HOME IMPROVEMENT Fall
Revamp on
MANTRAP LAKE
SWENSENS UPDATE LOG HOME TO MAXIMIZE SPACE
Story & photos by SHANNON GEISEN Park Rapids Enterprise
Brett and Michelle Swensen recently remodeled their home on Mantrap Lake, creating a resortlike experience and better utilizing space.
“I’ve been coming up here for almost 60 years,” Brett said of his family’s longtime connection to the Nevis area. “When we got married, we started coming up here and have always brought our kids.”
“We know the area very well,” Michelle agreed. Originally, they stayed at mom-and-pop resorts until they purchased their home in 2013.
“It was built in the 1990s, so it was time to refresh it,” Brett explained.
Throughout the remodel, the Swensens retained the charm of their log home.
Brett and Michelle Swensen repaired their outside deck, but also created more usable space underneath it. The three-season porch hosts additional seating, a hot tub and games.
“THE LOGS ARE FROM UPPER PENINSULA. I THINK THE BIGGEST ONE I FOUND WAS 26-INCH DIAMETER. THEY’RE HUGE.”
“The logs are from Upper Peninsula,” Brett said. “I think the biggest one I found was 26-inch diameter. They’re huge.”
The update began in summer 2023, starting with their lakeside deck.
“Our deck was getting rotten,” Michelle said.
Their general contractor was Emcon, Inc., with Charlie Lee and Matt Henry as project managers.
They replaced rotting log rails with cable railing. This offered better views of the lake.
Since they had to redo the wooden deck, the Swensons decided to use maintenance-free, composite decking.
Then the Swensens realized they could make the space under the deck more livable.
Hillside underneath the deck was removed, allowing for the creation of a three-season, screened-in porch “because we’d be down by the fire and there’s a certain time of night where the mosquitoes just drive you out of there, so now we can go inside here,” Brett said.
Michelle and Brett Swensen enjoy their new walkout basement. Foldable glass doors lead from the home to the three-season porch.
Brett Swensen
Brett built the bar out of an old boat, continuing the nautical theme.
While we’re at it…
With the contractor onsite, the Swensens quickly determined it made sense, in terms of efficiency, to add onto the remodeling project.
“It was like ‘while we’re at it,’” Michelle said. “Let’s do it all, then we don’t have to do it again.”
“It’s messy work,” Brett agreed. “Just do it, and be done with it. We kept adding to the list and made it the way we wanted it.”
According to Michelle, the kitchen had always been really small, for example.
“We’ve always had problems with the kitchen,” Brett added. The old kitchen was gutted. “It was 100% do-over,” she said.
The massive log structure presented a challenge, though.
“You’re constricted by the logs. There’s only so much you can do as far as making it bigger,” Michelle explained.
Cleverly, the Swensens repurposed a huge walk-in closet in the master bedroom. They converted a portion of it into a butler’s pantry.
The new porch overlooks Mantrap Lake, with plentiful cushy seating.
The ample walkout now features seating, the hot tub and a variety of games.
“It really expanded our kitchen in two ways,” Brett explained, noting there’s additional counter space, plus room for appliances in the pantry.
“Jerry Eischens did some great work for us,” Brett said of the cabinetry. “He also did some furniture for us, which was really nice because it’s unique.”
A new kitchen island emerged, along with a new drop-down ceiling for recessed lighting.
Master bath expansion
Part of their walk-in closet was converted into an improved master bath.
Some of the biggest, most beautiful logs were hidden in that closet, they said.
“This bathroom was a complete gut and redo as well,” Michelle noted.
A big, unused whirlpool tub was replaced with a copper bath tub. “It saved a ton of space,” Brett said. “It fits the style and colors.”
New loft bathroom
The loft lacked a bathroom. The Swensens installed one that sits above their master bath, tying the plumbing together.
“Ackerman was really good to work with on that,” Michelle said.
They cut into the A-frame roof line so both sides of the loft had identical angles.
A gigantic walk-in closet was reinvented as a butler’s pantry, larger master bath and upstairs bath. A
master bathroom. It replaced a bulky whirlpool tub.
“NOW, FOR ENTERTAINING, WE SPEND MOST OF THE TIME DOWN HERE.” Brett Swensen
Walkout basement
Opening up the space underneath the deck resulted in a walkout basement.
Previously, “it was kind of like a bowling alley, just a long, narrow room,” Brett explained. “It was too skinny.”
Steel I-beams were installed to support the house.
Two sets of folding glass doors open onto the screened-in porch.
They added a lot of games –foosball, pool table, darts, air hockey – for their three kids.
“Now, for entertaining, we spend most of the time down here,” Brett said.
Again, Michelle praised Emcon for the quality of their work.
The hot tub was moved from the top of the deck to the enclosure below.
They opted for nauticalthemed decor. Wall sconces mimic ship lanterns. Portholes peer outside or into neighboring rooms.
They hired John Lassila & Associates Interior Design to coordinate the lights, furniture, wallpaper and so forth.
The home bar imitates a ship’s galley.
Brett cut an old boat in half, added shelving and stained it to match shiplap cabinetry. “I actually found the boat on Belle Taine,” he said.
The bar sink is shaped like a fish.
The table is an actual boat covered with clear glass.
The Swensens said they also purchased fun decorations at Greet & Gather in Park Rapids and Muskie Waters in Nevis.
Above: Walkout basement. Below right: Wall sconces emulate a ship’s lantern.
Left: The Swensens love their outdoor shower, especially to clean off sandy feet or dogs.
Right: This boat, complete with boat motor, makes a beautiful table.
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“THE END RESULT WE’RE REALLY HAPPY WITH.”
Brett Swensen
Ample, cushy seating is gathered around a TV. A long bench offers more seating, plus storage space.
A storage room and shop was turned into exercise space with closets.
One of the closets houses tools and a short bench, which is convenient in the wintertime, Brett said. “It’s very handy to have this for random stuff” that needs fixing around the house.
A guest bedroom resides in a formerly empty spot.
“We redesigned that with two smaller closets,” Brett said, along with an egress window.
A sliding door leads to a redecorated bathroom, laundry room and sauna.
Michelle praised Lori at Eischens Wood Products Inc. for her helpful input. “Things we would not have thought of,” she said.
The remodeling was completed in spring 2024.
“The end result we’re really happy with,” Brett said.
Shannon Geisen can be reached at sgeisen@parkrapidsenterprise.com.
Left: By converting a walk-in closet into a butler’s pantry, the Swensens were able to move some appliances into the area. The additional counter space is appreciated. Right: The butler’s pantry is a perfect coffee and wine bar.
Eric, Wyatt, Becky and Simon Krause manage The 4 Word Farm, a commercial hydroponic operation located in Mantrap Township, near Nevis.
Nevis family launches
HYDROPONIC GARDENING ENTERPRISE
Story & photos by SHANNON GEISEN Park Rapids Enterprise
ERIC AND BECKY KRAUSE GROW
A VARIETY OF LETTUCES AND HERBS IN A HYDROPONIC GREENHOUSE.
Hubbard County’s only commercial hydroponic farm is the brainchild of Eric and Becky Krause.
Summer 2024 marks their third year of hydroponic production in their rural Nevis greenhouse.
“We started this business kinda for fun, but it’s not a lot of fun all the time,” quipped Eric.
“It’s a lot of work,” Becky agreed. “In the summer, it’s from dawn to dusk some days.”
COVID-inspired career change
The pandemic was both a catalyst and a hindrance.
“COVID was a big reason why this whole thing came about. I was working as a director of maintenance, which just means I was in charge of a lot of toilets at a memory care facility,” Eric said.
He quit that job to become a full-time gardener.
It’s a family-run business. Their two sons – Simon, 17, and Wyatt, 14 – help extensively. Their eldest son is a senior at Nevis High School. He aids in planting, trellising, mowing, weed whipping, harvesting and selling at the farmers markets.
Becky works full-time for Hubbard County, but assists whenever needed.
Water enters through a garden hose into a tank. Eric adds nutrients. A small computer monitors the water and automates the mixture. “It gets adjusted for PH. It gets sanitized with food-grade hydrogen peroxide because this is what’s called a sterile system,” Eric explained. Nutrient-rich water is then funneled into black, quarter-inch tubing and fed into the trough.
Plants at the 4 Word Farm are born in 1-inch starter trays. “This is a biodegradable growing medium,” Eric said.
They built a 50-by-50-foot root garden plot. “It’s a no-till method, so we laid down cardboard, then compost,” Eric explained.
The first year or so, they used occultation, or tarping.
“It’s where you take a large tarp. This one is black on one side, white on the other. We laid it down for a summer to kill off the weeds. That helped a lot,” he said.
Greenhouse materials were delivered in Aug. 2021. The Krauses gradually erected the structure, finishing in Oct. 2022. It was primarily delayed because each family member acquired COVID-19 in succession.
A second garden bed is behind the greenhouse, with a third in the works.
Eric envisions upwards of 10 plots total in the future. “We’d certainly need employees at that point or some time before then,” he said.
The Krauses are still expanding. They currently use half of the greenhouse, with plans to build out the other half.
Upscaling will be a slow and thoughtful process, they said.
Luscious lettuce
The University of Minnesota Extension Office (UMN) describes hydroponics as “the cultivation of playing roots in a liquor nutrient solution rather than in the soil. The plant’s roots can either be in water, sand, gravel, perlite, pear moss, sawdust, coir, or rockwool.”
The system offers many advantages to the home gardener, the UMN says, including higher yields, no weeds, soil-borne pests and disease are minimized, more vigorous plants, less space and the system can be automated
“WE DON’T USE ANY CHEMICAL PESTICIDES OR HERBICIDES ON THE GROUND. IF IT’S IN THE GROUND, IT’S ALL ORGANIC, SO WE’RE TRYING TO BE GOOD STEWARDS OF THE SOIL.”
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Eric Krause
Above: The Krauses use tarping, or occultation in their garden beds. The Universisty of Minnesota Exention Office explains, “Plastic traps heat and moisture, which encourages seed germination and plant growth.” It also limits weeding, Becky added. A white net protects young carrot plants from insects. Below: When nursery plants are big enough, they’re transferred from the starter tray to this long, plastic trough. Eric makes his own.
The main purpose of the Krause’s hydroponic greenhouse is producing lettuce and greens, in general. The 4 Word Farm plants buttercrunch, red and green summer sweet crisp, red and green incised, oakleaf and five star lettuces, among other varieties. These make the foundation of their salad mixes, according to Eric.
They grow basil, parsley and kale as well.
Their garden plots are mainly root crops, “but, as you see, we have peas, tomatoes, cucumbers, field tomatoes,” Eric said.
They also grow strawberries, salad turnips, peppers, cabbage, beets and much more.
Eric starts everything indoors by seed, Becky explained.
“He lets me have one row for flowers,” she joked. (She loves dahlias.)
Eric said they have a sustainable operation “in that it uses very little water in comparison to what field crops would use.”
Eric admits there is “pest pressure” on their 10-acre farm. They fight it in a variety of ways –insect netting, for instance. Thrips, leafhoppers and aphids are the bane of any garden, he says.
“We don’t use any chemical pesticides or herbicides on the ground,” Eric explained. “If it’s in the ground, it’s all organic, so we’re trying to be good stewards of the soil.”
They use crop-specific, synthetic fertilizers in the hydroponic system. “What that means is that the plants are uptaking the nutrients, and there isn’t anything left out of balance that we have to discard on a very frequent basis,” he said.
The Krauses would like to use organic fertilizers, but those are currently cost prohibitive.
“I can buy feather meal. A big, 65-pound bag will last me the whole year,” Eric said.
Feather meal is a byproduct of poultry processing that’s used as an organic fertilizer and in animal feed.
“It smells horrible,” Eric said.
“But it works,” added Becky.
Mighty microgreens
The Krauses grow microgreens in a climatecontrolled trailer on the property.
Microgreens are harvested when they are seedlings, just after the cotyledon leaves have developed. They range in size from 1 to 3 inches, including the stem and leaves.
According to the UMN, vitamins are 4 to 6 times more concentrated than in full-grown plants.
“It’s very nutritious because the plant is so compact,” Becky said. “You’re basically stunting a plant. They’re very good on salads.”
Microgreens are grown in the dark under about 15 pounds of pressure. In about a week’s time, they are hand harvested.
The farm grows sunflower, broccoli, radish and pea shoot microgreens.
Self-watering rain gutter system
They utilize a bucket and rain gutter setup for growing tomatoes, like romas and juliettes. It was invented by Larry Hall of Brainerd.
“I just thought it was neat, so I built it,” Eric said. “It’s a wicking system.”
Each bucket has a hole in the bottom and sits in the rain gutter. A garden hose with a float is hooked to the system. “As the water gets low, it automatically fills up,” Becky said. “You don’t have to weed or water.”
Vertical strings allow the tomato plant to climb. “By the end of summer, we actually need a ladder to pick the tomatoes because they do get all the way up there,” she said.
Above: Becky and her sister, Sandra Nims, help customers at the Park Rapids Farmers Market. Below: They utilize a bucket and rain gutter setup for growing tomatoes that was invented by a Brainerd gardener.
Among the farm’s best sellers are sweet crisp, buttercrunch and Cherokee lettuces. The Krauses harvest their lettuce in the morning. Eric doles out a fresh head for Park Rapids Farmers Market customer.
“If you use the proper growing medium, you can avoid fungal problems,” added Eric.
He tops off the buckets with specific nutrients every day. “We get really heavy yields off of that.”
The Krauses sell their produce at both the Nevis and Park Rapids farmers markets. Lettuce and microgreens are their best sellers.
They also peddle French breakfast and Easter Egg radishes, which Becky said are popular. Customers also seek bunching onions, salad turnips and carrots.
Soil testing through the UMN was key to their success, adds Eric. Their land, for example, had a high phosphorus content, for example.
Shannon Geisen can be reached at sgeisen@parkrapidsenterprise.com.
The Krauses converted a circa 1977 trailer into a work station. There’s a microgreens growing room, seen here, along with a wash-spin-dry operation for prepping lettuce for sale. Another area is used for cutting, bagging and labeling the microgreens.
The 4 Word Farm offers a variety of microgreen flavors.
better use of small space PARK RAPIDS REMODEL MAKES
Story & photos by ROBIN FISH Park Rapids Enterprise
APark Rapids homeowner’s recent remodel increased and enhanced her living space, making the small house a bit more livable.
When Shelley Russell moved in at 209 Minnesota St. in April 2017, it had one bedroom and a cramped bathroom, crammed behind the living room and a tiny kitchen.
To provide a second bedroom for her granddaughter, Madison Robbins of Lake George – who wanted a place to stay locally while working in Park Rapids and preparing to start college this fall in Detroit Lakes – Russell sacrificed her living room. A wall now separating Madison’s bedroom from a new hallway running from the front door to the bedroom and bathroom at the rear.
To make up for the lost space, Russell knocked down the wall at the far end of the kitchen and put in a brand-new dining room.
“That’s the only addition,” she said, indicating the almost openplan transition from kitchen to dining room. “When I bought it, there was a wall here. This was completely closed off.”
The wall she opened was actually where the stove and sink were located. Knocking down that wall meant moving those appliances to the other sides of the room, but also allowed Russell to add more cupboards and counter space.
“I had literally hardly any cabinets in this house,” she said, describing a
kitchen with few counters and room for only a small table and two chairs. “It made a lot of difference with new cabinets. It had Menards cabinets in it already, so we just bought more, and then I repainted them. They need repainting again, but I haven’t gotten that far yet.”
Above: Prior to remodeling, Russell’s house ended at the step between the kitchen and dining room. The kitchen featured less counter space and a tiny dining table. Tearing down an adjacent carport and opening up the kitchen wall allowed her to add a new dining room as well as cupboards and countertops.
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Top: Shelley Russell improved and expanded her home at 209 Minnesota St. in Park Rapids, with a new roof, siding and an added room at the front right corner, where there used to be a carport.
Bottom: Snowflake, one of four cats (plus a dog) in the home, gives a friendly meow in the front hall that used to be part of Russell’s living room. To the left is a new bedroom where Russell’s granddaughter, Madison Robbins, stays while working and studying locally.
Russell regrets not putting a semi-gloss paint on her kitchen cabinets, making them easier to wipe clean.
She is similarly vexed by her new cast iron sink, which has proved a graveyard for glassware and hard to clean properly.
But the added storage and workspace are a big improvement.
Bringing a living room to life
There used to be a carport where the dining room now stands. This led to an almost inaccessible, unheated and uninsulated bonus room at the back of the house.
“I used it very rarely because it was cold out there in the winter,” said Russell, adding that she had to go through the laundry room to get into it. “The old lady who lived here before made it into a bedroom of some sort. There were cabinets and closets all along the back wall.”
Russell first added a patio door between the back room and the carport. This eventually moved to the side of the dining room facing the fenced backyard where her Pyredoodle, Scooter, chases chipmunks.
“That room was completely gutted,” she said. “The floor was taken up. Insulation was put in the floor and all the walls, all new sheetrock. You wouldn’t believe how much it opened everything up. It made a world of difference.”
Her favorite thing
The elephant in the room, of course, is the room that wasn’t there before. Once a carport, now a dining room, the new addition at the home’s front corner abounds in sunlight and vertical space.
“This is my favorite,” she said. “I told my son, I’ve got to have something with a little character – just the space, the halfvault – instead of putting a flat ceiling like everything else.”
Russell’s son is Ryan Robbins with KR Construction of Lake George. He built the dining room for her. Between him and ex-husband Keith Robbins, Russell kept the labor in the family, purchasing most of their supplies from Menards with some from Hilltop Lumber.
The half-vault makes space for a builtin curio shelf above the wide opening into the living room. Keeping the space cheerful are wall hangings, potted plants and a buffet that belonged to Russell’s grandmother.
“I will not redo it,” she said of the buffet’s dark woodwork. “I like it the way it is.”
One choice she wishes she could redo is the vinyl plank flooring in the kitchen and dining room. “I’m not a fan of it,” she said, though she doesn’t mind the darker color in the living room. The lighter shade looks dirty all the time, she said.
Ron
Above: Russell’s new living room now opens off the dining room, where there used to be a patio door between a carport and an otherwise inaccessible room. Left: Russell decorated her new dining room with this antique buffet, which belonged to her grandmother.
Russell said she loves having the dining room. “For Christmas and holidays, it’s what makes it really nice,” she said. “Otherwise, I never did have other people over, because I had a little table and two chairs and a smaller living room.”
Lose a closet, gain bathroom space
Among her other home improvements, Russell had the home resided and reroofed. She also added space to her bathroom by tearing out a closet and moving the doorway.
“I lost closet space,” she admitted, “but I needed room in the bathroom, too. I put in a new tub and the lovely tub surround, and I did the ceramic tile myself.”
She created a bathroom vanity out of a dresser found at Linda’s Recycled Goods, adding a sink on top. She hasn’t gotten around to restaining it, but that’s on her still extensive to-do list – along with installing aluminum window trim, siding and shingling the detached garage, tearing down popcorn ceilings and repainting some walls whose color didn’t turn out as she’d hoped.
“Everything needs to be done yet,” Russell said wryly.
Bottom line is a home that, according to a recent appraisal, has tripled in value since 2017 – and better yet, it’s a good place to live. “I enjoy it a lot,” she said.
Robin Fish can be reached at rfish@parkrapidsenterprise.com.
Pollinators
Tarah Young is the Hubbard County University of Minnesota Extension educator in agriculture, food and natural resources. If you have any questions about this topic or any others, contact her at 732-3391. If information about agriculture, gardening and natural resources interests you, consider signing up for the Hubbard County UMN Extension Agriculture, Gardening and Natural Resources E-newsletter at z.umn.edu/HCExtensionNewsletter.
id you know diverse woodlands provide wonderful habitats for native pollinators?
overlooked giants of pollinator habitat and how woodlands can be managed with pollinators in
Minnesota has over 500 species of native bees and thousands of pollinators, including bees, moths, butterflies, ants, beetles, flies and birds. This diverse group needs many different types of plants to live and thrive. Prairies are often thought of as pollinator havens, but woodlands with their downed wood, standing dead trees, huge leaf canopies and diversity of herbaceous plants and trees also provide important habitat for many life stages of
Story by TARAH YOUNG cultivating success in the farm & garden
Our interdependence with pollinators
• Native pollinators support plants that help build soils, filter water and sequester carbon.
• 85% of the world’s flowering plants and two-thirds of food crops require pollinators.
• Some species of flies can look like bees. You can tell them apart by counting their wings: bees have two sets of wings, while flies have only one set.
• 25% of all birds need food produced from plants that need pollinators.
• All flowers need pollination to produce fruit but some are wind-pollinated; however, even wind-pollinated plants are often used by pollinators for food and shelter, even though they are not required for pollination.
• Honey bees are non-native and most are managed like livestock to produce honey and pollinate crops.
• Some plants rely on native pollinators’ buzzing to shake the flower and release pollen.
• Native pollinators including mason and bumble bees are important fruit crop pollinators.
The interplay between pollinators and flora
While developing our climate-ready woodlands information, we researched how each tree and plant species on those lists benefits wildlife, including pollinators. Early blooming trees and spring ephemerals can be critical as early spring food sources for many emerging pollinators. Insects will seek out the spring blooms of maples, hawthorns, dogwoods, cherries, willows, serviceberry and eastern redbud. Insects pollinate spring ephemerals, including trout lily, trillium, Dutchman’s breeches, violets, wild geranium and wild ginger, among many others.
We also researched tree and plant benefits for beetles, ants and flies. We know that beetles pollinate pipsissewa, Canadian mayflower and bluebead lily. Ants pollinate common marsh marigold, leatherleaf and chokecherry. Flies (which often mimic bees) pollinate bog rosemary, wood anemone, skunk cabbage and creeping snowberry, just to name a few of the many, many plants that benefit our diverse pollinators.
Just as trees and plants provide for pollinators, pollinators are good food sources for other woodland wildlife, including birds, amphibians, mammals and other insects.
Woodland management for pollinators
Forests meet the full habitat requirements for many pollinators throughout their life stages – from eggs, caterpillars and grubs to mature butterflies, moths, beetles and ants.
Pollinators benefit from woodlands that have some open canopy, which provides more light to sun and fly in, and allows for more herbaceous flowering plants to thrive.
Pollinators also benefit from wood and brush piles as well as snags (standing dead trees) that create habitat for woodboring beetles whose tunnels are used by cavity-nesting bees. Some pollinators will also nest in burrows created under brush piles by small mammals.
Because diverse woodlands are home to many species of trees and plants, plants will flower at different times, supplying a continuous source of nectar and pollen.
Woody plants support 10 times more butterflies and moths than herbaceous plants. For example, Lepidoptera (winged insects that include butterflies and moths) use native woody plants for shelter, pupation and feeding.
There are many things woodland stewards can do to enhance pollinator habitat across the forest. A few important ones are preventing forest fragmentation, reducing troublesome deer herbivory, minimizing pesticide use and avoiding over-harvesting of wild plants.
Good woodland stewardship, including invasive plant removal, thoughtful timber harvesting and corridor management are also important.
Invasive plant removal
We know invasive plant removal is good woodland stewardship, but it is also important for pollinators. Research shows that 15 times more native Lepidopteran species use native woody plant species as larval hosts than non-native ornamental woody species.
In addition to being less useful, some invasive plants can actively harm native pollinator populations. Female monarchs will lay their eggs on black swallow-wort instead of their preferred milkweed, even though larvae cannot feed on these plants and soon die.
Invasive species control commonly uses pesticides, and timing basal bark or trunk injection treatments until after flowering can help limit non-target damage. Because some pollinators use invasive plants, it is important to replace invasives with native plants to ensure continued pollen sources.
Woodland edges
Many woodland owners or stewards have woodland edges throughout the property. Creating a gradual transition between habitat types, called feathering, can enhance bumblebee and butterfly abundance. Many folks also find feathered edges more aesthetically appealing and naturallooking than straight edges.
Timber harvesting
Timber harvests are often essential management tools for resilient woods.
Creating small canopy gaps can increase herbaceous plant flowering and allow butterflies to sun themselves. Timber harvesting is also a good time to improve the climate resilience of the forest by diversifying tree and plant species. Species diversity is critical for optimal pollinator habitat.
Log landings are areas where logs are piled before hauling off-site during a timber harvest. These woodland openings are often reseeded after logging is complete and some will have residual wood.
To manage these areas for pollinators, reseed with native perennial wildflowers and allow loose bare ground to persist along the edges, as this can be valuable for ground nesting and mason bees.
The wood piles can be used as habitat for overwintering pollinators, reptiles and amphibians.
Corridor management
Managed trails and roads that run through the woods can enhance pollinator habitat. If the corridor is wide enough for sun to enhance flowering herbaceous plants, they can provide nectar and pollen later in the season. If the corridors or road edges are shaded they may harbor spring ephemerals that are critical for early-season pollinators. It may be helpful to think of mowing as a vegetation management tool to be deployed with care. For some plants, waiting until after they’ve flowered may be preferable. (For invasives, it’s important to make sure the mower does not spread propagating parts or seeds, though sadly this is common with wild parsnip.) Rough or high mowing can leave behind herbaceous stems that pollinators use for overwintering or nesting habitat.
Mowing information from the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources (DNR) offers this advice: “Roadsides that have not been mowed for three years have up to three times as many [bird] nests per acre as those mowed annually. Mowing every three years is sufficient to control brush. Mow grass high to leave cover over winter.”
The DNR also recommends spot mowing or spraying for weed control.
In Hubbard County, we are fortunate to have woodlands, prairies and wetlands right at our fingertips. Keeping a few management considerations in mind will also help our pollinator friends enjoy these areas as much as we do.
