Don Ray#NativePlants #Prairie #Iowa
1/🧵
The county crews have been busy this week mowing roadsides. Bad for the native plants, but they survive in un-mowable nooks and crannies.
Example: Wild Licorice (Glycyrrhiza lepidota)
Don Ray2/🧵
Here’s why I remembered to stop at this patch of wild licorice that the county had attempted to mow down (and. in the process, had snagged the guardrail with the large mower behind the tractor). #oops
lfisk@donray@mastodon.online
Sad, I see much the same with the County Crew too😑
Just a budget burner IMO. Spend down your budget or it will be taken away from you. Preferably do it in such way that residents who pay the taxes for your budget see something being done.
We have Purple Loosestrife, Crown Vetch, Garlic Mustard, Spotted Knap Weed, Dames Rocket... spreading like wildfire along our roadsides moved along by the hogs. Also more car/deer collisions, they like to browse in the cut areas next to traffic😑
Don Ray@lfisk@infosec.exchange
County road maintenance (even county blacktops) has really gone downhill in the last 25 years. Mostly 1 mowing per year. This roadside will have quite a bit of vegetation that will stay there all winter (bad for seeing deer). Teasel is a problem, and the county roadsides are producing quite a few seeds.
lfisk@donray@mastodon.online Ours are normally hogged twice a year plus the "*mangler" maybe in early spring. In the old days they used lightweight tractors with sickle bars. Those would cut off offending plants without knocking their seeds all over.
The latest tractor I saw weighs 6 tons, 130 hp running a 10 ft hog on the back plus maybe 5 ft hydraulic side hog. It crushes the shoulder of the road where wheels run in the ditch and makes deep ruts if its wet...
* Tractor with Boom Brush Hog. They reach way up into trees alongside the road with this machine and hack (mangle) branches sticking out into the right-of-way😑
https://www.colvoy.com/tiger/boom-mowers/tiger-mowers-bengal-boom-mower.php