Rewilding My Lot

Early on in my time here, I set aside a portion of the back garden to be an area for mid-height native prairie grasses and the one I particularly wanted to grow was Little Bluestem (Schizachyrium scoparium). I introduced that by plant and seed.

Sometimes I plan one thing, but nature, increased knowledge, or random events take me down a different pathway. In the past year, here are some things that have happened to this particular area of the garden:

• This part of the lot is approximately the highest point and heavy rains in the early months caused new soil that I had added to be washed downhill. Most of the rest of the garden later received some extra soil, but this area did not.
• The far end of the original “tall grass” area is now where I have a group of young milkweed plants growing.
• The near end now has three Gulf Muhly (Muhlenbergia capillaris) where I had originally planned only one.
• There are at least six clumps of Little Bluestem that are growing (I think two from seed and four from planting). I like them and I plan to sow more seed in the fall.
• There was one clump of taller grass that grew, which turned out to be Switchgrass (Panicum virgatum). This is a good native prairie grass but I removed it because it was just too big for my area.
• Most of the volunteer plants in this area have been removed, but some I have left because they are single specimens that I want to preserve (like this Red Pricklypoppy), or I like the look of them with the Little Bluestem, or I haven’t identified them yet.

So before new seed goes down in the fall, I want to add more compost and soil to this area. As time goes on and the garden gets more established, I hope to reduce or eliminate the movement of soil when there are heavy rains. I am confident that I am not losing soil from the site, but heavy rainfall can move soil from barer areas to elsewhere in the garden.

Over the period of a few days, I added more organic material to this area. First went down the product of a shredder session. Most of the plants in that batch were sunflowers and I realize that there is a high likelihood of transferring sunflower seeds to the tall grass area, but that is a price I am willing to pay and I’ll just remove unwanted plants later.

Then, I added some used soil from the Three Sisters mounds that have been dismantled, and from pots where old seeding projects hadn’t worked.

Now I’ll just let this area sit until I’m ready to put down some fresh Little Bluestem seed in the fall.