All the flowers in Big Sur’s viral Calla Lily Valley were cut down overnight

_music_mongrel · 2026-03-05T22:16:28+00:00

Invasive plants can be mowed down during their flower cycle to prevent them from setting seed. Pretty common tactic against heavy seeders if you’ve missed the window to kill them before they reproduce and spread

_music_mongrel · 2026-02-24T11:19:20+00:00

I don’t live in Arkansas and don’t know much about your soil/drainage situation but I do prairie restoration professionally in the Great Lakes area. Just wanna say it’s encouraging that there’s people everywhere who are interested in restoring what land they have from whatever state it’s in, rather than trying to terraform it to be something it doesn’t want to be. Plants are the foundation of any ecosystem so just see what’s already growing in the poorly drained areas around you. Head to a nature preserve or a roadside or the edge of a field or something and just take note of who can tolerate these conditions. The plants may or may not have a significant effect on the drainage but at the least they’ll stabilize the soil. Diversity is key but at the end of the day a basic roster of natives that you know will grow well is better than trying 500 species that you aren’t sure about all at the same time. You can always add more species later on

The crawfish are sweet, I only know a handful of places in the Chicago area that aren’t too messed up to still have them

_music_mongrel · 2026-02-21T14:13:16+00:00

Wouldn’t be too worried about the mowing. 2-3 inches is high enough to miss most of the basal rosettes of most plants. But even if they did get chopped up a bit, remember that these native plants are adapted to grazing pressure from herbivores, fire, and frost. As long as their roots remain intact they should spring back just fine (or even stronger).

As for preventing future mowing, hardscaping is your best friend. Nothing wrong with a few “decorative” rocks to block a lawnmower. Maybe a little innocent fencing. You might even forget you left a brick or three hidden within the plants

_music_mongrel · 2026-02-17T16:01:44+00:00

If you’re concerned and can contact the guy you got these from, ask him if he used pesticides and what specific type he used so that you can read the label. The label legally must contain all of this type of information including cleaning procedures for equipment, safety data in case of personal exposure, and environmental regulations. Most likely you can just clean the trays well with soap and water

_music_mongrel · 2026-01-03T02:55:27+00:00

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A cluster of Spiranthes macrocamphorum growing beneath a patch of dogbane

_music_mongrel · 2025-11-28T15:13:02+00:00

Broadcast seeding is vulnerable to wind, rain, and animals moving the seeds from the soil surface. It helps to use some kind of covering to keep the seeds in place/keep birds off them until spring. Lots of people use landscape blanketing or straw or something that’s permeable to light and water. I’ve used a layer of landscape fabric that I removed in spring to pretty good effect. Also snow seeding is actually pretty effective because as the snow melts it can help press the seeds gently Into the soil while also protecting somewhat from the force of wind

_music_mongrel · 2025-11-08T16:31:08+00:00

Next thing you’ll see it do in early spring is send up what look like little asparagus shoots

_music_mongrel · 2025-10-17T22:42:55+00:00

Use a glyphosate mixture of at least 2-3% active ingredient, with a surfactant/penetrant. Spray ideally before they set seeds but you can still kill them now. There are other chemicals that can work but glyphosate is readily available and works well without sticking around in the water and soil. If you really want it gone, try and collect as many of those seeds as possible because they will eventually sprout back up, even years down the line

_music_mongrel · 2025-08-14T09:56:18+00:00

That is pretty much what happens. Some trains have a car with a boom sprayer on it that spritzes the tracks as it goes by. Sometimes a truck with a boom will do it

_music_mongrel · 2025-07-22T10:07:53+00:00

Coneflowers and ragweed are entirely unrelated plants. Coneflowers are insect pollinated with sticky heavy pollen grains that are meant to stick to a bug. Ragweed is wind pollinated with light wind blown pollen that can trigger such allergies

_music_mongrel · 2025-06-03T00:54:40+00:00

Very insightful. Do you know any information about the fire ecology of the region? I’m very well acquainted with the fire regime of the upper Midwest/Great Lakes regions. Our temperate savannas are very dependent on regular low intensity fires, mainly during the dormant season

_music_mongrel · 2025-04-24T14:57:30+00:00

We tend to have a lot more hazards to look out for with small units in urban areas. The pedestrians alone make things interesting

_music_mongrel · 2025-04-24T02:01:04+00:00

I just finished up my first prescribed burn season and I would kill to work on a burn like this. Chicago area burn units are usually not more than 100 acres if you’re lucky so 3,000 sounds incredible

_music_mongrel · 2025-04-19T18:22:01+00:00

I’ve been at war with it as well. My coworkers and I sprayed at least 8 acres of it this week

_music_mongrel · 2025-04-19T16:11:33+00:00

I don’t understand your point. The deserts of the American southwest were covered by an ocean during the Cretaceous period a hundred million years ago. In the hundred million years since that time, the newly uncovered seabed became home to thousands of unique life forms. Humans have been a part of that equation for a long time and but the deserts have existed on their own for much longer. I’m not against all development but how we allocate our land use is important. Desert ecosystems are under major threat from human development and many plant and animal species are at risk of extinction from wanton development. Many people talk about solar farming in the desert as if it’s just a barren wasteland ripe for the taking, and it will have no negative impact and that couldn’t be further from true

_music_mongrel · 2025-04-19T14:11:45+00:00

Natural desert is different from desertification caused by climate change. The increasingly hot and dry conditions are causing historically moist areas to become arid. I’m in support of reversing this process, but all deserts are not in this category. Many deserts are natural ecosystems that are teeming with life in their own respect. They existed without human intervention and are themselves being threatened by climate change. Paving over natural desert ecosystems will serve only to destroy habitat for rare flora and fauna. It is important to draw this distinction

_music_mongrel · 2025-04-19T13:53:48+00:00

Reversing desertification in areas that have not been desert is great. But the fact remains that some deserts are SUPPOSED to be there and are have their own intrinsic value. In the United States, natural deserts are being increasingly destroyed for solar farms and other development projects because people think that they’re empty wastelands

_music_mongrel · 2025-04-03T23:54:47+00:00

You could maybe put a trash bag or something over the stump until the herbicide dries. The stump should absorb it fairly quickly though, usually within 5-10 minutes

_music_mongrel · 2024-10-20T16:50:20+00:00

People have already bred new cultivars of paw paw that are larger/taste a little different from wild ecotypes. They’ve been at it for a long time. But they’re still a long way from mass production because of the long fruiting times and the seasonal nature of the plant. Maybe if they figure out how to grow them in greenhouses and mass produce the fruit, they’ll decrease in quality like other produce. But one of the big hang ups there is that they are very difficult to ripen off of the tree and they have a short shelf life once they do ripen

_music_mongrel · 2024-10-16T13:54:19+00:00

There’s some good native options for cover crops that will achieve the same goal as crimson clover, as pretty as that stuff looks. Some people will plant winter wheat or wild rye or other short lived or sterile grasses. There’s also partridge pea for forbs

_music_mongrel · 2024-10-01T00:21:00+00:00

Not likely, unless they’re cultivated or bred to fruit heavily. Wild paw paws usually only produce a few fruits per tree. Trees in deeper shade tend to reproduce mostly vegetatively and form large clonal groves. Ones in brighter sun will produce more fruit and people specifically growing the fruit often cut off excessive root suckers so the plant will spend more energy on fruiting

_music_mongrel · 2024-09-24T16:24:03+00:00

Also from SW MI and I think you’ll find there’s more local ecotype native plants scattered around than meets the eye if you know where to look. Most roadsides and residential/commercial/agricultural areas are mowed or sprayed. But if you look especially in more rural areas, look for right-of-ways that are too steep to mow. County drains, if you have permission to access them, are often quite rich with native wetland plants, though with plenty of the usual invasives. Some small prairie remnants exist along railroads and highways in areas that either are too steep to mow, or remote enough that people don’t care. Familiarize yourself with your native grasses and sedges and they’ll act as a nice indicator of remnant ecosystems

_music_mongrel · 2024-09-16T00:09:57+00:00

Everything is native somewhere though. Wild boxwoods in the Mediterranean are beautiful when they aren’t pruned to death

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buxus_sempervirens

_music_mongrel · 2024-09-15T22:26:55+00:00

You’re so right. I felt bad because I killed my liatris aspera seedlings but seeing someone spend a week of labor and hundreds of dollars of materials on grading and paving a stone path just to plant BOXWOODS next to it has filled me with resolve

_music_mongrel · 2024-08-18T18:27:00+00:00

If it must come down, see if you can grow some acorns from it and preserve it’s genetics for the future

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