benali
Senior Member
Posts: 138
Joined: Wed May 22, 2013 2:40 pm
Location: Zone 5b

Is a wildflower area self-sustaining?

I'm eliminating grass from my backyard and replacing it with more interesting plants.

I made a wildflower area. I did this simply by turning over the grass, buying one of those canisters of wildflower seeds, dumping it on the bare soil, and watering it until the seeds started. It's looking good.

My questions are --

Will this wildflower area be self-sustaining?

Or should I add in a new canister of wildflower seeds every year?

Is there any other maintenance I'll be forced to perform? (I only want to perform maintenance if absolutely necessary.)

Thank you for your advice.

PS -- I'm in region 5b, with fertile midwestern black dirt.

PaulF
Greener Thumb
Posts: 910
Joined: Tue Nov 09, 2010 5:34 pm
Location: Brownville, Ne

The biggest problem is with weeds and grasses. Turning over the grass will only delay its return. The grass/sod needs to be completely removed from the area or killed off completely. A very thick seeding of wildflowers is necessary because germination can be spotty. Wildflowers tolerate weeds whose seeds will be blown in. If you don't mind the flower and weed and grass combination, it looks very natural.

Weeds tend to take over if you don't overseed every year. Some wildflowers will naturalize, some will not. We ended up with a whole bunch of purple coneflowers and black-eyed susans. Many of the others got pushed out so we reseeded. Pre-emergent grass killer was used to "delay" grass growth.

The area looked great for a few years, but it takes a lot of work to keep the area looking like a wildflower garden. We finally returned the area to flowers and grass and of course weeds.

imafan26
Mod
Posts: 13961
Joined: Tue Jan 01, 2013 8:32 am
Location: Hawaii, zone 12a 587 ft elev.

Wildflowers are themselves weedy by nature because they reseed. A true meadow, though is not uniform and does have weeds. You will have to pull out the ones you don't want.

What wildflowers will grow will depend on where you live and the mix you have sown. Some will grow and others won't because it is not for your zone.

I prefer to select which flowers I want to grow and mix the seeds up myself. Some things I don't mind reseeding, like alyssum because the seeds are heavy and as long as you don't weed whack them, they don't go very far. I put in plants which don't readily seed in my area like angelonia, Russian sage, and some native plants. I also can naturalize nasturtiums, glads, and amaryllis which will not spread far and wide and can reliably come up year after year. I actually have selected long lived perennials that are seedless, grow slowly, or don't readily reseed (dioecious, mostly male plants) because I don't want to have to weed out hundreds of seedlings as I have to do with the McArthur palms that came with my house. Close planting and diversity does help them compete with weeds so they are at least less noticeable, but it is not weed free. I still have to weed out what I don't want.

Native plants are usually a better choice for naturalizing because they actually belong there and you don't want alien species to escape and endanger native species.

This is a huge problem here. Hawaii has a high rate of endemic plants and unique animals due to its isolation in the Middle of the Pacific Ocean and how difficult it was in ancient times for plants and animals to survive the crossing. We also have one of the highest extinction rates of native and endangered species in the world. Most of the species are endangered due to habitat loss and the introduction of non native plants, animals, pests, and diseases that predate and out compete native species. Most of the plants seen in urban areas are non native, but have been around so long that they seem like they have always been here. Even plants associated with Hawaii are not native, like pineapple, plumeria, mango, litichi, avocado, macadamia nut, and haole koa (Leucaena leucocephala).



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