Last year as part of our ‘mid-contract management’ requirements for the Conservation Reserve Program we had to interseed legumes and forbs in the CRP ground that is mostly non-native grasses.
(CRP is the program where the government pays us to take ground that is susceptible to erosion out of crop production and plant it to grass.)
I was pretty skeptical of this. We had a wonderful weed-free stand of grass and clover and you want to kill off strips and plant it to wildflowers? Seems like a recipe for creating strips of weeds to me, but Lana and I did it. I sprayed 60 foot wide strips across the field with glyphosate (Roundup) to kill what was there. Then we seeded a mix of oats, clovers, and wildflowers.
This spring I was delighted to see a wonderful bloom of wildflowers.
The glyphosate just stunted the existing grass and clovers enough to let the wildflowers get started, but not let the weeds take over. The field is beautiful with strips of wildflowers across it.
This year we’re going to try to plant something suitable for wetlands in the areas of this field that drown out every year.
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