Hi folks. So, we’re in central Kansas, for an idea of weather; this lot is 1.93 acres, back of it used to be tilled up and farmed, part of a 32 acre plot just south of it. Evidently only been part of this homestead for a year or two since the satellite imagery still shows signs of cultivation. I plan on putting a fairly large workshop back behind the big garden for my cars, but everything behind that will go largely unused for the time being; we thought about seeding a wildflower field or something, but I worry about mosquitoes.
The front and back yards of the house, the current owners water regularly and have kept well-maintained. I plan to keep that up.
Question is, what should we do with the back lot? Wildflower field? Let it grow? I don’t have time to make it look like a golf course, and I don’t have the cash for a big reel mower lol. Strongly considering getting an old Farmall Cub or Allis B model with a belly mower to maintain with, something with enough oomph to pull a box blade too.
by ratrodder49
18 Comments
Congrats on the new home! I’d let it grow, plant some trees/fruit trees, and mow some trails. Possible food plot for deer in the back. Once you build the shop you could plant some grass around it.
You can do so much with that much space. Honestly, if it was me, I’d love to get that area heavily planted with native plants to promote biodiversity! You can easily sow wildflower seeds in the fall (some varieties do well in the spring!), add native trees, plants, etc. Definitely doesn’t have to be done in one season and you can add more to it as time goes on. Congrats on the purchase!
Solar plus battery backup if you can afford it!
Totally worth it, and with the space you have you can mount the panels to the ground, and the batteries out there too if you wanted.
The advantage of ground mount is great in that you’re not risking your roof, low risk but still, and the panels can be used for vegetation. Look into that, super awesome for garden beds.
Edit: found an article relating to what I’m suggesting!
https://www.npr.org/2021/11/14/1054942590/solar-energy-colorado-garden-farm-land
Second edit: the term for it is agri-votalics
Not lawncare.
I would do some high level thinking related to improvements.
Eg, if you’re going to want trees, you might as well plan them this year.
If you build it, they will come.
Wildflower fields or prairie-type vegetation will *not* increase mosquitoes at all, if anything it’ll decrease it, because if you have native vegetation, it’ll attract a ton of specialist insects, which will then attract and support generalist predators of insects, and those will also eat mosquitoes.
The main source of mosquitoes around homes is stagnant water on hard surfaces, usually things like flower pot saucers that don’t drain, depressions in cement, parts of your gutter that don’t drain completely, things like that. It’s usually stuff around your house. Go around your home about a day after a rain, looking for any standing water, and eliminate any source of it. I am less concerned about temporary standing water in the lawn; if it persists less than 2 days you’re fine. It’s areas that don’t drain at all that are the problem.
As for how to get a wildflower meadow or prairie established, it’s definitely a knowledge-limited activity, and the knowledge can be hyper-local. Maybe look up a native plant group in your state, see if you have anyone doing anything similar locally who has been successful. When I have worked in projects like this I usually do a small test plot, because you can test something on a small scale, figure out which plants thrive and which don’t, which invasives come up and how to control them. There are two advantages to starting small and expanding later: (1) you get knowledge and experience (2) you can then use your plot itself as the seed source, saving a ton of time and money when you expand it later.
If I were you, I’d start small, dig up a small patch of yard, seed it, use it as a test plot, and keep mowing the rest, then as you get invasives under control in your prairie/wildflower patch, you can expand it and reduce the lawn, and you can mow whatever area you want for recreation as well as paths for access.
DO NOT just stop mowing your grass…that’ll be a disaster. Often you get a ton of invasives. The turfgrass itself is often invasive, depending on what it is, and it’ll prevent the establishment of healthier prairie vegetation. Turfgrass is meant to be mowed, letting it got to seed often looks awful and isn’t great ecologically either. So to convert turfgrass to wildflower meadow or prairie you need to actively kill a patch, dig it up or till it, and seed it with plants that you want or even transplant plants in.
You can buy plants from nurseries and seeds from various sellers, but I am honestly a bigger fan of sourcing the plants yourself from weedy field margins and prairie remnants along local roadsides and railroad tracks and stuff. This way you often get more vigorous plants, and you help preserve the local populations. The tough thing here is learning to identify the plants. I like to use iNaturalist for this; it not only has an AI image identification to make a first guess, but there’s a community of experts to help confirm or correct your initial guesses.
You’re in the Central Great Plains region which is unfortunately an area I don’t know as much about as I’ve never even visited Kansas, the closest I’ve been is TX and AR. Your area is a mixed-grass prairie region with both tallgrass and shortgrass species. I’ve been working on ecoregion articles across the US but unfortunately I haven’t gotten to your region yet. However, pulling from the EPA documents, the dominant species are little bluestem, big bluestem, sideoats grama, blue grama, yellow Indiangrass, sand bluestem, and sand dropseed. All of those grasses will probably do well and I’d want to include all of them. You can check BONAP’s county-level range maps for specific counties and pick stuff native to your particular county. There are some really beautiful flowers that would thrive in your area. Some that come to mind are Ratibida columnifera, Helianthus maximiliani, and Echinacea angustifolia. There are probably dozens of beautiful, showy flowers you could grow though. A very easy plant to grow in your area would be Solidago missouriensis. It’s showy and aggressive so it would keep unwanted invasive plants out. Also Symphyotrichum ericoides would be very easy to grow.
So yeah, that’s how I’d start.
True native wildflower/grass meadows are amazing. There’s a lot of upfront work with site prep, but if you do that right, the plants take it from there.
Just make sure you get site prep right (this summer would be the time for that), then use quality native seed from a regional
company such as Prairie Moon.
Maybe consider augmenting a wildflower/nature preserve sort of feel with some type of pavilion — to where you have a space that you can close up, but also open up, and entertain, relax, etc. Placing a small pavilion with seating and relief from the Sun, led to be a footpath, might help it feel more maintained and less like you’ve just neglected it.
Personally I’d want a basketball court — but that’s much more niche and expensive
If you have wildflowers then you will have enough other critters to keep the mosquitoes in check. Also mosquitoes would need some water nearby. Have you considered fruit trees as well?
Plant corn. Build a baseball field.
You can reduce the amount of yard work by putting a huge pool in that yard.
It looks like you may be off a freeway or a busy highway. Might be helpful to plant some more trees for privacy/sound reduction.
Edit:
You could probably get someone to push some dirt into some shooting berms. You seem to have a decent amount of space.
I’d see how much the guy would pay to use it as part of his field again. You make money and he takes care of it for you.
I have a friend that also owns similar property and they lease the unused land to a local farmers who use it to produce hay. It grows in the summer without watering needs and then they come harvest it. My friend gets a check cut every year for a little amount of money. If there is still active farming in the area, ask one of your neighbors if anyone wants to throw you some money to grow hay.
Goats.
Put tents up. Let the homeless live on your land
Just a tip when protecting your privacy – you scribbled out the road but if you zoom in you can pretty easily still read it.
Almost anything you decide to do is going to be a multi-year project. So know that going in and don’t try to rush things that shouldn’t be rushed.