Creating a landscape of desirable plants is largely a matter of manipulating habitat to favor the plants we want. Most often there is no need to put a lot of money or labor into seeding rangeland. Plants reproduce exponentially, so one seed can become a plant with hundreds more seeds, and each of those seeds can become plants totaling many thousands more seeds. Eight years ago it was difficult to find a wild onion growing on the dry hill behind our house. But early one spring while digging soil for flower pots, I realized just how badly the hillside had deteriorated.
Wild onions are a low successional species that requires bare ground to germinate.
After eight years of continuous rest there was so much bare ground between the plants that the wild onions were sprouting by the hundreds just in the small area where I was filling flower pots. A foot print sinks deep into the puffy soils left from repeated cycles of freezing and thawing. Air moves easily through the soil and steals the moisture before seeds can germinate. Animal impact can compact the soil and allow seeds to germinate. Bennet Hills, Idaho.