Go Wild
Want a glorious meadow in your own back yard? Here are some seeds of wisdom about growing Texas’ native flowers.
(Page 2 of 2)
Of course, you can really go native and collect your own seed from plants near your site. The indiscriminate picking of flowers or digging of plants from the wild is strictly taboo (with the exception of those in the shadow of a bulldozer or on your own land), but if you gather a handful of seed from a field of Maximillian sunflowers, the natural world won’t collapse. The most accessible wildflowers are along highway right-of-ways, thanks to the 60,000 pounds of seed planted annually by the Texas Department of Transportation and the absence of cattle grazing the roadside. When harvesting seed on public lands, “preservation” is the watchword among collectors—meaning, don’t be greedy, and take seed only from abundant patches. Timing is crucial. Dan Hosage, Jr., who owns Madrone Nursery outside San Marcos, suggests you “get to know the plant a little bit.” Watch the seeds or capsules as they go from green and succulent to brown and dry; then it’s harvest time. Some plants are freer with their seed than others. Following a good bloom year, bluebonnets, for instance, will actually shoot their seeds at you. Lay a drop cloth under a plateau goldeneye in late October or early November, shake the plant gently, and you’ll have enough seed to share with a scout troop. Then you have stubborn mountain pinks, which enclose their germ-size seed in tiny, sticky pods that are as hard to pull off the plant as chewing gum from a toddler’s hair. Harvesting Indian paintbrush gives even a professional like John Thomas fits because its seeds are so tiny and must be hand-harvested: Twenty Wildseed workers spend three weeks collecting less than 120 pounds of seed.
Separate the seeds from their pods and any stems and leaves you snatched while gathering by rubbing the dried plant material you’ve collected between gloved hands. (Do this inside a large paper bag so the seed will fall to the bottom of the sack.) The more chaff you remove, the easier the seeds will be to store and scatter—and the less danger there’ll be of moisture damage during storage. Seeds keep best in a dry, cool place; stored in correctly, they will lose 10 percent of their viability every thirty days. In the vaultlike seed room at the National Wildflower Research Center, most of the seed is stored in crumpled, well-used brown paper sacks.
Lay the Groundwork
YOU’RE NOW ONLY TWO STEPS AWAY from achieving meadowhood—preparing your site and planting your seeds. Wildflowers don’t care what you look like. So forgo the fancy gardeners’ threads from that mail-order catalog and spend your money on what John Dromgoole considers the essential wildflower tool: a high-quality rake with flexible wire tines (it will set you back about $40). I suggest a good pair of gloves, although I can never seem to find mine. The ones I’m always losing are Tillman’s, available at welding-supply shops for about $14 and made of leather supple enough to grasp little seed packets but tough enough to endure hand-to-rock digging in limestone. If you have a weed problem, you’ll need a hoe for tilling; for larger meadows, borrow or rent a gas-powered garden tiller.
Weeds like African Bermuda grass and nut grass will choke out your wildflowers, and getting rid of them can take months—so the time to start is now. The best approach is a combination of many strategies. First, till the soil (but no deeper than one inch or you risk awakening more dormant weed seeds than you have to) and remove the clumps of vegetation. Next, in a kind of “good cop—bad cop” tactic, water thoroughly to stimulate weed growth. Then, depending on your organic inclinations, nuke the pests with (a) repeated tilling, weeding, and watering; (b) solarization, or sterilizing the soil by “cooking” it under heavy black plastic or pieces of carpet for a couple of months (your neighbors will love this look); (c) a dosing of non-residual herbicide such as Roundup or Finale; or (d) all of the above.
A Time to Sow
THE BEST TIME TO PLANT MOST WILDFLOWERS is in the fall from mid-September to the end of October. Sow your seeds too early and rodents, bugs, and birds will scarf them down before they have a chance to germinate. Wait until the spring and you’ve missed out on the crucial winter chill.
Start small. One of the greatest disappointments in creating a meadow comes from trying to cover too big an area with too little seed (picture a bad hair transplant). The Wildflower Center’s Wildflower Handbook includes a mind-numbing formula for determining pounds of seed per acre that is so complex you’ll wonder whether you’re planting a wildflower meadow or building a neutron bomb: You figure density and ratios by multiplying the number of seeds per pound times their germination rate times the percentage of species desired times . . . Let’s boil this ox down to a bouillon cube and say you need six to ten seeds per square foot.
If your meadow is lucky enough to be sown over an existing field of native grasses, simply mow the vegetation as close to the ground as possible, then rake the thatch aside to expose patches of dirt. (Caveat: Some native grasses, like buffalo, really hate to be scalped, and experts say mid-sized to tall grasses should never be sheared shorter than six inches.) To scatter the seed evenly, especially the fairy dust—like seeds of paintbrush or bluebells, mix one part seed with four parts fine sand. Marcia Herman wouldn’t plant bluebonnets without their species-specific inoculant, the bacterium rhizobium, which can be purchased at many native-plant nurseries.
When broadcasting the seed, remember that it should either rest on the ground or, at most, be gently tamped down with an understated stomp. Although different species have different requirements, a general rule is, Don’t bury your seed deeper than one eighth of an inch or it may not have the energy reserve to push through the dirt. At this point in the process, the experts agree to disagree. Dromgoole suggests a very thin top coat of Dillo Dirt, a compost made from municipal sludge, followed by a light watering for a wildly successful meadow. Bill Neiman prefers to let nature take its course, eschewing even an initial watering: “Once you start watering, you can’t stop.” He figures if the seeds don’t germinate this year, they’ll save themselves for a time of ample rainfall. John Thomas says Wildseed Farms doesn’t have one piece of irrigation pipe, and his spectacular fields of color testify to the success of his dry-land farming techniques, which rely solely on rainfall. On the other hand, author Geyata Ajilvsgi, as passionate about butterflies as she is about wildflowers, wants a garden full of blooms, so she lays in soaker hoses to help her flowers through droughts.
Depending on your neighbors’ attitudes or your aesthetic requirements, you may want to clear out the raggedy remains of some wildflowers after they have gone to seed, particularly the taller varieties like coreopsis and Maximillian sunflowers. You can yank the offending plants up or, in a large meadow, mow them down. If you do decide to mow, raise your lawnmower blade to its highest setting to avoid damaging emerging seedlings.
A Garden of Delights
CONSIDER KEEPING A JOURNAL OF YOUR WALK on the wild side to track its ever-changing nature—and yours too. During the first year, you will note how the annual species dominate the site. Some perennials may sprout, but they won’t bloom until the second or third year. You might begin to notice more butterflies around your yard. By the second year, you may spot a few places where you need to reseed, and maybe you’ll want to transplant some of that standing cypress, a stately plant topped with a bright red cluster of blossoms, to a flower bed. After consulting one of your field guides, you might decide that a bed of mealy blue sage would be just the thing to replace that azalea that has never bloomed. By the third or fourth year, you’ll be listing all the native plants that have sprung from seeds planted by visiting birds snacking on butterfly larvae in your meadow. And you may find yourself scribbling a plan to rip up your chinch-bug-plagued Saint Augustine and start a second meadow. Wildflowers seem to have this effect on people.
You may not even be content to leave the flowers outside; Wanda Lancaster and Wanda Fielder certainly aren’t. Every week, the two Wandas arrange wildflowers to grace the cafe tables, the gallery, the gift shop, and a few lucky offices at the Wildflower Research Center. During last summer’s drought, when I couldn’t imagine what they could possibly find to use, they would emerge from their workroom with vase after vase of stunning arrangements of dainty yellow broomweed and daisylike purple coneflower and spikes of lavender gay feather. When winter rolled around, they made the most of dried grasses and branches of red-berried possumhaw holly. “I think it’s almost basic human nature to cut flowers, bring them in, put them in a vase, and look at them,” says Wanda F., who advises putting the flowers in water as soon as they’re cut: “Take a bucket out to the field with you.”
While bluebonnets and Indian paintbrush top their list of wildflowers for arrangements, they can’t disguise their enthusiasm for other species: “Bluebells are the best. They last the longest!”
“Drummond’s phlox! A lifesaver this year.”
“Purple coneflower,” they coo in unison.
“Thistles!”
“There’s always something available if you don’t have preconceived notions,” says Wanda L. Then she gives me some advice I think I can use in life as well as in wildflower arranging: “Take the givens and make the most of them.”
Pages: 1 2
My Library
