“Though I do not believe that a plant will spring up where no seed
has
been, I have great faith in a seed. Convince me that you have a seed
there and I am prepared to expect wonders.”
― Henry David Thoreau
For the last 5 years, I've been working on establishing native wildflowers on our land. After getting a small patch of soil prepared & planted near the house, I had to wait patiently for the first 2 years until the showpiece flowers started blooming. Over the next 3 years, we burned the small patch every winter and each spring even more flowers would grow. I was fascinated with the huge numbers of insects that surrounded the native wildflowers. By the thousands, they come. So many varieties of bees including honey bees, bumblebees, carpenter bees, mason bees and even little sweat bees were availing themselves of the sweet nectar produced by these plants and I could watch them for hours. Their ability to work so energetically for hours is something of which I'm very envious!
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| Honey bees on Butterfly Milkweed in the hot July sun. |
And when the butterflies arrived - oh lordy, I knew I was hooked on native wildflower gardening and needed to plant more. After all, I have 23 acres, so why not plant it all in flowers?
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| Black Swallowtail on Prairie Blazing Star in July |
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| Crimson clover makes a great cover crop. We planted it in the late fall and it provides plenty of food in the early spring for the bees that emerge early from their winter slumber. |
Last Fall, I spent a lot of time out gathering native
wildflower seeds on our property which included thousands of Butterfly milkweed
and Common milkweed seeds too.
I was delighted
to receive seeds from new friends and I went even further and purchased a
variety of packets of seed from the Missouri Wildflowers Nursery
(MOwildflowers.net).
Normally, I would have already scattered the seeds over the
areas to be planted so that the freezing and thawing from winter would naturally stratify
the seeds and get them ready to sprout this summer. But, the areas I’m going to plant this spring are still thickly
covered with dead fescue that we killed last Fall. If not killed, the
fescue would continue to choke out the native plants and I
might as well throw the seeds in the trash, because they wouldn’t sprout
until the fescue is gone, gone, gone. The dead grass then has to be burned off too so that the seed, once scattered, can make good contact with the soil. I’ve been seeing
some whorled milkweed struggling through the thick grass in this area for the last 2 years, so I can’t wait to see what
happens when we burn it this spring.
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| Mr. Freeze has plowed a fire lane to the south (to the right) of this 3/4 acres, so we don't burn down the neighbor's barn & house. |
While we’re waiting for the perfect burning weather (we don’t
want our names to be part of a headline story in the local newspaper), I am
manually stratifying the seeds. Well,
this is the way the experts recommend stratifying seeds at home, so we’ll see
if it works. At least this way, I’m not
feeding the local mouse population too! I moistened some soil less potting mixture (sphagnum
peat moss) and mixed the seeds in, dumped it into trays, then put them in the
spare refrigerator.
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| These flats contain seeds for: Praire Blazing Star, Purple Coneflower,
Yellow Coneflower, Pale Purple Coneflower, Horsemint (Bee Balm), New
England and Aromatic Aster, Royal Catchfly, Rose Verbena, Hairy Mountain
Mint. The bag contains both Common and Butterfly milkweed seeds. All require 3-6 weeks of stratification. |
I have placed them outside at night a few times, just so
they could freeze over and then brought them back in. It’s what would happen in nature, so I’m
helping, right?
I've also potted some Common milkweed plants to have
around for any Monarch caterpillars that I’ll find this year.
I’ll be able to set the potted milkweed plants
inside of their houses for them to eat, eliminating the need for me to cut fresh leaves every day from the field plants.
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| 4 seeds were added to moistened potting soil in each recycled 1/2 gallon milk jug. |
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| I put together 34 of these, sealed them shut and left them on the deck all winter. |
All I have to do now is wait until the perfect burning weather to do our prescribed burn. Mr. Freeze always lets me throw the first match. I think he knows it appeases my inner pyro, who needs to be unleashed often. I love fire - not because it is destructive, but because of what happens after it passes through. It brings new life to areas where it was once suffocated, it renews and rejuvenates and some seeds even require it for scarification. After a long, cold winter, I am ready to turn up the heat!
