Epic Gardening, Native Garden Updates, and the Moths are Coming!
My favorite food-growing podcaster, Kevin Espiritu, had a series of pods about native gardening this past week. Please find his excellent podcast here and the interesting 101 about growing natives.
My own native plant garden has been very much on its own the last month or so as I’ve been traveling and not around to help out or even notice much. Over the last few days, I’ve made up for lost time trying to get my seedlings organized and photographing the garden.
Unfortunately, the large Elymus plants making up the base of my home prairie were looking sad. They were either diseased, stressed, or just unattractive. I decided to cut them back and give them a chance to come back green and healthy. The added benefit to cutting them back is that I removed the seeds before they ripened (I hope) so won’t have as many volunteers around the garden next spring. There are hundreds of seedlings that came up from last year’s seeds, already, and that is probably enough Elymus for now.
Sad-looking Elymus grass mostly brown and going to seed.After the Felco pruners had their way; I left the cuttings on the ground in case anything is living in there and also to add organic matter.
Here are some highlights from the native garden this spring.
Geum flowers on tall stalks.More Geum flowers.Geum seed ball forming.Maidenhair fern leafing out late, which is their habit.Dicentra setting seeds. Dicentra flowers and seeds.Fringecups in front of salmonberry.Willow cuttings plopped out in the garden with a hope and a prayer that they might become willow trees one day, a keystone species for food webs in Seattle.Cornus blooming in the rain.Somebody is eating the thimbleberry leaves. I have yet to discover the culprits. Maybe there is more than one kind.Tolmiea blooming in front of the Cornus. They have beautiful, intricate flowers.The thimbleberry is not only spreading like a virus but has flowers this year for the first time. Will berries be next?I was so excited that the Sidalceas in the prairie/meadow area bloomed for the first time this year; you can also see camas blooming in the background among the Elymus grass.Checkermallow (Sidalcea) in bloom. It isn’t a large plant but has lovely flowers and interesting seed pods.A closer-up view of the checker mallow.And closer still.Likely a different species of Sidalcea–beautiful flowers!Second view.Close up of Sidalcea seed heads forming.These aquilegia formosa seedlings are growing slowly. I’ve had a tough time getting these to thrive–not sure what I’m missing. I planted about 15 more of them directly in the garden to see what happens.The native plant garden is growing up and looking lush…from some views.Camas seeds forming–quite a few of them? Is it possible they might self-seed?Close-up of seed capsules.One of my favorite plants — the wild strawberry (Fragaria vesca). I haven’t noticed it being utilized as a part of the food web yet but is supposed to be a popular larval host species.The Douglas aster patch is very robust this year. And to the right in the sunlight is the fireweed brother Tim brought over from his pea patch.Considering how many acorns my friend Dean harvested for me there aren’t many seedlings yet–just two that I have noticed so far. I suspect the squirrels had several acorn-based holiday meals over the winter at our expense.
I’ve spent hours and hours transplanting native seedlings this weekend, including the above Sidalceas and below salmon berries. The large trays include Puget gumweed, Erigeron speciosa, and Oregon sunshine.
Salal flowers at Ingraham High School, where I often borrow seeds.Snowberries blooming at Ingraham High School nearby.Another view.Gorgeous moth visitor this week.A different view…shows some green and brown markings.A littler moth that visited this week.This could be a ten-spotted honeysuckle moth.Two beauties, a snout moth and an owlet of some type or other.This was a new bee for me–I think a red-horned bee, possibly. The Santa Barbara daisies are swarming with native pollinators.
