Narrows Prairie – 2024

[To see photos and stories of this prairie in other years, go to the links on the main Narrows Prairie page.]

My experiment last year, cutting and treating aspen sprouts, worked well – the area I worked on had very few aspen sprouts. So I added to that area – cut and treated the aspen sprouts all around it, especially along the path to the east.

I also tried another experiment: I cut handfuls of Canada/Tall Goldenrod and treated the cut stems with Milestone + bark oil. I’ve done this kind of treatment before but with glyphosate, and the problem is that in order to be effective I have to treat every stem in a clone. Since I don’t know where clones start and stop, and even in the middle of a clone I miss some of the smaller, non-flowering stems, I thought I would try a new scheme. Milestone + oil works well on woody clonal species, so I’m hoping it will work in the clonal roots of Canada Goldenrod. In this case I only cut and treat the flowering stalks, and I removed the flowers which were going to seed.

Mike did his usual mowing for aspen sprouts after the Monarch migration passed through, but skipped the places where I had cut and treated by hand.

We put up 3 new bluebird nest boxes on thick metal poles. The bears keep knocking over the stakes that we’d been using, so we’ll see if the poles are more resilient.

1/6/2024

2/1/2024

2/18/2024

4/29/2024

5/16/2024

5/19/2024

5/27/2024

5/28/2024

5/31/2024

8/8/2024 Prairie Blazing Star – seeds that I didn’t plant intentionally, but probably were mixed in with some that I bought. There are several plants in this prairie that are doing well.

8/14/2024

9/13/2024

9/21/2024

9/28/2024 This is my goldenrod experiment, in a place where I’d also cut and treated aspen sprouts. On the right is the area where I cut and treated Canada Goldenrod with Milestone + bark oil; on the left side it was untreated.