In Australia some gum trees rely on fire to clear the under growth, split the seed case, allowing the seed to grow. Fire was also used to clear the bush and fern on NZs now farm lands, they were then sown with grass seed for the paddocks. Do a Papa-pepper and dig up any interesting small trees and replant them in the right spot avfter the fire
Nah, I want to let the wild plants grow wild in their native wild habitat. There are invasive weeds here that thrive on poor soil, and move in first if anything is disturbed unless something like the fire ring gives the native plants a nutritional advantage. Spotted knapweed is especially problematic here. Part of the reason behind clearing the underbrush and pruning limbs is to give a boost to native plants.
Try flame weeding, they are available in USA and are one hand operatable, run off LPG, easy to fire up, walk over the area and squirt the weeds you want killed, it is a long term job as it only kills the top bit without a top nothing will grow so success is obtainable. Ask an agriculture machine shop in your area, or Uncle Google, he knows everything.
BAD idea here. When the knapweed is ready to be taken down before going to seed, everything else is far too dry to be playing with fire. And it's far too widespread for spot treatment.
don't wait for it to grow, when it first pokes it's head through the ground, hit it.
As an experiment, pick a small patch, boil some water, sprinkle it over the test bed and repeat weekly. At the end of the year see how the weeds are.
A pain in the *** but it is a test, over time, a long time, you should clear the whole area.
It works in NZ, on our painful weeds.
I don't want to denigrate your well-intentioned advice, but I don't think you understand how widespread this stuff is. For perspective, I will try to remember to post pictures this July to show what I mean. It's everywhere. It's almost as abundant as grass in the fields. If you know what you're looking for, you can see its dried dead remnants from last year everywhere in this post.
The real long-term solution is improving the growing conditions here so native plants have a better chance to out-compete the stuff. Knapweed likes poor soil and weak competition. We are improving the opportunities for its native competition. In the short term, mowing is a somewhat-beneficial practice.