Second Native Window Open– Special Native Event and Sale Upcoming!

It’s been a hot summer. And dry. Not the kind of year that makes someone want to get out and plant a ton of new material in the yard, let alone go on a big Native planting spree. Too much work. Too much watering. Too much sweat.

But then August happens. Usually, as days shorten, cooler air bleeds down from Canada — hopefully without wildfire smoke in it, and pretty soon, soil temperatures peak and start on their way down. Now gardening feels not only possible again, but totally worth it before winter forces us all indoors.

I did say “usually in August”, just not this year. Not in a Super El Nino summer. We didn’t get much cool air in August, but, hints are coming forward here in September. Cooler air wafts in at night. Fog covers the fields by morning. Certainly very saturating dews. And any week now, it will rain and the full Native second window will be open for fall planting

So get ready. Fall is a great time to plant natives — and the first step is to remove existing vegetation. In fact, that’s the hardest part of getting a native garden going. How are you going to prepare the ground?

There are three ways to do it. The first one, insolation, using the sun, or really abusing the sun by deploying black plastic across the ground and locking it down with stakes, bricks, rocks, even pieces of wood. Problem here is two-fold: one, the ground needs to be covered for at least six months. (Not possible when starting this in the fall.) Two, the wind and general abuse of nature makes it tough to keep the plastic in place, keep it from ripping and tearing and blowing away. Black plastic can be done, just not easily, and you do need to get it started in April or May.

The second way to deal with vegetation before putting in native plantings: Herbicides. Um, I an not going to cover this one in great detail. It’s not something I would recommend, but professionals do use this approach. They do have success with it. I mean heck, farmers use herbicides all the time and they aren’t even putting in native plants — only growing food, so maybe we shouldn’t get so squeamish about glyphosate, atrazine, 2-4 D or Dicamba, being put down ahead of natives, right? Wrong. Herbicides destroy soil microbes and the entire underground food web. Not to mention polluting ground and surface waters and killing all kinds of liarger organisms — insects, birds, rodents and the occasional mammal. Last I checked, humans are mammals. Don’t throw the baby out with the bath water full of herbicides is what I would say.

Third way to prepare the ground for native plantings: use shallow tillage repeatedly, over a couple months. This one you can start in the early fall. I use a small tine digger and a small tractor. Round I go, digging in only two or three inches deep, stirring the soil and activating the soil seed bed. It works especially well when it rains and seeds start to sprout. Then its back to the tractor and shallow tillage, round and round I go — at least four or five different times during the fall. By inviting seeds to sprout, I am exhausting the weed seeds in the upper layers of the soil — making eventual space for the germinating or planted natives.

Look, no one said growing natives would be easy. And this is the first step, one you kind of need to get started on in advance. But, on the bright side: fall is cool, and usually wet. (I did say usually again, right?). And compared to starting natives in June or July, less weed pressure, less heat, lower soil temperatures — it may just be the best time to Go Native. But, you need to plan for it. That’s all.

More on planting natives coming in the next few weeks. In fact: you heard it here first: Saturday, September 26th, Dragonfly Gardens is hosting a pretty detail-forward series of presentations about Going Native with people who have done it. Stay tuned to this channel or write it on your calendar: Saturday, September 26th — 9:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. Dragonfly Gardens Event Space. Don’t miss it.

There will be special native close-out pricing and lots of hands-on advice about how to get natives in the ground, on their way to making a healthier, more beautiful, and better functioning planet.