07/07/2025
Labor of love....
This is me, I am a land manager and doing every bit of it every spare second that I have. Most weekends and evenings, in my free time I spend it managing CRP acres and other parts of our own and neighboring farms. I pride myself on how good our acres look, how our early succession timber is mostly invasive free (due to hand saw, stump treatment and annual foliage spraying), how our pollinators plots are in tip top shape and our native grassland acres are gorgeous. Seeing the wildlife use all of these acres is just as enjoyable as my own personal view of these sites. A passer by could easily mistake these beautiful fields as a set it and forget it program, he planted it and now look at it! This is absolutely not the case. All acres that are maintained as grasslands or flower plantings are constantly trying to be overtaken by bush honeysuckle, autumn olive and every tree species in the nearby timber, plus new invasives. Annual maintenance for me is burning 1/3 of the fields in spring or fall, mowing fire breaks and spot spraying invasive in May/June and then mowing 1/3 of all the acres the first week of August at the end of the primary nesting period. Spot spraying invasive plants again in July after first treatment is visible to get what was missed and new arrivals. Clethodum or grass killing herbicide is sprayed on fire breaks to keep clover strong, 24d or crossbow is used on the invasive broadleaves and trees all year long. I am clipping and bagging Canadian and musk thistles that I missed initially to burn. We manage 60 acres of CRP on 15 different fields that are actually in a program but we do the same management on at least half of the 400 acres we are responsible for, program or not. The pastures are another topic and thistle is the big pain on them for me. Throw in a dozen food plots for dove, quail, deer and all the animals and birds and it is a full time job, but one that I do outside of my full time job. Success in the fall depends on the time and work applied during the rest of the year and we apply gobs of it. The amount of diesel, chemical, parts and (big one here) TIME, that I apply to these acres would be mindblowong to most. I often say that if you are earning a annual crp payment you can figure 1/3 to 1/2 of that to go towards maintenance and management.
This has all gotten to be an even bigger struggle more recently with the introduction of Sericia Lespedeza to our native and CRP acres. This plant is displayed in the first 4 photos after me on the atv. It has absolutely no forage or wildlife value and is the most aggressively spreading invasive we have seen, due to its enormous seed bank. Year 1 it can be a single stem, year 2 that one plant has hundreds covering a 20x20 space, year 3 triple that and so on. In years 4-5 you could have a monoculture of it. Spraying it twice during the growing season is best but identification is tough because it looks like the rest of what you are trying to grow. Its not a big tree or a larger shrub towering above the rest of the stand. It sets seed mid August so mowing after the first of August is going to spread it everywhere you drive that tractor and chopper. I typically drive the tractor through the fields in June to locate it and then grid spray with atv after, same again in July and August. There is no easy out on this one, it will be change how we manage these fields here soon. It likes fire but fire can get rid of old growth and have younger plants that are more succeptible to herbicide treatment, so fire is still good so long as you do herbicide applications during the next growing season. I wanted to create this post in hopes it may help others ID and start the annual eradication process of this new problem plant.
I will next post some happy pictures of beautiful thriving plants and fields.
