The Meadow

I got it in my head that I wanted to turn the west field into a wildflower meadow.

RAF helped me move the fence, and after that was done, I felt quite intimidated.  

What I thought was going to be a small meadow seemed overwhelmingly large after the old fence was gone...especially large when I put down my 10'x 16' billboard tarp to start killing out the bermuda grass.  

With only a small tarp like that, and taking into account that the grass has to stay covered for at least a year to be sure it's good and dead, I estimated it would take me over 100 years to kill out all of the grass just using my billboard tarp.

Needless to say, I don't think the tarp will last that long - and I certainly know I won't!

Many experts who create native wildflower meadows recommend killing the existing vegetation with herbicide.  And while I'm not opposed to all use of herbicide (recall my war on privet) I'd prefer not to use it unless I have no other choice.  

So my older sister and her husband run a market garden, and I asked her one day if they had an old silage tarp I could buy.  She said they didn't have one to sell, but they had one I could "borrow indefinitely."  (I'm still trying to figure out how to make that loan fair to them.  I'll think of something.)

I was anxious to get started on the meadow, so late last summer, I decided I'd take a chance that the grass under the billboard tarp had been killed.  I dragged it over 9' to the west.

In the "bare" 10' x 16' space where the tarp had originally been, I set out a few native plants that I had started from seed, transplanted some plants that had come up in "the wrong place" and scattered some seeds I had collected or that were given to me: 

• 2 - Spotted beebalm (Monarda punctata) grown from seeds I purchased
  
  
• 1 - Green Milkweed (Asclepias viridis) grown from seeds I collected from the Carey field
  
  
• 4 - Pale Purple Coneflower (Echinacea pallida) grown from seeds I collected locally
  
  
• 1 - Tall Thistle (Cirsium altissimum) grown from seeds I collected in the Barber field
  
  
• 1 - Wrinkle-leaved goldenrod (Solidago rugosa), divided from a plant I started from seed collected in the Barber field a few years ago
  
  
• 1 - Missouri Ironweed (Vernonia missurica) transplanted from the vegetable garden
  
  
• 2 - Late Boneset (Eupatorium serotinum) transplanted from the vegetable garden
  
  
• 4 - Early Cudweed (Gamochaeta purpurea) transplanted from the vegetable garden and the yard
  
  
• 1 - clump of Purple Top grass (Tridens flavus) transplanted from my yard
  
  
• 1 - clump of Switchgrass (Panicum virgatum) - at least that's what I believe it was - transplanted from The Flower Bed to hide the Ugly Stump
  
  
• 1 - clump of Texas Vervain (Verbena halei) grown from seeds I collected from a plant I rescued from the lawn mower two summers ago.
  
  
• 2 - seeds of Whorled Milkweed (Asclepias verticillata) collected locally 
  
  
• 4 - clumps of Old Field Goldenrod (Solidago nemoralis) grown from seeds collected in the Barber field
  
  
• Seeds from Rudbeckia hirta collected from my flowerbed.
  
  
• Seeds from Maryland Senna (Senna Marilandica) collected from plants in my flowerbed that were from seeds collected in the Barber field
  
  
• Seeds fron a pink Yarrow (Achellea millefolium) collected from the 12-acre field
  
  
• Seeds from Purple Lovegrass (Eragrostis spectabilis) collected from the Barber house
  
  
• Seeds from Canada Wild Rye (Elymus canadensis) collected from the ditch in front of my house.
  
  
• Seeds from Little Bluestem (Schizachyrium scoparium) collected from the Barber house, the Barber field, and from a plant I started from seed collected down on the creek a few years ago.
  
  
• Seeds from Maryland Meadow Beauty (Rhexia mariana) that my younger sister collected from her field
  
  
• Seeds from Purple coneflower (Echinacea purpurea)  I collected from my flowerbed
  
  
• Seeds from Rocket Larkspur (Consolida ajacis) I collected from my flowerbed (non-native)
  
  
• Seeds from Wild Bergamot (Monarda fistulosa) I collected from my flowerbed (original seeds were purchased from everwilde.com)
  
  
• Other miscellaneous unidentified seeds I had collected on my walk through the fields

In the early spring of this year, I picked up the silage tarp from my sister.  The tarp had been cut into three smaller pieces, which was very good, because they are pretty heavy when they're all in one piece.  After battling the strong winds that kept blowing the tarp around, I ended up putting it in a "U" shape around the billboard tarp, weighted down with t-posts and some old wheels and tires.

Looking over my list just now, I think I got a little  lot carried away with my haphazard "throw it and see what sticks" approach.  But that list has lots of interesting and beautiful plants in it, and I thought they would make the meadow really beautiful.

A few months later, with spring well underway, how does it look?

Honestly???  It looks like poo.

From a distance, the entire thing really just looks like a big weedy mess.  I'm sure RAF is hating it every time he has to look at it as he's mowing around it (but to his credit, he hasn't said anything about it yet).  

I didn't cut back the early winter annuals - the Henbit and Red deadnettle and meadow buttercup - so any little plants that might have germinated from seed - how would I ever see them?  And how would they ever see the sunlight?

As for the seeds I planted, for the most part, I just stupidly (very stupidly) scattered the seeds instead of clustering them in distinct spots and marking them.  So there are things coming up now that I don't recognize, and I am wondering, "Is that something I planted, or is that a non-native that needs to go, or a native that I don't want?"  (Case in point:  the Texas Dandilion, Pyrrhopappus pauciflorus.  I vaugely remembered scattering some seeds of a dandelion-looking plant, but I didn't know what the actual plant looked like so I didn't recognize it.)  

There are common ragweed and lanceleaf ragweed seedlings coming up here and there through the bed, but luckily I know what those look like and I've been pulling them out.  There are also quite a few Virginia pepperweed plants - some of those will get to stay but not all of them because they do tend to take over.  

There are sedges and reeds that I don't recognize.  

There are "weeds" that I just don't recognize all through the bed.  I don't think they are things I planted, so I suppose they were in the seed bank.  Are they natives or not?  I hope as they grow, I'll eventually be able to identify what they are.

Then there are the grasses.  There were/are some quite pretty and others that look like bullies, but I don't know my grasses much at all, so again, I have no idea what's native and what isn't.  

But worst of all, much worse, I didn't leave the billboard tarp in place long enough, and I'm already pulling sprigs of Bermuda grass out of the meadow!  NO, NO, NO!!!!!!  Not what I intended at all!!!!

I really feel like giving up on the meadow and turning it back into pasture.  Should I just give up? 

Not yet.

A meadow needs much more native grass, and I should have focused on planting grasses in my first year rather than planting flowers.  I should have set down my "matrix" first...the grasses are, after all, the anchor of the meadow.  They support everthing else growing there.

I did have some success with winter sowing Purple Lovegrass and Little Bluestem, so a few clumps of those were added to the meadow about a month ago.  

Purple Lovegrass

Little Bluestem

I have planted more little bluestem seeds in cell trays, so I am hopeful that I'll have more grasses to set out late this summer.

In the meantime though, I'm just going to try to work with what I have.

And although the bed is already a hodge-podge of stuff, and really didn't need anything else added to it, there were two small Butterfly Milkweed plants that came up in The Flowerbed to Hide the Ugly Stump.  They were in spots that were way too shady, so I decided to take a gamble and transplant them into the meadow.  So far it looks like they've survived the move.

And this weekend, I went on another "rescue mission," transplanting some things from the Sparks place into the meadow.  These plants had already been mowed down at least once, and would continue to be mowed the rest of the summer so I didn't see why they shouldn't be relocated where they'd at least have a fighting chance.

Plains Coreopsis?

Spiderwort

So yes, right now it's just a big weedy mess.  But IF (and that's a very big IF) I can control the Bermuda grass that's trying to spread again, I hope that by next summer it will be looking more like a meadow and less like an abandoned city lot.

I've learned from the mistakes I've made in this first 10' x 16' section.  When I move the billboard tarp again, not only am I going to set my grasses out in a true matrix, I'm also going to use some sheet mulching or a terminated cover crop of something like cereal rye or winter wheat to keep the weeds down between the grasses while they get established.  And only after the grasses are growing well will I start adding my flowers.  And when I do add my flowers, I'm going to plot out on a map where everything is planted (and when it was planted) so I'll have a better idea of what to look for where.

I wish I could have a re-do on this first section of the meadow.  But maybe Mother Nature will look at it, sigh, shake her head, have pity on me and fix it.  And if she will do that for me, it will eventually be very beautiful, as all of her handiwork is.  

That's my hope, anyway.