May: My busy season

Many jobs have a "busy season," whether it's final exams for students, winter holidays for retailers, or tax season for accountants. Mine is field season set-up in May.

For an explanation of why I'm doing all this craziness, check out this previous post about my research.

Because one of my major research questions is about inter-annual variation in restoration (a.k.a. if I plant a prairie in 2014, and I plant the same prairie the same way in 2015, will it turn out the same?), I need to replicate what I did last year exactly in order to have good experimental control.

That means that if I mowed the field on April 29 last year, sprayed herbicide on May 5, plowed on May 18 (and so on) last year, I have to try really hard to hit all those dates again this year so that the only difference is the year itself. And by "I," I mostly mean "the people with big equipment that do me big favors." Super shout-out to Mark, the manager at my field site that helps me with these things (and his predecessor Steve)!

Then, when all the "big" preparations are done, I have to get the fields sown and build my rain-out shelters for my experiments. I did this all in about a week last year, which means I had no choice but to do it in that much time this year (and I'll do it the same next year, too)!

The madness started when my prairie seeds arrived in the mail. I ordered the seeds for my experiment from Native Connections, a local Michigan seed supplier. The seeds are all different shapes and sizes-- anything from a grain of sand to a bean-- and they're all individually packaged by species. I have 30 species altogether in my experiment. 

I want to achieve a certain seeding rate (in seeds/sqft) for the species that I want in each of my experimental plots. Some plots get a low diversity mix (8 species), and others a high diversity mix (30 species), but the total density of seeds needs to remain the same for both. Also, since I'm sowing the seeds by hand, I need to be careful to distribute the seeds evenly across a large area. To help with this, I divided up my field and seed mixes into smaller parts.

Since I have 6 big prairie plots (each divided into 6 smaller areas for easy sowing) that get one type of mix, and 2 different mixes sown into 4 additional plots each, I needed to weigh out 84 bags of seed mixes. Multiplied by the number of species going into each, I weighed seeds 1008 times. This took me about 20 hours. 

My favorite prairie species, purple prairie clover (Dalea purpurea, formerly Petalostemum).
The smaller seeded species come in a ziploc bag.

My second favorite, side-oats grama (Bouteloua curtipendula). 
Bouty bouty bouty bouty rockin' everywhere!
The larger seeded species come in a plastic-woven seed bag like the one above.

20 hours sound like a lot, but It's actually nice to once in a while have something to do that doesn't use too much brain power. Plus, I got to catch up on a couple dozen Radiolab podcasts.

The next day, I met my new summer field assistant out at my field site, and started bringing my rain-out shelters out of storage. We will be using these to manipulate how much rainfall the experimental plots receive (to simulate, for example, a rainy year versus a dry year). They were a little grimy after last summer and even grimier after spending the winter in a barn, so we spent a day washing them off. 

Meanwhile, my buddy Mark tilled up this year's plots for me.

It took another full day to measure out and flag where the rain-out shelters and seeds needed to go.

Then, it was sowing time! This is always the fun part.

I divided my big plots into 6 smaller areas with measuring tapes.

Then I shook up each bag, and sprinkled the seeds as evenly as possible across the area.

I did this 36 times across my 6 plots.

For the smaller plots, I decided which half would receive the high diversity seed mix using this very technical randomization instrument.

My flags told me where to sow the additional seeds.

The ground at a freshly tilled site is soft and lumpy. So in order to create what is called a "germinable seed bed"-- that is, to pack the soil down-- the sown seeds need to be cultipacked.

I lied. THIS is the best part. Because I get to ride the cultipacker!!

Aww, yeah!

And just look at those super-straight lines on the field in the background! Beautiful.

The next day, the heavy lifting began. I was lucky enough to have an additional volunteer to help my field assistant and me. He pounded 108 fenceposts into the ground (without a single complaint, no less!) and installed the gardening edging around the experimental plots while I hauled materials around and fought with the shelter roofs.

Each plot gets 4 stakes, 2 ropes, a vinyl roof, a kiddie pool, a cinder block, a gutter, and 2 half-pool noodles. High tech!
After the fenceposts are in and the edging installed, the ropes and stakes are added.

Sometimes, things just didn't quite line up. Now how did I ever get the roofs to spill perfectly into the gutters when that rope is in the way? It took me a few tries and lots of head-scratching to remember how I did it last year.

Shelter in progress.

After three days, all 18 shelters were up. It would've taken me at least 7 if I hadn't had two marvelous helpers! I am incredibly grateful for all their help.

Ta da!

The final test, of course, is to see how they handle the rain. I finished construction on Saturday, and by Tuesday we had quite the storm.

Yikes! Radar image from the NWS. The big red smudge in-between Kalamazoo and Lansing went right over my shelters.

I checked on the shelters the next day, hoping they were all in one piece. The test was whether they would actually collect water in the pools (because if not, water is running off the edges and onto the ground) and whether the plots would be dry inside the edging. Survey says...

The pools were full of water! Success!
Based on how dirty the water looks, you can tell the storm was also quite windy.

Even better, the plot is dry. You can even see the lighter-colored rectangle of ground that was protected by the shelter-- it's especially apparent in the lower right of this photo.

Quite a few pool noodles (which act as bumpers to direct the water down to the gutters instead of off the sides) tried to make an escape during this windy storm, so I might need a new system to attach them this year. You'll notice they're missing in the above picture. A minor fix, though! 

Overall, I'd say my crazy week was a great success!

Until next time,
Anna