Central Plains Gardener's March Checklist

Central Plains Gardener's March Checklist

March means cleaning in the backyard. Additionally, it is a great month to maintain the lawn, since you won’t be tripping over dead plant stems. So get in there and include the ornamental elements you have been missing, like grasses for year-round water and interest features for wildlife and low-maintenance style.

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Huettl Landscape Architecture

Plant grasses for four-season interest. Before you cut the garden in early March, snowstorms permitting, take one last look to see what you could do to add winter interest next year. By using grasses, one way to improve four seasons of attention is.

Want quick height at a mid century location? Think big bluestem (Andropogon gerardii) or Indian bud (Sorghastrum nutans). Wish to hide the unsightly bare stems of flowering perennials? Think sideoats grama (Bouteloua curtipendula) or prairie dropseed (Sporobulos heterolepsis). These blossoms provide cover and nesting materials for birds, frequently have nice autumn color and make for a gorgeous winter garden.

Benjamin Vogt / Monarch Gardens

Clean up. My principal backyard is 95 percent herbaceous perennials, which grow back from the ground every year. I like to linger, therefore that I use scissors and pruners to clean up the plants one by you, but you could just as easily have a weed whacker into the backyard and be carried out in 30 minutes. This is the wonder and splendor of herbaceous perennials.

Benjamin Vogt / Monarch Gardens

Insert water features for wildlife. As you’re thinking about plugging holes at the garden vista with ornamental native grasses, think about adding some architectural characteristics that are also beneficial to wildlife.

A disappearing fountain is reduced maintenance — often requiring just the removal of the pump before winter — and you’ll attract thirsty birds and butterflies while still listening to the soothing sound of water. The fountain shown here is a premade concrete type that came with a tube already inserted inside.

Watch more ways to attract birds and butterflies to your backyard

Exteriorscapes llc

You can ask a landscaper or a different stone expert to drill a hole in a rock, and then conduct a PVC hose or pipe indoors to produce a more pragmatic evaporating fountain.

Normally the fountain sits up on a grate using a water basin beneath, but it is also possible to fill up the basin with stone. The drawback is that the pump will be harder to get to, and you are going to need to refill the water basin more frequently.

Benjamin Vogt / Monarch Gardens

Recall native bees. When you cut hollow plant stems, think about creating 6-inch bundles that can become native bee houses. Native bees pollinate the great majority of our food crops, and they come out earlier than the nonnative honeybee. Give them a house, why don’t you? The picture shown is Joe Pye Weed (Eupatorium spp), but you could utilize sedum or ironweed (Vernonia spp) or some number of plants using varied stem diameters.

Mark Hickman Homes

Get your tools ready. Good steel wool eliminates rust from tools stored over the winter. To reduce rust on smaller gears in the future, insert them into a container of sand so air can not get to the metal.

Natalie DeNormandie

Compost. My town offers free compost, and the material is black gold; it’s lush and rich and easy to use. Top-dress your garden beds using 1/4 inch of compost to increase fertility and aerate them, which eventually mitigates the need for bad chemical fertilizers. Properly sited indigenous plants also don’t need for fertilizers of any kind.

Compost is great in beds that are raised for veggies or whatever needs good drainage. My garden is 100 percent town mulch.

March can be a fantastic month to operate out — it’s not too sexy, and ambition tends to fill the body. Get out there and show us what you have got, you lovely prairie gardeners.

More: Watch how to use a cold frame in the backyard

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