FINDINGS ON CROP PERFORMANCE AND IMPACTS FROM WILDFLOWER PLANTINGS SHARED
Now into its fifth year, the Native Meadow Trial at the Farm Hub serves as a platform to explore how mNow completing its fifth year, the Native Meadow Trial at the Farm Hub serves as a platform to explore how meadows intersect with insects, soil, water and crops. At the annual Native Meadow Trial Twilight Meeting held in July the Farm Hub’s Anne Bloomfield together with Conrad Vispo and Claudia Knab-Vispo of Hawthorne Valley Farmscape Ecology Program shared some key takeaways:
- The plant composition in the wildflower plantings and the fallow control plots has evolved over the years. Flower abundance has consistently been higher in the wildflower plantings than in the fallows; however, it peaked in the second year and has steadily decreased since then.
- Wildflower plantings attracted a higher number and diversity of bees and butterflies than neighboring fallow.
- Parasitoid wasps (many of which are considered beneficial for agriculture) were much more common in fallow plots than in the wildflower plantings.
- Butternut squash planted adjacent to the fallow plots tended to grow more and larger squash than next to the wildflowers; the harvest yield has been 40% higher near the fallows than next to the wildflowers.
- The meadows are mowed once a year in early spring to avoid them turning into forest. In addition, management involved spot-weeding of Mugwort.
- At least 22 species of birds have been observed in the plots, some of them using the meadows as habitat over the winter.
Farmers, ecologists and land managers from the region were attracted to the event–keen on strategies they could use for their own meadows.
“We’ve done some meadow seedings, would love to do more and are really interested to find out how it is done here,” says Avalon Bunge, a farmer in Elizaville, NY who manages 250 acres of pasture and forest. Avalon is interested in invasive species management and native species reestablishment. She also sought tips on mowing. “How do we keep the meadows from turning into a forest without mowing it into a lawn…I learned a lot about staggering mowing.”
Of the Meadow at the Farm Hub she says, “It’s so beautiful. This looks like it has taken off in a really great way.”
Click here for the handouts from the 2021 Native Meadow Trial.
– Amy Wu