Prairie Planting

Last Friday I planted our school prairie with the help of every student in my school. Together almost two acres where reverted back to tall grass prairie. We planted prairie plant plugs and then broadcasted a seed mixture across the entire plot. In the first photo you can see how big 1.6 acres actually is. The brown area is my prairie. We had to kill the non-native grass first in order to establish our native plants. The brown area will once again be green in no time.

In the above picture, Dave from the Prairie Center is getting the prairie plant plugs ready for distribution. I am helping him count out about 24 plugs per section. Each classroom had a section to plant in the prairie. The weather was great. It was about 75% and no rain. However, I am wishing for some rain now so that the prairie can get growing.

Here I am showing a class how to remove the plant from the plastic plug container. Each student planted one or more plugs in their section of the prairie. My voice was tired after explaining two steps to each class. We had about 25 classrooms come out to plant the prairie. The classes ranged from pre-school to fifth grade.


The last step was to broadcast the mixture of seed throughout the sections of prairie. What we did was the graduate students that came to help mixed the seeds with sand. The sand helps the seeds from blowing all over when throwing it over the land. It also helps to better distribute the seed evenly throughout the sections. I recieved the thousands of dollars worth seeds, herbicide, tractor, grad. students (3), four tons of sand, and a prairie sign for no charge. It was a true demonstration of grace. What am I goning to do next year to top this?????