Native grass plantings check an important box in EWU’s Palouse Prairie restoration.

After overcoming obstinate weeds and uncooperative weather, members of Eastern Washington University’s prairie restoration team earlier this year announced another milestone in the project’s development — the seeding of native grasses across the whole of its 120-acre restoration site.

It’s an important step, Prairie Restoration Project leaders say, in advancing the university’s plan to devote a third of its campus land to reestablishing a patch of natural Palouse Prairie — an ancient ecosystem largely lost to agricultural development. When completed, the restoration will become a “living laboratory” for interdisciplinary collaborations and research.

“We’ve learned a lot through this seeding process,” says project head Erik Budsberg, director of sustainability at EWU. “Living systems are very dynamic, and there are always going to be complications that come in, challenges that you weren’t expecting.”

Among those challenges was the persistence of invasive, broadleaf weeds that, in earlier testing, had proven lethal to native grasses. Taming the floral interlopers involved repeated mowing, tilling and, eventually, herbicide applications to completely clear the ground. Eventually, it worked. “I think we got the site looking about as pristine as you possibly can,” Budsberg says.

“We’ve learned a lot through this seeding process,” says project head Erik Budsberg, director of sustainability at EWU. “Living systems are very dynamic, and there are always going to be complications that come in, challenges that you weren’t expecting.”

Sadly, Mother Nature then stepped up to offer a new complication: a warm, wet, early winter. Counterintuitively, prairie grass seeds require sustained cold to sprout in spring. “What they need is called ‘cold moisture stratification,’ ” says Erin Endres, an EWU nursery services specialist whose work is crucial to helping the prairie bloom again. “That means they have to be planted in the cold to break their dormancy and germinate.”

Getting the timing right fell to Chris Fitzner, a local farmer with an interest in sustainable agriculture.

“Chris just had to sit and wait for the right conditions,” says Budsberg. “We needed it to get cold, and then to stay cold, so that the seeds wouldn’t germinate too early.” There were also issues with the soil not freezing sufficiently for the drill seeder — specialized planting machines developed for no-till farming — to operate effectively.

“So he had to wait until we got a good ground freeze,” Budsberg continues. “When it finally came, Chris went out at ten o’clock at night and seeded the site until three in the morning.”

That sort of dedication bodes well for the project’s future; a future that is increasingly coming into focus. “With getting these grasses in the ground, I think we’re truly at a turning point,” Budsberg says.