A Prairie Haven

Upper East Center Valley

The is the first of the prairies where we've planted into "old field" vegetation. It's an experiment, but since all these experiments are in slow motion, we'll continue to plant a few more, while we wait to see if this one works.

We have 5 large areas - 5-10 acres each - that used to be farmed or hayed, but were abandoned years ago. Now that we've finished planting all the cropped areas, I decided we should tackle these old fields - to see if we can get them to be more diverse, with more native vegetation. Upper East Center Valley is the first try at this.

The lower half of East Center Valley was one of the fields we planted the first year - the winter of 2000/2001. But we left the upper half to deal with later.

The upper half of East Center Valley is about 8 acres, and has typical old field vegetation: Smooth Brome (Bromus intermis), Canada Goldenrod (Solidago canadensis), Black Raspberries (Rubus occidentalis ), and Queen Anne's Lace (Daucus carota). It's a long thin strip of land, on a steep west-facing slope, running along the edge of a woods. This photo was taken in 2007, and shows both the upper and lower fields. (The planted prairie in the lower field was 7 years old.)

The field does have some desirable natives: Asters, Giant St. John's Wort (Hypericum pyramidatum), Wild Geranium (Geranium maculatum), and Violets.

Here are Wild Geranium and Black Raspberries at the edge of the woods.

This photo shows the upper field on the right, and the lower field - planted in prairie - on the left.

Because the field is so steep, we can't do much work with machinery except mowing. Neighbors have told us that several people rolled tractors while trying to farm it, so we've been very cautious about bringing big equipment up there. We've mowed it a few times - stimulating large blooms of Queen Anne's Lace - and otherwise, left it alone.

I'd like to preserve the natives that are there already - especially the violets. Violets are very difficult to introduce into planted prairies - their seeds are small, difficult to collect, and expensive to buy. Violets are especially good to have because they are the host plants for Fritillary butterfly caterpillars.

So, I'm going to try sowing prairie seed directly into the vegetation that's already there. I've chosen sturdy, aggressive plants that I hope will compete successfully with the weedy old-field vegetation.

We mowed the field in the fall of 2009, planted seeds into the snow in January and February of 2010, and we'll mow it all summer in 2010, and possibly again in 2011. Then, in the summer of 2011 or 2012, we'll see if any of this works.

This was taken while Mike was mowing at the end of the summer, 2009.

Another view of the mowing

Late in the fall I staked the field.

Here's the field, ready for planting.

Once there was snow on the ground, I started planting. Because the field is in a narrow part of the valley, it acts as a wind corridor, so it was often too windy to plant, or the surface of the snow was too slick for the seeds to stick.

I carried buckets of seeds and my snowshoes to the field on a sled.