best laid plans
We have, each spring, set out to implement the plan. However, parts of it have changed and we haven’t always got done what we wanted to accomplish each year. Often times just dodging the weather has slowed us down. Occasionally something didn’t work the way we expected and we had to alter the plan. As well, we have changed our minds about this region or that. For example, the back yard was completely filled in, between the back of the main building and the dike, in 2006. We had intended to use the area for recreation purposes. But, we subsequently decided that it was mostly a thoroughfare and altered it in 2008. Great and necessary as plans are, they have to be flexible. We don’t cotton to the axiom, “If we did the job right the first time, we’d all be unemployed.” But many details have had to be reworked two or three times. Experience is a wonderful thing. It is had by doing; by doing over when necessary.
This is the first time out for both of us on a project of this magnitude and complexity. The learning curve, while not as steep as some other endeavours, has a wrinkle in it. If you miss the window of opportunity — southern Manitoba has a short growing season — you’re looking at the following year before you can redo whatever it was you had in mind. In fact, especially when it comes to planting, much of what we are doing in a given year doesn’t really show until the next year or the year after that. It’s a good thing that we’re not in a hurry. Which is not to say that we’re so laid back that it matters little to us if we ever get this project done. We are eager to see the native grass and wildflowers, et cetera, coming up. We’re eager to have shrubs planted and maturing to provide some shelter from the wind. But, even if we had a crew of a dozen people, this is not a project that can be hurried. Like a fine wine, perhaps, it will be ready when it’s ready. In the meantime, there are rewards along the way. As areas are planted, or added to, it is delightful to see the results of our efforts.
Below are annual accomplishments from 2004 - 2007.
2004 ~ mowing and thinking
Like everyone else’s in the vicinity and beyond, the yard was mowed. However, midway through the summer mowing came to an abrupt stop when a log was hit while cutting long grass beside the pond; the garden tractor seized. “Know your terrain” the manual says. Good advice. A piece of the clutch assembly was broken.
There’s a long story as to why, but the tractor wasn’t operational again until mid 2006 when it was too late to mow; the grass was too tall.
After seeing me use hand mowers on the outside of the dike as I tried to finish the job, neighbour, Lenora Penner, came by with their utility tractor and a big rotary cutter on the back. She watched anxiouslyNot surpising. I convinced her to let me do the mowing but this was my first time driving a tractor of that size. while I mowed the east yard.
I visited the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve, near Tolstoi, for the first time and started researching native plants online. I was very excited one day when I visited the Penners *next door* and, while holding up a long stem of grass, I said “I found big bluestem”. “That’s not big bluestem,” Lenora said. “It’s some kind of cordgrass, I think.” She was right. I had found prairie cordgrass. It grows in abundance around the site.
2005 ~ research and digging
With the garden tractor laid up the yard was not mowed in 2005; a state of affairs which prompted another neighbour to offer use of one of his tractors. Instead, though, hand mowers were used to cut paths around the yard and the top of the dike to get a sense of where they should be and what they would look like when the property was seeded with tall grass and wildflowers.
The summer was occupied with research — including several trips to the tallgrass prairie preserve — and digging by hand in the west yard. As well, a ditch was dug (also by hand) to drain the west yard into the area behind the garage. And the east ditch — which goes from the southeast corner of the pond to the highway ditch outside of the dike — was dredged by hand several times to get water draining from the pond to the highway ditch. It was a wet summer. All the moisture helped at times with digging and checking water flows. Sometimes, though, the soil was too soft to work.
pond ~ 05SE13
pond ~ 05SE13
full site
Late in the summer, neighbour, Irv Penner, dug a ditch with their tractor on a portion of the site (not shown on the site drawings) where a roadway runs from our property to the service road to the west. When this road was put in the contractor neglected to install a culvert through it. This new road prevented the two lots just west of this one from draining by way of a ditch beside a service road which runs into the northwest corner of the pond. There are already enough mosquitos in Manitoba; we did not want to provide habitat for more to breed. After the ditch was dug, Irv moved the soil to the southeast exit from the pond; the beginning of a mini-dike.
Coleen entered the picture in late 2005. She liked the place and the *plan*. And me, too, it seems.
2006 ~ site preparation
Aside from research and planning, a primary focus of the summers of 2006, and 2007 was getting the drainage right. But not just drainage. The site has been graded to make use of water from rain that passes over the site to water the site. Most of the furrows and ditches have stretches that briefly retain shallow puddles allowing a little extra water to be absorbed by the soil. As well, the west yard and nursery have been set up so that they can be drained completely, if need be, to avoid providing breeding habitat for mosquitos.
front yard ~ 07JL13
front yard ~ 07JL13
During the summer of 2006 we graded the front and east yards. We got water running from the pond to the main building which allowed us to install irrigation and to set up a wet garden in the west yard. And we reworked the driveway.
east yard ~ leveling ~ 06JL10
east yard ~ leveling ~ 06JL10
The east yard had a hump in the middle that we razed. The area was *dished* so that the lowest part is in the middle with a drainage furrow that allows water to flow to the culvert through the south dike. The removed soil was relocated to the east side and rear of the main building.
As we were digging and rearranging soil, Irv came by with his tractor and a cultivator on the back of it to demonstrate that using a cultivator would help a lot. The soil was very hard that summer because there was so little rain. We soon acquired a cultivator of our own. Things were much easier after that.
babbling brook 07SE19-01
babbling brook 07SE19-01
Plumbers that we hired discovered that the suction line inside of the main building would not draw water from the pond. We had to hire an excavator to repair ruptured water and air lines. Once that was accomplished we installed a *babbling brook* at the intersection of dike and driveway. It is fed, underground, by water that originates from the pond, and is used to keep a portion of the west yard wet. The wet area — for rushes and sedges — was dug by hand; as was the winding ditch that drains the area behind the garage.
We had to wait for the soil to settle after the excavation to repair the suction line from the pond was filled in. This meant that work on grading the nursery could not start until the following summer. In the meantime, a 30 m ditch was dug and built upPart of the area was too low to drain into the east yard. across this wide area which sloped to where the dike and yard meet. The ditch was necessary to test whether the west yard would drain into the east yard. It did / does. A second long ditch — 15 m — was dug with the tractor through the back yard to allow the west side of the yard to drain into the east yard the following spring.
The dish was a little too deep in the east yard which we discovered by watering the region for a week with two hoses until it started to fill. Soil removed from the front yard was added to the low spots. The area of the front yard, which we call the thumb, was one of the toughest spots to dig. It had been a driveway before the dike was added to the property. The soil, which had a layer of gravel and broken concrete under it, was hard packed from heavy vehicles driving on it. (The main building was built to house a higway tractor and trailer; which it did for the first five or six years of its use.) A combination of watering (to soften it) and cultivating made it possible to dig the soil.
welding cultivator ~ 06JL13-02
welding cultivator ~ 06JL13-02
The *new* implement made it possible to cultivate much of the property, including: the east yard, the sides of the pond, part of the highway ditch, and the inside, top, and outside of the dike. However, the relic cultivator broke several times, which required visits from the welder or replacement of the many bolts Part of the learning curve: bolts on tractors and implements need to be checked often. that held it together. Except for the outside of the dike, the cultivated areas were then smoothed using a couple of railroad ties as a drag on chains behind the tractor.
Earlier in the summer, while waiting for water, the driveway was regraded. First the *highway mix* had to be removed. The soil in front of the garage was scraped to match the height inside the garage. The turn around area was then crowned and sloped away from the building. Just before the snow started to fall in late October, we had crushed rock delivered and then spread it on the driveway and inside of the garage. Three overhead doors were installed in time for winter.
driveway ~ 06OC28
driveway ~ 06OC28
2007 ~ more site preparation / weed removal
triangle ~ 07JL13
triangle ~ 07JL13
The summer of 2007 was occupied with removing existing vegetation on about 70% of the property, finishing or fine-tuning the grading (or so we thought), The soil moves around a lot, swelling and shrinking depending on temperature and the amount of moisture in it. Several areas had to be reworked in early summer 2008 to get them draining again. and starting to set up the nursery behind the garage. The paths in front of and beside the main building were built up a little and mini-culverts were installed to allow different sub-regions to drain. We also did some test planting, much of which was relocating some of the native material already growing on the site. We have found that flora likes it here a lot. For example, prairie sage is said by most sources to grow to a height of 60 cm. Some we planted reached at least a meter high.
west yard ~ 07MA06
west yard ~ 07MA06
Keeping the soil black, as it’s called, is a challenge. Areas that were free of vegetation in the fall of 2006 were all overgrown with an assortment of weeds interspersed with some native plants by the middle of June 2007. Many hours were occupied hand weeding and spraying with herbicide. To further complicate matters, we blundered the first year by only cultivating the dike and not smoothing it out. This made it impossible to mow with the garden tractor in 2007. It was too wet during the early part of the summer to cultivate again; the grass had time to reach its full height. Since it is next to impossible to cultivate soil with tall grass on it, we ended up using a weed whacker and a hand mower to cut down the unwanted grass and wildflowers on the inside of the dike. It was then cultivated and smoothed.
west yard ~ 07JN03
west yard ~ 07JN03
west yard ~ 07JL12
west yard ~ 07JL12
In May grading of the west yard was finished. A few plants were transplanted and some seed sown. Next to none of the seed germinated. The paths through the sub-region were built up and covered with *highway mix* that had been removed from the driveway the year before. Plank bridges were added across the wet area.
Several trips to areas where native flora still grows expanded our knowledge and library of images of many of the species we plan to plant on the site. Further research, online, added to the data on the material; things like when best to plant, whether cold-stratification is required, what moisture and sunlight conditions each species prefers.
We thought to water areas to encourage the weeds to come up before seeding them, but learned that we could do this for five years or more and unwanted material would still come up in abundance. “The seed bank in this region has been replenished for at least 100 years. Most of it is introduced species,” we were told by someone with many years experience doing native plantings. The seed bank is contained in the top 10 cm of soil. While cultivating is necessary — and the most effective way to remove vegetation — the practice stirs up seed that has been slightly buried. Hence more stuff emerges afterwards. At some point in the process it is best to not stir up the soil anymore. Hand weeding works best. And keeping areas smooth after they have been cultivated a few times seems to prevent blown in seed from collecting. Regardless, once areas are seeded with desirable species considerable weeding is required; especially since watering causes everything to germinate.
front & east yard ~ 07JL13
front & east yard ~ 07JL13
The thumb portion of the front yard was seeded in mid-summer with a mix of big bluestem and indian grass. A few big bluestem seedlings emerged. But we were very disappointed with the result. We had not put down even close to enough seed; as well both grasses tend to not germinate right away. Along with the few desired plants we had no shortage of dandelions, quackgrass, and smooth brome to deal with. These plants are very tenacious. “You can hang quackgrass roots on a fence for two years and they’ll still grow if they fall in the soil,” a neighbouring farmer told us. Digging up these and a couple of other species is the best way to eradicate them. But the quackgrass and smooth brome send out thick rhizomes that make a mess of a much wider area than where a blade or two of grass appears. Scarce though they were some seedlings were sacrificed to get rid of the other plants; roots send up a plant way faster than a seed does.
A portion of the ell in front of the main building was seeded with a mix of grasses and wildflowers. Nothing germinated. However, a lone big bluestem appeared as did prairie sage and narrowleaf sunflower. Seed had drifted from the triangle and a couple of bunches of sunflowers that we had planted the year before in the thumb. The area also partly filled in with peppergrass, scratchgrass, and witchgrass (which grow all over the place out here).
Part of the west yard beside the driveway was also seeded but nothing came up. However, the west yard started to take off. Nuttall’s alkali grass planted in June was reseeding and germinating in August. Softstem bulrushes and several other rushes and sedges multiplied.
Towards the end of the summer we went seed gathering. We found a a few good spots, one of which is on a short stretch of highway a couple of kilometers west of Silver Plains.
irrigation ~ 07NO07
irrigation ~ 07NO07
Work on the nursery began in September. The entire area was first graded to make it flat with a slight tilt towards the dike. The trenches were then dug and the removed soil was put where the paths are. Water was used to ensure that the trenches drained to the east side of the region.
The final bit of yard work was installation of a temporary culvert through the path beside the garage to drain the west yard. We taped together 15 cm diameter coffee cans to test whether a culvert would work in this location.
Robert G. Mears
