As anticipated, in the summer of
1999 this planted field produced a fine crop of weeds! The weeds
were mowed twice with a bush hog set to mow 6 inches high. At
that height, the tiny prairie plants were spared, but the weeds
were cut and prevented from flowering.
In April 2000 the field was burned
and the field allowed to develop. There were still a lot of weeds,
but many prairie plants were also seen, including black-eyed susan,
wild indigo, spiked lobelia, great blue lobelia, yellow coneflower,
rosin weed, showy goldenrod, Kalm's brome, Indian grass, sky blue
aster, evening primrose, New England aster, white vervain, blue
vervain, gray goldenrod, and milk vetch. The field was mowed again
in mid-August. Despite this mowing, some Indian grass went ahead
and set seed. Ox-eye daisy, a nonnative weed, was a large problem
on this field, and extensive hand weeding was done. Later in the
season, hand weeding of Queen Anne's Lace was also done.
In the 2001 season, the prairie (we
no longer need to call it a "field") was developing very well.
It was dubbed "Toby's Prairie" in honor of the then recently departed
mascot of the Pleasant Valley Conservancy (see photo at top of
this page). Because it had been mowed in late summer 2000, there
was insufficient fuel for a controlled burn in 2001 but there
was a lot of diversity. By September, the Indian grass had developed
extremely well, and was used as a source of seed for collecting.
Both ox-eye daisy and Queen Anne's Lace were still a problem and
were weeded by hand. Because of the size of the field, this weeding
took 4 people about 3 days. Some especially bad areas were mowed
with a brush cutter. Despite weeding, there was a good stand of
prairie grasses, especially Indian grass, and lots of forbs.
In early April 2002, a very successful
burn of this prairie was done. Prairie plants did very well that
summer, and the weed problem was less. Only scattered hand weeding
was done. The prairie now served as an excellent source of seeds
for planting another large field. It was burned again in 2003
and in that year we collected over 50 pounds of Indian grass seed
from this prairie. It was burned again in 2004 and again served
as a major source of Indian grass seed. We plan now to put this
prairie on a three-year burn cycle.
The species check list for 2004 is
given in the table below. Photos of most of these species are
given in the complete species check
list,
