Field of Science

Prairie field work - late spring edition

The prairie is slow to get going, but then the vegetation blasts out of the ground. This makes some of our treatments more difficult. Today's nutrient augmentation treatment wasn't too bad, but let's see to put 7 g of nitrogen on each square meter plot using 12-12-12 fertilizer, you need hmm, how many grams?? But the real trouble is the 128 plots. Used the Sawyer approach to get a young back to assist with this very fascinating research. Part of this is to figure if hemiparasites function as nitrogen thieves and how that affects the rest of the prairie community. The other plots are to see if increasing the competition from grasses will negatively affect an invasive bush clover. So now things will certainly grow faster and better, oh boy! Wild camassia was in flower, a very pretty wild flower. Sorry, forgot to take a progress picture to compare with the one posted a month or so ago.

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