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Colorado Plants: Small-Leaf Pussytoes
Feb. 15th, 2019 05:56 pm
Antennaria parvifolia - small-leaf pussytoes
In the dry climate of Colorado this plant is an excellent groundcover. If you live in Colorado I can frequently give starts of this plant.
Antennaria parvifolia - small-leaf pussytoes
In the dry climate of Colorado this plant is an excellent groundcover. If you live in Colorado I can frequently give starts of this plant.
The Shortgrass Prairie Garden
Feb. 13th, 2019 11:20 am
(Do let me know if the image is too big or breaks things. I am just getting back into posting on Dreamwidth since Tumblr became too stupid to use. I shall eventually move this post to a date of 2018 when I took it. There is going to be a lot of back posting things here as I rejigger stuff from my Tumblr at http://veni-vidi-vinca.tumblr.com/ to this blog thingy.)
At the request of a great many people (one) I shall be showing off pictures and explaining my villainous theory of gardening. One of the qualities of a villain is having a huge burst of enthusiasm for a project and eventually tapering off to laziness and/or boredom. Semi-natural plantings are perfect for this since once established they do a lot of caring for themselves. In my shortgrass prairie garden, for example, the buffalo grass stays under about 10 cm of height so it requires no mowing, hurah! It does only look that perfect green in the spring and fades a bit even with adequate summer moisture, but it needs much less than grasses from climates wetter than Colorado's front range. If I were trying for a planting like this much east of Kansas City this probably would not work for a lazy gardener unless the soil drained much more freely than even the sandy loam in my bit of earth.
The very impressive flowers are shell leaf penstemons (Penstemon grandiflorus). They are native to only the far eastern bits of Colorado, but they do well with no more care than moving the few that seed themselves in inconvenient locations. Like many penstemons they are short lived, but reseed themselves very freely and will come up through the buffalo grass to an adequate degree.
Scattershot
Feb. 11th, 2019 03:48 pmWhen I went for a walk today I scattered wildflower seeds on a recently turned up bit of ground. Penstemon, wild rose, dwarf rabbit brush, false goldenaster, Rocky Mountain beeplant, purple tansyaster, and smooth white aster. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. If I worked and lived in a perfect world with perfect ability to get stuff done I might have put the seeds into little balls of soil before scattering. Still, better planted than getting old in my large stock of seeds. Good luck to them. I am still on the look out for some spots to plant some desert scrub oak (Quercus turbinella) and red hesperaloe (Hesperaloe parviflora).
I have also noted a spot near the sign for my neighborhood that is mostly growing weeds. I think I will try planting some buffalo grass (Bouteloua dactyloides) there. My garden supply is relatively abundant and I can spare five or so pieces and a little weeding time. The rest of my starts will be going to my back yard to start a new prairie lawn since my front yard is nearly finished. I had different plans for a more formal garden, but I think I do not have enough enthusiasm to do laid out beds and everything needed for that. Instead I want to just get it under control, most of the weeds dead, and start planting grass at one edge. More of what I have already had success with instead of trying to do something totally different. Though I may start planting some cultivated plants with the grass instead of only letting wildflowers grow as I do in my front yard. Or perhaps the reverse. Create another pure wildflower display and break the theme of my front yard to being xeric instead of native to my region only.
I have also noted a spot near the sign for my neighborhood that is mostly growing weeds. I think I will try planting some buffalo grass (Bouteloua dactyloides) there. My garden supply is relatively abundant and I can spare five or so pieces and a little weeding time. The rest of my starts will be going to my back yard to start a new prairie lawn since my front yard is nearly finished. I had different plans for a more formal garden, but I think I do not have enough enthusiasm to do laid out beds and everything needed for that. Instead I want to just get it under control, most of the weeds dead, and start planting grass at one edge. More of what I have already had success with instead of trying to do something totally different. Though I may start planting some cultivated plants with the grass instead of only letting wildflowers grow as I do in my front yard. Or perhaps the reverse. Create another pure wildflower display and break the theme of my front yard to being xeric instead of native to my region only.
Silver Lupin in the Rain
Apr. 27th, 2018 08:46 pm
2018 on April 27th. This is a silvery lupin (Lupinus argenteus) a common western plant. I have had mixed success with them in my yard so far. I have transplanted a few, but mostly they do not care for such treatment. I have also gathered seeds and had some come up, but many of them have not survived beyond their first season. This one was two years old in 2018 and living with the previous year's spent plant stalks and leaves. I call this technique composting in place. Instead of trying to make a perfectly neat yard by hauling stuff away I just let it break down where it falls. This is not because I am a lazy villain, but because it creates a natural healthy soil.
Honest.
I can identify old elm leaves and black-eyed-susan seed heads in the browns. The living plants around the palmate leaves of the lupin are some nice green and fuzzy black-eyed-susan leaves and the slightly toothed oblanceolate leaves of smooth white aster.
