Episode 19

The Modern Botanist with Host Stephanie Barelman

Published on: 10th April, 2024

The Modern Botanist

Episode Introduction

In today’s episode, The Modern Botanist, we examine what modern gardening can look like within the native plants framework, different tools you can use to get “spec’d out” in your gardening abilities, and why it matters more than ever to bring back gardening as part of a healthy lifestyle.

Host Stephanie Barelman

Stephanie Barelman is the founder of the Bellevue Native Plant Society, a midwest motivational speaker surrounding the native plants dialogue, and host of the Plant Native Nebraska Podcast.

Episode Sponsors

Today's episode sponsored by Midwest Natives Nursery:

https://www.midwestnativesnursery.com/

https://www.facebook.com/midwestnatives

https://www.instagram.com/midwest_natives_nursery/

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Episode Content

Growing

Get nerdy and grow your own plants!

Start with a good potting soil. This could be Pro-Mix or a Berger mix or another recommended potting soil. You can even google how to make your own potting soil and mix the components up in a wheelbarrow. It’s fun to experiment!

Pre-moisten your soil in a tubtrug or wheelbarrow or 5 gal bucket.

Get seed trays: one drain tray (example: 1020 seed starting tray), one cell tray(example 72 cell seed tray,) and humidity domes. Bootstrap Farmer has really good ones:

https://www.bootstrapfarmer.com/collections/plug-trays/products/extra-strength-72-cell-seedling-starter-trays

https://www.bootstrapfarmer.com/collections/1020-trays-and-flats/products/1020-trays-multi-color

Bottom water when your soil starts to get dry so your seedlings don't get washed out.

Pack the cell trays with soil. Knead those puppies down.

Plant seeds at right depth (per instructions on packet.) Plant two to three seeds in the middle of each cell for best germination. You can cull or up-pot extra seedlings.

What I’ve been doing for labels is using my Brother label maker and taking one popsicle stick, place one label at the top for each row and then affix the label with clear packaging tape to the stick. I’m hoping this will help keep my labels more waterproof... we'll see how it goes.

Keep those plants happy. Pot up to a 3 or 4 inch pot when you see true leaves. You can also start fertilizing once you pot up.

Don’t forget to “harden off” your plants before planting out in the garden. Google, google, google, my friend.

PLANTING

The tale of three tools: the soil knife, the auger, and the drain spade.

When you are planting, the soil level of the potted plant should sit about a half-inch below the surface of the ground. If the plant is pot bound, tease some of the roots with your fingertips or give it a good slice horizontally and vertically.

Don’t forget to water the plants in and to tamp down with the heel of your foot or by putting firm pressure all around the perimeter with the palms of your hands. Cover with more soil until we’ve got an upright plant well-packed in the ground.

Learn your plants. Plant taller plants in the middle or behind shorter ones. Line paths with very short plants- think 6-12 inches or less.

Know and plant your ground covers.

Strong shade groundcovers native to Nebraska: wild ginger, mayapple, and common violets.

A good groundcover for partial sun could be Virginia waterleaf.

For our sun gardens: pearly everlasting, common violets, prairie blue-eyed grass, wild strawberry, wild geranium, wild petunia, or nearly native early buttercup, hairy penstemon, or prairie smoke. I also like the ‘snow flurry’ cultivar of heath aster.

You can also work in grass or sedge ground covers like Pennsylvania sedge, ivory sedge, long beaked sedge, blue grama, buffalo grass, purple love grass. Little bluestem also makes an excellent ground cover when planted en masse.

LAWNING

Let's lawn better! (For what we can't remove today)

SAY YES TO:

Setting your mower to the tallest setting and mowing once a month.
Adding in low growing natives like self-heal, purple poppy mallow, common violets.
Adding in plugs of sedges.
Not spraying exotic dandelions, henbit, clover, oxalis, or creeping charlie.
Aerating and overseeding your lawn with buffalo grass or blue grama instead of the usual turf seed

If you have a really blotchy lawn in shady areas, you can even look into shade ground covers we mentioned before or try your hand at a moss lawn. There is a great bee lawn mix by Prairie Legacy that you can try to make a meadow lawn or in your hellstrip.

YAY TO LESS LAWN!

Reduce your lawn by planting garden borders. Start small and work as your free time and budget allows!

WEEDING and MANAGING

Get out and weed monthly. Know your weeds. Maybe let some go that don’t get over 6 inches or so. Just know that creeping charlie is allelopathic.

Better Homes and Gardens common weeds article: https://www.bhg.com/gardening/pests/insects-diseases-weeds/types-of-weeds/ You can decide the ones you can live without and hand-pull them.

Remember: perfection isn’t possible and pretty much every successful garden has its share of weeds here and there.

You may choose to manage your plants that self-seed. This may involve culling some seedlings, transplanting plants to a different location, or cutting specific plants back after flowering to keep them from taking over a garden space. This may include agastaches, tall boneset, coneflower, asters, pitcher sage or sweet black- eyed susan.

Know your truely invasive or undesirable exotic and weedy plants like callery pear, Japanese honeysuckle, Canada thistle, brome, Japanese hops, foxtail, poison hemlock.

OBSERVING

Get out there and look around, girl!

Get to know your garden. Pretend like you're a tourist and everything is interesting!

EXPERIMENTING

SAY NO TO MIND TRAPS SOMETIMES TAUGHT BY GARDEN VETERANS:

You must water constantly all year
You must never ever use non-native species
You must weed weekly to appease the aesthetic gods
You must use foundation plants
You must never use aggressive species
You must not have a wild front garden
You must keep lawns for negative space
You must not let anything go to seed

The joys of life come from experimenting! Get out there and do weird stuff!

ENGAGING and HARVESTING

We don’t lose seasonal succession with natives, what seasonal succession looks like just changes.

We become aware of local wildlife- birds, pollinating insects, small mammals, amphibians- so much wildlife that we can observe once we start reintroducing habitat.

Think of incorporating edible and medicinal plant parts into your daily life. Make wildflower teas! There's no time to toil and suffer like the present...

SHOWCASING

Signage, signage, signage.

You can source signs from:

Monarch Waystation Registry program
Prairie Moon Nursery
Nebraska Monarchs
Midwest Natives Nursery
PATH-Pollinator Alliance of the Heartland
Xerces Society
and many others!

But importantly, give your neighbors something to look at by actually planting a wild, native garden on the streetfront. Some ‘plant people’ will tell you to save wildness for the back garden. But let’s put it all out there.

If you're feeling especially brave, display your garden on a local garden walk.

The two maps we discussed today:

https://www.homegrownnationalpark.org/
Pollinator Alliance of the Heartland map when it becomes available!

RESEARCHING and COMPILING

Find out what’s native to your area and then plant what you like!

Tools:

Eco guide tools:

Bellevue Native Plant Society

bellevuenativeplants.org

Look at plant catalogs and gardening books for inspo, at the same time getting to know your local and online native plant suppliers:

Online (and some local also)

Prairie Moon Nursery- Minnesota (plants and seed)
Prairie Nursery- Wisconsin (plants and seed)
Prairie Legacy- Nebraska (plants and seed)
Stock Seed- Nebraska (seed)
Great Plains Nursery- Nebraska (plants)

Local

Midwest Natives Nursery- Lincoln, Ne (plants)
Nebraska Statewide Arboretum Lincoln, NE(plants)
Golden Hills RC& D

Additional content related to this episode:

What makes a plant native?

http://bonap.net/fieldmaps Biota of North America North American Plant Atlas database-select Nebraska

https://bellevuenativeplants.org Bellevue Native Plant Society

native (wild type) vs. nativar/native cultivar (native plant cultivated by humans for desirable characteristics)

On the Web

BONAP aforementioned

BNPS aforementioned

http://www.facebook.com/groups/bellevuenativeplantsociety- BNPS on Facebook

Books & Authors

Rick Darke- The Living Landscape

Douglas Tallamy- Professor and Chair of the Department of Wildlife Ecology and Entomology at the University of Delaware, author of The Living Landscape, Nature's Best Hope, naturalist, and curator of "Homegrown National Park".

Enrique Salmon- Iwigara

Daniel Moerman -Native American Ethnobotany

Heather Holm- https://www.pollinatorsnativeplants.com

Native Plants of the Midwest

Planting in a Post-Wild World

Jon Farrar's Field Guide to Wildflowers of Nebraska