Gardening by Mistake

I’ve been spending a lot of time weeding the tall grass prairie that took over my garden. (That is, if a tall grass prairie was made of invasive, non-native grasses). I did a great job of staying on top of the weeds until about mid-July. Then we had unbelievable heat and humidity and I hid inside. The weeds kept growing with abandon.

I’ve been noticing what is still growing and what is no longer in evidence from what I planted. So far, aquilegia is the only thing I’ve noticed that has vanished. Oh, and one of my asclepias tuberosa plants. Everything else is still hanging on somehow. It’s been a hot and dry summer since mid-July. My viola pedatifida, WS and planted this year, were looking beautiful on Friday morning as I weeded. On Saturday evening they’d vanished, no trace that they’d ever been there. I assume the blasted rabbits got them.

As I’ve been weeding I’ve had a lot of time to think about this year’s gardening and I’ve gotten pretty bummed out about what seems like my many failures this year, the first and most noticeable of which is the current weed situation.  Another item high on the list is my failure to get as many plants added as I’d set out to. My goal was 350 plants. Last year I added 170 or so. So far this year, I’m at a measly 123. I still have winter sown plants sitting around waiting to be planted, so it’s possible (I don’t know that it’s likely, though) that I could make it to 170 this fall. I’ve just got to get more planted next year. And that might sound like a lot of plants, but I have (stupidly) 1,000 square feet of garden to fill in. 170 is a drop in a very large bucket. Added to my list of disappointments are the failure to get my prairie rain garden in and my front border done. Both of those go on my list for next year.

Maybe by the end of the growing season I’ll have gotten more planted and everything will be nicely weeded and maybe even mulched and I’ll feel better about things. For now, though, I’d have to say that this growing season was a real disappointment and failure.

Okay, this time I’m using commercial seed for Big Bluestem, so I can be more sure that whatever grows will actually be big bluestem. Also started is a bunch of little bluestem and some blue grama. The other thing I did differently was to inoculate the soil with a mycorrhizae mix and I think that will definitely help. If I can get some growing they should be big enough by the end of the growing season to make it through winter.

The flooding we had this past weekend washed away part of my pocket prairie. That is, I’d put down a thick layer of cardboard topped with leaves in an attempt to smother all the nasty stuff growing there already (like poison ivy– what fun!) before I planted my prairie plants.  That seemed to be working beautifully. The water washed away the leaves and some of the cardboard. Once I can get out there again without walking through water an inch deep, I’ll see if I can’t repair some of the damage. The fence at the far end of the garden caught a lot of the leaves, so I might be able to haul them back to the prairie area.

The fact that I hadn’t been able to plant my prairie seems like a blessing in hindsight. I’ve been frustrated that I couldn’t get that planted this year but there’s an upside. It would be worse to get it planted and lose a bunch of plants to the flooding. The prairie didn’t get done this year for two reasons: the first was that the cardboard and leaves hadn’t decomposed as I’d thought they would. Hopefully that won’t be the case next year, and if it is, I’ll consider removing the cardboard since it will have been smothering things for over a year at that point. The other reason was that I had the darndest time getting the native grasses to grow, and at a certain point it became personal so that I’m determined to do it myself rather than buy plugs or small plants.

I did end up getting big bluestem to grow… I thought. In fact, it grew much more vigorously than the little bluestem. And when it got big enough, I couldn’t see that it was different from some invasive weed grasses. I just don’t know enough about the various grasses to know for sure. The big bluestem seed came from a trade, however, rather than a commercial source, so I worried that it was mis-identified. I certainly didn’t want to plant an invasive non-native grass in my garden. I have enough of that to pull as it is! So that went bye-bye.

So I’ve come up with a different approach to getting my prairie. I’m going to try some native grasses that are supposed to be easier to grow. And I’m going to keep trying the big and little bluestem at the same time.  As I said, that’s become a personal challenge. I’ve ordered the seed and I’m going to get busy with it as soon as it gets here. If I can get some germinations, the plants will still have most 4 months for growing.  They might be large enough for planting next year.

I haven’t given up on growing some native grasses from seed. I just potted up another batch today. Even if they all make it, I’m still not going to have what I’ll need, but I’ll be a lot farther along. At this point, ironically, I don’t have a place to plant them.  I’d set up a lasagna bed for the pocket prairie area, and it’s not composted yet. It seems too deep to just plant the small, slow-growing grasses in it. Those grasses will get out-competed and covered up by invasive, quick-growing grasses, I’m sure. So, it looks like I’ll have all of this spring and summer to grow my grasses in pots with the expectation that I’ll be able to plant them, finally, in the prairie, in the fall. I also have the forbs that I intend to plant in the prairie area. I guess I’ll go ahead and plant those whenever they seem big enough. They can have a season to get established before they have to start competing with the roots of the grasses, which I read will be quite impressive some day.

Thanks to my gardening friend in Minnesota, I have both Big and Little Bluestem grasses. They are quite different. I find it interesting that the Big Bluestem seems much more vigorous. I’ve got quite a few of those– when I originally didn’t plan on having any due to their size! They grow much faster than the Little Bluestem and I have no idea why. They seem hardier, too.  The Little Bluestem are more appropriate for my small prairie area, so I do hope I have success with the batch I potted up today.

Not only are native grasses boring to grow, they are not easy to grow. Aside from my chasmanthium latifolium (northern sea oats) I’m having miserable results.  It is very, very frustrating. It’s going to be hard to have my pocket prairie w/o the grasses! At this point, it looks like I’m going to have almost all forbs. I’m going to have to try winter sowing some and if those germinate, I’ll have to plan on babying those through the summer and then hopefully they’ll have enough size to plant out in the fall. If not, then I suppose I’ll have to bite the bullet and buy some from a nursery. I don’t want to do that if I can help it.

Very frustrating.

The asclepias, on the other hand, are shooting for the moon. It’s ridiculous how tall those seedlings are getting. I have trouble imagining that they won’t bloom this first summer. They are dwarfed only by the rudbeckia of unknown type that are growing next to them. One of these days, those rudbeckia are going to bloom and I’ll find out if they are the Cherry Brandy or something else.  It’s too bad they weren’t of planting out size before the killing freeze. Then I wouldn’t have to be caring for them over the winter. It’s rather silly to be doing so.