I think that the experts (I am not one) would recommend a thick cover crop for the first summer. I would look at the website of Prairie Moon Nursery for hints. You'll want to establish a cover crop to stabilize the site and also take steps to kill the many weed seeds that are present in the soil.

I think a north slope is OK for a prairie or widlflower meadow type of planting unless it is a really steep north slope. If the site supported a feral pasture it will support a wildflower meadow.

Good luck!

Planting a meadow on a north slope is no problem, as long as it is not too steep. But it is important to do it right if you want good results. How you plant this slope will determine free of invasives meadow will be. I don't think the sewer excavation will really eliminate the problem species on your site. A cover crop would prevent erosion but would not eliminate the underlying problems.

Since the site is heavily disturbed already, you might want to bite the bullet and use this summer to control your invasive species with roundup, as preparation for seeding native grasses and forbs in late fall. Several applications are usually recommended during the growing season. This is really the ideal practice for sites with a history of invasives.

There are some nearby native plant nurseries that are good sources of advice and seed. I highly recommend Missouri Wildflowers Nursery, located south of Jefferson City. There are probably local companies in KC, but I don't know of them. Are you familiar with the organization KC Wildlands? They can probably put you in touch with some local experts. Another great source of advice and help is the nonprofit group, Wild Ones Native Landscapers. I don't think they have a chapter in KC (there is one here in central MO), but they have an excellent and informative website.

Here is a link that might be useful: KC Wildlands

Thanks much for the responses. Glad to see another Missourian here. I'll check out the resources you offered, and I have some literature around here (somewhere) from the Missouri Prairie Foundation as well.

If I could follow-up a little, let me know if this plan makes sense or not...

The site was already home to some natives (grasses, echinacea, coreopsis, leadplant) as well as the invasives, so I'm thinking the best procedure would be to Roundup the area a couple of times through early May to knock back the cool-season stuff that comes up, then overseed with a dense cover crop (probably annual rye and clover) and give the warm-season plants a chance to come up through that. Come fall, when the warm-season plants go dormant, mow it all down, Roundup a couple more times, then seed and transplant the area with the desired species and maybe another annual crop to provide cover and critter habitat through the winter. Mow it all down early next spring, Roundup Roundup, throw down some more seed, wash rinse repeat.

Would that be effective? Is there a way to simplify this plan? Am I missing anything?

Thanks,
Dug

Wait, it's not leadplant, it's ironweed. Mind's working slowly this morning...

Dug

Dug,

I can't say that I've heard of use of a summer cover crop while trying to eliminate cool-season grasses. You don't say so, but I assume you are trying to reduce erosion on your slope. The approach of early- and late-season glyphosate treatment to eliminate cool-season grasses (especially tall fescue) without killing warm-season natives is used pretty commonly in Missouri. You do have to be careful to spray only during the window when fescue is still growing but your natives are truly dormant. This approach may be successful eventually, but it will certainly require more time than a full-bore spraying program through a full growing season, followed by fall/winter seeding.

I guess your key decision is how much you value your natives and therefore how much time and effort you are willing to invest to save them while (hopefully) getting rid of your undesirables. Without seeing your area I can't judge how much good stuff is there, but the forbs you mention are very easy to establish, and you could kill what is there this year and have them back in a couple summers, along with a lot of more exciting species that you can establish by seed. You would have to tolerate a barren summer season with possible erosion problems, but you could plant a winter cover crup such as annual rye to stabilize your soil until your new seedlings get started.

Yes, preventing erosion was the main reason I thought planting a cover crop would be beneficial, as well as side benefits of adding organic matter, providing some competition for invasives in empty spaces, and keeping some roots actively churning nutrients and breaking up the subsoil that was brought to the surface by the sewer excavation.

There's also the consideration that this strip of land is highly visible from the area where I have a fire ring, seating and other furnishings for a party I throw every year around the summer solstice--i.e., a blanket of annual rye and clover is more attractive than bare dirt and dead fescue.

The "good stuff" that's there is by no means rare, you're right. I'm just of the opinion that a patch of echinacea, for example, that's been there ~8 years will be more vigorous than new plants. Your argument for devoting this growing season to eliminating all the existing vegetation and seeding desirables in the fall makes excellent sense, though. Thanks.

Dug

Dug, What *I* would do is just sow a heck of a lot of prairie grasses and wildflower seeds all over and hope for the best. Plant some plants if you can get them from somebody. If it was dug up for sewer, then some of the digging was fairly deep and hopefully has disrupted a lot of the plants that you don't want. Once in a while cut or pick really evil weeds going to seed, dig out the wild roses if they come up, etc. Use all the time you are saving by not buying and spraying the Roundup! I personally would find the idea of spraying pesticides 6 or more times in order to create a more 'natural' environment rather wrong. Where I live a prairie has been creating itself naturally over the decades (it was fields about 50 years ago) and it has done pretty well. Main 'enemy' plant I have is dogwood, plus a few quite large multiflora roses. But I have more wildflowers than I even know the names of, so we just have the fight the few bad species that are really trying to take over. Why kill the good plants you already have? I don't think a field of dead plants will be very attractive anyway.

Marcia

Hi Marcia, your approach is actually closer to my natural tendencies. The area in question is a swath through a wild area that's just shy of an acre. I've been allowing it to self-create a prairie for about 11 years. During that time I've been practicing what I call "gardening by subtraction"--taking out misplaced woody plants, keeping a path mowed through and around it, and letting the grasses and forbs fight for their space. This swath actually had some of my best successes--native grasses were starting to displace the fescue and wildflowers were more abundant every year--until the backhoes moved in.

Given that just about every invasive species known to man grows vigorously all around this patch (fortunately kudzu's not hardy here but you should see [and smell!] the Japanese honeysuckle), I know it will be difficult and laborious, if not impossible, to keep it pristine. Mostly I'm looking to give the wildflowers a running head start.

There's a thick stand of greytwig dogwood just uphill from the area in question--thick enough that I'm considering cutting a space in the middle of it for a little hidden sitting area. So I guess I've made peace with the dogwood, though I still try to keep it from spreading elsewhere.

I have a ready source of transplants for some species right in my frontyard beds, where echinacea and monarda (primarily) have been spreading for years. The rest I can beg, borrow, swap and, as a last resort, purchase.

Dug

Marcia,

If you plant prairie seed now, unless its been stratified, it will not sprout until next spring, if at all. You will be wasting time and money. The best time to plant native plant seed, imo, is the long Thanksgiving weekend, but I've planted it all the way into early February.

The stuff that grows on fields that are left fallow are usually not native plants. Goldenrod and asters are about the only ones I can think of that will find their way in.

John is right that soil preparation is very important. It is almost impossible to establish a prairie without the judicious use of an herbicide. I use Round-up because it has little or no environmental impact. To prepare my patch of ground, I used it 3 times. I haven't used it since, and that was 3 years ago.

Just do the best you can..., and have fun with it.

Good point about seed timing, when I have planted prairie seeds in the spring I usually had them at least in the freezer first or tried to stratify them myself first. I have planted seeds both spring and fall at my former house and some 'empty' land I still own. Where I am now I have a few times smothered patches of dirt with plywood or cardboard and then sown it in the fall with seeds I have saved from other areas of my property, and 2 that I bought (blue flax and purple coneflower.)

We do have a LOT of native prairie and woodland plants here, and I assure you they mostly brought themselves here. The land was owned by my family for almost 50 years. I have seen photos from long ago and it was clearly a big cultivated field before my family moved in. If you leave land alone long enough, the native species come out as well as weeds. A combination of seed bank, wind, birds, and animals.

I keep finding trilliums popping up here and there, and we have a few nice patches of False Solomon's seal. Those aren't prairie plants, but they are definitely native plants that came to call. We have lovely wild violets everywhere we mow. Besides some lovely types of goldenrod and both white and purple asters, we also have purple prairie clover, violet monarda, cinquefoil, milkweed, yarrow, wild strawberries, coreopsis, white and purplish fleabane, and several things I can't think of the name of right off. Introduced by me were the black-eyed susans and purple coneflower (it's great to give your mother plants and then buy her house later and have them there) and a tenant introduced wild geraniums. We also have some interesting grasses which I cannot name for you, side-oats grama (?) and foxtail are 2 I actually know the name of.

I assure you most of the wild plants put themselves here. My family was always into organic gardening, which helped. Wild trees even grow, like wild plum, painful but great smelling this time of year, and blackhaw, which I have found is very rare in WI and only found in 2 counties. We also have many red currant, gooseberry, and high bush cranberry bushes all over, mainly planted by birds.

So humans interfered once in a while, my father planted fruit trees all over, and we plant vegies and flowers here and there. Some areas were mowed at some times, mostly just paths, so nature has had a lot of time to do her work. We would mow more now if our mower worked. :-)

A non-native specie that I now consider a prairie plant is mullein, which I love, as birds perch on it and eat the seeds. Anyway, what my point was supposed to be is that if given enough time and some native species, you will attract wildlife, and get more native species via them. So it is a matter of gardening by subtraction with occasional strategic additions.

Dug, if you like, I can send you some black-eyed susan seeds, these are the tall wild kind, smaller flowers than the modern varieties, but more flowers per plant. In the prairie they are about 2 to 3 feet tall, in a watered garden they get up to 5 feet. They are originally from North Dakota prairie via hubby's great-grandmother, and passed around the family since. They spread themselves very nicely.

Marcia