Work on the site began in the winter of 2003-04 when I began removing overgrown fencerows on the North and West sides of the prairie. I felled all the volunteer box elder, pin cherry and dead American elms leaving only a few walnut, bitternut hickory and black cherry. Firewood was removed and the remaining brush piled and burned in March and early April.

A wet area extending into the southeast corner of the prairie had been unfarmed for years and contained a mix of reed canary grass, goldenrod, dogwood (red osier and gray) and willows. While not part of the prairie planting per se, this area will eventually be restored to wet prairie and was burned twice in early April to start the process. The first burn removed the standing fuel but failed to burn the wetter more matted material especially in the canary grass stand. A second burn two weeks later removed all of this material and provided some further suppression of the canary grass.

An experimental application of Roundup to the regrowing reed canary grass appeared promising, releasing a number of formerly suppressed species including joepye weed, Eupatorium maculatum (left) and swamp aster, Aster pilosus (right).

The west fencerow was replanted in mid-April with a mixture of white pine, Michigan holly, gray dogwood and silky dogwood. Alfalfa was planted in a 15-30 foot wide strip along the west and north sides of the field to serve as a CRP food plot and to act as a future burn break. On May 10, the remainder of the field was tilled to prepare for planting. A soil conditioner was run over the previous years soybean stubble to remove existing weeds and stimulate germination of annual weeds on the soil surface. A period of record rainfall in May (over 9 inches) precluded further field work for several weeks. On June 4 the field was finally dry enough to spray Roundup on the prairie area to remove the germinated weeds and prepare for planting.

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