Stalk cutting

My herbicide mentor strolled around the meadow with me the day before yesterday. I showed him where I had planted Little Bluestem seed after pulling out bittersweet root and expressed concern about the disturbed soil I had created. He suggested clipping the dead bittersweet stalks and removing as much thatch as possible to give the resurgent grasses, of which there are many types, more access to light and air.

I spent 2 hours yesterday and again today clipping in the forward part of the meadow (SW). each time I generated a bag’s worth of mostly leafless stalks. Sometimes just in tracing the stem back to the ground, I would pull out a few inches of decayed root. I scratched away as much of the thatch from previous years’ mowings as well.

The grasses that are filling in seem to be bunch grasses. I can identify the velvet grass but there are others as well. Note how hard it is to spot the bittersweet.

Down at the soil level, I got many grasshoppers to jump around and was bitten by a mosquito.