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When and how?
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Posted by kek19 5b-Michigan (My Page) on Mon, Jul 30, 07 at 16:27
| I have a field across the street, I own about 20ft x 200ft of it. I'd like to add some more beauty to it. Right now there's a lot of spotted knapweed, along w/ grasses, fleaebane, queen anne's lace and various other weed/wildflower that you find in a field. I want to increase the amount of milkweed and various other butterfly nectar plants. So my question is... can I just harvest the seeds of the plants I want to increase and just toss it out there and hope for the best? Or am I actually gonna have to create beds or prepare the soil for planting? I'm not going for an organized or weedless prairie look. I just want to add some various coneflowers and milkweeds to what's there.
My other question is when? Can i do it when ever I harvest seeds, or should I wait till fall?
Thanks
Karri |
Follow-Up Postings:
RE: When and how?
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| I have a small wildflower area in my yard and usually I just throw the seeds out there. This year however, I raked them in a little bit and noticed they came back better (probably because the birds had a harder time finding them for lunch. |
RE: When and how?
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| Weed competition is always an issue. I would knock back the undesireable plants a bit before sowing seed. |
RE: When and how?
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| The plants you want will self seed as will the ones you don't want. I would suggest pulling the ones you don't want (or at least cutting down before they seed) and leaving the ones you want. Learn to recognize seedlings or early spring appearance and pull the unwanted as early as possible. Over time, the wanted will outstrip the unwanted. |
RE: When and how?
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| One approach is to grow plants in pots until they are reasonably large, then clear small areas to transplant groups of potted plants. This will give the plants from the pots a fair chance to become established before the surrounding plants fill back in. Once established, many wildflowers like Milkweeds, asters, sunflowers, etc. will persist for years or even spread on their own. I think simply scattering seed in a field is unlikely to work unless the seed has a bed of cleared soil in which to grow. |
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