This often leads to concerns about burning their prairie in the spring, as it would seem that putting fire to seed laying on the ground or hanging in the still-standing growth would compromise the seed’s viability.

By doing a fall seeding, the seed in fact has all winter to drop down and make good contact with the soil well before the spring burn. The wind and rain get most of the seed down to ground level. The freeze-thaw cycle then works the seed into the soil. The temperature of a moving fire is not high enough to kill the seed and in some cases heat will help a species.  Ceanothus americanus (New Jersey Tea), for example, benefits from having a treatment of boiling water poured over the seeds to aid in germination for spring planting.

Maricel oversees hundreds of boxes packed and shipped during this busy season.

Roots are carefully packed in moistened peat moss and kept chilled until they are shipped.

Site prep on April 19th – at least the soil is not frozen.

Planting a cactus pad into a sandy bed.

Question: Can you explain the coloring system more?

Answer: The following key to the map colors provides more detailed explanations than the key that accompanies the maps on our website. Notice that although there is county-level data for species occurrence, native status is only indicated at the state-level:

Q: Can I plant a species outside of its range on the map? Should I?

A: In many cases the answer to the first question is yes. Our range maps are not hardiness maps—they do not show where a species can or cannot be planted and survive. Rather, they show where self-reproducing, wild populations are documented to occur. North American native plants can often be planted outside of their native range. When a species has become naturalized in a state outside its native range, it is represented by the blue counties in our range maps.

While some people believe that introducing North American native species beyond their native range is harmless, some restorationists, conservation biologists and others object to it. Wherever you stand on this issue, it is always important to avoid introducing new species to sites near remnant native plant communities (for example, state natural areas). In fact, when planting in the vicinity of remnants one should not only use strictly native species, but should furthermore use seed or plants of local genetic origin.

Q: Are these maps the same as on the USDA website?

A: The USDA range maps indicate whether a species is native or introduced to the continent of North America. The BONAP maps indicate whether a species is native or introduced to a particular state or province. As an example, compare the USDA maps to the BONAP maps for Amorpha fruticosa or Agastache foeniculum. The USDA maps give the impression that these species have wider native ranges than the BONAP maps indicate.

Actually, much of the data that USDA uses for their maps came from BONAP. BONAP no longer supplies data to the USDA, but continues to update its independent database, and has added hundreds of thousands of county records since then. Furthermore, BONAP has deleted many county records that, upon investigation, turned out to be in error.

Comment: A word of caution. Not all the information that went into these maps has been properly vetted. I know for a fact that there are mapping errors in the state where I work. Don’t trust all of those outliers.

Response: This comment reminds us that these maps are drafts. There are county occurrence records that are in error, and there are counties where species occur but have not been recorded. There are even local experts who would dispute the native status of some species in some states. With time BONAP will refine their database, but there may never be a perfectly accurate and complete picture. The range maps we have right now provide general outlines with some rough edges. The edges may be more rough in some states than others.

The most common method for putting down seed to initiate a prairie planting is a fall or frost broadcasting.  This is usually done between October 15 and March 15, after a year of site preparation.  It is not uncommon for people to notice birds visiting the ground that has been recently planted.  Generally, this is not a problem.  Most of the prairie seed is small and when it is evenly distributed over a large area it is randomly placed in a manner that typically does not occur in nature.  When birds eat small seeds typically it is directly from the plant and they can consume many seeds at one time.  A bird may find a few randomly scattered seeds but it will not find many.  The situation is similar for seed broadcast onto snow.  Within an hour of being put down on the surface, the seed will begin to melt into the snow.

Some seeds will inevitably be consumed by birds, insects and rodents, but the seed count for our seed mixes is high to accommodate for this.  When a seed mix has a seed count of 100 seeds per square foot most of those seeds will not ever become a mature plant.  Some attrition is built into the formula.

I was looking back through our website’s old blog postings when I noticed my entry about our new rain garden from September of last year.  I thought it would be a good time to give you an update since then.   We have had a fairly wet second season, with many occasions of heavy rain of an inch or more in a relatively short time period.  You have to be fast to even see any standing water in the rain garden basin; it infiltrates and is drawn up by the plants so well.  A  few of the drier species that I put in the bottom basin had too much moisture and rotted but others have grown so thick that there are no gaps. Ours is a fairly low-tech style of rain garden with just a plastic pipe from the downspout to the basin area.  We also leave a few curved sections of wire fencing and some dried blood baits on the outer, drier shoulder section to make it unappealing to hungry deer.

Late last fall and this spring I put in more plants on the outer section.  This spring we did a thorough weeding in the bottom section about twice before it got too thick to need it. We weeded the top section several times and reapplied some shredded bark mulch.  The garden is in the back of our building so it is out of site most of the time but is a break-time destination for some of the employees here; the color and pollinator action are so compelling that we take part of the day to go and check to see what is happening.

The Anemone patens wolfgangiana or Pulsatilla patens, Pasque flower, bloomed profusely this spring and left tiny seedlings as well. I was thrilled by this plant. Every time I went outside and peered into the blossoms I saw a black bee-like pollinator rummaging around the outer edge of the middle of the flower, presumably where the pollen is. I tried to get his picture but he was too fast for me to get a good shot. Last week I added more Pasque flowers grown in pots this summer, and I want to eventually have hundreds around the building to refresh our spirits after winter.

Even the seeds of Pasque Flower are attractive!

Some of my other favorites were the Asclepias incarnata, Swamp milkweed, and the Hypericum prolificum, Shrubby St.John’s Wort. Both of these plants bloomed for a long time and were covered with flowers and so many feeding insects that the entire area had an audible hum!

One of three Astagalus crassicarpus, Ground Plum, made a neat little pearly “plum” seed pod that vanished before it fully ripened.

There was also plenty of Asclepias tuberosa, Butterfly Milkweed. I had wondered how well it would like this location but all the roots wintered-over well and bloomed strong except for one. We have lots of Monarchs and Monarch caterpillars and butterflies of all sorts around the Butterfly Weed plants.

New plants that I added last fall as dormant plants:
Aster azureus, Sky Blue Aster, is all budded but not quite blooming.
Aster oblongifolius, Aromatic Aster, has grown well and is just starting to bloom:

Agoseris cuspidata, Prairie Dandelion, grew well, flowered and made lots of seeds.

This spring and summer I have added:
Andropogon scoparius or Schizachyrium scoparium, Little Bluestem, from greenhouse plugs
Baptisia leucophaea, Cream Wild Indigo, from dormant bare root stock
Castilleja coccinea, Indian paintbrush, from greenhouse plugs

Indian Paintbrush greenhouse-grown plugs

Planting Indian Paintbrush plugs in July

Erigeron pulchellus, Robin’s Plantain, from dormant bare-root stock

Robin's Plantain juvenile. Notice the 2 small Indian Paintbrush seedlings on either side of the plant.

Monarda Bradburniana, Bradbury’s Monarda, from greenhouse plugs

Bradbury's Monarda seedling

Next spring I may top off the mulch a bit and then I hope to just enjoy the show, provided we get rain.  I’ll let you know how many Indian Paintbrush make it to bloom.

By contrast, we on Prairie Moon’s sales and consulting team spend much of our time carefully and deliberately dampening the expectations of prospective and first-time customers. No matter how many times we chant into our phones our mantra that establishing a native plant community from seed can take at least three to five years, we know that our best buzz-kill efforts will only slightly diminish the number of follow-up callers ready to proclaim a failure two months into a planting’s first season.

Because we are so diligent about trying to inject doses of realism into planting plans, it was fascinating, while out in the field this spring, to find myself falling prey to some of the same impatience and unrealistic expectations that I daily, glibly, strive to exorcise. I grow a small number of species for bare-root plant sales through our nursery.  After experimenting early with a few more finicky varieties, I settled on six species that seem popular and relatively easy to propagate and tend in my spare time.

Monarda fistulosa, Wild Bergamot, is ubiquitous in plantings and native remnants all around us, yet that species has proved the most challenging for me to grow reliably and predictably. In our cultural guide we describe the species as easy to grow and assign it germination code A, needing no pre-treatment.

When I first planted it, I was advised also to follow the code D instructions because of Monarda seeds’ tiny size. So I dutifully surface-sowed the seeds in lines in my production beds and covered them with strips of burlap to press them to the soil surface and retain moisture. The trickiest part of this procedure is to remove the burlap after the seeds germinate but before the seedlings get caught in the burlap and uprooted with its removal.

Nervous about that timing, I kept peeking under the strips, puzzling over whether the green sprouts that I saw were weeds or my crop. When the hardiest seedlings started to penetrate the burlap, I decided I’d better take the strips out of the bed and try to cultivate as the season progressed. Weeks went by, gradually eroding my confidence in my ability to identify any Monarda among the tiny green emergents. I resorted to pulling everything that I knew for sure was weedy, resignedly concluding that my planting somehow had failed.

When frost cycles ushered in plant-digging season, I was surprised to discover that indeed I did have a few sale-worthy plants in my poorly managed patch. I noticed that many plants were available from Prairie Moon’s own beds, so I asked the nursery’s garden manager to share his technique. Arnel told me that a fall planting seemed to yield better germination in the spring, even though Monarda is not considered to require over-wintering.

I adopted that approach, abandoning the burlap strips, with greater success in subsequent seasons. This year, though, I was reminded that, regardless of how experienced I think I’m becoming or how confident I feel in expected outcomes, it’s still awfully easy for me to fall prey to common pitfalls and hasty, false assumptions.

I sold all of the Monarda fistulosa plants in my bed last fall, so I decided to try a frost seeding for this year’s crop. When the snow drifts had settled to a few inches’ depth in early February, I brushed off the garden bed and lined out my rows of Bergamot seed, dusting a blanket of snow back on them to tuck them in until spring.

When I seeded other species in my production beds in early May, I tried to take Monarda inventory and was discouraged to be able to identify only a few, scattered sprouts. They were about the size of a dime or smaller and far scarcer than the more vigorous weeds popping up all around them. Complicating matters was that the adjacent species in the bed is Heliopsis helianthoides, Early Sunflower. Some of them had gone to seed, greatly increasing my uncertainty about whether each sprout that I saw was a Bergamot or an encroaching Sunflower or a weed.

I began to worry that I would not have enough M. fistulosa plants to fill the orders that already had been assigned to me, not to mention the full inventory figure that I had projected for the fall harvest. I decided that I had better try a spring sowing to increase the plant numbers. I lined out more of the tiny seeds, lightly pressing them into the soil surface.

Several months of hot, wet weather ensued and by July, crowded, thick rows of Monarda waved at me, evoking mixed emotions of relief and sheepishness.

As I thinned the rows, spacing plants to provide more room for all to develop, I reflected on how my superimposed agenda had prompted me to lose faith in what I knew to be a protracted natural process. Soon I ran out of room for all of the seedlings and had to choose the hardier specimens, culling the rest. I vowed to improve my skills at plant and weed identification, to be more trusting of predictable progressions and certainly to be more compassionate when counseling anxious customers to be patient with their plantings.

Here are two views of my Monarda fistulosa bed in mid-August. The taller plants were seeded onto frozen soil in February. Seeds for the shorter plants were surface-sown in early May, when the wintered-over seedlings were about the size of the dime pictured below.

1. The seeds of grafted plants produce plants with the characteristics of only one of the parent varieties. Customers who plant areas to be managed as whole plant communities require plants that are self-reliant (not dependent on the qualities of another variety to thrive) and produce plants from seed that are similar to the parent plant in environmental tolerances.

2. Native plant enthusiasts appreciate the natural heritage of native plants. Grafted plants are new creations, not historical representatives.

3. There isn’t a need to modify our native plants because they are already well adapted to every natural sun and soil situation.

The DNR’s Woodland burn was impressive and the publicity will help spread the word that prescribed burns are an important tool in maintaining our diverse woodlands. The area historically had been an Oak savanna but was being overtaken by honeysuckle and other trees which the fire helps to control. In the future we can hope Smoky the Bear will have a new motto: “Learn to Burn”

Smoke rises from the Vinegar Ridge Forestry Unit near Rushford, Minn., Friday during a controlled burn by the Department of Natural Resources. The fire burned about 450 acres. Melissa Carlo/Winona Daily News

Ray Monson, a grounds employee at Forestville State Park, uses a drip torch of diesel fuel and gasoline Friday to ignite fires along the outer edge of the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources' controlled burn at Vinegar Ridge Forestry Unit near Rushford, Minn. More than 50 wildland firefighters helped with the burn. Melissa Carlo/Winona Daily News

Ray Monson, a grounds employee at Forestville State Park, uses a drip torch of diesel fuel and gasoline Friday to ignite fires along the outer edge of the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources' controlled burn at Vinegar Ridge Forestry Unit near Rushford, Minn. Melissa Carlo/Winona Daily News

Melissa Carlo/Winona Daily News

Keyth Wallin installs the plastic sphere dispenser in the helicopter before takeoff. Wallin operates the dispenser to release spheres filled with potassium permanganate injected with antifreeze that will react and ignite after they are dropped. Melissa Carlo/Winona Daily News

Keyth Wallin sits in the open door of a helicopter Friday, flown by Mike Balch of Scott's Helicopter Service in Le Sueur, Minn., as they prepare to ignite the Department of Natural Resources' controlled burn at Vinegar Ridge Forestry Unit. Melissa Carlo/Winona Daily News

A helicopter flies around the smoke Friday rising from the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources' controlled burn at Vinegar Ridge Forestry Unit near Rushford, Minn. Officials say it was the first time a helicopter was used to ignite a burn in southeast Minnesota. Melissa Carlo/Winona Daily News

Melissa Carlo/Winona Daily News

A helicopter flies around the smoke Friday rising from the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources' controlled burn at Vinegar Ridge Forestry Unit near Rushford, Minn. Officials say it was the first time a helicopter was used to ignite a burn in southeast Minnesota. Melissa Carlo/Winona Daily News

Many North American indigenous cultures burned sweet grass in ceremonies to invite the presence of good spirits. The Dakota name for Sweet Grass is Wachanga; Omaha is Pezhezonsta; Winnebago is Manuska and the Pawnee name is Kataru. In the past, the scientific names Torresia odorata and Savastana odorata have been used.

Sweet Grass prefers rich, moist soil but will grow in almost any soil that receives a minimum of half a day of sun. Sandy, well-drained sites will require mulch and watering during times of low rainfall. Add compost to sand or clay soils. The preferred pH range is 6-8. To start from seed, plant 1/4″ deep in pots containing sterilized potting soil. Plant in your area when large enough.

Keep in mind that Sweet Grass is very aggressive and difficult to eliminate if it spreads to areas where it is not wanted.

You may want to encircle the Sweet Grass with a 5′ wide pathway made of plastic covered with sand, pea gravel, sawdust, wood chips, paving stone or brick. A spacing of 2′x2′ will fill in solid in 1 year. Harvesting each year will stimulate the growth of rhizomes. After 1 year of growth, plugs may be taken to expand or establish additional plantings.

Avoid late fall planting as there may not be enough time to establish new roots to help withstand frost-heaving. Apply mulch after transplanting. At Prairie Moon, we use a 2″ thick layer of sawdust. Since sawdust may cause a temporary nitrogen shortage, spread compost or a high nitrogen substance prior to mulching. Watch carefully for the appearance of any other rhizome-forming grasses as once they are established, may be impossible to eliminate.

If Sweet Grass receives adequate rainfall or irrigation, it will actively grow from spring to fall. Harvesting can take place in summer or early fall. Early harvests may be more aromatic, but leaves will be shorter. Complete harvesting when you notice the foliage beginning to go dormant. The plant will lighten in color and will lose some of its scent.

As you are cutting, bundle grass in approximately 1 1/2″ in diameter with rubber bands. Hang in a dry, ventilated area out of sunlight.

Before braiding, reconstitute bundles by submerging in water only until thoroughly moistened and pliable enough to braid, but no longer than necessary.

Do not braid when overly wet as they may mold later on. Allow to dry thoroughly before storing. Store in a box with some air flow.

To finish off, use some strands of grass to replace the rubber bands on both ends!