Jul. 28—KELLOGG, Minn. — Stepping into a prairie along Wabasha County Highway 84, Autumn Folkert points out a cluster of plants with purple spotted pink and cream flowers.
Spotted horsemint, a plant native to Minnesota, grows on what was a corn field less than four years ago in 2021. Seeds for the plants in an approximately 55-acre former crop field came from plants in neighboring remnant prairies in the Kellogg-Weaver Dunes Scientific Natural Area near the Mississippi River in Southeast Minnesota.
“When you walk out on some of the (prairie) remnants, there’s a carpet of this mint,” said Folkert, Southeast Minnesota site steward for the Nature Conservancy. “This looks a lot like the remnants.”
Four years ago, the field was covered in corn crop.
“To go from a corn field to this is pretty amazing,” said David Ruff, associate director of forest strategies focusing on natural climate solutions at The Nature Conservancy. “The number of species that are going to find something for them here compared to five years ago is huge.”
The field, along with nearly 90 acres of pasture land, were acquired in 2021 with funds from the state’s Legacy Amendment distributed via the Outdoor Heritage Fund. About 146 acres of land was added to the SNA.
The habitat is important for native Minnesota prairie plants. Prairies once covered more than 18 million acres in Minnesota. A little over 1% of native prairie remains in the state, according to the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources.
The sandy soil in the dunes area is also one of two places in North America where Blanding’s turtles nest. The turtles nest in sandy soil like that found at the Kellogg-Weaver SNA.
Folkert said she spotted a turtle in the rejuvenated field earlier this year while she was doing a butterfly count there. Remnants of some sort of reptile nest were spotted in the restored area. A predator had dug up the nest. Eggs shells and a depression in the sand were all that remained of the nest.
The quick transformation of the land took some effort. At the time the corn field was being harvested for the last time, conservancy staff, interns and volunteers collected seeds from in and around the prairies at the Kellogg-Weaver Dunes.
They collected 310 pounds of seeds from 158 species of plants. Staff then used a modified spreader owned by the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources to disperse the seeds.
“It’s nice to get that hyper-local seed and just carry it across a road” Ruff said. “We couldn’t have gotten that species mix at a nursery.”
The seeds were spread directly on the sandy dirt in 2021 while the field was still dotted with cut corn stalk stubble and pieces of corn husks. In 2025, some of the pieces of stalk can still be spotted between new growth. Spaces between vegetation are part of the design, Folkert said.
“(The turtles) need that open sand to nest,” she said.
Although it took a couple years to establish vegetation in the former crop field, it has needed less upkeep than the pasture land acquired the same year, Folkert and Ruff added. The pasture land has required more burns and some manual removal of invasive species and woody plants.
The annual crop planting and harvesting helped keep invasive plants and non natives from taking hold on the field, they said.
“It really was a blank slate,” Ruff said.
In spring this year, the plants were thick enough for conservancy staff to do a controlled burn on the site. The pasture lands, which have more grasses, have had more burns beginning the second full year after the conservancy took stewardship of the land.
Between the remnant prairie land at the SNA and seeing which natives thrive in areas being restored, Ruff said the Weaver-Kellogg Dunes area is a a rewarding place to visit and study.
“No matter how much knowledge you bring with you, if you bring your curiosity, something out here is going to surprise you,” he said.