Total Yard Makeover: From Lawn to Micro-prairie

[Music] hi Sandy Drake here with Bloomington Parks and Rec in today's program we're going to be talking about how to establish micro prairies what you might be asking is a micro Prairie well it's honestly a trendy term for recreating the habitat that once was here and using the native grasses sedges and forbs forbs being our wildflowers we try to create a system that is beneficial to both the animals insects and plants that are original to this area why is this important you may be asking to answer that question you nearly look as far as the dinner-table as you may or may not know 75% of our food systems are reliant upon pollinators and we are currently seeing a global decline in pollinators as a whole so in order to support those pollinators we need to create what was original to their habitat we're talking about supporting their entire life cycles a perfect example of this and probably the most well known is that of the monarch butterfly and the milkweed the monarch butterfly of course lays its egg on the milkweed the egg hatches into a larva and that larva eats only from the milkweed until it is ready to transition into a primary pollinator now that sort of relationship actually exists between many many many of our pollinating insects and our native plants so what we're aiming to do here is recreate an environment that is mutually thriving for all organisms first step in doing that is establishing where and how large of a plot you are willing to transition now I'm here in beautiful Olcott Park and if you need some inspiration I would say that this is the place to go because they have done a wonderful job in transitioning this into a native Prairie land however it is a large area and a word to the wise is try not to bite off more than you can chew it generally takes between three and five years to establish a native gardens space and so I recommend starting small starting with perhaps the unsightly border along your house perhaps an oval feature garden in middle of your yard starting in a corner and then you can always each year make it larger and larger after you have control of what you have established because to begin we're going to do site preparation patience is your greatest tool here because proper site preparation is going to be the make or break of this garden if you are planning on doing a smaller starting off small and by small I'm talking ten by thirty feet along the side of your garage say or again in that like feature garden the native garden space one of my favorite ways to establish a garden space there is simple mulching method so you lay down cardboard in the shape that your bed will be cover it in mulch and you wait likewise you can always tarp it and smother it that way you'll have to wait a bit longer before you plant into that and I would call a number of months to kill off entirely any of the perennial grasses that are there but again then you'll want to put down a barrier and then mulch the other option being sod removal now this is of course a little more labor-intensive you're going to want to remove at least three inches of and then again I would cover that in cardboard and mulch and then becomes a really fun period we have that of observation you want to watch this area here we are late April early May not all of our leaves are entirely left out the tulip leaves are tiny we all know they're going to be grow to be much much larger my oak trees are not showing their leaves at all so what may look like full Sun beneath an oak tree right now could be entirely shaded we want to wait and see how the light changes not only seasonally in coming months but also throughout the day does it get morning light does it get primarily afternoon light are you in a primarily shaded area we're also going to want to watch how water runs through runs through that area is it a wetter zone does it dry out easily what about the soil composition now easy and fun way to do oil composition test fill a quart ball jar halfway with the soil that you will be planting in to fill the remainder of the ball jar with water and shake for many minutes until it is entirely mixed up once it all settles let it settle for hours before looking to see a sand - clay - silt ratio and this is going to tell you your soil composition a lot of the organic matter you're going to see at the top and it tells you really we'll talk more about when if we come into planting out this area but knowing your soil composition becomes very important for choosing what plants are going to thrive in that area and finally the pH of the soil the pH is going to is another big indicator as to what is going to be six successful in your home garden I want to quickly touch base with those who are willing to transition a larger area all at once we're talking your entire yard multiple acres or even an agricultural site first and foremost I want to applaud you it is ambitious and it takes a lot of hard work so be prepared for that we have a number of people you could consult here with in Bloomington and abroad within Bloomington we have ecologic they specialize in taking areas back to their native habitat we also then have deep you garden center deep root is full of sage advice and contacts and the local growing native community we also of course always have Indiana Native Plant Society checking out their website can be most informative in terms of larger transitions there are a number of ways you could go about doing that we have the herbicide approach which means spraying you would have to spray in the spring the summer and then again in the fall either way whether you're going all natural or herbicide plan on at least a year of transition and again depending on what you're up against in terms of what is previously growing there it could be even longer so patients again the other method would be to burn or mow the area again seek the advice of professionals if you're planning on a controlled burn specifically if there are any structures around and it's always wise to alert the county or area firefighters that you're going to be doing a controlled burn just so they have that on radar so to speak and again after you do that mow or that burn you're going to want to do a deep cultivation followed by I would say only the top three inches every two weeks for the remainder of the year now that deep cultivation is going to turn it all in but then you don't want to continually bring up a decade of weed seeds so that's why I'm saying sticking to the top three inches then every two weeks organic farms also have propane flaming method where you basically drive across the field with a propane flame burning all of the tiny seedlings as they start coming up let's move now to installation this is where all of our observations and daydreaming for the last few months really get to pay off now I cannot tell you here what plants to put in your native bed however I can lead you to the resources that will tell you what's going to thrive best according to your conditions so that soil composition test that pH test this is where that really pays off for example Lupin one of my very favorite of flowers thrives in sandy acidic soil I unfortunately have very alkaline clay heavy soil so that is not a plant I can establish without extreme amounts of soil amendments which I honestly do not suggest I think you come out with a hardy or happier plant if you plant according to what is in your yard currently lucky for us there are a number of prairie plants there's the tall prairie plants that prefer a richer soil we have short prairie plants that might thrive more in my yard at the more clay based soil we even in fact have sand prairie plants those who are going to do best up against your house or where there's a lot of rock and sand from old construction sites and then of course the woodland for those shaded shaded areas so you have a bunch to choose from I again suggest visiting the Indiana native plant site I will include their website at the end of this segment they are just absolutely a treasure trove in terms of identifying what plants are going to do best in yours and what you do get to do is decide entirely upon your taste alone what you want for your yard are you going to go with the more native prairie look for drifts of color are scattered throughout taller native grasses or are you going to go for more of a garden look even plugging these native plants into already established beds around some of the exotic plants are highly beneficial to those insects again that we are trying to support here you could go on a color theme purples and blues with splashes of orange and yellow again classic gardening often is played upon texture and shape I always encourage having something like rattlesnake master be a feature in a garden bed something unique draws attention you also want to consider perhaps stacking your plants that means putting the shortest in front some blue stem grasses in front with a middle plant and then your tallest perhaps cut plant in the back you can also use some grasses to support some of those taller plants also something to consider our paths will you have paths through that open area I often find pea gravel a really attractive and low-maintenance option in terms of pads so I always always encourage really just to dream on that and go with what delights you the most there are many people that shy away from planting a native bed thinking that it's something messy it doesn't have to be something messy it doesn't have to necessarily be an unkept Prairieland in your yard it can be very artfully skillfully done to incorporate your and once it's in the landscape if you are planting live plants you're going to need to water fairly heavily I would say at least once a week in the first year to make sure that it becomes established now one of the virtues of establishing a native Prairie garden is that is a very very low maintenance what it once it is established however it does take a little bit of work to get there so watering that first year is going to be key don't expect a lot of flowers that first year either perhaps one or two perhaps none at all exam with this second year by the third year that's when you're going to start seeing the colors that you have been waiting so long for maintenance maintenance required in that first year is going to be primarily again the watering but also weeding and mulching invasives have a way of finding newly available ground and so you're going to want to be very vigilant again a reason to perhaps start small and move out from there once you have your first area established so weeding and mulching is a definite area if you're going to be going seed seeding is not a bad idea because oftentimes it takes it establishes a little more hearty if you were to spend this entire summer doing site preparation and then seeding in the fall most of the native seeds do need that cold of winter in order to then germinate in this spring and so that is how it's primarily done is seeding in the fall you could seed this fall but again in order to tell what is native plant and what is weed next spring there are a couple things you can do there one thing that you can do is both start seeds in ground direct seed this fall but then in the spring starts another tray in soil so that you can compare the two otherwise something else you could do is similarly or in the way that you're comparing is cut the sod off of an area close by where you are establishing just a small area and then see what weed seeds come up if you find those seeds coming up in your native bed you know that those are in fact the weeds that you want to take out having been that you did not see that other cut sod area after three years your maintenance becomes very very small and again this is the joy of a native garden and why so many people are attracted to it basically you give it a mow in the spring or even as controlled burn in this spring and you're done at that point you can mulch but it shouldn't need it once it's established after three years those plants should come back and oftentimes when they fall down they become their own mulch for that next year I'm gonna thank you guys so much for joining us tonight I hope you're feeling inspired to pursue the native plants scheme happy planting we'll see you again [Music]

Channel: BloomingtonParks

Views: 41,442

Keywords:

Id: A-NRAVpJIZE

Length: 16min 40sec (1000 seconds)

Published: Mon May 11 2020