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We moved out of town in 1991
Our place is about two miles west of the Grand River. The
Grand River valley has many feeder creeks. The creeks cut deep valleys,
particularly as they tumbled down to the river. Some of the creeks have
their own feeders...at least in wet weather. The feeders cut their own
gullies. The gullies have fingers of raised land separating them. Time
and vegetation has softened the features. Still, from 40,000 feet, the
valleys branching off valleys branching off river must look like frost
on a December window. Our ten acres is on one of those fingers. It is oriented
with the base of the finger to the North and the tip to the South.
Michigan is flat country, bulldozed by countless glaciers.
The receding glaciers left a layer cake of gravel, sand, clay. Our property
has a whopping 35 feet of elevation difference. That is huge for our part
of Michigan.
Our ten acres is 440 yards in the North-South direction and
110 yards in the East-West direction. The change in elevation exposed several
types of soil. The sand layer is exposed at the tip of the finger and underlies
the majority of the property. Above that is a layer of clay. These layers,
and the finger-like topography are the major factors in the hydrology of
my property. Soil, especially clay, is plastic over time. A layer of clay
with more overburden will flow outward, much like a sheet of pudding with
a big scoop of ice-cream plopped into the center. The top of the clay layer
becomes slightly bowl shaped and tends to collect water. It is highly paradoxical
that the top of a hill should need drainage and the bottom of the hill
is a dry as a bone, until you know the mechanics of clay and where it falls
in the soil profile. Knowledge of the soil profile does not come out of
a book. It comes from sticking a shovel into it.
My property drains down the south-west corner. There is an
alfalfa field immediately to the south of my property. There is a woods/swamp
off the south-east corner, mostly silver maple and dying elm. The creek
runs a quarter mile south of my south property line. Soggy woodlots are
connected by the creek like pearls on a necklace. The woodlot off my south-east
corner is one of those pearls. The property to my east is in Corn-Beans-Miami
rotation. The road is to the north. An electric fence and continuously
grazed pasture is to my west.
The property had five mature trees on it. Three were box
elder and one was a weeping willow. The property had a 1400 square foot
ranch house, 6000 square feet of barns and a shallow well, jet pump capable
of 3 quarts of water a minute.
You have to travel half a mile up-wind to find the next mature
tree. The creek that drains into the Grand River runs east-west and our
finger of raised land sticks out into the creeks valley. Our finger of
land gets scoured by the wind.
One of our first priorities was to plant trees. We missed
the first planting season due to the hustle-and-bustle of moving. The horse
pasture grew up to orchard grass. We did get two honey locust planted on
the south-west corner of the house. We moved them bare-root from my dad's
place. The tallest one was 15'. They both survived. My dad had liberated
them from a storm drain in the parking lot of the local middle- school.
That fall I dug holes. I planted trees. The trees disappeared.
The next spring we sneezed as the orchard grass pollinated. We dug holes.
We planted trees. They disappeared. The next fall we dug holes. We planted
trees. They disappeared.
A healthy eco-system is a resilient thing. The many links
interlock and mutually reinforce each other. Death in the meadow comes
in nibbles. The grass grows tall. Snow mats it over. Mice tunnel under
the thatch. Mice girdle the seedlings. Bunnies mow down the seedlings.
The trees that are miraculously missed by the mice and bunnies grow about
four inches due to the competition for moisture, sun and nutrients. The
critters usually find them the next year. The meadow shrugs off my feeble
attempts to move it to climax forest.
The pioneer species are different. They tend to sucker profusely.
The older growth tops out over the grass. From the lofty vantage of four
feet in height, they get the best light. The older stems subsidize the
edges of the thicket. The death of the meadow also comes in nibbles. The
thicket species are gray dogwood, sumac, blackberry, sandbar willow, aspen,
black locust.
Many of the species that I favor: sugar maple, red maple,
most oaks, Douglas fir, and apples take a real drubbing at the hands of
the meadow eco-system. A few of my favorites: red oak, black walnut and
Norway spruce, do OK with minimal intervention. Others like sawtooth oak
and English oak fall in the middle. I choose species that offer many wildlife
benefits. I figure that I am wildlife when I am out there. I like to take
a bite out of wild-grown apples. I like to nibble on chestnuts and acorns....peeled
acorns, of course.
My 10 acres is too small to have much resident wildlife.
So, to get more wildlife:
*I need to borrow wildlife from the surrounding habitat.
*To do that, I need to offer what the biologist call "ice-cream"
species.
*I also need to keep the buffet table open for a substantial
portion of the year.
So the selection criteria for the species that are "keepers"
include easy to grow, heavy production of fruit/nuts/forage of high calorie
density -and- a long window of fruit/nut/forage availability. The two criteria
conflict to a certain degree. Plants that are extremely heavy bearers are
usually not vigorous forest-type trees. They divert a large percentage
of their resources into food products. See species list link at bottom
of page.
*Begining of rant*
There is a lot of high-minded philosophy published regarding
native species. There are two camps and they are quite polarized. To my
thinking the native species purist talk out of both sides of their mouth.
First they claim that native species are custom fit to the climate and
soil, that they will prove far more durable than "exotics". Then, in the
next breath, they curse the alien invations of aggressive species that
are out-competing the natives. Huh? Which is it? Are the natives champs
or chumps? Finally, all the native species proponents resemble humans.
To the best knowledge of scientists, humans did not evolve on this continent.
Even more damning, most of the whiners appear to be of European descent.
I will listen to them with more respect when they move back to Europe.
*End of rant.*
For a fairly balanced discussion of alien species,
see Alien
invasion
I have given up on the Douglas fir. The others I have gotten
to grow by spraying Roundup and Simizine in a 4 foot diameter patch around
the trees. I throw about eight ounces of urea around each tree in mid-May.
I cages made of chicken wire around the trees (there are eight such cages
sitting beside the computer, waiting to be placed over the latest batch
of sawtooth oaks that I moved) or wrap them with news-papers, or paper
tape depending on the size of the trees. I put mouse poison into empty
soup cans and crimp the tops shut. I shoot the bunnies. My trees are growing.
In a few places, they are getting close to forming a closed canopy.
The crown jewels have been the seedling apple trees. I cored
out a bag of Jonafree apples from my dad's orchard. Probably pollen parents
are Ozark Gold, Starkspur Golden Delicious and Empire. My dad's orchard
was my test ground. We must have run through a good fifty or sixty varieties.
Jonafree is the champ for wildlife. Jonafree is one of the PRI scab immune
cultivars. It blooms late and misses frost and the worst insect pressure.
It sets large numbers of fruit and seems to dump the ones that do get hit
by bugs. The ripe fruit not only tastes good (intense Jonathan taste with
high sugar and acid), but they hang extremely well on the tree. I planted
out 140 one year old seedlings (18" tall on average) in 1994. Eighty-six
survived. I planted them on ten foot centers. I intend to thin them out
to roughly 20 foot by 30 foot centers. Or, in other words, I plant to cull
five out of every six trees. An old-timer once told me that the essence
of "scientific farming" is to breed the best-to-the-best and cull all the
rest. If I did it again I would plant them on three foot centers in rows
ten feet apart so I could cull even more heavily.
One of the experts who I consulted with was Mike Parker,
the wildlife biologist from the Soil Conservation Department. He surveyed
my property and wrote up a development plan. Under his tutelage, I widened
my wildlife corridors to +60 feet. I bell-mouthed the ends of the corridors
to funnel wildlife traffic into them. I also made a few minor extensions
to the wildlife corridors to provide much better continuity of cover. He
also recommended dense brush on the edges (fruit/edge column in species
list) and less dense planting through the middle (mast/canopy in species
list). The dense brush breaks the wind and screens the critters from visible
human activity...giving them a greater sense of security. It is also the
natural order of things. I am deeply indebted to Mike for pointing out
a few simple, easy-to-implement things I could do to make my property more
attractive to wildlife.
Viewed from the air, the corridors look like a kitchen chair.
The legs point south, the one on the west points down the drainage gully,
the one on the east toward the woods/swamp. The back of the chair runs
along the west property line (Duh!). The spaces between the rungs of the
chair are pasture. We got the cattle and sheep as much to control the grass
pollen as to make money. A bonus of the grazing animals has been a big
increase in perennial ryegrass, bluegrass and white clover in the sward.
These are very high quality forages for wildlife as well. Across the road
from my property is swamp that has been divided into five acre parcels
and built upon. It is too fragmented for deer and turkey but it is wonderful
song bird and small mammal habitat. The west corridor runs all the way
to the road.
Our house is nestled into the north-east corner of the property.
We have a bay-window on the south side. I chose the edge species on the
"seat" and "back" of the chair for fall color. I planted sumac, aspen,
red maple, and sugar maple. Hot, hot colors! The sugar maple in this neck
of the woods hybridizes with black maple. Some sugar maples have great
fall color. Others are mediocre. The problem in selecting good seedlings
to transplant is exacerbated by environmental factors. Trees that are stressed
for moisture and nitrogen, and have excellent sun have greatly enhanced
fall color. The prettiest trees are usually perched on the cusp of the
road grade and have a couple of wraps of barbed wire around them.
A species I wish I had started planting sooner is red oak.
Not only is it relatively resistant to mammal damage, it is fast growing,
and (in this part of Michigan) tends toward nesting cavities. I planted
one of the larger seedlings ones in our yard and it has been subject to
borers. The borer holes probably initiate the hollowing. I wonder if it
is a case of co-evolution. Did the momma oaks that tolerated a certain
level of borer damage get fertilized with 'coon poop and owl pellets? I
had resisted the red oak because of the bitter acorns. They are not favored
by wild life. I have warmed up to them because of their propensity for
nesting cavities and because they are almost as good as evergreens for
breaking the wind. The juvenile trees hold their leaves all winter. An
advantage that oak has over, say Norway spruce, is that the oak will self-seed
in southern Michigan but the spruce will not.
Plant
Species List:
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