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Making Prairie

Spring 1998 Newsletter

As all gardeners know, there are many steps and much hard work to produce a lush and beautiful landscape. Just how does one make a prairie?

Only Mother Nature can make a prairie in all its parts, so our "prairie restoration" will be an approximation of what once was.

We study existing prairie remnants to familiarize ourselves with the native flora and fauna, for many of our native plants also depend on native insects for pollination and native animals for seed dispersal.

We pay particular attention to the local ecotype.  We note the variations in soils and choose a seed mix that will hopefully flourish in the chosen location.

"Meadow in a Can" is definitely a no-no. The seed mix in such an ersatz product is rarely 100% native and usually not suitable for local conditions.

When planning a prairie restoration, our thinking must do a 180-degree turn. Most of the grasses and forbs (flowering plants) that we use in our landscaping and buy at the local nursery are now "weeds".

Most of the stuff growing in ditches and on undisturbed ground that we used to think of as "weeds" are now the rare and sought-after prairie plants from which seed will be collected to make our prairie.

Remember, before the Europeans settled this land, America had grasses, flowers, bushes and trees aplenty. All had evolved through the eons to deal with local conditions and provided nutrition and cover for the native wildlife. It was a balanced ecosystem.

The introduction of non-native species upset that balance and now we struggle to remove ‘aggressive’ foreigners from our prairie patches. One of the first steps in prairie making is soil preparation.

The eradication of all non-native species from the chosen plot gives the natives a head start. Prairie making is an ongoing experiment, but it seems clear that if you start with weeds (non-natives), you will always have weeds.

Seed collecting comes next. Much of the seed comes from previously established prairie restorations. Some is bought from ‘native nurseries’, businesses that specialize in native plants.

The rest is collected by volunteers from roadside remnant stands of native plants. The ‘cultivation’ of our land has quite literally pushed our native vegetation into the ditch. When we pick, we never take all the seed, but leave plenty to spill on the ground to regenerate the stand of natives.

Finally we mix and sow the seed, generally in late fall and by hand. Obtaining the right blend of seeds is a sorcerer’s art and is best left to those who have had much experience making prairie.

Mixing the seed with dampened peat moss assures good contact with the soil as we broadcast the seed and leave it on the ground to adjust to its new home.

If we have done our job right, chosen the right seeds for the spot and prepared the soil well, we will be rewarded with native seedlings the following spring.

Within two years (and some hand weeding to pull the most aggressive weeds) there should be a healthy stand of native forbs and grasses to rejoice over.

—Rickie Rachuy