09/22/2024
Looking beyond the Christmas trees, Honeybrook farm is a wonderful pseudo-prairie grassland. The Christmas tree orchards are mowed at the end of the growing season so most families never see tall grass, weeds, and flowers; and all the life that goes with them. Most of the growing year though the Christmas tree orchard has a plant cover around 24 inches tall.
Honeybrook Farm reclaims a couple of acres of corn and soybean fields for our Christmas tree seedlings each year. The initial idea that never quite got off the ground was to establish a blue grass mix lawn between the seedlings. Instead, we have from the beginning let nature re-occupy the space; the only constraint being mowing a few times per year. After more than two decades we now recognize a predictable succession of plants that move in and take over the bare ground around the trees.
The first year or two ragweed dominates the field. Ragweed is a problem. It's an aggressive grower that if not keep in check can reach 6-8 feet in height. It easily can shade out young seedlings and everything else. If the ragweed is kept down, annual grasses like foxtail can grow in the field. Manure really promotes the growth of ragweed, and we have found it necessary to minimize fertilizing the Christmas tree seedlings the first couple of years, likely impacting the growth of the seedlings a least a bit.
By the third year, perennial grasses and weeds start to take hold. There has been no herbicide applications or plowing since the field was reclaimed. Almost magically the ragweed recedes into memory. In the spring the field is solid yellow from dandelions and butterweed. Clumps of red, white and yellow clover, nitrogen fixers, appear. The combination of tree growth and less aggressive weeds make management/ mowing much easier.
In year 4, big and little bluestem become a noticeable component of the field. The Ohio Department of Natural Resources has maps that show that there was a natural tall grass prairie where our farm is now located, before it was converted to agriculture. Seeing these two iconic tall grass prairie species means that after 200 years, the plants that would have thrived in that prairie are still hanging on around the margins of our farm, enough so that they can recolonize our Christmas tree plantings. That to us is amazing and very affirming of the reasons for why we like Christmas tree farming. If we had to make an estimate, we would guess that about half of the plants in our Christmas tree plantings at this stage are native. There may be opportunities to enrich the planting with native plants even more.
The oldest Christmas tree planting, the ones closest to the road, are dominated by thick stands of tall fescue, the non-native grass that the Ohio Department of Transportation plants along Ohio's roads. The oldest fields have very little mud which is ideal for people cutting trees. A conversation with a Pheasant Forever conservationist though has me wondering if we want tall fescue to be the final stage of my Christmas tree fields. Thick, sod forming grasses do not make good habitat for pheasants. Pheasant chicks have difficulty moving through the grass and get wet from the dew the leaf blades collect. Wet pheasant chicks die of hypothermia. We'd like to release some bobwhites and ring neck pheasants in our Christmas tree plantings, just because we would enjoy seeing them. This means we will have to figure out how to delay or stop the spread of tall fescue into my Christmas trees. It may also mean accepting more mud during the Christmas tree cutting season in December, especially in wet years,
