Farm Stand Marfa

WILDFLOWER GARDENS REPLACE LAWNS

Have you ever dreamed of having a wildflower garden?
Here in Far West Texas most of us have scruffy yards of grasses, invasives and bare dirt crawling with ants. Walking around the yard in flip-flops is not any fun.  These unfriendly dirt palettes just might make ideal canvases for a wildflower garden.

After consulting with Jim Martinez, our local plant lover extraordinaire, I became convinced of how easy it would be to plant a wildflower garden in my yard. Jim advised against digging up the plot, since removing the sod would bring generations of seeds, waiting to germinate, to the surface.  Instead he suggested that I aerate the designated wildflower patch.

Soil aerators make shallow holes in the ground. They are either manual or power driven.

If you are a true conservationist strap-on shoe aerators or the broadfork, are the tools for you. The broadfork, a two-handled tillage tool, should be a part of every gardener’s tool collection. Unlike a tiller, it loosens the soil without destroying the soil structure.

I learned about the broadfork in my early gardening days in Topanga Canyon, just above Los Angeles along the coast, from the John Jeavon’s manifesto, How To Grow More Vegetables Than You Ever Imagined Possible. Once a planting bed had been made, Jeavons taught gardeners to work the soil with the broadfork to minimize tilling and soil disturbance.

The broadfork resurfaced in the eighties when I had a market garden in Hudson, New York. During that time Eliot Coleman’s The New Organic Grower was my Bagavad Gita. The master gardener, Coleman, who turned his Maine garden into a four season organic paradise, wrote that he had tilled an acre using the 2-foot wide spading fork.

There are other ways to prepare the soil for a wildflower garden.  Chickens will till the soil for you.  No poultry? You can lay a heavy mulch of straw over the planned garden area. Leave it for a month or until the fall.  Depending on how broken down the hay becomes, you can broadcast wildflower seeds directly over the partially decomposed mulch.  If the mulch is thick, remove some leaving a layer of about an inch.  Sow the seeds over the mulch.

Here’s how to plant:
_First lay out the dimensions of the bed with stakes.

_Then mow the area close to the ground.  This might be a good time to invest in an electric mower or a manual push mower.

_Next, using the broadfork, aerator shoes or a lawn aerator spike the area with one- inch deep holes.

_On a still day, hand broadcast the wildflower seeds.  The seed companies suggest a pound of seed for a 1-2,000 square foot area.

_ Lastly, water before the birds make a picnic of your seeds. Here’s a message from Jim: “Seeds are equipped with interesting devices to adsorb water and ‘install’ themselves into the soil when wet…so watering them when you sow them is a good idea. The seeds might just stiffen those awns, choke those birds and auger themselves into the ground.”
If you want the annual seeds to start sprouting, water the garden every day or so for a few weeks.  Then water once a week for the next month.  Water once a month in the winter.

_Next fall cut down the tall plants with dried seed-heads with a scythe. Leave the cuttings on the ground.  You can collect some of the seed-heads to sow later, or you can leave the seeds where they fall.

Add seeds to the garden throughout the year.  I dry the seed heads of chicory, cosmos, parsley, carrot, fennel, borage, Clary sage, sunflower, Plains coreopsis, columbine, poppy, Echinacea, calendula and any others that are easy to save.  I broadcast these seeds into my wildflower garden.

Collecting seeds is a pleasurable way of adding to a seed collection.  When visiting a friend’s garden or a farm or ranch, take some seed saving envelopes along with you. Be a good wild crafter and follow these rules:
_Collect only seeds that are dried. Do not pick the flowers.

_Collect only 1/10th of the dried seeds, leaving most of them to re-seed.

_Do not dig up plants, or crush them underfoot.

_Do not disturb endangered flowers.  Here’s a list:
http://www.tpwd.state.tx.us/huntwild/wild/species/endang/plants/index.phtml

_Do not collect on public land, this includes parks.

_Do not dig wildflowers.  They will most likely not survive.

_Store the seeds in paper bags.  I use empty oatmeal boxes. Plastic will encourage seed rot.

The wildflower garden creates a habitat for beneficial insects and other pollinators like the hummingbird.  Planting native and naturalized flowers means that you won’t be using pesticides and fertilizers, which pollute our water sources. Before this time next year you can be cutting flowers and grasses to fill vases in your home. You will also have seeds to share with your neighbors.

(The Farm Stand Marfa Newsletter is published by Sandra Harper.  If you’d like to receive the newsletter contact farmstandmarfa@gmail.com)

SOURCES FOR WILDFLOWER INFO, SEEDS AND TOOLS

Native Plant Society of Texas
www.npsot.org

PLANT NATIVE has a list of nurseries for every region.
http://www.plantnative.org/
General Info
http://wildflowerinformation.org/default.asp

The Wildflower Center is located in Southwest Austin, Texas

http://www.wildflower.org/about/

SEEDS

Colorado http://www.westernnativeseed.com/
Fredericksburg, Texas http://www.wildseedfarms.com/
Junction, Texas good catalogue http://www.seedsource.com/
Santa Fe, NM good catalogue http://www.plantsofthesouthwest.com/

AERATORS
Broadfork
http://gullandforge.com/ beautiful, $185.
Coleman’s broadfork from Johnny’s Seeds, $179.
http://www.johnnyseeds.com/catalog/product.aspx?category=292&subcategory=636&item=9677

Lawn Shoe aerators
http://www.cleanairgardening.com/aeratorshoes.html

Power Driven Lawn Aerators
The local hardware store rents a lawn aerator at $35 for a half day.

GENERAL WILDFLOWER INFORMATION
http://wildflowerinformation.org/default.asp

The Wildflower Center is located in Southwest Austin, Texas http://www.wildflower.org/about/

Push Wheel Mower
http://www.cleanairgardening.com/reelmowers.html

Solar Powered lawn mower
http://www.freepowersys.com/sunwhisper.htm
Electric Mower
http://www.greenerbuyer.com/neuton-electric-mower/

http://www.cleanairgardening.com/electricmowers.html

If you have a battery operated lawn mower, here’s how to convert it to solar.
http://www.instructables.com/id/solar-lawn-mower/