Crow’s Nest: The big planting

By Daniel Barringer, Preserve Manager

Actually, it’s not a big area, but it is a LOT of plants. We’re planting meadow plugs on 1 to 1.5 foot centers. I wouldn’t undertake a project like this without knowing we have the support of our wonderful volunteers.

We’re converting a section of lawn near French Creek to meadow, nearly the last part of converting this suburban lot near the center of Crow’s Nest Preserve back to a natural area. We’ll keep lawn near the road intersection (for visibility), but mow this lower meadow just once a year, which sure beats once a week for half the year. We haven’t had many opportunities to do restoration at Crow’s Nest, since it is already woods, meadows, or currently active farm fields. This effort complements the shrub planting from fall 2012 also performed by volunteers.

Here’s a photo of the site preparation with most of the turf grass killed.

This is about as far as I got with the auger before I couldn’t get it restarted any more, the day before the big planting.

Here are the volunteers (thank you!) who carried the day getting about 500 plugs planted in three hours. We still have a couple hundred more to do this week. I was also pleased to have the sprinkler set up on this planting just in time for it to rain (we’ll need it later).