Saturday, February 5, 2011

Native Prairie Plantings

I am working on getting my yard certified as a Best of Texas Backyard Habitat.  I have most of the requirements in place already.  I have 0.8 acre with a pretty good variety of habitats - more than just lawn.  A good portion of my yard is wooded.  I really only have one requirement left - water.  I had originally been thinking I'd dig a small pond, but I started the planning process of that and decided it would be too difficult to keep viable in my area.  I'd have huge problems with evaporation and even bigger problems keeping it filled.

I decided, instead, that I would do a water garden in a pot.  A local garden center, Dragonfly, has an outstanding selection of suitable pots and the various accessories necessary to turn them into a water garden.  This will be a perfect addition to fulfill the requirements of the certification program's need for water.  The water garden will have aquatic plants growing in it, and I would hope that it would eventually attract breeding amphibians.

Part of the certification program (not a required portion, but a suggested portion) involves reducing or eliminating nonnative turfgrass lawn spaces.  I already had a part of the back yard that was beginning to naturally seed with some natives (mostly little bluestem) and I decided that I would help the area along by planting a mix of native grass seeds.  I found a place that deals with a lot of Texas native plants, Native American Seed, and found that their Eastern Savannah Grass Mix suits my area perfectly.  It has a great variety of grasses:
  Big Bluestem 
  Bushy Bluestem 
  Eastern Gamagrass 
  Broomsedge Bluestem 
  Indiangrass 
  Little Bluestem 
  Prairie Wildrye 
  Virginia Wildrye 
  Sideoats Grama 
  Switchgrass 
  Purpletop 
  Sand Dropseed 
  Sand Lovegrass


I also purchased some American beautyberry seeds from them.  I'm attempting to germinate some of them indoors because I have a particular place I want them to grow.  The rest I plan to direct-sow in the woods after the last frost.  I got a bunch of wildflowers from both them and Baker Creek that I plan to plant in various locations in my front and backyards.

Garden Prep Jan 2011
Fun prepping the seed bed for the native grasses.


After talking to the wife, I've decided I'm also going to eliminate some lawn in the front yard in favor of some native plantings.  This area I'm going to be a little more specific about what goes where.  Native American Seed sells rootstock of a variety of grasses and flowers and I think I'm going to go this route for some things.  In particular, I have my eye on the big bluestem, indiangrass, and gayfeather rootstocks.  I'll probably also put down their Caddo Mix wildflowers here.


I do plan to maintain some section of lawn grass, but I think I'd like to plant buffalograss, a native turf grass, in the remaining portions of lawn.  It does really well on low rainfall.  Even though the area does get good annual precipitation, it's a VERY droughty climate.  Last summer, we went a full 2-3mo without a single drop of rain, so the more drought-hardy my plantings, the better off they will be.

Garden Prep

The end of January saw the time to begin preparing the gardens for the 2011 season.  It was pretty warm here at the time, so conditions were great to get out and clean up all the fall debris.

While cleaning up, we found a few plants still going that have been hardy all winter (a few freeze/thaw cycles, even).  The carrots we planted in spring of 2010 were still going.  I had all but forgotten about them because they just weren't any good all summer.  Well, apparently they wanted the cool season through fall and winter to really put on some mass.  They were nice looking carrots when I pulled them all up.

Garden Prep Jan 2011

The chives we planted last year were also still going. Not great, but still there. Probably because they had been buried under mountains of unwanted grasses that began to fill the garden at the end of the fall.

Garden Prep Jan 2011

Our blackberries looked pretty good, too. They started out last spring pretty small. Since they only produce berries on 2nd year or older stems, we ought to get some more berries out of them this year. We only got a few last year, and the birds got 'em before they were ripe. Hopefully they produce enough this year to satisfy the birds and leave some for us. We planted 3 plants last year, but I'm considering adding 2 more to the spot since there's room.

Garden Prep Jan 2011

The major task of the day, however, was clearing out all of the dead plants left over from our vegetables and the weeds that came in after they died off. We have a pretty big mountain of stuff!

Garden Prep Jan 2011

It's ready now to add to the brush pile in the back. And the brush pile in the back is currently ready for me to bring a chipper in to shred all that stuff up into mulch. This mulch won't go into the vegetable garden. It'll be too full of unwanted seeds. But it'll be good to add a little bit into the compost bin and use the rest to lay out a mulch path through the woods.

I would really like to burn that stuff so I can incorporate the ash into the garden, but since we live inside the loop, we aren't allowed to do open burning...and that pile of stuff from the garden will create quite a raging inferno that would burn hot enough to sterilize a LOT of soil (and that would NOT be good for the garden). I will eventually be getting a legal firepit with a cover, and that will allow me to burn some material safely and have some ash and coals to add to the garden.

I've selected my list of plants and ordered all my seeds for this spring. I will probably have to do a summer seed order, too, for some fall stuff.

Tomatoes:
Green Zebra (these taste great)
Jelly Bean
Early Girl (great producers)
Dr. Wyche's Yellow
Chocolate Stripes

Everything else:
Danvers carrot
Black beauty zucchini
Mexican sour gherkin cucumber
Arugula (to put in pots - it's too hot in summertime for this in the garden)
Emerald giant pepper
Pandora striped rose eggplant
Dragon tongue beans
Tomatillo verde
Jalapeno pepper

Later in the season, depending on how everything else is producing, I may add in some pumpkins and watermelons if I have the space.  I got a single 20lb pumpkin last year (early season) and I still have some in the freezer.  I hear that some of the blue pumpkins make amazing baking pumpkins, and I may go with one of those varieties later.  I may also plant some radishes depending on what my space utilization looks like.  If I have a lot of space, I may dedicate a corner of the garden for underground veggies like onions, garlic, and potatoes.  We'll see, but if I plant any of that stuff, it probably won't be until fall.

Last year, I had the herb garden located within the fence of the vegetable garden.  Some things did well there, but others got too cramped and were choked out by the sweet basil.  This year, I'm moving the herb garden to an area right off the back of the patio to make more room for both the vegetables and the herbs.  I've chosen to plant a few of the same herbs, but a few new varieties.

Herbs:
Italian Parsley
Common Thyme
Oregano vulgare
Slo-Bolt Cilantro
Genovese Basil
Lemon Basil
Transplanting the remaining chives into the new location