At Pleasant Valley Conservancy we have dealt with weeds in
our prairie remnants, our restored oak savannas, and in the prairies we have
planted in former agricultural fields. Each situation presented different
problems and required different solutions.
I admit I was surprised when Paul West told us in the summer
of 1997 that hand-weeding would have to be done on the South Slope. All we had
done so far was cleared and burned Kathie’s Prairie. How could there be weeds
already? Not woody plants, but herbaceous ones. Weeds he specifically mentioned
were wild parsnip and sweet clover. Later, mullein and thistle entered the
picture.
Obviously, our restoration work had not created these weeds.
They had already been there. So it was not only woody vegetation that we would
have to deal with. I finally got accustomed to the idea that weeding was one of
the major activities of restoration ecology. And in natural areas, weeding was
often hand work, although weeds could sometimes be dealt with by mowing or
spraying.
Paul West spent 6.5 hours pulling primarily wild parsnip on
Kathie’s Prairie in July 1997. In July 1998 he and Pat Schrader spent 16 hours.
Again, mostly wild parsnip. In 1999 the hired crew pulled no weeds as this was
the year the whole South Slope was cleared, and burned, but Kathie did a lot of
weeding (see below). But in the year 2000, West, Schrader, Michler, Brown, and
Nate Chisholm among them worked almost 1000 hours pulling weeds, almost all on the South Slope!
Although most of the weeding in 2000 was on the South Slope,
weeding was also done on the County F and Pleasant Valley Road cuts. Also at a scrubby area at
the corner of PV Road and County F (Unit 14), and Toby’s Prairie (quite a bit,
as this was in its second growing season).
In the early years, all the weeds were pulled by hand. This
requires a strong back and strong arms and shoulders. Most of the folks pulling
weeds at PVC were young and strong, and seemed to have no trouble. However, as
the weeds age their root systems get larger, and eventually they get to the
stage where they really can not be pulled. A strong person will end up just
breaking the stem near the base. This is when you start thinking about a
shovel.
Broader weed activities
Kathie and I first got involved in invasive plants through
our work at the Campus Natural Areas on garlic mustard. In fact, garlic mustard
became a major issue for us for a while. Kathie discovered major infestations
of garlic mustard in Shorewood Hills, and got a number of village residents
involved. She got the Village Board to declare garlic mustard an official
“noxious weed”, which led to lots of work in the village. Kathie organized
volunteer work parties to control garlic mustard on village land, and she and I
did lots of garlic mustard work on our own.
Then there was the very important meeting called “Plants Out
of Place” (acronym POOP), held in March 2001 at Eau Claire. This meeting was
held in association with meetings of The Wild Ones (the day before POOP) and
The Prairie Enthusiasts (the day after POOP). With all these meetings,
attendance at POOP was over 600. Kathie and I attended both the POOP meeting
and the TPE meeting. I really revel in this sort of high-level meeting that
provides a great summary of expert scientific information.
In addition to the meetings, there was an extended
discussion among the presenters and attendees of how control of invasive plants
could best be accomplished. This was one of those sessions where people wrote
topics on large sheets of white paper hanging around the sides of the room. One
of the major “conclusions” was that a new organization was needed that dealt
with invasive plants of Wisconsin.
All those interested in this idea were invited to attend an
evening meeting to formalize this organization. Kathie and I attended this
meeting. TNC’s Nancy Braker, who Kathie had worked with extensively, was the
secretary of the meeting. I ended up sitting in the middle of the table, which
led me to do a fair bit of talking. When it came time to select officers for
the new group, I was asked to be President. Since Kathie and I were so heavily
involved in our own restoration work, I declined, but volunteered to be
Treasurer. Before the end of the evening, it was decided to call the
organization the “Invasive Plants of Wisconsin” (IPAW). In order to incorporate
we needed Articles of Incorporation, which were written that evening. The
By-laws, needed to get non-profit status, were written later by the Board of
Directors.
As Treasurer, my responsibility was to get the organization
started. I took all the checks that had been written by potential members and
on return to Madison made the application to incorporate with the Wisconsin
Department of Financial Institutions. The fee to incorporate came from my
personal checking account. IPAW was officially incorporated
on March 8, 2001, just a week after POOP was over. Once I had the official
name, I got a tax ID number from the IRS, started a checking account, and
deposited all the checks. With a bank balance, I was now able to write checks.
I rented a post office box at the Hilldale Station (Box 5274, which still
exists). I checked the P.O. box for mail weekly, and was pleased to see checks coming in.
The membership list was being maintained by the Executive
Director of The Wild Ones, so as checks came in, I deposited them and sent the names and addresses on to her. I wrote
a thank you note to every new member. With the Board of Director’s help I put
together the papers necessary for becoming a non-profit organization and sent
them off to the IRS. In due course, the letter came back making us a 501-(c) 3
corporation.
The other activity I played a major role was getting a good
web site for IPAW. One of the new members, Marsha Vomastic, had volunteered to
set up the web site. She was an experienced web designer and she and I worked
together. I wrote quite a bit of the website content. Although the design has now
been updated, Marsha’s web site served IPAW well for many years.
Because I was so intimately involved in the creation of
IPAW, I quickly became very familiar with the biology and control of
Wisconsin’s invasive plants. With my strong scientific background it was no
problem reading the scientific literature in this field. And we had our own
Conservancy as a test case for control methods!
Here it is 17 years later and weeding is still necessary, although lots less than in 1998.
Weeding at Black Earth Rettenmund Prairie
Kathie and I became stewards of this fine prairie remnant in 2001. By that time we were beginning to understand sweet clover fairly well, and BE was heavily infested. In those early years, the patches were very large, and had to be mowed.
Sometime around 2009 or 2010 mowing was no longer necessary, but hand pulling is still essential. Although volunteer work parties are held regularly, the fact is that most sweet clover work at BE is done by hired help, although for about 10 years we also used paid interns.
At one time I thought we might be able to eradicate sweet clover from BE, but I no longer believe this. However, some years it is worse than others. This year is especially bad.
Why is sweet clover so bad at BE when the prairie itself is so good? After the Nature Conservancy acquired BE Prairie, considerable effort was put into sweet clover control, but as the years went by, work focused more on brush control. In the year 2000 only 7 hours were spent on sweet clover control. If sweet clover is not eradicated, seed formation will occur, adding to the already rich seed bank. The main reason Kathie and I took over stewardship in 2001 was because we were concerned about the sweet clover problem at Rettenmund Prairie.
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| Contractor mowing sweet clover at Black Earth Rettenmund Prairie, July 2005 |
