When you direct seed to you ever prep a small spot for a particular plant? What I'm referring to is I've tried several things to start natives... I've tried spreading seed in native pasture with the hopes that some of it would take, I've tried doing it after a burn, I've tried stomping seed into plug holes, and now I'm going to try hitting small spots (2ft diameter) with gly and eliminating competition for direct seeding. Have you tried the spot spray method for DS? I don't want to destroy the plant communities I already have with boom spraying, just want to amend what's already there.
The short answer is no - we don't ever prep for a specific plant.
The Long answer. So our land has been in our family for probably 100 years now. It's owned by a few different family members. The land that I specifically own was mature red oak forest with park like woods, with some conifers (jackpines) and planted white and red pines. In 1996 a tornado came through and pretty much leveled a vast majority of the oaks. Since then a lot of red oaks have continued to fill in and tons of jack pines. The nice thing here is this land never saw a blow, I believe much of it was probably prairie / Savannah type habitat. Pennsylvania sedge covers the ground, thick as the hair on a dogs back. It smothers young plants.
Our land is extremely sandy soil, and almost always a fire hazard. We can't safely do prescribed burns, it's just not safe. We use roundup. Typically early in the year before native grasses are emerged and native plants are emerged. We will spray large patches of land 1/2 to an acre around trees and things, if we see native plants we try hard to spray around them. Then we let it sit for 12-18 months, spot spray any green that emerges. The roundup does allow the native plants and grasses to be released from the Penn Sedge. Then we over seed (broadcast) on top of that. It just takes a really long time for that Penn Sedge to break down to get some soil exposed. It's a painful, slow process.
