36. The Native Meadow Experiment – Maintenance

It has been great to watch my native grass and wildflower meadow flourish this summer, with lots of grass growth and great flowers from the Poppies, Lupine and Yarrow.  Now fall has arrived and its time to cut back the grasses and think about other maintenance tasks.  (To catch up on the earlier parts of the Meadow Experiment, you can go back to this first blog entry and learn more.)

“Mowing” the Grass

Because this is the second autumn that my grasses have been in the ground, they are well established and ready for a trim.  Most of the grasses I used are cool season bunchgrasses, which have their big growth spurt in the cool winter season and form a tough clump instead of the typical rhizomatous lawn grasses that form an even mat.  This means that you don’t mow them in the traditional lawn sense, but you do need to occasionally cut the clumps back to between 4 and 6 inches high.  There are mowers that can be set high enough to do this job, but hand clippers were fine for my small area.  The trimming removes the dead grass blades (called thatch) and gives more space for new ones to grow in.  Because new growth is from the base of the plant, you cut back the entire clump to open up space.

Fall is the general season for this annual grass trimming, but the exact timing varies according to the weather and your specific microclimate, as well as your personal preference.  I did my trimming over a period of six weeks based mainly on how brown each type of grass was looking and how long our hot and dry season lasted.  There is forage and habitat value to grasses in the fall, especially the seed heads - I have seen all kinds of birds amongst the seed heads in my meadow, so its good to let the seeds develop.   The drying seed heads are also nice looking and worth keeping around purely on aesthetic grounds.  The key is to cut them back before regular winter rain and cool temperatures arrive and kick in a growth spurt.

This manual cutting back of the grasses is a substitution for natural processes that the grasses evolved with: animal grazing and wildfires.  Native grasslands were grazed by animals like deer and elk, and periodic grass fires served to naturally renew the grasslands.  When you do cut things back, you might leave the seed heads there on the ground for the birds, or even do a little spreading of the seed on to the soil to encourage new seedlings.

It has been really interesting to watch how quickly various grass types have grown back – the Festuca idahoensis ‘Tomales Bay’ grew back the fastest, showing lots of new green blades within 6 weeks, while most of the others are slower.  The Poppies also seeded prolifically, to the point of overwhelming some of my pathways, so I’ll have to take some of them out!

Other Maintenance

The annual fall trimming of the grasses is the most unique maintenance aspect of the native meadow, but it is not the only task.  Even though they can take place at different times of year, there are several other regular maintenance tasks that I will go ahead and touch on.  These include fertilization, pest and disease control, weed control, division and irrigation upkeep.

Fertilization, Pest and Diseases

When you put non-native plants in the ground, you may end up constantly battling improper soil, and dealing with insect or disease attacks that the plant did not evolve to fight against.  But with native plants, there should be much less maintenance in these terms.  If you have done a good job preparing the soil prior to planting, then you shouldn’t need to do much fertilizing of a native grass meadow for years to come.  Top dressing the soil surface with organic compost, or the use of an organic slow-release fertilizer once a year can be done to help keep things growing well.  Always keep an eye out for signs of pests and diseases and act accordingly, but with healthy soil and native species, you should have less to worry about.

Weed Control

As I’ve talked about before, weed control is a big issue with establishing a native grass meadow, but once the plants are established, the weed issues should not be as bad.  This is because the plants fill in and shade out the ground where weeds might sprout, and you have been reducing the seed bank in the soil more and more with the pulling of each little weed seedling.  For large planting areas the techniques previously discussed can be used, such as pre-emergent herbicides, controlled burns, or controlled grazing.

Division

It can be good to divide grass clumps in the late fall to give them more room to grow, and as they get older and bigger I may do this, but I haven’t seen a need for it so far.  Division is done after cutting the grass back as described above, preferably on a cloudy moist day when the shock of the digging and dividing will be reduced.  I won’t go into detail on this fairly standard gardening practice but essentially you dig up the clump and divide it into pieces and plant each piece in its own spot to grow to maturity.

Irrigation Maintenance

As with any garden area, it is good to perform regular maintenance on the irrigation system.  You may or may not have one for your native grass meadow (I don’t), or you may have installed something temporary.  Hopefully by the second or third year you don’t need regular irrigation, so you could go ahead and remove a temporary system.  If you do have a permanent system it is good to check all the parts for leaks and proper operation, and flush the lines annually.

So, the goal is to have a self-sustaining native landscape that doesn’t need much maintenance, and things are starting to work pretty well in my little meadow.  I began with a pattern of lines of grasses, but now I’m letting things grow on their own into a more natural pattern.  A few grasses have died and others have grown to take up more space than I thought, and this spring the wildflowers are going to really fill in, so it will be fun to see how things continue to evolve!

References:

Handouts and Notes from my attendance at the California Native Grass Association’s workshop:  Using California Native Grasses in the Water-Conserving Landscape www.cnga.org

Creating a California Native Meadow by David Amme, as published in Grasslands, A publication of the California Native Grass Association.