified 45 different wildflower species found here) and I have begun to spend more time aiding wildflower populations here. Below is a map of the quarter section, which shows a 40 acre native pasture with a pond in the northwest quarter, a 20 acre new seeding in the northeast corner and the original 100 acre restoration filling the rest. Zone 1 is the combination of the two areas just mentioned, 40-45 acres which have the most diversity and the greatest amount of species and total plants that come from my gathered seed.

Thus, in a sense, this part of the 2024 plan is simply to build upon the past couple years by continuing to enlarge the circle, so to speak, hoping to continue out from Zone 1 to create 80-90 acres of very high diversity prairie. This will include most of Zone 2 as well as the new seeding in the upper right, but not Zone 3, which had such a bad thistle infestation in 2019 that I had it broadcast sprayed with herbicide to start over. The broadleaf herbicide which was used to kill the thistles also killed the few forbs which had made it through the drill, but left the grass untouched. I’m afraid that turning Zone 3 into a real prairie may await another manager. Still, even without Zone 3, turning 40 acres of high diversity prairie into 90 acres is a huge task, probably the work of the next several years. As always, I need to make plans that this work doesn’t fall completely on my flimsy shoulders, which leads to:

Part 2. The Next Step

Yes, one damn thing leads to another. The vision for what this land can contribute has grown over the past five years, It started with the traditional litany of ecosystem services (water quality, erosion control. wildlife habitat, carbon sequestration and recreation/hunting); progressed to the idea of it’s being a spot for the greater conservation community for research and education; and came to the goal I stated last year of its being a reservoir of native seed for others engaged in prairie restoration. Already, two years ago, some of my friends in the conservation community had come to my restoration to gather small amounts of seed to use on personal projects. That idea turned into my planting (with significant help) about 1500 seedling plugs of 20-25 species over the past two years (unfortunately, with two consecutive hot, dry Junes the survival is likely only 25-30%, still 350-500 new plants). The original thought had been primarily to help build populations of many of the wildflowers native to my remnant prairies to numbers that allowed more opportunities for continued cross pollination and their long term survival, but grew into the realization these enhanced populations could then be a seed source for others. I even attempted to begin a study of various seed sources of several species in conjunction with friends at South Dakota State University (SDSU) which foundered on the shoals of my poor ability to manage the project and the poor survival caused by the weather. Still, I expect that in 2-3 years there will be many more groundplum milkvetch, prairie turnips, green milkweed and a cohort of other wildflowers adapted to these stony, difficult hills up on the Prairie Coteau because of the transplants.

The next step needed resources. Thus, my friend Ben Lardy and I have applied for a USDA Sustainable Ag Research and Education (SARE) grant which would be used to purchase more seed and plants, hire help (mostly Ben and his wife, Kelli) and enlarge the geography by doing some planting on Ben and Kelli’s small farm 30 miles northwest of me. We will find out in February if we receive $25,000 to spend on growing the seed project. Ben would like the grant to help towards establishing a small business of growing and selling native seed, but my goal in the project is to keep expanding the populations of plants of the species I have targeted, and perhaps add 10-20 more. Already there is more demand for restoration seed than is available. Seed houses are in the perpetual quandary of all businesses of how to build inventory of a product for which the market is uncertain. Do you start with the chicken or the egg, so to speak. This quandary is greatly exacerbated by the difficulty of “gardening/farming” many of these wildflowers. In the end, a large proportion of restorations get planted to a group selected from 20 or 30 wildflowers that are comparatively cheap and easy to grow, mostly from sources far to the south or east of here, and ignore the 200 other species that lived in the prairies. My contribution would be to provide some of those species to those looking to create a richer, better adapted restoration.

Our grant would allow us to plant another 1500 seedling plugs grown for us by our friends at SDSU this spring, and do a business case comparing seed production from the surviving transplants to areas which are burned and then topdressed with new locally sourced seed. The hope is that we can turn this into both an edifying comparison and several thousand new wildflower plants of perhaps 50 species out in the restoration. I was really not sure I wanted to commit to such an endeavor, which will include much more documenting and record keeping, but I will be relying upon Ben once again (though I fear documentation and record keeping may also be a weak spot for him). I want to support him in his hope to build a business from this, which I believe would be good for the restoration community, as well as for Ben and Kelli.

I feel this, along with the tasks of general care of the restoration, will completely fill my year, but again, as I keep repeating, one damn thing leads to another, and there is a further step I am beginning to explore.`

Part 3 The Dream

I have already referred to this idea of a “living seed bank”, though so far it is mostly cheap talk. All seed banks, even those in a well secured vault in Svalbard (the home of a famous one), have to renew their seeds regularly. No seed will stay alive forever, no matter the quality of storage, so some have to be periodically removed from storage, grown carefully to guarantee purity, and their progeny put back in the vault. Within USDA there is an entity with the acronym GRIN which stores accessions on an enormous quantity of native seeds. The facilities are connected to small farms that are dedicated to periodically growing the samples to renew the vigor of the seed of that particular genotype. I use that term genotype rather than species because, realizing the variability within species, they have accumulated multiple samples of most species to reflect those differences. I received small amount of several samples of two species from GRIN that I was trying to increase last year, with the dual purposes of investigating differences between those samples and my gathered seed, and of providing some new genetic material for crossing for my local genetics. Though there were several different selections of each species, none was from within 500 miles of me. It slapped me across the face with the not-so-novel idea that the world is an enormous place, and each plant, much as we always say about each person, is a unique assemblage of genetics shaped by its environment. Each is a response to a labyrinth of pathways that produces a new miracle. Some of the seedlings that grew didn’t even look like the same species that I was used to.

So, how should I respond to that? This wasn’t a new concept, even to me, yet I was still amazed by the visual evidence of variation within a species there in front of me. I’ve gone on several times about “locally adapted seed” and how I want to secure a foothold for my humble prairie plants of the gravel hills. But past planting a few extra plants and tossing around a few more seeds, what the hell can I really do about it? I’m just an old, health challenged Don Quixote, tilting at my own windmill. This year is for trying to come up with an answer to that question. Essentially I want to learn how important the seed, that probably fits an area of 20-40,000 square miles, is considered by the conservation community. With that information I hope to decide whether to formalize the idea of the seed bank and to help build a business structure, whether as a non-profit organization or perhaps as a for profit business. While my set of botanical answers to this environment is likely no more important than others, it is still a discrete collection of those answers, and as such, can be a significant contribution to conservation. The world is an enormous place, but I will only be concerned with one corner of it, and perhaps only with the subset of species which grow in well drained and droughty sites. This could still mean 100 species. Perhaps that will necessitate a bit of triage which will whittle it down to 30-40 key wildflowers, those which both characterize these dry prairies and are difficult or impossible to access. Seeds would be harvested from my prairies, both native and restored, most used immediately, but some saved and put into some secure, controlled storage. Those seeds could then be doled out to entities or individuals for increase, and to use as they see fit. There would always be more seed to re-supply the seed bank from the periodic harvest of the “growing” portion of the seed bank on my farm. Various organizations have done the first part of this plan over the years, increasing selections from relict native prairies in restorations that they then gather for use in new restorations; I have not heard of any that also have a facility for longer term storage of some of that seed.

A big project indeed, even for 30-40 species. Yet you could say that I have made a start on it, a start that will grow should Ben and I get the grant. Partners would be needed of course, and one of my jobs this winter is to try to determine the true interest of others in the field. We need to find out if this fits into the category of neat, but not truly necessary ideas, that wither and blow away, or whether it strikes such a chord that I am inundated with offers to help develop the concept and use the seed. I may know more after some conversations with key players in the various organizations that do prairie restorations. In the meantime, I am happy just to continue to spread new seed and plant seedling plugs to make my restorations even better. Perhaps I will have a more complete perspective by this spring, and if I do I will post an update then. My first visit with an interested party/potential partner is tomorrow. I close with a picture of one of the wildflowers of interest, hoary puccoon (Lithospermum canescens). It is not a rare plant and has a range covering much of the central United States, and includes many plants in my relict prairies. It blooms early, when little else is blooming, likely making it important to insects in early summer. However, it seems it is difficult to propagate, the seeds are very difficult to gather, and I have yet to see anywhere it is sold. I could not even find it on the GRIN website. This is not something that I would consider trying to grow for sale at scale. However, it would be very nice to get enough seed to work with, and to have some seed from my geography in a seed bank that others could use. Its ubiquity implies that it takes care of its own propagation very well once it enters an area. Yet one more goal for the year.

Postscript: This was written several days ago, and I need to update it after my visit to Dr. Lora Palmer at SDSU, the potential cooperator I referred to earlier. She told me about a group she leads, composed of representatives from conservation organizations from several states, whose purpose is to evaluate sufficiency of native prairie seed, and to answer the dual questions of what constitutes “locally adapted seed”, and how much interest there is in taking steps to increase amounts of that seed. It seems that much of the research I was planning to do this winter is already in progress, and that I will have an early look at those results. The second part to the postscript is that temperatures have dropped about 40 degrees during the last 3-4 days, and some snow has fallen to be pushed around by the accompanying wind. My seed collection and spreading days are likely over until spring.

The view out my window this morning, January 14, at -20 degrees.