Vegetable Garden Distractions

I’ve been interested in vegetable gardening for most of my life and have had some type of garden every year since I was eight years old.  Maintaining a vegetable garden is an activity that my wife says makes me appear more normal in the eyes of the general public.  It gives me a second topic besides the weather of which I have an interest and which I might discuss with others while creating idle conversation at social events.  I’ve learned that most people can only stand a few minutes of weather talk and generally have no interest in my thoughts about managing land for native ecosystems.  Talking about gardening gives me something to do besides reading a book or standing alone glaring at anyone who comes near.  This pleases my wife and gives the illusion that I’m having a good time.

My garden is located in the lower portion of a field drain where eroded soil was trapped behind an elevated farm lane.  This was the only place I could find with soil deep enough to securely anchor fence posts.  People sometimes question why I carved my garden out of a nice prairie field.  In this situation there was no prairie when I created the garden.  At that time, the field was all oat stubble, remnants of the last grain crop to be grown there.  The garden was long established by the time the prairie came in.

The garden is maintained in raised beds.  Through the summer I fill the trenches between beds with whatever organic matter I have at hand, mostly mower clippings.  Each fall I till the trenches and scoop the half composted organic matter to the top of the beds.  Worms and other organisms work on the organic matter over the winter and the beds are ready to receive seed in the spring.  Onions, peas and potatoes are currently growing.  Row cover was placed over the peas to protect them from some predicted cold temperatures.  They made it through a couple of 20 degree nights with no damage.

But there are other things going on in the garden that easily take my attention away from the vegetables.  Several native prairie species are grown here for seed production.  The natives are not as well behaved as the vegetables.  These Prairie Dock will not stay confined to a bed and are continually increasing their territory.

The organic mix atop the beds seems ideal for germination of Prairie Dock seed.  I’ve decided to limit the Prairie Dock to one bed and they’ve just about taken that.

Clumps of False Gromwell last for three to five years before dieing.  In that time they produce huge quantities of seed.  Some of that seed manages to germinate and initiate growth of another clump.  False Gromwell are always in the garden, but their location is constantly changing.

Butterflyweed has claimed a three by three foot section at the end of one bed.  It came in as a volunteer and I let it stay.  That was about fifteen years ago.  Since then it has attracted swarms of interesting insects to the garden.  For the past three years it has hosted the caterpillars of the Unexpected Tiger Moth, an Ohio rarity.  The garden keeps losing ground to natives, but there’s still plenty of space for vegetables.

The cedar fence posts around the garden continue to expand their collection of interesting lichens.  It doesn’t take much for the lichens to distract me from my gardening chores.  I have yet to take the time for any serious lichen studies, but when I get around to it, there should be plenty of lichens here to get me started.

I am serenaded constantly while in the garden.  This Song Sparrow nests in an ornamental juniper that is kept in the garden just because birds nest in it.  It was planted there as a seedling 28 years ago along with several others that were intended for landscaping in front of the house, but it was not used.  Instead of getting rid of it, I left it there in case one of the junipers in the yard failed to grow.  By the time it became obvious that it wasn’t needed for landscaping, it had become a favorite nesting site of Song Sparrows, Catbirds and Cardinals.

Although not as melodious as the Song Sparrow, Henslow’s Sparrows call out their territorial warnings from perches in the tall Indian Grass surrounding the garden.  Since these birds return here every year and I hear them calling well into summer, I’m assuming that they are nesting.  It’s hard enough to see these birds in the field.  It would just be dumb luck if I ever encountered one of their nests.

A Burrowing Wolf Spider has claimed a territory near the Butterflyweed.  The burrow should be safe from disturbance in this location, so I will have time to coax the spider out for some photographs.

While on my knees looking at the spider hole, I glanced beneath the Song Sparrow’s juniper and saw this garter snake.  I think the garden is an appropriate place for this snake since, as a kid, I used to think their proper name was Gardener Snake.  This one kept doing strange gyrations with its tongue as though trying to convey a message in snake semaphore.  Maybe the message came through, because I suddenly thought of something I should be doing.  That’s how most of my garden forays progress; distracted by the native plants, distracted by the birds, distracted by the bugs and gone.

Prairie Garden Spring Maintenance

The dead growth in the Prairie Garden is removed each spring.  I used to do an occasional spring burn, but abandoned that management technique because of the potential threat to the overwintering pupae of the state endangered Unexpected Tiger Moth, Cycnia inopinatus.  Now I mow and lightly rake, which greatly reduces the threat to the pupae tucked away in the leaf litter at the base of their larval food plant, Butterflyweed.

Red flags act as warnings to use caution with the mower in certain areas.  I’ve learned not to trust myself to remember every little obstacle hidden in the tall grass.

The plants would grow even if I allowed this dead material to remain.  The reason for removing the top growth is to facilitate observation of the various growth stages of each species.  Getting to know the plants at different times of the year was my primary motivation for creating this garden.

Even though the grass looks impenetrable when viewed from a distance, it actually has many openings that allow sunlight down to low growing plants.

It only takes a few passes with the brush mower to get things cut down.

What’s left looks pretty brown.

A closer look reveals a lot of color being displayed by early season growth.

Western Sunflower, Helianthus occidentalis, begins growth early in the season.  Even though Western Sunflower will grow to a height of six feet or more, most of the leaves remain at ground level, so the plant must make full use of early season sunlight before it becomes shaded by neighboring plants.

This is Hairy Bittercress, a weedy non-native that I first found here about 20 years ago.  It is now everywhere around the yard.

Hairy Bittercress thrives in bare, disturbed earth.  Large ant mounds provide an ideal growing environment.  All of my yard mounds harbor this weed and the plant is beginning to show up on ant mounds in the fields.

Fortunately, most of the greenery in the prairie garden is due to growth of native species.  These are the basal leaves of Gray-headed Coneflower, Ratibida pinnata.

Wild Bergamot, Monarda fistulosa, is coming along nicely.  A morning low of 11 degrees doesn’t seem to have done any damage to the leaves.

The population of Round-podded St. Johnswort, Hypericum sphaerocarpum, keeps shifting its position around the garden.  Clumps of plants live for two or three years and then die.  There are always new plants coming up somewhere else to take their place.

Prairie Dock has hardly made it out of the ground, but something has already nipped off the first leaf.  Deer browse heavily on this plant in the early spring, but ignore it later on.  I imagine that more suitable forage becomes available as the season progresses.

I suspect this to be the work of an Eastern Cottontail.  There seems to be a rabbit’s nest in the garden every year.  Usually she digs up some plant that I’m particularly sorry to lose.

Protecting the Harvest

This has been a year of many plant species deviating from their normal development cycle.  Some species flowered late, some early, some have stayed around for the whole summer and others were totally absent.  Most have had individual plants that flowered out of sync with the rest of their group.  This Prairie Dock is an example of that condition.

I’m enjoying the extended flowering period, but the rest of the Prairie Dock plants are well past this stage.

This is the time of year for seeds to be ripening.  The tall flower stalks have lost their color and the plants are busy pumping energy into the achenes that will soon dry and scatter on the wind as a promise of new plants in the future.  I plan to intervene in this natural process and gather the seeds for distribution in areas of my own choosing.

The achenes containing the seeds can be seen surrounding the central disk.  Each flower head produces about a dozen achenes and each achene contains a single seed.  I’ve read that seeds will germinate if planted while the achenes are still green, but I’ve never had any success with that method.  I won’t harvest until the entire seed head is dry.

I opened a couple of the seed heads to check on seed development.  Every achene I checked was swollen with a developing seed.  I should be able to collect plenty of seeds.  At least I will if I can keep the birds from eating them before they dry.  The almost sunflower like seeds are eagerly sought by many bird species.  Goldfinches in particular can clean out an entire stand in just a few days and they don’t wait for the seed head to dry.

In order to save some seeds, I must make them inaccessible to the birds.  I usually don’t take any action until I see some sign that the birds have begun their harvest.  The most noticeable sign, aside from the birds themselves, is bird droppings on the leaves below the flower stalks.

I place a net barrier around the portion of the seed crop that I would like to claim as my own.  The open mesh of the net allows adequate air flow for the seeds to dry.  When the bulk of the seed crop is ready to harvest, I’ll remove the net and pluck the seed heads.  When I first began doing this, I tried to cinch the net around every possible opening, but a bird would always end up inside the net.  Letting the bird out was a nuisance, so I’ve changed my methods slightly.  Now the bottom and top of the net are left open.  If a bird really wants to, it can get inside the net and later it can easily get out.  Those few birds that do go in eat so few seeds that it doesn’t make a difference to my harvest.  I also leave plenty of stalks outside the net for use by the birds.  In this way I think we all get what we want.

Prairie Dock

The Blue Jay Barrens population of Prairie Dock expands each year.  The large basal leaves make it impossible to overlook this species.

The original area of Prairie Dock was growing in almost permanent shade and was only about 30 feet across.  The Prairie Dock spread rapidly after I thinned out the trees to increase the light levels.  One to two dozen plants bloom each year.

Prairie Dock is generally unaffected by drought conditions.  Its roots go down many feet and can easily bring up enough water to keep the plant growing.  A problem occurs when bedrock stops the roots a foot or two beneath the surface.  On this site, a rainy year will definitely increase the number of flowering plants.

Shade also affects growth of the plants.  Prairie Dock was quick to spread into newly created partially shady areas.  It has failed to expand into the areas receiving full sun.  This is normally a plant of full sun and removing additional trees to create a more open habitat would seem the natural management scheme.  Since I can’t put the trees back once they are cut, I’ve been slowly thinning trees and evaluating the results.  Until I discover why the plants do not spread into the open areas, I’ll allow them to remain in the shade.

I do have a few plants that grow in full sun and thrive in that condition.  This mass of flowers was produced by some of the more robust plants on the property.

I maintain this cluster of plants in my garden.  The plants grew from seed produced in the previously described area.  Their purpose is to provide me with a source of Prairie Dock seed for reseeding projects.  Soil depth in this area is in excess of four feet and provides the plants with conditions much superior to those at the natural stand.

Several new plants have popped up in the vicinity of my garden plot.  Most are found in the fence row where birds have dropped the seeds.  Finches swarm to these plants and can clean up all of the seed in just a few days.  In order to harvest any seed for myself, I must cover the seed heads with netting to keep out the birds.

It may be the lack of competition that keeps the leaves on these garden plants shorter and smaller in size.  This is a three year old plant that is flowering for the first time.

For the most part, these flowers track the sun through the day.  The most spectacular view is in the early morning when the sun is still at a low angle.

Unlike many composite type flowers, the Prairie Dock flower does not produce seeds across the entire seed head.  The tubular flowers in the center of the disk are incapable of producing seed and serve only to produce pollen.  Seeds are produced by the ray flowers located at the base of the yellow petals.  In the photo, the candlestick shaped flowers are the pollen producers and the brown curls indicate the location of the seed makers.  The brown curl is the stigma that receives the pollen.  Newly produced stigmas are yellow-green in color and turn brown after pollination.

Peeling away the phyllaries exposes the ovary in which the seed will develop.  The mature fruit is known as an achene.

Here is an individual ray flower with attached ovary.

The achenes mature rapidly.  These will soon be attracting the finches.  The birds are often able to extract all of the achenes without disturbing the rest of the seed head.  It can be quite disappointing to begin seed collection only to find the birds have already cleaned everything out.

Most petals showed signs of being fed upon, but I saw very few insects.  I found another Spotted Cucumber Beetle, this one yellow.  It was sharing the flower with a small Crab Spider. 

The most interesting plant eater was this Stinging Rose Caterpillar working away at one of the big Prairie Dock leaves.

The Final Pots

My plan was to plant the residents of my pots into more permanent locations.  The early onset of drought conditions made me change those plans, so any necessary transplanting will take place next spring.  This Small White Morning Glory is a native annual vine that I first discovered on the property last year.  I threw a few seeds into this pot and I think every one of them sprouted.  I have noticed no plants growing where they were found lst year.  As long as I continue to supply water, this mess of plants should give me a good supply of seeds.  I’ll spread some of the seeds in a couple of suitable locations around the yard to see if they can establish permanent populations.

My work with potted plants is being phased out until I can construct an enclosure that effectively keeps out the marauding wildlife.  Most of my pots are under attack by various local animals.  I also need to create some permanent beds in which to plant the mature plants.  I originally began with pots in an attempt to learn about germination habits of the local native plants.  In the process, I managed to accumulate several pots full of mature plants. 

Here’s one of the animal offenders.  Not only do the Cottontails sit in the pots nibbling the plants, they have gone so far as to dig their nests in the center of the pots.

Squirrels and Chipmunks keep the potting soil constantly stirred. 

I had some seeds left over from my Prairie Garden expansion, so I planted them in a couple of empty pots.  I planted two species per pot, each confined to their own half.  Unfortunately, before I got a screen cover on this pot, a squirrel dug into one side and mixed the seed.

The seeds I planted were all species that I hadn’t raised since I got my first digital camera.  I grew them now just so I could get a photo record of their young forms.  Prairie Dock grows just enough to get the cotyledons above ground. 

Development of the first true Prairie Dock leaf quickly follows emergence of the cotyledons.  The impressive growth is taking place below ground.  At this stage, the root has already exceeded a depth of 12 inches.

This is the seedling of Liatris aspera, Rough Blazing Star.  The cotyledons of this species also remain stalkless at ground level.  The first true leaf rises tall and thin.  Seedlings sometimes only produce the one leaf in their first growing season.

These False Aloe plants have been growing in their pot for several years.  One has managed to produce a flower stalk, but they are way too overcrowded to do well.  The problem with transplanting is going to be separating individual plants from the solid mass of roots in the bottom of the pot.  Plants that naturally put their roots deep into the soil just don’t respond well to confinement in pots.  I’m hoping that the creation of permanent growing beds will allow me to observe the natural progress of plant development that follows  the germination and early growth stages.