Prairie Renaissance continued

by | May 15, 2020 | (Sub)Urban Homesteading, Flowers/Grasses, Garden/Yard, Garden/Yard

Moving Forward

Once we made the decision to convert about 3,000 square feet of our lawn to a prairie, we began active planning. We have 40 years of prairie establishment and management experience so it was easy for us, but we still needed help and sought partners.

We contacted many organizations and found support for our project from these people and groups:

Sustainable Landscape Solutions, a business based in Iowa City. We hired them to do ground preparation.  Sean Pearl is the owner.  

Monarch Research Project, an active Cedar Rapids-based group that encourages pollinator plantings.   

Linn County Secondary Roads.  Since our prairie is near a Linn County road we wanted their support.   

Pheasants Forever.   We received help from a biologist, Allie Rath, and bought an outstanding seed mix from Pheasants Forever. Matt O’Connor manages the seed store and encouraged us to buy a Leopold Mix that contains about 72 species of flowers. Our seeds were produced at the Allendan Seed Company in southern Iowa.

Good Neighbor Iowa.   This organization encourages people to shun lawn chemicals and plant native vegetation.  A key contact is Audrey Tranlam.

Requirements

We wanted the prairie to be diverse in plant species, establish as rapidly as possible, and be “short profile”. Meaning we did not plant tall big bluestem, Indian grass, and Switchgrass.

We chose the Leopold mix because it has a diversity of flowering plants. And, Pheasants Forever kindly removed the tall-growing grasses from the mix for us.  

Preparing and Seeding

Years ago when we began restoring prairies at Indian Creek Nature Center, it was impossible to buy seed, and little was known about how to establish a healthy native grassland. The Center had no money to invest in planting. Jock Ingels was a savvy restorationist based in Illinois. He gave us this advice,  “If you don’t have any money but want a prairie, go pick some seeds and broadcast them into the existing lawn. Then burn it. Then wait. You’ll think you wasted your time because nothing will show after a year or even two years but burn it annually. By the third year, you’ll see prairie plants appear and it will get better each year after.” He was right. We gathered seed, planted at the Indian Creek Nature Center, and burned it annually.

At the Nature Center, we got a prairie at no cost and avoided herbicides and ground preparation but it had a limited diversity of species. The newly established prairie was far healthier ecologically than the bromegrass that was once there. For the prairie we wanted to establish at our home, we wanted a more diverse prairie and more quickly. So, we chose a faster method. Mind you, we are not keen on sprays but recognize they have a place. 

Sustainable Landscape Staff sprayed our lawn with roundup in late April to kill the grass. They returned one week later and resprayed it to kill the remaining grass.

They returned a week later and rototilled the area to expose the soil. Spraying and tilling allows newly planted native seeds to grow with less competition from exotic lawn species. It emerges as a more diverse prairie faster than if spraying and tilling are avoided.

In the next installment of this series, we’ll show photos of us seeding the prairie and explain various other ways of establishing a prairie or pollinator meadow.  But because lawns are now growing and people are mowing we’ll leave with this thought:

There’s a no-cost method of diversifying a lawn that reduces work. Simply mark off a section of the lawn and don’t mow it. It can be small. Many native plants have durable seeds that remain dormant in the soil for years or decades. They can’t succeed with constant mowing, so to increase plant diversity simply stop mowing a section of lawn and try to identify the new plants that emerge.  You will help pollinators.

There’s a new phone app that we’re using to help identify plants we’re not familiar with. It’s called SEEK and is produced by the National Geographic Society, the California Academy of Science, and other groups. It’s free and can be accessed from the app store. You point the phone at a plant, insect, bird, or even a fungus, click a photo, and SEEK will identify it for you. It’s mostly accurate.   

Prairie Renaissance – A Review and Preview

by | May 7, 2020 | (Sub)Urban Homesteading, Garden/Yard, Nature

What’s to Love About a Prairie?

Colorful prairie forbs

prairie forbs help pollinators

We love prairie. Prairie is color. Flowers yellow, red, blue, and every hue in between shine through tall grasses. Prairie beckons flying flowers……butterflies as well as birds, bunnies, and other interesting animals. Compared to a groomed July lawn, prairies are a joy to our eyes as grasses and flowers wave in the evening breeze.

When we moved to Winding Pathways in 2010, we inherited lawn.  Lots of lawn. Starting almost immediately we transformed two big sections into a prairie. But we still had lots of lawn left. So, in late 2019 we decided to whittle it down by about another 3,000 square feet. In-place would be a short profile prairie sporting at least 70 species of wildflowers.

Lawns Have Their Purpose

We’re not anti-lawn. They are great places to relax with friends and play. There’s just too much lawn in America and its environmental impact is huge.  Lawn watering annually consumes 3 trillion gallons of irrigation water, 200 million gallons of gas for mowing, and 70 million pounds of pesticides. There’s no need for that.

Ways to Ecologically Manage Lawns

  • Allow diverse plants to grow.
  • Avoid watering or spraying.
  • Mow on a high setting. We use a battery-powered EGO mower that’s recharged by our solar electric panels.

There are lots of ways to establish a prairie. None is perfect. Some yield fairly quick results, while other methods require patience. Through a series of blogs this year we will detail how we decided to plant prairie, explain its benefits, and detail a way to achieve fairly fast results. Ours is just a model of one way to do it. We encourage anyone who has a lawn to consider transforming it into prairie or other native vegetation even if it’s only a few square feet.

Why We Are Doing It: Decision…

There are lots of reasons for converting a lawn to a prairie. Here are a few of ours:

  • We’re individualists.  We find neighborhoods with rows of perfectly clipped, fertilized, and sprayed lawns boring.
  • We thrive on diversity. Every new bird, plant, and animal discovered in our yard is a thrill. Ecologists who have long said that diversity implies stability, are correct. Species change from year to year but always there’s change within the stability of a healthy habitat – our prairie.
  • We consider mowing a waste of time and resources.  Nationally, lawn mowing consumes millions of gallons of gas. Mowers spew out emissions that foul the air and contribute to climate change. Mowing is time-consuming.
  • With a few exceptions, we shun chemicals. We’ve never used any insecticides and only use a few herbicides to help our prairie compete with persistent introduced plants.
  • It’s all about beauty. As we sit on our summer porch colors dance in the wind from hundreds of blooming plants and butterflies hopscotch about. Prairie is a joy to the eye.
  • Water is precious. Perhaps the world’s most precious resource is clean water. Deep-rooted prairie, unlike lawns, never needs irrigation. Instead, it filters, cleanses, and sequesters rain that percolates down to the water table through zillions of interlocking roots.
  • Years ago, we restored one prairie. But on the other side of the drive is a swath of lawn that continually needed mowing.  Worse yet, it was on a slope, causing our creaking knees to work extra hard pushing the mower upslope. So, in late 2019 we decided to convert part of it to a prairie, leaving a margin of a mowed lawn around it.

…and Early Preparation

So, we began to plan our newest prairie. Unlike the existing ones we wanted it to establish as quickly as possible and we wanted great plant diversity and lots of color with only one exception. We wanted a short-grass/forb prairie, so chose the seeds carefully. We chose not to include Big Bluestem, Switch, and Indian Grasses in our mix.

We also had to determine these things:

  • Was it legal in our area?   Yup. We checked ordinances.
  • Would it bother the neighbors?  No. We informed them and learned they were fine with it.
  • Did we have the time and money to establish and maintain it?  Yup. We are frugal and energetic enough to maintain and nourish the prairie.

 

Just What Is Prairie?

Native prairie is an enormously complex and beautiful grassland that became established in the American middle after the glaciers receded and the climate warmed and dried. It stretched from Ohio to the Rocky Mountains. Eastern prairies lived where rainfall and humidity were fairly high. It was nearly plowed to extinction and was replaced by vast corn and soybean fields. Shortgrass prairie can be just ankle high and lives in the dry Great Plains with the mid-grass prairie in between. We live in the area once occupied by tallgrass prairie, a truly endangered ecosystem. Establishing prairie is appropriate in areas that were once prairie and it is ecologically wonderful to replace lawns with vegetation native to the site.

Winding Pathways is partnering the project with the Monarch Research Project, Linn County Roadsides, Sustainable Landscape Solutions, and Pheasants Forever.

Now on to the next phases of our Prairie Renaissance. (For earlier background on pollinator patches read our blog of February 20, 2020.)

How Can You Make Your Home and Yard Safer from Lyme Disease?

by | Apr 16, 2020 | (Sub)Urban Homesteading, Garden/Yard, Nature, Pests

Lyme Disease is something you just don’t want. Rich has had it twice. It was no fun, and he was lucky. Nearly as soon as symptoms appeared, he visited our family physician.   She prescribed a powerful antibiotic that worked wonders and left him with no lingering problems. Unfortunately, many Lyme Disease victims suffer pain and fatigue for years.  It’s serious.

Ticks In Jar

Collection of ticks

Lyme is often transmitted to a human from a bite by a tiny tick that picked up the disease bacteria from an infected white-footed mouse. It once was thought that deer were the primary carrier but mostly they are host to a tiny larval tick that infects a mouse that allows another tick to infect a person.

In theory, eliminating white-footed mice from a yard and home will greatly reduce the odds of transmission of this disease to people. Killing all of them isn’t feasible but reducing their numbers is.

About White-Footed and Deer Mice

White Footed and Deer Mice are amazingly common across much of North America.  They’re the cute, native mouse, not to be confused with the common house mouse that originated in the Old World.

White Footeds naturally live in dry temperate forests with brush. That perfectly describes suburban landscaping. It’s likely that five to 20 white-footed mice live in close proximity to most suburban families. They’re nocturnal and rarely seen.

Here are some characteristics:

  • They’re hoarders. Find a cache of corn, dog food, or acorns in a shoe or empty can and you’ve found a white-footed mouse cache.
  • They reproduce like crazy. A 44-day old female can become pregnant and bear a litter after 22 to 28 days. Babies become independent in three weeks and soon begin having their own babies. Mom often has two to four litters a year.
  • They don’t live long. A year-old mouse is elderly.
  • Foxes, weasels, hawks, owls, coyotes, and many other predators love dining on mice.
  • White Footed mice enjoy coming into homes, where they often find food and enjoy a furnace’s warmth. They can bring with them disease-bearing ticks.

Prudent homeowners carefully manage ticks, in part by reducing white-footed mice numbers. The fewer mice that live near people the lower the odds a person will contract Lyme Disease.  So, managing mice and ticks makes for a healthier home and yard.   Here are a few tips:

To reduce mouse populations and entry to homes:

  • Welcome mouse predators. Karla Bloem, Executive Director of the International Owl Center says, “Two actions people can take to encourage owls are to protect large dead trees that aren’t a threat to people of buildings should they fall. Owls love them. Also, building and erecting an owl house can welcome owls to live near a home and catch and eat mice.” Barred owl nest box plans, and plans for many other birdhouses, can be found at www.nestwatch.org.
  • Plug up holes that allow mice to enter a home and replace worn or broken weatherstripping. This is an important fall maintenance that also keeps cold drafts outside and reduces heating bills.
  • Avoid feeding mice. They love dining on dog or cat food left in a dish overnight or birdseed left under a feeder. Only feed pets and wild birds what they can eat in a short time. Then, pick up and clean the pet bowl.
  • Use snap traps to kill mice in the house. Avoid poison. A poisoned mouse can stagger outside to be caught and eaten by an owl, which can sicken or die from the poison.

A Few More Ways to Reduce Lyme Disease

In addition to reducing mouse numbers and applying a vaccine to keep survivors free of Lyme Disease bacteria here are a few other ways a person can do to reduce odds of infection:

different types of tick protection

Pants, boots, gaiters and insect repellents help protect from ticks.

Use Permethrin:   When applied to clothing, not skin, this chemical repels and kills ticks.  Rich purchased several sets of clothing from the Insect Shield Company that are impregnated with permethrin. Supposedly the tick-killing effectiveness lasts for 70 washings. The chemical is also available in spray cans to apply to any clothing.

 

 

 

Do Tick Checks:   After being outside, strip down and check the body over for ticks.   Then take a hot sudsy shower. Ticks usually crawl around on a person for several hours before biting. A tick merely walking on the skin can’t infect a person.

Opossum

Opossums groom themselves carefully.

Thank and welcome opossums:  New research indicates that opossums are tick vacuum cleaners. Ticks climb on them, but these primitive mammals groom often and eat the ticks they remove from their fur and skin. If you have a possum living in the yard be happy.

An Emerging Tool in the Battle Against Lyme Disease

A new product is being developed and tested by a major research company. It is an oral nontoxic vaccine placed in small baits. When strategically positioned around a yard, mice not yet infected with Lyme bacteria eat it and become resistant to the bacteria. Mice uninfected by Lyme can’t spread the disease to a person. If all goes well this product will be on the market by 2021 and may be a major help in reducing human cases of Lyme Disease.

Lyme Disease is an awful condition. Taking precautions to reduce the odds of being infected makes sense.

tick guards

gaiters with tick guard help repel ticks.

Why is Sunshine Important?

by | Apr 9, 2020 | (Sub)Urban Homesteading, Energy Efficiency

Sunshine On Our Shoulders, Makes Us Happy!

We love John Denver’s famous Sunshine song almost as much as we appreciate sunshine!  After a long gloomy winter, the sun finally appeared toward the end of March. We welcomed it into our home and went outside to soak it up.

Although 93 million miles away, the sun constantly sends cheery energy to earth. Without it life couldn’t exist, so we celebrate the sun. Here are some sunny things to be thankful for:

It’s a Vitamin D engine. Sitting in the sunshine helps our body beef up its Vitamin D. This means strong bones for us! And Vitamin D boosts our immune system so we fight infections more easily.

sun in sky

Sunshine benefits us in many ways.

It brightens our house. We are amazed at how many people keep their blinds closed, even in the winter, when they could open them and let natural light warm both the human soul and interior temperature. Sunshine can significantly reduce heating and lighting utility bills, and our nearest star never sends a bill!

 

 

It energizes plants. In early April we planted radishes and lettuce in a cold frame on the south side of our home. Sunshine warms those tiny seeds and fuels the miraculous process of photosynthesis that enables plants to grow. Soon we’ll be eating spring greens and enjoying the snappy taste of fresh radishes.

It is one of the best sanitizers. Sunshine can kill bacteria and some viruses. So, we sometimes leave things we want to sanitize in the sunshine before bringing them into the house.

But mostly we savor the way early spring sunshine brightens our mood as it stimulates the winter dormant world into glorious life.

 

Do You Know These Two Free Wild Spring Greens?

by | Apr 2, 2020 | (Sub)Urban Homesteading, Foraging, Garden/Yard

Our Yards Offer Nutrition

Every spring we look forward to eating delicious, free, wild greens that grow in our yard and just about every place people live. Having an ability to identify, pick, prepare, and eat wild foods gives us some comfort in this age of uncertainty.

We encourage everyone to boost their backyard food production through gardening, backyard chickens for those who can keep them, and foraging. Here are a few things to consider before picking and eating any wild plant.

  • Make sure you’ve identified the plant correctly. Use two sources to confirm identification. These might be an expert forager and a book or Internet source or a combination.
  • Make sure the plants have not been contaminated by pesticides, animal feces, or vehicle exhaust.  It’s best to forage away from busy roads. Wash plants thoroughly before preparing.
  • Eat just a small portion the first time. Although it might be fine food for most people there’s a chance you might be allergic to it.

Nettles

Stinging Nettles

Carefully pluck the top three leaves off.

The key to enjoying all wild greens is to harvest them when they are very young. Many edible wild plants are tender and delicious shortly after they sprout but soon get coarse and bitter as warm weather stimulates their growth.

Nettles, sometimes called stinging nettles, live in moist places near streams, ponds, and woods, where they seem to prefer light shade. We have a couple of patches in our yard.   They green up early in the spring, and we pick them before they are ten inches tall.  We carefully pick just the top three or four small leaves. Remember these are stinging nettles. Wear light gloves or carefully pinch the top growth off the plant between the thumb and index finger. About a hundred leaf clusters make a great dish for the two of us. Rinse the nettles and boil them for a few minutes. The stinging part is a protein that dissolves in boiling water.  We put a dab of butter on the drained cooked nettles and drink the water as a delicious spring tea.

Dandelions

Dandelions in bloom

By mid-summer dandelion leaves are tough and bitter.

Because of herbicide companies’ promotions, just about everyone dislikes dandelions. Some have heard that dandelions are edible. It is true and, we need to thank our European ancestors for bringing dandelions to the New World. Otherwise, they might not have survived. They are high in vitamin A, folate, vitamin K, and vitamin C and a good source of calcium and potassium. Today, folks from Mediterranean countries grow and harvest dandelions as crops. They are a popular dish in Italian communities.

The few people who have tried eating them make the mistake of picking mature leaves in mid-summer. By that time, they are bitter and inedible. The best dandelion leaves are those picked in early spring and have been under a blanket of leaves. They’ll be partially blanched and delicious. It’s fine to pick small young leaves that can be added to salads if they are not too bitter. If they are bitter, boil two pots of water. Put the leaves in one pot and boil for a couple of minutes.  Drain and put them in the second pot of boiling water and boil for another minute or so.  The boiling removes the bitterness.  Drain and enjoy with butter and salt and pepper.

This is a year of great anxiety and having some knowledge of how to find free food nearby can remove some of that concern.

 

Why Do Birds Hit Windows?

by | Mar 26, 2020 | (Sub)Urban Homesteading, Birds, Nature

*Note: Our assessment of WindowAlert is based on our experiences both from purchasing the company’s product and a complimentary set of decals to try.

Last fall as Rich was walking along the outside of the Cedar Rapids Public Library and found a tiny dead warbler on the sidewalk beneath a large window. Fall warblers are tough to identify but it was a blackpoll.  Why did the bird hit the window?

This amazing bird has an enormous migration from the far north of the continent to the south each fall, with a reverse trip in the spring. The bird Rich found probably was only halfway through its autumnal journey.  Its death was sad and probably could have been prevented.

Cardinal

Cardinal

Occasionally we have a bird crash against our windows at Winding Pathways, and a male cardinal persists in cracking his head against a window at our church in Cedar Rapids.

Bird numbers are declining at an alarming rate for many reasons. Certainly, habitat loss and climate change are taking a toll. Feral cats and windows also kill millions of birds every year. Some of that loss can be prevented.

Why Birds Are Killed by Windows?

According to Spencer Schock at WindowAlert, birds are impacted by windows for two reasons.  First, all year, but especially during migration, birds simply don’t see the glass and assume they can fly right through it. That’s what happened to the warbler. Second, it’s springtime rivalry. The cardinal banging on the church window sees his reflection, assumes it is a rival and tries to chase it off or intimidate it. This behavior is common, especially among cardinals, and usually happens from late winter into early spring. It’s rarely fatal to the bird but can annoy humans inside the building.

How to Reduce Bird Strikes on Windows.

The simple solution for both types of bird strikes is to do something so the animal recognizes it is glass. Here are some ways to reduce window strikes:

  • Close Drapes. But then people can’t see out and sunshine can’t enter.
  • Put something over the exterior window that looks to birds like a barrier or physically keeps them away. Draping the mesh netlike material made to protect cherry trees from birds trying to steal fruit works. The downside is that sometimes birds get tangled in it.
  • Put decals on the windows to help birds identify a glass barrier. We like the many designs sold by WindowAlert. They’re easy to apply, attractive, inexpensive and work well.
  • Eliminate reflection to keep cardinals and other territorial birds from attacking their own image. WindowAlert has a material called Stop Bird Attack. It comes in a spray can that’s sprayed on the outside of the window. The material looks like white flocking put on Christmas trees to imitate snow. It eliminates reflection and can be easily cleaned off the window after the mating season.

 

What to Do When a Bird is Found under a Window

A few times we’ve been sitting in our home and hear a bang as a bird strikes a window.   We sadly find the poor animal lying still under the window. There are two likely outcomes.

dead bird

This bird broke its neck hitting a window.

The bird is either dead or dying and there’s nothing we can do to alter that unhappy outcome.  e bury the poor creature and add more visibility items to the window.

The bird has been stunned and will soon recover and fly away. Often a bird will recover, but while it is stunned it’s vulnerable to cats and other predators. Spencer advises gently putting the bird in a closed cardboard box or large paper bag. As soon as it has recovered, release it outdoors.

Probably the best thing a homeowner can do to help songbirds is to plant a diversity of native grasses, flowers, shrubs, and trees to create habitat. The next best action is to keep cats indoors and reduce the odds of collisions with glass using the methods described above.