Ep. 340 How and When to Plant a Prairie So It ACTUALLY Shows Up
Justin Meissen of the Tallgrass Prairie Center brings 10 years of boots-on-the-ground restoration research to the table in this episode. He and the guys dig into the science of prairie establishment — from annual weed management in year one, to why seeding in November consistently outperforms spring for forb diversity, to how seed size predicts which plants actually show up in your mix. They also get into the coefficient of conservatism, the ecotype vs. diversity debate, and Justin's 300-acre Irving Prairie adaptive restoration project. One of the most technically rich episodes yet.
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Justin Meissen (00:00.566)
I'm Justin Meissen, I'm the research and restoration program manager at the Tallgrass Prairie Center, and this is the Prairie Farm Podcast.
Justin I have a theory I want to I want to hear what you think about it. I recently learned that a lot of the annual weeds that are like the bane of a monoculture prairie farm Producer the bane of their existence things like Pennsylvania smartweed a lot of the different
that's right.
We'll see you.
Kent Boucher (00:38.91)
Amaranth. What's another classic one in there? Mares tail. That one's not so bad. I mean, it's bad in the field. it's hard on equipment. You know, it's very woody. Ragweed. Yeah, kind of the same deal, but more so from a seed cleaning standpoint, lamb's quarter. yeah. Well, yeah, I guess true. not just from a seed cleaning standpoint, but even an establishment. A lot of them are native annuals.
Mayor's tail.
Kent Boucher (01:09.378)
And a lot of prairie establishment, so we're talking in a reestablishment here, a lot of the guidelines that are given are like, you you got to mow often for the first year, maybe even two years, because you got to keep all that stuff down. But then when I learned that these are actually native plants, they must have their place somewhere. And native species can behave like an invasive species in a
ecosystem that's got a lot of open niches, which is Iowa. But should we like change our tune on those native annual weed species? Like do they serve a purpose, like almost like God's cover crop for when you're reestablishing a prairie? Or should, no, you see, even if you planted the most diverse
and 150 seeds per square foot mix. You see a bunch of native amaranth and lamb's quarter and Pennsylvania smartweed popping up in that first year. You got to get that mowed down before it goes to seed or it'll ruin your prairie.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, um, you know, as, as I always sent him to say, it depends, right? Like, so, um, annual weeds. Yeah. I mean, you brought up a good point that a lot of them are native. Some of them are not, but then some of them are sort of like quasi native, like amaranth, um, you know, obviously the Palmer amaranth is technically native to like the Southwest. Right.
Obviously we don't want it up here. but you know, they, they do serve a purpose. One thing I'll kind of throw back at you is that, you know, we think about these, these systems, these newly restored systems, thinking about it from sort of the natural aspect, what, what did it used to look like? Well, it definitely did not used to look like, you know,
Justin Meissen (03:17.578)
all these annual weeds in the seed bank to that same extent. Because what you would typically, if you had a real big disturbance, you'd often have a lot of native things in the seed bank still not to the same extent, but you'd also have, know, some, call that the bud bank. So that's the little pieces of a vegetative reproducing structures in the ground.
You know, even, even if you plow up a prairie once, it'll often come back from those bud bank and from the seed bank and from surrounding vegetation. You see that, you see that often in places a further West where, you know, folks tried to farm a prairie one time and like the depression and then they gave up and it looks about as good as a.
the surrounding remnant does. but it's really, yeah, it's called them go back. but you know, we have a totally different system now, right? Like we don't have a bud bank. We've been farming these places for decades. Usually, there definitely is no prairie seed bank. And so we just have a very different
Interesting. Go back praise.
Justin Meissen (04:44.398)
uh, situation that we gotta take, it could take a bit of a different approach. And the way that I tend to think about it is, it gonna, is it gonna be a problem for the establishing seedlings? So what did establishing seedlings need? And they need primarily in this part of Iowa, they need light. it doesn't matter what it is, right? It could even be native. Um, you know, if you
See too much Canada wilder. I or you get the right conditions Anything that competes with for light with our seedlings that we're establishing is gonna cause a problem and that's why we do the mowing so Now having said that Another thing that I tend to see and notice when we're talking about annual weeds is that they
tend to take care of themselves, right? So these are plants that are adapted to basically crop production, right? They need disturbed bare soil to, not necessarily bare, but disturbed soil to germinate and to get going. And once those conditions are gone, once you have an established prairie like year two,
annual weeds no longer have that niche to utilize. So as you get your prairie establishing over time, your annual weeds always go down. the different, the issue here is that sometimes it's hard to tell when your prairie is establishing and then you see, my annual weeds are not going away. Maybe the annual weeds are causing my prairie to get stunted.
In my experience, that's pretty rare. What's usually happening is that there's poor establishment at the get go and there is.
Nicolas Lirio (06:48.718)
That's the biggest reason for poor establishment. We know that for decades it was planting too deep. There's a pretty good understanding that you don't plant prairie too deep. Now I feel like that's a mistake that happens much less often. So what mistakes are people making?
I'd say the biggest mistake and I don't think this is this, this was a bigger problem when we were just rolling out the pollinator program, but the density of, of seeds that we're going to establish is often too low. So what I mean by that is if you think about something like heat faster or, know, gray golden rod,
Tiny tiny seed that that seed has got to be It's got to have all it's gonna have to become a plant and start, you being mature Compare that to with you know, like a big bluestem pretty decent sized seed, right? Well when we design seed mixes with seeds per square foot, that's we're treating those seeds as the same possible
they're those seeds as having the same possibility of establishing. So I think, you know, what tends to happen is you seed, we know we got a good handle on our seeding rates. We think that, you know, we'll seed one seed per square foot of big bluestem, we'll seed one seed per square foot of a great goldenrod. Well, that means a very different thing for a tiny seed and a big seed.
So that was something that happened early on, especially when you're on a super budget. I'd say that's the thing that tends to happen. So when you're on a big budget, or not a big budget, you're budgeting big time. Yeah, make compromises where it looks, your CMICS looks pretty good on paper, but it ends up being something that in reality probably isn't.
Justin Meissen (08:55.17)
that successful. You probably shouldn't expect it to be that successful.
Is it possible to So like I this would be good information for our listeners I was standard for like CRP is 40 seeds a square foot Illinois 20, right? Okay Is it possible to seed too heavy to where the prairie almost like you have this big, you know, maybe
Yeah, unless it's HAL then it's port.
Kent Boucher (09:23.862)
germination and sprout and then all the nutrients soft up or so much competition from each other that it chokes itself out.
So you can see too heavy of certain species. think on the flip side, there's certain species you can't really realistically see it enough of. I mean, yes, you're gonna be, if you're going too heavy on big bluestem, Indian grass, this is already kind of baked into some of the Iowa standards. There's some restrictions on those species for a couple of the, I guess, like sub.
practices. But there's also other species, know, going back to the seed size thing, right? I did a little experiment where I I seeded like 80 species, 70 species, all at one seed per square foot. Can you guess what came up in an insane amount?
Switch grass and big blue stuff. Yeah. Black eyed Susan first, right?
That'd be my guess.
Justin Meissen (10:33.292)
This is interesting. No. Really? Those came up like I expected.
I know people struggle with sawtooth sunflower, cup plant or compass plant if you put too much of those in.
Really, this compass plant? That's an overcrowder? wouldn't expect that.
Well, the reason it's not normally an overcrowder, my understanding is that you can't. It's so expensive because the seed counts so low that if you actually put five seeds a square foot on the ground, it'd be like five hundred dollars or five thousand dollars an acre.
Nailed it. That's our limiter is the price that that get that's a benefit sometimes for things like compass plant, believe it or not. But I was going to I was going to say show we took tree foil was unbelievably. Yeah.
Nicolas Lirio (11:26.702)
Really dense,
Now that I think about like we have a field of that and it does that I mean it behaves that way it just it in fact weed pressure is not is not a huge problem in that field because it just crushes I mean
And, and another thing was, Oxeye, the oxeye tends to take care of itself over time. But, but yeah, so, so this is kind of what I'm going for is that, you know, this, those are big seeded species that we tend to see it at lower rates. Now we seed our grasses around, you know, seed per square foot. So that's, that's normal. But when you start seeding things,
higher than normal and when we say normal basically just means what can we afford?
Yeah, yeah.
Nicolas Lirio (12:18.114)
Well, so like white wild indigo, round headed bush clover, some of these bigger seeded, heavier seeded, a lot of times are legumes, right? I can put those in at point one seeds square foot. And as long as you have at least several acres, you know, if you have like half an acre, you might not. But I'll find those plants in there at a decent chunk, not just one or two. But I guess.
There are some species that like asters, we were just talking about this with Laura. I kind of joke, asters give you the crappiest seeds. Their germination always comes backwards. And there's two different things. There's a germination rate and what you're talking about, I have labeled, I don't have a better term. I have a labeled as a success rate. So you have germination that happens in the lab. And then even out of your germination, you're going to only have a certain percentage succeed. The bigger the seed, the more succeeds. And so asters not only do they, will germ them,
Everything else is German at like 90 to 95 and Astor's and late, stiff goldenrod. Anything that seems like it can blow away in the wind seems to germ at like 75 to 85. So it's got a worst germ. And then it seems that it's got a worst success rate. So, and then the Iowa calculator, the Illinois calculator kind of based on each other, they kind of.
Like they have recommended if you're doing a single planting of only the species, this is how many pounds you should do, but that's based on seeds of square foot, right?
I, to be entirely honest, I don't know how those single species rates are calculated. I've never, that's, that's a thing that I've never really considered doing.
Nicolas Lirio (14:03.394)
That's well, I guess what I'm trying to get at is does anybody have any numbers on how to build? You know, if I, if I said, Hey, I'm going to put blue sky Aster in there and let's say price doesn't matter. My goal is just to get it to show up. What is the seeds per square foot that you need to get it to show up? Or do you need to go buy pounds? Is it easier to go buy pounds? But I don't know.
This is what I've been thinking about for the you know past seven years
So there's no literature or anything on it?
Hopefully there'll be some literature eventually, hopefully sometimes. But I, you know, I've, I've looked at a lot of our plantings over the, I've been here at the tolerance center for almost 10 years now and every single project we've done, I make sure to go out and, and sample seedlings in year one. That is kind of our baseline way of
Is that gonna be?
Justin Meissen (15:03.776)
reporting success and you know trying to figure out whether planting is going to succeed or not and over the years I've been able to you know keep that data going and use that to analyze
Establishment rate what you're calling success like I call establishment rate. So so it's how many seeds What's the success rate of a seat? So, you know if you have one seed you have a establishment rate of 70 % for a lot of that would be really nice 7 % for a lot of speed
Wow at one seat a square foot
No, that's just like any given seed.
has that you put out there you so forty seeds a square foot you're only expecting a two three of them to actually show up in that square foot.
Justin Meissen (15:58.924)
Depending on seed size obviously there's other things so you know you can make this huge giant complicated awesome model with you know seeding time and you know seed shape and You know plant life history and you could come up with a really good predictive model, but Like we're talking like you and me live in a world where we have to do that if we're going to do a seed mix That's good
for 80 to 100 species. That's so much work to actually get that information for all those species. But what we do have is seed size. You can find that for everything. There's lots of databases out there that give you estimates of seed size for different species. And so.
we can create these models, just kind of a simple model based on what is the establishment rate given a species seed size. And we can get that, throw it in Excel, and then we can have a estimated establishment rate. then so we can kind of flip the script where we rather than design our seed mixes based on seeds per square foot.
we're actually trying to do now. And what I've kind of transitioned to is designing in expected seedlings per square foot. So that kind of gets that layer of a tech tree foil establishing really well, because it's got big seeds compared to an aster, a heath aster, it's got a tiny seed that establishes really low numbers. once that's, you know, once you can kind of get that
I've had pretty good success in my experience with some of our projects recently with having plantings that look a lot more like my seed mix.
Nicolas Lirio (18:07.918)
Interesting. So, well, first a little side note. I feel like if you uploaded the correct information that you're talking about to just an, uh, an LLM model of some sort, um, that, and then just very light training on it, you could say, Hey, I want to put these hundred species in at what rate should I put them in?
to get each one to show up over 30 acres or something. And it should be able to, because then Excel of that would be very complicated. You know, plug in.
Really? Yeah, you just have one little, it's a simple equation, right? I've already got one that works.
but so the hard you're saying the hard part earlier was figuring out what the actual success rate was of each species.
So what I was saying earlier is that if we wanted to make a really good, use the best knowledge that we could get to get a really good estimate of establishment that's really accurate, it would be really hard to do. But we can use this sort of simple approach where we just use seed size.
Nicolas Lirio (19:19.285)
okay.
Nicolas Lirio (19:26.562)
Hmm. That is and seed size seems to be very heavily correlated with interesting. That is so interesting. I like because I I understood a little bit that their success rate was a little different than germination. Right. And so Astor's I put I try to put a full seed a square foot in an Astor. I don't have to do that with Illinois bundle flower partridge pea. You know, especially the legumes. You don't have to do that. So trying to balance that out.
But then at the same time, if you put a seat a square foot of compass plant again, it's like the
Kent Boucher (20:03.43)
In a previous conversation with Laura, we were talking about stratification and then how long seed can remain viable. I don't know, maybe it's just an assumption I made up in my head, but it seems like legumes can last almost indefinitely in a seed column. I mean, from your work, you seen that?
I know this is kind of a hard pivot here, but it's like ask the expert time. So I want to, I want to get my questions.
All right.
I mean, is it accurate that, let's say if you had, I don't know, a lead plant seed, could it, if it got buried for whatever reason, let's say it fell on the ground in the 1850s and a bison smashed it into some wet ground or something, put it a foot down even in the soil column and then through years of other activity going on.
Would 50 years later if the soil got stripped away enough there and it was right at the proper depth for germinating where soil temp and all that are good, would it 50 years later, would you see, I mean, do you think a legume would show up again?
Justin Meissen (21:29.866)
I for, for lead plan, I don't really know. I do know that there are some species, unfortunately they're the ones like ragweed that can do that. Yeah. the, you know,
Yeah. It could just live forever.
Kent Boucher (21:48.29)
Seems like clover does that too, like red clover, white clover.
Where you can farm corn and beans for like 20 years and write in the red clothes.
sweet clover as well. Yeah. I suspect you would be able to, you know, it would do a live there for quite a while. you know, usually the, thing that gets our seeds is, you know, fungus predators. And so if you could create the conditions where you take those away, yeah, I think storage tends to be, I mean, obviously we take those away when we put them in the cooler, right?
Dry them out. Make sure nothing can Can get at them. So But yeah, yeah legumes and and hard hard coated species tend to be things that Yeah interesting
a long time. What about grasses? Do those, I mean, do those seeds last very long in the environment like that if they get buried in the seed column?
Justin Meissen (22:48.216)
The grasses are interesting because, you know, think at least talking to Laura, and we can see if this, they last quite a long time in the cooler. that you guys?
Shrill column, not seed column.
Kent Boucher (23:02.642)
Yeah, we've planted seed from here that we, to start a new field that was 12 years old and that came up great.
Yeah, but it's actually really, really short lived in the wild. Okay. So a lot of those warm season grasses have what we call a transient seed bank. So they basically only last in the seed bank for like a year or like less than a year. And so I think probably that's got to do with the fact that they're, you know, basically like
papery little coatings and very easy to attack from a funguses standpoint or another seed predator. so, so they don't really last in, in the, in the seed bank. And if you think about, you know, prairie seed banks are kind of weird because they're not that weird. This is not that uncommon of a situation, but they do not look like.
the above ground vegetation, right? You sometimes think, well, you whatever is growing above it, that's what seed banks can look like. Right? Sure. No way. Not at all. Really? There's almost no native grasses in the seed bank. Wow. And they are, what does persist in the seed bank is stuff like, you know, some of the legumes and,
Black-eyed Susan for sure really like for being a host data or I mean them vervein Yeah, stuff like that that you know,
Kent Boucher (24:42.094)
Because the seeds are just so tiny that they're harder to be depredated on.
I don't know exactly what it is about those seeds that make it so resistant, but there's something in there. And it's, sorry. no, I was just going to say it's a bummer because it's all the species that are not hard at all to get going.
of
Nicolas Lirio (25:08.078)
Well, it's interesting because we talked with Louie DeAger and he has this, he's like, everyone complains about these early successional species. Like there are weed and some are technically weeds, but are invasive. But he's like, those are the ones that need to be ready to go. You know, if you tilt the ground and that they are evolved for disturbance. Right. And so it's almost like they're in the ground ready to go, you know, to to cut like a cover crop just in case we're here, just in case anything, any disturbance happens. We're here just in case.
just in time for that big bluestem seed to come in on a buffalo's hide and get dropped in the next year. And that is fascinating.
What's the I guess maybe the right term would be evolutionary advantage to You know like delayed germination, you know the need for stratification on seeds So the one that that always sticks out to me is Canada anemone where it requires 180 days right 60 cold 60 warm 60 cold It just seems like that would be such a disadvantage to the plant
because so many things can happen to a seed. Sure. growing season.
Yeah, right. And you know, I think part of the calculus with a lot of, you know, we're talking about evolutionary advantage, something that, you know, us human beings don't tend to think about as much as like the timeframe on which evolution can happen. Cause we can be talking about,
Kent Boucher (26:39.886)
I think in a one year to one year.
You're talking about decades to centuries for changes to happen. so, you know, it, it, all it takes is, you know, a couple individuals to pass those genes along. And, and, know, in, in these really nasty scenarios where, you know, those conditions, you know, being able to stay dormant and not, you know, shoot your shot at the wrong time.
I think is over the long term, often pretty advantageous.
interesting
Can I, I'd like to play a little game and top of mind, if it's research space, that's amazing, but it doesn't have to be. I'm going to name a month and you give it a grade on what you think F to A for planting. All right. Let's start off easy one for natives, plenty of natives and it's a diverse native. So
Justin Meissen (27:32.929)
Okay, okay.
Kent Boucher (27:39.512)
Just start with the
first month you give me a month and I'll I won't stop talking
August.
August is okay. The easy one. Yeah. Bad for all situations. That's enough. Okay. Yeah. December is I would say I'd probably call it a B, B to a depending on the conditions, right? Like a warm December would be an a, I would say.
F
Nicolas Lirio (27:52.418)
December.
Nicolas Lirio (28:06.124)
Wow. Why?
So, know, all right. So when we're doing a diverse seeding, you know, we are mostly trying to get our Forbes to come up. That's the majority of our, of our species in our mix. And those, especially the ones that we are most interested in, like spring species and the fall species. So having that, you know,
phenological diversity. Our experiments that we've done here at Fulgrass Prairie Center has shown, you know, having that kind of early-ish mid planting time, dormant planting time, like November, December, gives, you know, it gets the species out there plenty of time to stratify. And so that's so far.
be worse if it's cold December than a warm December.
I will say, when I say cold December I mean snowy.
Nicolas Lirio (29:11.882)
okay, okay. All right, well, let's continue. November.
November A. A. That was my favorite season.
Is that your favorite season to
Because you hit it before the snow even if it's warm because our november's these days this year or this last year was very snowy and cold but three years in a row before that were warm
Yeah, we had 70 degree.
Justin Meissen (29:33.941)
I Yeah, I still here's a great example of why it doesn't bother me. Okay, so I think it was around Halloween or it was it was early November you know, I had already planted our natives and or I just planted a small little planting and we got it was the I was like 70 degrees and we got rain right like
Germination perfect timing for germination, right? Yeah, and we have a whole bunch of oat cover crop that we had played it in September Oat cover crop came up overnight started growing like crazy Native stuff does not have that same Just as a media germination response to those conditions
It has to be, I mean that's why it's not showing up till later into the summer because it takes a while. It has to be warm for a bit.
So that was always a fear of mine that customers would want to play it at that early window and be, I don't know. We get those 70 degree days, but that's not really a, there's not, it would have to be like weeks of sustained.
In my experience, we have not had any situations.
Nicolas Lirio (30:44.408)
So that line of thought, you made it sound like you planned in October, what would you grade October?
Highly variable. Okay. I think you could get some good successes, but
So if you had a cold fall, you'd be okay.
Yeah, I think you'd probably, I mean, if we're given a grade, I would say C.
Okay, okay, okay. That's higher than I thought it would have been. But so basically you would not almost ever plant before the first half of October and even the second half of October and even the second half of October is not ideal.
Justin Meissen (31:17.89)
I would say, I mean Halloween is usually my personal time where I don't, you I like to go after.
We always use Thanksgiving after we tell people between Thanksgiving and Christmas. Okay, this is good. Okay, January.
January probably going with a B. Okay same with I mean from a plants perspective I would say yeah, there's no not a huge difference between December and January. It's more of a You know, when can you get in there? Okay. Yeah, because I mean, you know you can see it on some small You know small amounts of snow and feel probably pretty good about it, but it doesn't take much the wind to problems
I tell people it's fine if it snows. It can't snow and then melt and then freeze. Cause then you get like a sheet, know, exactly. If you've got, if you got a little quarter inch of snow on it, know, and dad always told me never more than two inches, but he wouldn't plan over one inch of snow. I don't know. That was just a rule. Yeah. okay. Well February.
Couldn't freezing it onto the surface though be almost an advantage?
Justin Meissen (32:26.872)
If you can time it, 100%.
Yeah, I'm saying like if it melts the next day.
and yeah
If you can get that seed frozen onto the surface, that's great. like Nicholas was saying, you wouldn't want to see it onto ice. It has nowhere to stick unless you, there's so many little, unless this, unless that's.
because then it'll just blow up.
Nicolas Lirio (32:50.318)
zero zero win for three days and then it turns into 45 degrees and it melts. Yeah. Yeah, that seems very, uh, that seems like a risk I'm willing to take with my customer seat. Uh, February.
Okay, so so now we're getting into a little top of mind in terms of some research that I'm doing right now Okay, so we've got a new experiment that I'm gonna be planting this Could be late February could be early March
You just put out a bid for that, right?
I tend to get ahead of them so I sent that one out last year.
okay. Well, what did we bid on?
Justin Meissen (33:30.158)
I, well, I get into that.
for sure. Okay, okay, that's totally okay. Okay, cool. Cool.
Does kind of link into this project, but let's keep playing the game. like this game. It's good. But I think, we'll find out. I think my hypothesis is that it will be pretty good, especially because hopefully we'll hit the sweet spot between not sitting in the ground all winter, but also being able to provide some stratification to release dormancy for a lot of those species. Interesting.
Okay, okay.
It's just on the ground less to experience less problems.
Nicolas Lirio (34:09.88)
There's a guy we're good friends with, Skip Sly, he's a big deer hunter and has really pushed natives for deer hunting. are very grateful to that guy. A lot of natives are on the ground because of him. And he plants second half of February, first month of March is about the latest he'll do. Now he's looking for biomass. The first month of March is my favorite.
Week of March, not first month of March.
Some of the hides of March.
And he'll plant, you know, in that timeframe every year, but he's looking for biomass in his big bluestem switchgrass and stuff. And, you know, and he's always got the legumes in there as well. So those kinds of plantings are pretty successful for him. But again, he picks things that have high success rates and are legumes.
Yeah, well, that's really interesting to hear because that, you know, in theory you could kind of split the difference, but you could sort of get that early on stuff that you do get a hit from seeding in November from your grasses. So it's not.
Nicolas Lirio (35:14.262)
It's not as good for your grasses.
Not, no, it's not.
Wow, I did not know that.
Kent Boucher (35:24.256)
reason why November is your favorite because it gives a little bit
Forbes a bit of a, yeah. Yeah.
Who is to get the credit? That's interesting. Also, we should note that things with higher success rates are seeds that are more impressive. They probably have more nutrients and they also seem to line up with the kinds of seeds that deer like to browse on. So that's interesting to think about. Okay, March.
March probably gets a B, I would say.
Okay, okay and then April?
Justin Meissen (35:54.303)
A for some plantings.
C
For grass a for like quick establishment Grasses love it You have you get good Forbes as well, but You don't I mean so what happens in our so we do have some experiments looking at you know, looked at April versus Versus November and the the April plantings, you know super grassy
Decent, you know, good diversity, but not as much of those spring and fall Forbes. And that has persisted into like year seven.
Okay, interesting. So great summer for
Justin Meissen (36:41.998)
If you've got a cheap mix that's got mostly summer stuff and grasses, April's a great time. If you've got super high quality, tons of different Forbes, go for Dormant.
I feel so much smarter. Yeah, I feel so much smarter just listening to talk. Okay. Well, and may was when my dad said, he said, if you're going to plant the spring, do the second half of may before a rain. he, but he looked at prayers. Usually he was looking at the more biomass kind of, he likes him blazing stars and cut plants and stuff like that. So that's what he was looking for just as a grade, but
Yeah, may get to see for me. It is, I mean, again, though, it depends. If you're going for biomass, it's an A. I would say once you like, I would disagree that the tail end of May is kind of the ideal scenario. I've had some real bad luck with like,
Memorial Day type plantings.
Okay, well then what about you?
Justin Meissen (37:59.724)
June gets a D.
June gets a D. Okay. And.
That's interesting because I think for CRP recommendations, what is it? May 15? April 15 through June?
No, April 5th.
30. Yeah, yeah, I think.
Nicolas Lirio (38:15.628)
What, Ed, you would move that to November 1st until maybe May 15th?
For ideal situations. Yeah, I think you know, it's nice to have a little just in case you don't get around to it because that's
Well, you can apply for extensions as is, now people are applying for extensions in the July.
Right. That's, yeah, let's get to July.
So what's up with July? What do you rate?
Justin Meissen (38:38.978)
That. Def.
There's sand on the beach at that point.
Crazy.
That is so risky. Okay. I mean there are, I mean not to say that it couldn't happen. Like you could get good conditions. You could get a nice wet spell and they continue to get moisture, but it doesn't take but a, you know, a wet period followed by a super dry period, which not uncommon.
think you just changed my life. Alright, I will...
Kent Boucher (39:07.835)
This is all super helpful information.
Okay, I've got a little- sorry.
Well, I was just going to go back to mowing a little bit. one of the things one of the things I fear about mowing, we recently talked with Dr. Patrick Kaiser from Kentucky, University of Kentucky, think. That's right, University of Tennessee. Yeah.
It might be University of Tennessee.
Nicolas Lirio (39:29.708)
Also, I'm at notes. I'm not texting. I promise.
Whatever you Jen.
I'll just...
You do you, whatever.
I saw a meme the other day that said that that Gen Z is the first generation recorded to be less intelligent than the generation before them. I'm serious!
Nicolas Lirio (39:51.246)
That's your
Yeah, honestly, probably we grew up with phones and that actually hurts IQ point. I don't know
I don't know that that's actually true. It was just a study shows. I ended that.
It was amazing.
I can't get all of it. There was a comment I saw on Facebook.
Kent Boucher (40:11.95)
Do those like hour long commercials that show you exactly what you need in your life, call them infomercials or?
Yeah, he skips the news so that he can get his information from 11.
The Cheeto feeder or something like that. But Dr. Kaiser talked about mowing at a point where you're not getting, he had a term for it, like the growth zone or where the plant is most vulnerable.
I didn't know I needed that.
That's funny,
Kent Boucher (40:49.026)
A lot of people mow their prairies. We just, at the beginning of this podcast, talked about the important reason why. But I suspect that a lot of prairies get mowed too short. Like let's say if someone's got a, you know, 500 square foot little pollinator garden in their yard and they just mow it with their push mower or their.
Are they doing more damage to that prairie if they mow over it, you know, just at the level that they're mowing the rest of their yard, then they're helping it? Furthermore, would it be beneficial to let those plants maybe mow it once early in their growth cycle and then let them
If some of them, like a wild rye or some of like a side-oats grom or something, could go to seed in that first year of growth, would it be more advantageous to let it go to that seed producing phase that it fills in better the following year?
Yeah, that's an interesting question. in general, we, so we did it, we did our experiment, here at the dog grass, prairie center looking at, mean, we, it was just a simple mo traditional, you know, mo every month type thing. or no mo and what we used for mowing height was four inches. So that's, that's like,
pretty sure that
Justin Meissen (42:18.222)
in your typical mower deck that you get from Ace Hardware, that's as tall as it goes. But everybody usually has access to four inches. Six inches, great, but you need to be having a tractor. I don't know where else you'd be able to get a six to eight inch.
You ever notice that mowers are basically like getting a car, you know, like some of those mowers, they're like 25,000 bucks. Yeah, they're like a tank and you know, and they have a TV on them and they do your dishes. mean, it's crazy. You're just kids out there. The autopilot's odd. He just eat cheetos.
Insane,
Kent Boucher (42:48.32)
Have a Cheeto feeder?
Justin Meissen (42:54.912)
Well, f*** you!
Sounds like something on an infomercial. I mean, is it way better than to mow it at like that eight inch level?
For sure. What's, I would say Jerry's out on whether four inches is much better or worse than six to eight. I'd be a little.
Is anybody tracking it? Are you tracking it at all?
We haven't looked into that detail. I think there might be somebody in Missouri's looking at that in more detail. but, for sure, if the question is, do you mode short or not mode at all? Definitely you mo. So that's interesting. Yeah.
Justin Meissen (43:39.47)
Now I will say I'll qualify that a little bit with a the weed pressure in these research plots was like insane so it was a ton of giant ragweed and Okay, other thing I will say is that if you saw those plots the first year when the giant ragweed was nine feet tall and And this happened people said like this is not gonna work. You need to take care of this. I'm like, we'll see
you
I challenge you to go out there and really show me which ones were on mode and which ones were not.
So they pull out of it down the road.
Yeah, if you get the establishment.
Nicolas Lirio (44:21.846)
and all the species pull out of it?
So here's the other thing, it's not that they're no different, Mowing is still better, but we're talking about the difference of 25%. It's not 100 % and 0%. I think a lot of people thought.
Well, I've been blasting him recently, but John Judson, he mows straight through two years, four times a summer. And he mows, he says, when it hits your knees, go down to your ankles. And that dude gets good looking.
yeah, that's good.
Okay, yeah, you'd go all way through second year. But dad always said that 4th July, the second year, do your last mowing and be done. But you think it's good, just go on through.
Justin Meissen (45:07.426)
I think so. think so the the so what John's approach and I you know, I think even sometimes recommends even more That like that's really good for your conservative species that take a long time to get going so stuff like Lead plant. I mean, I don't know if you've watched lead plant grow in a in a restoration context, but
Like watching paint dry.
Yeah, but like year three it's you know, it's only like Five inches tall a lot of the time unless you get really good conditions. Hmm. So Those are the kind of plants that are super benefited from getting all that light the first two years when they're really small so
What determines the conservancy number? Now, here's what I know about it. And then I would like you to fill it in because I don't really know how it's determined at all. Low conservancy is a species like black-eyed Susan. Usually low conservancy numbers are heavy in CRP mixes because they're cheap, because they're easy to establish. High conservancy numbers are 7, 8, 9 on the conservancy scale. And they are things, I think some sedges get that high.
Or a shirt maybe.
Nicolas Lirio (46:25.826)
No, think Culver's Root might be lower. Maybe some Blazing Stars that take several years to get in there. Blue-eyed grass would be like a 10. What I know is that they're really desired. They're usually very expensive. And I understand why they're expensive. It's because it's easier to produce and grow something that is easy to get to grow, and low conservancy numbers get or grow easier. That's like their whole thing. But is it?
Like what actually determines it? Is it just how late it comes into the season?
great question. think a lot of people kind of, you know, their, their interaction with it is, know, in the seed calculator or something like that. And, and you, yeah, if you're using it alongside that process, you see that association between cheap seeds, low conserved coefficient conservatism, expensive high numbers. But the coefficient conservatism has really nothing to do with
the ease of or cheapness of species. It has everything to do with how often is this plant found in conservative places like non undisturbed habitats. like a great example is a Kalmsbrough. Okay. You do not see it anywhere.
Does that count me out?
Justin Meissen (47:50.924)
Yes. Bros count me. I pray broom. Yeah. So the only place you were gonna find that in Iowa or in the Midwest generally is in a prayer. Okay. Wow. It's not that expensive and it comes up super easy, right? That's kind of the counterpoint. Yeah. It's got a coefficient of conservatism like nine or 10. Now. Yes. Blue eyed grass also has like a coefficient of conservatism of 10.
And it doesn't produce any seed. It produces like one seed that's the size of a mite. And then you collect like 20,000 plants and you get a thimble worth the seed. And then you're like, well, I just spent three months doing this. So you got to charge 5,000 bucks. You know, it's just a crazy plant. And I would love to have it it is so pretty. It is incredible. Blue eye grass and John Judson, the prairie that he like his personal prairie, it's not in CRP or anything.
Right, which one?
Nicolas Lirio (48:43.926)
He has so much of it. It'll have like a hue in some areas. You look at it from a distance of a hue that but he's like, yeah, but you can't collect the seed off of it because there's yeah. Anyway, sorry. I interrupted you.
Yeah. it's so yeah. So coefficient conservatism or is, is, is a, a number that tells you how, you know, how, how much that plant has to have undisturbed habitat. So you have things like black eyes Susan that it's in every Prairie remnant, but it's also everywhere else. Right. And so, so you get low, low coefficient conservatism plants tend to be.
You know stuff that you find everywhere prairies ditches next to the road that kind of thing now that doesn't mean that they're not desirable right like a lot of our milkweeds have low coefficient conservatism But super important. Yeah very and there are some of them are hard to get going right like World milkweed really low coefficient conservatism very expensive a
so transient. It almost acts like a biennial where it hangs out in a place for three years, just a random wild place. And then you go back to the ditch where it was maybe to hope hand collect gone. And there might be a patch twice the size down the road a mile that wasn't there. I don't understand that stinking. It's such a weird plan.
Here we had carol chasing it all over the farm. He said I'll never do that again.
Justin Meissen (50:09.89)
No
Nicolas Lirio (50:15.342)
There were patches all like the size of this room. He was going around trying to harvest these ra-
I mean we had our regular production areas, then like Nick said they would just show up for different areas
It was over like 1200 bucks that year. then it plummeted down to like $400. And I think because it's so transient, the market either has plenty or doesn't have any, you know, and so.
Yeah
Kent Boucher (50:39.662)
You know, an interesting thing in the seed production world is fertilizing. And obviously that's a huge part of, you know, commodity crops and, you know, having a successful, you know, corn production here. I've heard mixed results on it because weeds are such a,
big part of what we do. Carol didn't like fertilizing because he said you're not just fertilizing the big bluestem can't you're fertilizing all the weeds too. And also I've heard a lot of people complain that when you fertilize prairie you get way more biomass but you don't get more seed production. Have you have you done any research on on fertilizing?
Yeah, my, we personally haven't done, any, least I haven't done any here at the center, but, yeah, the literature is pretty, I think, you know, it's pretty unambiguous that added fertilizer is not good for diversity. So if you have, you know, biomass or, and like you're saying, yeah, I don't, I don't know enough about seed production to know whether that's kind of.
Help or hurt but sure but yeah, I mean if we're talking about restoration definitely is not a not a benefit
But maybe if you were just bailing big blue stem and switchgrass, that'd be about your benefit there.
Justin Meissen (52:17.696)
It's, it's maybe, but it's hard to justify the cost of what that would be compared to what you'd get.
And I got to think that so much of like corn fertilization because people don't really fertilize beans, but they they fertilize corn around but those hybrids are are tweaked so that actually uptake of that nutrients going towards the fruit of the plant instead of the instead of the you know, just the stock and the leaves and So yeah, it's probably now there is a guy Bob woven
has done a lot of experimentation and training with this and he's found some interesting stuff out. So if you're listening to this, you want more on prairie fertilization.
Was it like episode 80? It was like a long-
Spring of 23, I think.
Nicolas Lirio (53:09.662)
Wubin was either W U B B E N W U B E N one of the two. But okay, I got two more things that I came. I wanted to ask you about. I, maybe someone else has a term for this. I call it secondary successional species, early successional species. You, you know, me, the researcher,
Next we'll be the Prairie Textbooks.
Nicolas Lirio (53:33.711)
And, early successional speech. People know these black eyed Susan, any of those annual species that, Kent was complaining about that are native.
I'm an apologist for those species.
And but then there's like secondary successional. I would put most of the elements in this category. They kind of come up after the early successional and they hang out a little longer than them. I would put a stiff goldenrod in this stiff goldenrod. If you plant it in a prairie at like a seat of square foot, it will be everywhere for like six years. And then it kind of.
takes a backseat. It's there longer than the elements is the wild rise, but it still does end up taking a backseat. And there's, I wouldn't put code.
Maybe like sweet black eyed Susan.
Nicolas Lirio (54:25.518)
I haven't seen that in prairies at different stages. I've been to it and it shows up pretty strong year three, four, five.
I'm flowering.
Kent Boucher (54:38.03)
I'm thinking and then one that holds on forever is like wild bergamot. I always see that gray headed cone flower.
But you know, there's kind of these like middle ones. Is there any research or any categorization for that?
Not that I know of, but I think that is a good, I mean, that's a good way to think about restoration because those are the, lot of those species, you know, if you're new to it and you're not sort of expecting that, sort of these stages, you can get very frustrated. I think everybody knows, you everybody can tell you that, you know, yeah, black eyed Susan, you can get it for this year, but you know, it's going to be gone. know, and I think most people,
are not surprised to see that go away. But things like the elements, things like oxeye, things like that, tend to, in our experiments, oxeye is usually sticking around for five, six years and then just kind of slowly declines. And for a lot of our C mixes, especially in our CRP experiments, that was like the biggest.
producer of flowers. And so if you had not kind of anticipated that, you know, that would not be good. I think you'd have a really nice planting and then, well, halfway through your contract, you've got nothing much. yeah, I do think that's kind of, there's a second tier of species that tends to, they're not slow per se, but they're, they're not fast. So.
Nicolas Lirio (56:21.378)
Well, I mean, you can't compare it to like, what is meta is it linguistic metal blazing star, the actress Ling Ling something
Yeah, L.E.G. of Silas,
Thank you. You're so close.
I've seen it so many times. I really want-
But that stuff shows up like year seven. mean, it just like just waits forever to show up in the first. And but I I was just curious if there was you do feel like there is kind of a.
Justin Meissen (56:52.344)
Here's what I will say this though. You know, I think a lot of our, our intuition about how, you know, how, you know, things coming in later is more of a function of, you know, they're not necessarily coming in later to say that they're germinating later. It's that they're just not flowering early. So, I mean, I very regularly find, you know, like lead plants, flocks.
I even find, you know, blue eyed grass in the first two years. Now I've never seen that flower in the first like five years. So it's one of those things where from, you know, I'm, I'm the weirdo who goes in.
gets on his hands and knees and like literally identifies every single plant in a quadrat. Right. That's not something that most people want to do. So, um, so I think we kind of have this idea that things are not, uh, there when they're there, they're just not obvious to us.
Well, I've got I just have one more question and then kept my have some more, but I'm a little concerned. So the native seed industry in the Midwest, I'm very grateful. It's one of the most robust native ecological, you know, industrial machines that there are. And so I'm grateful for that. But we've really all the species now, not perfectly, but I'd say 80 to 90 percent of species that can be done.
easily are done. And we now have 0.01 % of the remnant prairie that used to be, but we have a few percent, many times that in CRP that have used the same, I mean, really the same 30, 40 species, but we could say the same 60 species, same 70 maybe. And then you've got some specialty people who are really wanting to do a good job and they might put.
Nicolas Lirio (58:58.766)
90 species right that's like an insane if I saw a thing with 90 species of it like boy this is going to take me a while to
I CRP or backyard, know, prairie garden. Any kind of reestablishment.
Yes, in any anything 99.9 % of the biomass or the amount of seeds that are put on the ground are the same 60 species, even though there were hundreds, right? All right next to each other, 100 within an acre. And what do we I'm concerned about that? Do you have any concerns about it? Have you ever thought about it? And maybe I shouldn't be concerned about it. I don't know.
Yeah, I mean, I'm definitely concerned about it. It's, there's always, we can always do a lot better. I think the, the, one of the values of CRP and, know, kind of these kinds of plantings that you're talking about are in my mind, they're kind of stepping stones to sort of get people who had no idea or
did not care about native plants, sort of interested in the native plant camp to where maybe there's a follow-up where next time they might, you know, wow, I had such a good experience with all these 50 species, then we'll.
Justin Meissen (01:00:25.974)
You know, there's a lot more out there that I could get. I could get even more bees. I could get even more insects like that kind of a stepping stone. Now I'm being quite optimistic about that. But I do think that our ability to do ecological restoration in the Midwest is it's like
moon landing stuff, man. Like this is, there's nowhere else in the world where a person can just go out and buy, you know, 80 % of what would be in a remnant, right? Like in a super biodiverse area, like the tall grass prairie. And you know, I, that's one of the, so we have a project, the tall grass prairie called Irvin Prairie. And this is a, amazing project where we've been able to
Basically, we've been gifted 300 acres of land to basically push the boundaries of what you can do with Doggers Prairie restoration in the context of, you a small team. So you were talking about, well, you've seen my bed sheets, right? Like those, I get all those species from most of them. I take, you know, I throw a wide net across the whole Midwest and usually
I'm able to get 120 species or so.
So diversity for you is better than ecotype.
Justin Meissen (01:02:01.069)
Yes, and this is
Really, I would not expect you to have said that.
Yeah, well, let me tell you about, we've, so through the Irving Prairie project, right? So let me, let me bring up some numbers here. Cause I got, that's part of this project is, you know, actually tracking numbers. What exactly did we plant out there? How much did it cost? you know, when did we plant it every three years? How is it changing? So we're just like really dialed in to.
how this project is going and doing as much research as we can on that project. But currently, we've been able to seed 162 different species out there. Wow. And on average, the amount of species that we seed in a year is about, it ranges from like 120 to 150.
And that's just like, no, we're doing. So what we're doing is what I call adaptive restoration. So this is where we we've chopped this project up into a bunch of small pieces. So it's 300 acres. We're not doing it all at once. We're doing a little bit at a time, about 40 acres a year. So each year we have an opportunity to buy all this seed, try new things, see what's working, what's not working. Um, and then kind of, um,
Kent Boucher (01:03:05.422)
Is that interceding that you guys are doing?
Justin Meissen (01:03:34.424)
you know, choosing and keep doing the things that are working and not waste their time with stuff that's not. And I think the thing that I've come away with is, you know, by looking at those numbers, looking at, okay, so I have all these bids, right? I've got 10 years of bids from, usually eight or nine vendors will be able to supply me with a bid.
And I evaluate those bids in a, I got a script that I use to rank them based on a variety of things. The most important thing is distance that I use to rank them. So if I get, so folks give me county information, I use that to calculate how far any given lot is from our situation. you know.
Huxley's stuff is very close. you guys get ranked really high.
How much of it do you get from within 100 to 150 miles?
Most of it. Yeah. So, you know, obviously we're blessed by having Alan Dan as well and, you guys and, just generally speaking, growers and Minnesota growers. yeah.
Nicolas Lirio (01:04:43.17)
Wow.
Nicolas Lirio (01:04:59.862)
It's a very strong. is the strongest Iowa, Minnesota and a little bit Missouri. It's the strongest native seed market.
Yeah. And, and it production, if you throw a little bit wider net, right? Like here's, you will never get 150 species from a single grower. like that's so much of your time, right? For a small project. But if we can, like we can automate it, it's like, I used to spend like a month on
Right,
Justin Meissen (01:05:37.194)
on my seed buys, you know, putting them all together, evaluating it and like, and finally at the end of it, I'd be, you know, sending out orders and then it's like, yeah, we don't have that anymore. No, obviously, cause it took me too long to get you an order out, but now I'm able to do it in like a couple of days and it's, it's crazy how much I wrote that I developed that process to evaluate bids in a
Why wait, what changed?
Nicolas Lirio (01:06:03.182)
Okay.
Justin Meissen (01:06:06.764)
you know, automatically. So just write a little program to figure that stuff out. You code. A little bit, yeah.
You ever use use Claude to code at all?
I don't really use LLMs that much.
Do you have a philosophical disagreement?
Kinda a yes, but I'm still not like, you know.
Kent Boucher (01:06:26.158)
That's all this Prairie Management advice.
Have you ever asked an LLM a prayer question? just wait. And you would think there's enough papers out there that it could get some decent info. is. yikes.
I have. It's terrible. It's really bad.
Justin Meissen (01:06:41.378)
So think so it is It's nice. That's mostly in the reason why I don't use them because I see you know in my domain of expertise what it has to say and it's It ain't good. Yeah, I just want to go back to kind of finish that train of thought, know that you brought up something super important that I That's you know really guides the way that I think about things with per restoration and buying seed is the
the trade off between getting high biodiversity in terms of species versus high, you know, quote unquote appropriate biodiversity in terms of genetics. So, you know, I had to look at the trying to come up with a number off the top of my head, but it's something around like 40 % less species I would have been able, you know, I ran the counterfactuals, right? So like, if I were to,
Completely say it. All right. I'm not gonna do anything over 172 miles, which is like the only place I've ever found someone willing to Make a definition for local So thank you for for that Larson at all. Yeah Because it's so that's you know, so, you know if you were using these really strict ecosystem type sourcing mechanisms
you are missing out on tons of species. And I think that I'm willing to, you know, kind of take the risk that something that's 200, 300 miles away is going to be, and I can tell you from experience that at least in the near term, I don't have much evidence to show that it's not a good thing. So,
So you think Ecopype is better? Yes. You like it, you weight it, definitely better, diversity is better than nothing.
Kent Boucher (01:08:49.805)
like that philosophy.
That's probably about where I'm at.
I've you know coming now that we have we have a lot of options to do computationally intensive stuff now and so Like I just we just if you can come up with a good ranking system like there's no need to do binary stuff The same way anymore like we don't need to say like it has to be local ECO type like you can say like I want it really bad and if you Are willing to provide it to me. I'll pay X amount
for that. And that's what I do in my program. I usually am willing to go 20 to 30 % over. And usually I don't have to pay that much. Usually it's, mean, from a markup standpoint, for me to get what I want in terms of like prioritizing the most local source, it's usually under 10.
percent.
Nicolas Lirio (01:09:52.974)
Interesting. Is it on a sliding scale? Like it's a continuous spectrum of or are there tiers? If you're outside this many miles, then it's this. If you're outside of this.
It's it's it's all continuous except for like there's some like cutoffs where I'm like, okay, that's too much like yeah I think it's like 700 miles or something like poke. So it's such a good example is Pope lusters. I don't if Laura told you about How she's going for? Foul bluegrass. Yeah, okay now, I don't know if you guys have been
Yep.
Justin Meissen (01:10:30.328)
folks have requested from you and you've gone out and tried to source it for somebody. But all of my endeavors have come up with, I usually get a bid back and they're always from Canada. Not even anything more specific than that, Canada. Every single time. And it's like, that's such an important species that, and you have,
Far East Coast.
Nicolas Lirio (01:10:50.786)
Well, yeah, that's tough.
Justin Meissen (01:10:59.854)
I'm not gonna just get that. So, you know, that goes at the bottom of the pile. It doesn't even get evaluated. And so there's those kind of things where it's like, I think we would all consider. That's not a good idea. Let's avoid that.
That's crazy. No buying seat off Tamu.
Yeah, yeah, no, All right, we got to wrap up because Kent is kids got to get home to his wife.
Who has to go to work.
Got the nighttime nurse shift, but I have one more question. Should be, should be pretty easy. I don't know. We'll see aliens show up on earth and they say we have a trained alien and native prairie and they're going to do trivia against your selected native prairie expert. Otherwise the earth is destroyed. Who would you vote for?
Justin Meissen (01:11:48.984)
Prairie related trivia. man.
mostly scientific.
Justin Meissen (01:11:57.738)
Let me think. I guess. I don't know, man. Like, maybe Carl Kurtz? Okay.
Yeah, I was thinking Carl. I was also thinking Dr. Ross Berg, maybe
Yeah, Tom, Tom would be.
Yeah, we'd be like, okay, I'm basically trying to figure out who knows the most in the world about North America.
We all have our own little niche. Yeah.
Nicolas Lirio (01:12:24.15)
Yeah, man, that's really
I noticed how he just said that word. Yeah, the right way.
next
I think they're all good.
There's a right way and there's an annoying way. Nick likes the annoying way.
Nicolas Lirio (01:12:35.988)
It's just, it's just niche. It's just, that's how you say it. Man, Justin, we really appreciate the work you do. I, I would hate doing what you're doing and do it, doing all the spreadsheet analysis and research that you're doing. I, I'm very grateful that you like doing it. And I benefit greatly from yeah, the whole Midwest.
Yeah. I have one last question. Yeah. If there was one advancement for like prairie management, like, maybe it's a, a new herbicide or maybe it's, you know, harvesting equipment for getting, you know, really difficult, you know, like where you gotta be there on the hour to get the seed or cleaning equipment or
You
Kent Boucher (01:13:24.64)
I don't know what, you know, something to make the prairie reconstruction world stronger. You ever, you ever fantasize about what that, if I could just have this, this would be my magic.
I would say, mean, I've always fantasized about like large scale plug planting machines. yeah. mean, I've talked to folks in California who apparently do that.
Yeah, it could totally be done. Yeah.
It would take a pretty strong tractor though because it would have to be so I mean you could offset rows I'm sure but like I think of how many there's a lot of resistance for the play.
just pulling and you don't have to lift it like ours does. I bet you could do it with our ad co. Well, well, and it depends on what you mean by large scale. mean, 60 row, you know, that's different than.
Justin Meissen (01:14:15.63)
of acres.
Yeah, when I was in the end of middle school, my neighbor came over and we sat on the back of the plug planter for two straight weeks and we planted 15 acres of sedges and it took us two straight weeks to plant, you know, forever.
It's a timing thing too, with you know, how coming around the wheels and digging into the dirt and then.
That would actually be kind of brilliant if you plug, if you could large scale plug plant Forbes and then the next year come in and seed grasses.
Yeah, you could definitely come up with a list of
Kent Boucher (01:14:55.839)
That's actually a brilliant, I mean, cause if you went to just like a 12 row, mean, think of how much time.
And you don't need to be plugging in grey-headed cone flower, you know what I mean? yeah, right.
Yeah
good point. Yeah, she plugs in it. Well, I don't know, maybe maybe the
Would you do like lead plant and the blazing star stuff?
Justin Meissen (01:15:17.559)
Yes, yes, could come up with a beautiful list for you guys. Yeah
It's it's well, so what they do is it's actually a long string of plugs and they each have a little pockets like tape and then the tape separates to create a little plug. And so it's like a bendy like and then you put it in like you put ammo in a box. You know what I'm talking about? And for like a minigun and then it just the tape slowly goes in and it feeds the thing continuously. One long tape. So you actually can have the trays.
I really like that idea.
Nicolas Lirio (01:15:51.906)
and you're feeding the trays or watering the trays and then, but then someone would have to be there feeding those tapes into the thing. But I don't know how big the machines get that actually plug plan.
Yeah, and then, know, as with all fantasies, once you really try to make it work, it all falls apart. How do you water it in? That kind of thing.
If only we had a billion dollars, we'd be able to make...
There you go. There's my other fantasy.
well, Justin, thank you so much. We really appreciate you. And you got strong, brilliant mind. I wish I had your brain. That would be that'd be good for me, I assume. But yeah, if you want to do conservation, you don't have to have a strong of a mind as Justin. But it does start there because conservation starts one mind at a time.
Justin Meissen (01:16:30.776)
Thanks, man.
