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RE: planting preparation

It is amazing how much weed seed can exist in the soil even where the land
has been farmed for so long (but then, weeds LIKE farming!)

It depends on your type of weeds, but often it pays to ignore them.  If
they're annuals like horseweed, ragweed and foxtail, they will not last
long.  In our 70 acre restoration (Meadowbrook Park, Urbana, Ill.) We had
huge stands of ragweed (along the boundary with a corn field), and then
after planting the field as a prairie, we had enormous stands of horseweed.
Also, the first "crop" of all of our prairie plantings has been a sea of
foxtail.  None of these plants survive long.  The year after planting, the
entire horseweed patch had vanished (not a plant grew!), and Ragweed was and
is a rarely seen species.  The first year after planting, we always have a
"sea of foxtail", the 2nd year, foxtail with prairie plants, the 3rd year
prairie plants with a little foxtail.  After that, little..if any... foxtail
survives in the planting.

Now if teasel showed up....or a stand of sweet clover or other tenacious
weeds, those we worry about!

Bob Vaiden

-----Original Message-----
From: John Foust [j*@threedee.com]
Sent: Thursday, April 20, 2000 11:03 PM
To: prairie@mallorn.com
Subject: Re: planting preparation



I was stunned by the amount of dormant weed and grass seed in
the former corn and winter wheat fields I've tried to convert to
prairie.  I'm about five miles west of Jefferson, WI.

The first season after the crops, it was tilled and mowed at 
least once.  The next season, a spring burn, sprouted, Roundup-ed,
waited, then I planted.  It seemed to go from dead to green again
in six weeks...  foxtail, horseweed, other grasses and weeds
I didn't plant.  The previous farmer had used atrazine in
relatively low amounts - what was it doing, if this much seed
was there?

The spots where what I planted "took" the best were the places
where the construction crew had scraped a few inches of topsoil
away to back-fill and level the area around my new home.  Almost
makes me wish I'd done that to the entire 20 acres.

- John

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