Easy Grow Coneflowers

Growing a beautiful flower garden on the prairie can be a challenge at times, with the extreme temperatures, lots of wind, not to mention greedy pests and weeds that are ready to take over any place that is given extra water and care. Fortunately, if you look for them, there are many beautiful plants that are native to the prairie and really thrive in a garden.
One of my favorites is the purple coneflower. This hardy, beautiful plant can be a real standout in your garden. It can be grown nearly everywhere in the U.S. and reseeds itself and comes back year after year. Another great thing about these flowers is that they attract butterflies to your garden. If you leave the seed heads on in the winter, birds, such as goldfinches, will feed on them.
Coneflowers are becoming available in a nice range of colors which makes them even more desirable. A whole bed of them will be a nice spot of color in your landscape. I'm planning where I'm going to put some more of them this summer.

Spring Blizzards and Gardening On The Prairie

Seems like we always get this beautiful spring weather in March and you're just sure that winter is over and gardening time is just around the corner and then, bam!, you get hit with a spring blizzard! I'm at least thankful that my daffodils and other early spring flowers were had not actually bloomed yet. I think the buds will survive and I'll still enjoy those pretty flowers. It's the plants that I had bought and not planted (thankfully) yet that will be a pain to keep healthy. I had succombed to the temptation and bought some brocolli plants and early flowers and then hadn't had time to plant them yet. That's good, but now they will have to be watered daily and tended to until it finally thaws and then dries out enough that I can plant them.
I'm really not complaining as the moisture was needed and as I look at the green shoots poking out of the blanket of snow over my perennial gardens, I know that they will benefit from the melting snow and most of them will survive just fine. After all, I plant a lot of native prairie plants and they are tough and suited to this climate!
Maybe this spring snow isn't so bad after all. I think if I could garden all year long, I would miss out on the miracle of seeing the brown and dead landscape suddenly come alive with green shoots poppping up and flowers starting to bloom and brighten my days.

Simple Water Gardening

Well, between the Kansas Tornado and then a trip to Kansas City to help my sister prepare for my neice's wedding, my prairie garden has been a bit neglected. The beauty of a garden planted with native plants is that it really doesn't take much care and other then a few weeds (not native beauties!) needing to be removed, it's really looking good. Of course, a wetter than usual start to summer has helped, too.

I've added a few simple water features to my garden and the one to the right is right outside my front door where I can hear the sound of the fountain inside the house. This was a really simple feature to set up. I found a long flat rock that fits across the back of the pot and holds the turtle spitter. In order to make a place for the plants to stand and hold some rocks I set a concrete block on its end in the pot and then used the front cage from an old fan that didn't work anymore (I'm an avid recyclyer, did I tell you?) and laid it face down on the concrete block. It's just a simple matter to place rocks inside the fan cage to cover it and to help anchor the plants.

The plants were pretty simple, also. I purchased a small chameleon plant and the other two reed-like plants were dug up from around the edges of our farm pond. Now, I know not everyone has a farm pond to dig up plants from, but if you live in an area where there is water and you would have access to water plants this is a great way to put plants in your feature. I put a small clump in a clay pot with some rocks or gravel in the bottom. When it's time to put up your feature for the winter, you can just dispose of the plants and save the pots for next year. You can also purchase water plants if you like.

You can overwinter your water plants if you have the space for a flat, under the bed type plastic storage container. I place it in a sunny window and set the plants into it and keep about 3" to 4" of water in it all winter long.

I also like to add a couple of goldfish to my water feature to help keep algae down and besides the grandkids love to feed them when they are here.

Use your imagination and look around for things you can use to set up your own water feature and enjoy the sound of the water during the hot summer months to come.

Creating a Prairie Garden

The largest single ecosystem on the North American continent was the prairie. Nestled between the lush forests along the Mississippi and the Rocky Mountains, and stretching from southern Texas to southern Canada, America's prairie was a virtual sea of grasses sometimes taller than a horse. Closer to the ground, a carpet of wildflowers of every color and shape blossomed. Under it all was the rich, black soil that settler farmers tilled and planted into wheat, corn, beans and other crops. The eastern part of the range had more moisture and supported taller grass and a large range of colored flowers. As the region moved west less rain fell and there was more mixed grasses and less flowers. Only about 1% of the continent's original prairie still exists. There are many efforts underway to reestablish and protect prairie habitats.

I live just about right in the middle of that great grassland. Other than the fenced in pastures and the fact that you can still see for miles and miles in any direction, it is hard to imagine what it must have looked like 200 years ago.

I have a lot of traditional flowers in my gardens - things planted by past generations that have adapted well to the prairie and seem as though they were probably always here. Things like the peonies which are blooming magnificently right now, the iris, the tulips and daffodils, and annuals like petunias and zinnias.

However, sometimes it can be a challenge to keep some of those plants protected from the wind and watered enough and so a few years ago, I started collecting and planting native flowers in my gardens. The purple coneflowers nearly take over as well as the pink Missouri primroses. I have started a False Indigo plant that I dug up from our pasture along with a pretty little grass with little white flowers called, simply, white eyed grass. Some wood sorrel started a couple of years ago has started filling in nicely and last year I found and planted a beardstongue which is just starting to bloom. Even some patches of Little Bluestem Grass planted amongst the flowers adds to the beauty of it.

Below are some pictures I've been taking of some of the flowers I have blooming this year. I have identified most of these through the website http://www.kswildflowers.org/ This is a great resource as the flowers as listed by color as well as by name, so it makes it pretty easy to find and identify flowers that I find.

Beardstongue - dug up last year while it was blooming. I was really happy when it came up and bloomed so well this year.

Pink Primroses - always beautiful and very prolific - actually can be rather invasive, but I just fight them back into the areas where I want them and they don't seem to mind - just keep blooming for weeks.

This plant is called Moth Mullin. I found a few of them blooming in the pasture when I was checking calves last spring. Couldn't resist the pretty little white flowers with purple centers. They shoot up about 2'-3' tall and the flowers are about 1" across. It starts blooming at the bottom and the buds above open later - rather like a hollyhock. I found out that this one reseeds itself quite well and have had to be a little ruthless about taking out seedlings so that it doesn't choke out everything else. Growing in the pasture, they are contained by native grasses, etc., but in the garden where they could have free range, they come up everywhere! They're worth the extra work now that they are blooming.