06-01-18 Field Note

06-01-18 Field Note

June 1, 2018
Jeff Clarke's early June field note describes high water, sage thinning efforts, bitterbrush planting, and both beneficial and detrimental new insects.

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Sage thinning, bitterbrush, floods, weed removal, black grass bugs

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Mountain snow pack was greater than normal. We also received more than 2” of rain in May. This combination led to river levels not seen since 1908.

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Cattle grazed in the sage lands for many years eating everything except sage.

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We cut all the sage and piled it along the edges of the opened landscape

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We grew 1,000 clematis plants from seed.

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The hops we planted a few years ago are starting to flourish.

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We planted more than 5,000 bitterbrush seedlings in groups of 50-100 all over the lower elevations of the ranch

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The red dots on the maps indicate where we planted the 2018 bitterbrush islands.

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Prairie and Morgan are studying different water catchment strategies.

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We seek and destroy hounds tongue, mullein, and black henbane. The battle wages on.

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This is the first year we noticed the hounds tongue root weevil.

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We assumed that the basin wild rye was water stressed when it turned yellow. Upon further inspection, the robust grass was being eaten by black grass bugs!

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Tent caterpillars also enjoy green foliage.

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Spring morels lurk in the tall grass of the soaked floodplains.

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With a bit of moisture, puffballs burst from the landscape, even in the road

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Debbie found a mallard nest near one of our new “Dam Ponds” in lower Woodchuck

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