Wildflower meadow 2010

Here is what it looks like at the end of winter:

From TTH20100531

From TTH20100531

Ideally you burn off the old vegetation but I live in a town where the neighbors and Fire Department would look askance, nay have a conniption fit, if I set fire to the backyard.

I tried an ordinary gas powered string trimmer and it could not cope. It didn't even make a dent in the tough stalks.

This is what I need:
DR String Trimmer
But alas, I lack the $500 to $700 for it and couldn't justify the cost anyway. I used to have one but lost custody in the divorce.

This is what I have:

De-thatching rake

It got the job done but it was a brutal job. I dragged at the stalks with the rake and periodically hacked with a machete, loaded it all onto a tarp and dragged it to the curb.


April 10

From TTH20100531

May 29

From TTH20100531

Mostly Penstemon in bloom

From TTH20100531

Bumblebees love Penstemon. I watched them burrow deep into a flower, back out and bumble on the the next.

From TTH20100531

Meadow in July

This is the second full growing season for the wildflower meadow. I had imagined it as a swoosh of native grasses studded with flowers. Instead I have a 5 to 6 foot high, solid wall of blooming forbs. I'm not complaining mind you but I'm still trying to revise my expectations. The bees, butterflies and birds give it top marks. Here's what it looked like last year and the year before.

From 200907

From 200907

From 200907

From 200907

From 200907

Wildflower meadow - 2008

Here are some pictures of my new wildflower meadow as of July. The wretched looking red shed is now a thing of the past. I'll show you my nice new one in another post. Follow the label 'meadow' to see the history of this project.

I hadn't expected that I would see many blossoms this first year since I had read that a lot of prairie plants spend their first year growing roots. I was pleasantly surprised at the number and variety of blossoms. The meadow buzzed all summer and into September with honey bees, bumble bees, butterflies and hummingbirds.

From TTH200811

From TTH200811

From TTH200811

Wildflower meadow with heavily laden peach tree

From TTH200811

The meadow is seeded!

I've spent 2 years preparing the soil and last week I finally got to plant! I took all the wildflower seeds and mixed them up in the garden cart with a mixture of peat, perlite and the dregs of potting soil bags, moistened well and stirred thoroughly. I broadcast the seeds by hand and then overseeded with three kinds of native grasses.

Prairie dropseed (Sporobolus heterolepsis) went along one edge. It was the most expensive and makes fairly low growing mounds so I wanted to show it off.

Side oats grama (Bouteloua curtipendula) is the tallest so went in a patch at the back as viewed from the house.

Little bluestem (Schizachyrium scoparium) covered the rest of the bed.

I've read that most of these plants will spend their first year growing deep roots and that it won't look like much above the soil surface. I will post photos as things sprout.

Wildflower meadow

I spent the weekend doing a final weeding of the prospective wildflower meadow. All the yard waste has composted down to a couple of inches and now that it's raked out it looks like brown velveteen. The seeds have either arrived or are on their way and in a few more weeks when it looks like the weather will stay cold I will sow the forbs and grasses.

Planting a prairie

I'm nursing my trays of seedling prairie plants, trying to get them through the summer heat until I can plant them out in September. I will then fill in with seeds of native grasses and forbs. When I started the project I knew that it was going to take at least a full year to establish the bed and get the weeds under good control. I hoped to get a good start by planting seeds in trays and overwintering them since many need cold to germinate and spend most of their first year growing a root system. I have some good sized plants blooming from the first winter and trays of very insignificant looking seedlings from this past winter. I'll plant them out but on the whole, I think I invested a lot more time and effort than the result justified. I learned some things along the way but if I had it to do over, would probably just wait until the bed was ready and sow seeds directly.

Some problems I encountered:
My temporary cold frames were constructed from half inch PVC pipe covered with plastic sheeting. The hoops had a rather flattened profile that let snow and water collect and collapse the whole thing. More than once I was out in the sleet cleaning them off.

Then I left the covers on too long and I think it got too hot. Many seedlings fried and died.

The cats thought the cold frames made a cozy place for a springtime nap. Having large hairy beasts lying on them didn't do the seedlings any good either.

Wildflower meadow - Big project for 2007

Winter of 2005 - 2006 I winter-sowed a lot of forb seeds in flats and got a good germination rate. Some the transplants died during the summer heat but I have quite a few in pots to plant out this spring. I did a lot more this past winter and have about 80 flats of seedlings. I'm not sure when the optimal time to plant will be. Here's the shelter I set up for the seedlings. It's made from the supports that used to be part of raised beds, 1/2 inch pvc pipe form the hoops. It was covered with plastic sheeting this winter and I've replaced that with shade cloth. I've got to work on the design. It is somewhat flattened on the top and that let snow and water accumulate and squash it. I left the plastic on too long and I think some seedlings fried. Either that or the cats squashed them since they decided it made a great place for naps.

For grasses I plan to start with three that are native to this area and supposed to be suitable for the soil and moisture. I don't want the very tallest ones so I have chosen Little bluestem (Schizachyrium scoparium), Prairie dropseed (Sporobolus heterolepsis) and Bottlebrush (Elymus hystrix/Hystrix patula).

In 2006 I laid out a teardrop shaped area that covers approximately 1000 square feet on the left side of the backyard. This is zone 6, full sun, mesic in spring to dry in summer. It's Virginia clay soil and a neighbor enlightened me to why I was hitting a near impenetrable layer about 8 inches down in places – an old railway bed ran through there years back. I killed the grass with glyphosate herbicide and have repeated applications every month or so. Used a broadfork to break up the soil to about 12 inches.

It has received most of last year's compost and fresh yard waste. By happy chance our town changed trash pickup rules and my neighbors brought me grass clippings all season. It looks like I have a good 4 or 5 inches of compost now that it has wintered over. I will need to do a couple of applications of herbicide this spring before I plant. I have some awful perennial weeds to get under control.

I'll plant out all the potted plants and seedling plugs, probably in June. In the fall I will direct sow more grass and wildflower seeds and see what comes up in the spring. I understand it takes about 3 years for it to look like much.

Here are the seedlings in the nursery, aka The Pot Ghetto