An Ohio Prairie Primer Walk for Bird Lovers

Guy Denny showing his prairie to local Audubon birdwatchers on an August 9 tour.  (Photo by Don Comis)

Guy Denny seems to stand as tall as the big bluestem grass in the prairie he created on his farm in Fredericktown.

With his straw cowboy hat, belt buckle and jeans and standing in his prairie, you could easily think he’s out West in the Great Plains rather than in Ohio.  Only the 10-power lens handing around his neck tells you he’s also a man with a scientific bent.

But Denny tells the group on tour from the East Central Ohio Audubon Society that there were cattle drives in Ohio, as well as bison, elk and prairie chickens in central and northwest Ohio in the days when Ohio had one to two thousand square miles of prairie.  He cited examples of those former prairies including the Sandusky Plains 20 miles east of Fredericktown, as well as the Darby Plains and Piqua Plains.

He said all the prairies in the United States form in the rain shadow of the Rocky Mountains, on the east side where there is much less rainfall.  The glaciers were also critical in their formation, creating several thousand years of sustained drought that killed off trees and helped grass spread in its wake  throughout the Midwest and Eastern United States.

These prairies, he said, were lost when drainage ditches drained the lands to grow corn and soybeans.
When Guy Denny moved to his 50-acre farm in Fredericktown 18 years ago, he decided to try planting a small strip of prairie plants along his driveway.   That strip has since grown to at least 20 acres of his property, the rest being woods.    He has coyotes, deer, wild turkeys, fox squirrels, screech owls, and mink on his land.

Denny retired in 1999 from a 33-year career with the Ohio Department of Natural Resources (DNR), serving as chief of the Division of Natural Areas and Preservesmanaging nature preserves on state lands, and became an outdoors writer and advocate for protecting Ohio natural areas and preserves.

During the August 9  tour, Denny said that nature preserves are not city parks and have to be managed differently.  He compared them to the historical documents room of a public library, where the materials have to be more protected than the regular books on loan.

He explained to the bird watchers how he used Roundup to clear existing vegetation which included a lot of goldenrod and Canadian thistle.  He also rototilled, but thinks that was a mistake because it stirs up the underground seedbank, allowing weeds to compete with his prairie plantings.  He says that he know someone at Ohio University who killed existing vegetation without herbicides, by covering the land for a  growing season with plywood or sheets of tin.

This is similar to advice in “Birdscaping in the Midwest”, a book about creating habitats for birds and other wildlife.  The author of that book suggests covering land with layers of newspaper.  I’ve found I couldn’t come up with enough newspaper to do that, so I did a lot of rototilling and then finally covered the land with a permeable landscape fabric.  That’s expensive but I think it can be re-used and it’s easier and no more expensive than rototilling, I think.

You could tell from the questions that at least some in this group are thinking about creating  a prairie section on their land.  Denny said that covering the land with scrap material is better suited to smaller plots, like a quarter acre, while herbicide may be required for larger areas.

Denny also manages his prairie by a controlled burn every year, to prevent trees and shrubs from overtaking the prairie plants.  He has 25 years of experience doing those controlled burns for Ohio’s DNR.  He helps the Brown Family Environmental Center staff with their burns and they in turn help him on his.
Fortunately, I don’t think those burns are needed on smaller plots!

He said that while it’s less expensive to plant seeds, the results take longer.  Most of the growth from the seeds is underground for the first two years.  In fact, Denny said that even for mature prairies, two-thirds of the growth is underground in deep roots, so looking at a prairie is like looking at the tip of an iceberg.

But is that tip ever beautiful with the bright red of royal catchfly flowers, the white flowers of culver’s –root and rattlesnake master flowers, the purple flowers of joe pye weed and prairie coneflower, and the yellow flowers  of other prairie coneflowers,  brown-eyed susans , partridge-pea, and ashy sunflowers.  All of these and so much more set off with plants that grow very tall, including grasses like big bluestem that provide a nice background for the colorful flowers.

He warned that switchgrass, a grass I planted in Maryland and will probably plant at Apple Valley, can spread.   He advises anyone starting a prairie from seed to choose partridge pea seeds first because they will make a showing the first growing season.

He also invited the group to return on September 27 at 10 a.m. for a prairie seed collecting field trip. He said that Gail Martin of “Natives in Harmony” in Marengo (www.nativesinharmony.com) would be there.   I’m coming back then, hoping to get some partridge pea seeds and seeds of other plants for my own little prairie.

But I'm not sure I can wait until September 27 to start my garden. I'll probably order a pre-planned package of 96 plants for a “Monarch Habitat Garden” in a 9- by 18-foot area of my yard from www.prairienursery.com.    This company ships plants on September 15 since September is the time to plant the seeds or plants.   It also sells partridge-pea seeds and says this annual is often interseeded with prairie plant seed mixes.   I may order these seeds soon as well, and try planting them around the 96 perennial plants.

Denny believes he is the steward of the land he lives on, not its owner.  To back this up, he plans to sign a conservation easement with the Owl  Creek Conservancy to protect it from development forever.

For a little more information on Denny’s prairie and controlled burning, check out my July 27 blog on my earlier tour of his prairie, which was part of the 13th annual “Explore the Nature of Knox County” series.  The next event in that series is “Fossils of Knox County”, indoors at the Brown Center on Saturday, September 6, from 1:30 to 3:30 p.m.  For more information, go to the Owl Creek Conservancy’s website.

Also, check out my website.

Denny says partridge-pea is a good first prairie planting with seeds because it produces showy flowers right away, unlike many paririe plants that don't emerge above-ground even until after 2 years.  (Photo by Don Comis)

Tiger swallowtail butterfly on prairie coneflower on Guy Denny's prairie in Fredericktown.  (Photo by Don Comis)