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Happy Fall!!! We are so excited for this season and all it has to offer… cooler temps, colorful leaves, fire pits, and great weather for gardening. If you’ve read any of our earlier posts, you’ve noticed we love fall and think this is one of the best times to add native plants to our outdoor spaces. We also love this time of year because of the annual Monarch migration. This amazing phenomenon is special… and as these Monarch butterflies travel to their overwintering home in Mexico, we get a chance to say goodbye and prepare our gardens and landscapes for when the next generation returns next spring.

If you’ve thought about adding Milkweed to help the Monarchs, fall is a great time to do it. The cooler weather and shortened days helps provide newly planted Milkweeds a great chance to get comfortable in their new homes before winter weather sets in. The two native Milkweeds we recommend to help provide lots of food for Monarch caterpillars are Common Milkweed – Asclepias syriaca and Swamp Milkweed – Asclepias incarnata (more info below). We will have many of these available, as well as many other native wildflowers, at the upcoming Hasta Luego Monarchs event on Saturday, September 24th. This is a great event, free and family friendly, that celebrates the Monarch migration. We are excited to be apart of Hasta Luego Monarchs this year and we’ll have native plants available for sale from 9:00 am – Noon, or until sold out (plant list below). A portion of our total sales will be donated to support the great work at the Pollinator Prairie!!!

Come on out and bring the family… enjoy the beautiful fall weather… and celebrate the amazing Monarch migration with us… see you then! – Jay Parsons

So much rain… so little sun. Like many of our plants, we’ve been anxiously looking forward to the sun’s return. It seems that May forgot that the showers are April’s thing. Thank goodness June is here!!! I’m excited for sunshine and warmer weather… and it’s looking like June will be a great time to get caught up on planting!

If you’re looking to add more native plants to your gardens and landscapes this year, but haven’t been able to yet, you’re not alone. We have several Farmers Market & Plant Sales scheduled for June and we’ll have several types of native plants available for purchase to help you add more habitat for bees, birds, butterflies, and other wildlife to your outdoor spaces! June is here… what will you plant?

If you have questions, or you’d like to preorder some plants for pick up at one of our upcoming sales… please Contact Us, we’d love to help! – Jay Parsons

When we’re asked about the best ways to get Monarch butterflies to visit our yards we always start with Milkweed.  It’s simple.  Sure, Monarchs need more than just Milkweed… but without Milkweed their wouldn’t be anymore Monarchs.  Growing Milkweed for Monarchs is the answer.

We would love to chat with you if you have questions about Milkweed.  You can reach out to us by simply clicking the link below.  Due to the current stay-at-home order in Kansas, we won’t be able to see our customers at the farmers market and plant sales we had originally scheduled for this Spring.  Instead, we are taking orders on our website and are currently accepting orders for our second round of deliveries that will go out on Saturday, May 2nd.  For more information, and to see what we currently have available and/or to place your own order, please click the Order Plants link below.  We appreciate your support for our small business and sharing us with your friends!

Contact Us     –     Order Plants

If you live outside the Kansas City area, we would recommend ordering plants online from Prairie Moon and/or Prairie Nursery.  We have had great experiences with both in the past and would highly recommend each of them.

The weather these next few weeks should be great for planting more Milkweed in our outdoor spaces!

– Jay Parsons

Milkweed & Monarch Resources

Here are a few resources you may find helpful in learning more about the native Milkweed plants that are best for our outdoor spaces.

Butterflies Go Native in Your Garden! A great resource, created by Lenora Larson, provides great information on other native plants, other than Milkweed, you can add to your outdoor spaces to help create need habitat for many more butterflies.

Journey North’s For an update on the current status of the Monarch’s Northern Migration.

Milkweed for Monarchs Information from the National Wildlife Federation about Milkweed.

Monarch Population Status Here is Chip Taylor’s (Monarch Watch) thoughts about the current situation with Monarchs.

 

We love this time of year.  As the days get warmer we enjoying spending more time outside, seeing our favorite plants and insects come alive, and welcoming back migrating birds and Monarch butterflies to our yard.  For the past seven years, we have gradually been creating more habitat for bees, birds, and butterflies to our yard by planting more native plants.  Every year it gets better and better, and it’s been fun experiencing it all with our son and daughter!

Even though we’ve all been forced to embrace a new normal this Spring, it is still a great time to add and create more habitat for wildlife.  By adding even just a few native wildflowers, we can help so many pollinators and birds, while reconnecting with nature at the same time.  Plus, with so many of us spending more time at home for the foreseeable future, Spring 2020 is turning into the perfect opportunity for each of us to create more habitat in our gardens and landscapes by planting more native plants!

But here is the big why for me… the Monarchs are coming!  As of this writing, the Monarch migration has been paused, due to the recent cold snap, and the leading edge is just to our south, according to Journey North.  I have a feeling that as the weather starts to warm up in the next week they will continue their journey and we’ll start to see Monarchs again!  However, for many of these Monarchs, their journey is coming to an end.  The first Monarchs we see are more than likely the ones that have left their overwintering homes in Mexico to move north and breed.  As the frail female Monarchs look to deposit their last eggs they are in need of only one thing… Milkweed.  This next generation of Monarchs, as well as all subsequent generations, depend on Milkweed.  Milkweed is the only type of plant that Monarch caterpillars will eat, and this is why it’s up to you and me to plant more Milkweed wherever we have space!

We would love to chat with you if you have questions about Milkweed.  You can reach out to us by simply clicking the link below.  Due to the current stay-at-home order in Kansas, we won’t be able to see our customers at the farmers market and plant sales we had originally scheduled for this Spring.  Instead, we are taking orders on our website and we’ll begin delivering orders starting the weekend of April 25. To see what we currently have available and/or to place your own order, please click the link below.  We appreciate your support for our small business and sharing us with your friends!

Contact Us     –     Order Plants

If you live outside the Kansas City area, we would recommend ordering plants online from Prairie Moon and/or Prairie Nursery.  We have had great experiences with both in the past and would highly recommend each of them.

Let’s take this Spring and decide to create more space for Monarchs by planting more Milkweed in our outdoor spaces!

– Jay Parsons

Additional Resources

Monarch Watch

Journey North

Xerces Society

The National Wildlife Federation

Deep Roots KC

Contain the Rain

 

 

I can remember like it was yesterday… my dad and I had just completed a small pond project in his backyard.  After the last stone was put in just the right place, and the water started flowing once the pump was plugged in, we sat back and admired our work.  For the next few days, as I sat out in my parents’ backyard, chatting about this and that, it became obvious that we needed to add some plants to help put the finishing touches to this new water feature.

We had heard about a plant sale being hosted by a local garden club in Omaha and thought we’d give it a shot.  As we strolled through the myriad of Geraniums, Impatiens, Petunias, and other flowering annuals, we came upon a section of plants that weren’t in bloom.  At first glance, I didn’t notice anything noteworthy about these “not so pretty” plants, so I continued on to the next table.  But before moving on I noticed a tiny picture of a Monarch, sitting on a pink flower, printed on a small plant label that was attached to one of those “not so pretty ones.”  I decided to take a closer look.  Swamp Milkweed is what the label read.  Huh… Milkweed…  I had heard about how Monarch butterflies use Milkweed for their caterpillars’ food, but had never seen a Milkweed plant for sale before.  Despite being short and skinny plants, these Swamp Milkweeds looked really healthy, and the tag said they liked to grow in wetter soils in full sun.  “Bingo!”  I thought… these would work great around our pond.  So, I picked out three plants, and with a sense of curiosity, took them back to my parents’ backyard to plant.

I wasn’t too impressed with them at first.  After planting them, they grew slowly at first.  After a few weeks they grew really well, but didn’t produce any flowers.  In fact, the only color they seemed to sport was the yellowish orange hue from all of the Aphids that were feeding on the stems.

I had almost forgotten about these plants, but around late July, the following year, they started to flower and they smelled like vanilla to me.  Plus, there were several kinds of bees that I’d never seen before stopping by for a drink.  Lady Bug larva had found the Aphids and would make quick work of them… so much was going on in this small area around our pond.  But, it wasn’t until I spotted a black, yellow, and white stripped caterpillar hanging out on one of the Swamp Milkweed that I froze. I got lost in the moment… this chubby bug had my full attention and just like a child, I was full of wonder.  What to some might have seemed like a mere bug sighting, to me, was a “holy crap… it worked,” type of moment.  I hadn’t seen a single Monarch butterfly, nor did I even know what their tiny eggs looked like, but there was no mistaking that this was a Monarch caterpillar.  Questions started swirling… how did it get here?  Were there more?  How big do they get?  On and on it went, and then I spotted another one… and another.  Altogether, there were seven Monarch caterpillars munching on our Swamp Milkweed!

Needless to say, this initial experience with these Monarch caterpillars,  helped to awaken a passion in me that has lead me in learning about native wildflowers, grasses, shrubs, trees, and the important connections they have with wildlife.  These often “looked over” or “misunderstood” plants are not truly the “ugly” ones… they are simply the “needed” ones.

When I’m asked about why I grow, sell, and landscape with native wildflowers, grasses, shrubs, and trees, the answer seems to surprise others.  What they’re most surprised about, is just how important native plants are.  When others discover that without them, our native insects, birds, and other critters wouldn’t have the habitat they need to survive, they get it.  What we plant matters… and it matters to so much more than we often realize. This realization is the beginning to discovering how we can each create a place for wildlife in our own outdoor spaces.

I’d love to hear your story about how you’ve learned about native plants and/or added them to your outdoor space to help create a place for pollinators, birds, butterflies, and other critters. If you’re new to native plants, and the role they play in creating habitat, we’d love to help answer questions and lead you to just the right plants for your space.

Creating habitat… one plant at a time. It’s that simple! Happy planting!

As the days grow shorter and the nights get colder, fall is fading away as winter starts to take center stage.  With the first day of winter upon us, Christmas right around the corner, and the beginning of a New Year soon to follow, many of us are caught up in the hustle of the season.  But, before I get completely immersed in the winter season, I wanted to take one last moment to remember my favorite season of the year, before it bids us farewell.

Fall has been my favorite season for as long as I can remember.  As a kid, I could remember how much I loved the start of a new school year, watching football with the family, playing outside with the neighbor kids in the cool autumn air, and getting excited for all of the Halloween and Thanksgiving festivities.  So many great memories.

As I look back on many of these memories, I’m amazed at how many of them include the sights and smells and sounds of fallen leaves.  Before long, I’m taken back to moments where leaves weren’t seen as those dreaded things that clog up your gutters or make a mess of your lawn.  Instead, these fallen leaves provided my friends and me with the materials needed to make a giant leaf pile… the kind all of your buddies would want to dive into.  I can remember at times getting so excited when we would get the chance to rake leaves into giant piles.  It didn’t seem like a chore, but rather a game.

I’m not sure when it started, but my dad would gather up the leaves we’d rake up and put them in a big pile beside his garden.  He’d use some thin garden fencing he had to construct a simple “leaf cage” so the leaves wouldn’t blow away.  It was a simple pile, nothing fancy, but boy would it grow.  In the following spring and summer, he would use these leaves to create the base for his compost pile.  The next spring, after the grass would start to green up and grow, my dad would catch some clippings while he mowed, and add it to the leaves to help get his compost pile started.  It didn’t take long before the leaves and grass clippings started to heat up and decompose, helping to create some rich, homemade, compost for his garden.

As a gardener now myself, my perspective on fall leaves has changed.  I no longer see them as just a mess to clean up, but rather a great source of organic material that can be used to make mulch and compost.  Over the years I’ve learned one of the most efficient ways to collect and reuse these “nature treasures” is to set the rake aside, and use our lawn mower.  Here are some simple things I do to shred, collect, and use these leaves in our garden and landscaping.

1. First, I put on the side shoot attachment to our lawn mower.  If your current lawn mower doesn’t have one you can instead raise the height of your mower all the way to its highest setting.  What I like about the side shoot is it enables the mower to cut up the leaves and then spread them over to another area to the side so they can be easily mowed over again.  I like to make a few passes over the yard like this, making sure the side shoot is aimed toward the grass areas and not the landscaped areas.
2. Once the leaves have been mowed over a few times, I take off the side shoot attachment and put the mower’s bag on.  If I have a lot of leaves I will leave the height the same… if there are fewer leaves I’ll lower the mower down a few notches.  As I mow over the leaves again to pick them up in the bag, they get one final cut.  After a pass or two, the bag will need to be emptied and I simply dump the leaves into a sturdy trash barrel and return the bag and continue mowing.  Once the barrel is full, I’ll carry it back to the leaf pile where I’ll dump them out.
3. I’ll use these shredded leaves as mulch in our raised garden beds, as well as around our native wildflowers and grasses.  I’ve found that when I add a 3-4 inch layer of these shredded leaves to these areas before winter, the soil stays evenly watered while keeping early weed seeds at bay.  Adding an additional layer in June also ensures a good coverage throughout the hot summer months that will continue to retain the soil’s moisture, keep the soil cool, while also slowly adding organic nutrients to the soil as they decompose.  Not only that, but this leaf layer helps to create the perfect environment for earthworms and soil microbes to be active and beneficial to surrounding plants!
4. The remainder of the leaves in our leaf pile will be used in our compost pile and will help to create some pretty amazing soil amendments that we’ll use in our garden and on our lawn.

More helpful resources:

K-State’s Research & Extension – Solutions for Getting Rid of Fall’s Abundant Leaves

The Spruce – Using Autumn Leaves in the Garden