Friday, May 19, 2017

Darwinian Gardening Takes an Interesting Turn

Soooo... for about 20 years now, I've been slowly working on converting my front yard from grass (which is notoriously difficult to grow in this arid region) to xeriscape - AKA low water plants.

I'm slow and not terribly deliberate in this process, and my approach is decidedly "Darwinian" in nature. By that I mean that I don't put a lot of effort into it, and I figure that whatever can survive with a fair degree of neglect gets to stay, and if a plant dies out, it means it's not intended to be here in the first place! I'll admit it's a process fraught with fits and starts, but I have had some success.


My general plan has been to put plants around the edges, and leave a small patch of grass in the center part of the yard...


However, as you can see from the above photo, it would appear that mother nature has other plans! Apparently the neighborhood has been invaded with some sort of lawn fungus, and the majority of the grass in my front yard is dead.

Slightly out of focus, but you get the idea
Basically it was just dead brown grass with LOTS of bindweed poking through.

Soooo... I decided that since the grass was already dead, there wasn't much to lose by digging out the bindweed roots. Holy Kazoli folks! I didn't take any pictures, but there was a rather incredible network of roots about as big around as my little finger running horizontally under all that dead grass, with tap roots going straight down every few feet.

I'm under no illusions that I've gotten it all, but it's gotta make a dent, doesn't it?

Anyhow, my initial thought was that I'd just dig out the bindweed, and in the process I'd aerate the grass, and perhaps it would come back to life. And after a week or so I started to see all sorts of green sprouts in the parts that I had dug, so I thought perhaps it was working.


But on closer inspection I realized that the little green sprouts were not, in fact, grass - but rather... wait for it....


Yes! Those are marigold sprouts!


This presents a rather interesting situation. And after thinking about it for a few days, I've decided that in keeping with my Darwinian tradition, I'm going to "go with it" and just let the whole area be taken over by flowers!

There will be plenty of grass to dig out, especially since I didn't remove the grass when I first started digging out the bindweed - but that's OK.

And... I decided that this might be a good opportunity to see if any of the dozen or so packages of flower seeds that have been languishing in the land of good intentions out in the garage for the past 10 years or so have any growing potential left in them.


Sooo... I've been digging out the remaining dead grass and what feels like miles and miles of bindweed roots, and sprinkling a variety of flower seeds in the area. I've also got a bunch of wildflower seeds that I gathered along the bike path last fall, so I added those to the mix.

I bought some more soaker hoses - although at the moment things are pretty wet out there as it's been snowing (seriously) and raining for the past 48 hours or so.

I'm sure lots of the seeds won't take, but that's OK - the yard can't possibly look worse than it does now, and at least I won't have to haul around the sprinkler and mow the darned thing! Plus, I've got a bunch of plants that need to be separated, so I can fill in any blank areas with plants.

Any way you slice it, I think it's gonna be an interesting experiment!


So, does anybody else out there have any experience with Darwinian Gardening? I'd love to hear what has and hasn't worked for you!



17 comments :

  1. My son and I were just talking about this today. He said if he every buys a house this is what he'd like to do with his yard. I'll tell him about your experiment so he can follow along.
    Good luck.

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    1. I'm pretty sure that the list of plants that do well is a fairly local thing - in other words, plants that thrive here might do terribly in a different climate and vice versa. But the survival of the fittest principal still applies.

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  2. We are big fans of "volunteers" growing in our garden, but mostly we mow the weeds in our yard and hope for the best. I like the idea of a xeriscape, although I admit, I think my brain has been trained to look for grassy green lawns and it might take me a little while to wrap my mind around a xeriscape.

    If I lived in a really shady area, I'd love to have ivy for my front yard. Yes, I know it's invasive ... but I love the look of it (especially with an old house with "character").

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    1. Xeriscapes are becoming more and more popular here, so it isn't quite as wild of an idea as it might seem - and some of them are really quite stunning. But I'm sorta guessing that you probably get much more rain than we do, so you might be able to grow grass there without having to water 3-4 times per week like we do here.

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  3. I haven't tried xeriscaping, but I'm pretty neglectful of my flower beds, so only the strong survive. Coneflowers have spread the most for me. I think I bought two 4 packs for $1 each several years ago (prolly close to 9 now). And now I have a ton in the front, back and side beds. I even have to thin them sometimes. I like that once they start flowering they go all summer. Other ones I've had luck with are poppies, fox glove ( took a few tries of growing them from seed to get some to take, but since that happened I've never had to start them from seed again, they self-sow. And to a lesser extent, sweet William.

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    1. Some of the wildflower seeds that I gathered along the bike path could probably be categorized as coneflowers. I tried the purple kind a few years ago - I think it was Echinacea? I bought them at the nursery - but alas, they couldn't tolerate the heat and the lack of water. Maybe I should have planted them in a shadier area. Hopefully the wild ones I gathered will be more "climate appropriate!"

      There's some variety of orange poppy that's very popular here - so I may pick some up at the nursery and give it a try. The other two that I see a lot of are purple sage and blue flax. I'm actually getting excited thinking about the possibilities.

      I just Googled Sweet William, and it looks like some variety of carnation? I've had good luck with dianthus - I wonder if they're similar.

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    2. Sweet William is in the dianthus family, so might be a good option for you.

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  4. I always intend to be a good gardener and weed/prune/care for stuff, but actually what I do is chuck stuff in and forget about it, then occasionally spend ages weeding/getting rid of dead leaves. So yup, my approach is more about survival of the fittest :D
    Although grass grows well here, the patch of lawn in the back garden is mostly moss and so on because moss grows well here too; the bit of lawn at the front is scraggy as I forget to mow it and leaves that I didn't bother to clear up killed it off a bit over the winter. Must try harder!
    May do a bit in the garden today; definitely need to plant squashes to put in at the allotment...

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    1. I know what you mean about good intentions. This time of year I always think I'll get sooo much done, and I promise to be better about weeding etc, and then reality hits. I'm hoping that the soaker hoses will at least make it a little easier to keep the plants alive. The part of the yard that got them last year did noticeably better than the part that didn't! So this my new approach - trying to spend the energy I do have on things that will make it easier to maintain in the long run. Time will tell if it works or not!

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  5. I like to let the pretty things grow. Unfortunately, some of them turn out to be evil. Some things I plant die right away, some last a few years, and a few have lasted a long time.

    I use Darwinianism for houseplants, too. If they can't survive on a once-a-week watering schedule (and whatever light they get), I don't subject more of the same plant to my house!

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    1. Survival of the fittest works pretty well for me - I suppose the main exception are the invasive plants. Some previous inhabitant of this house planted creeping bellflowers, and many are the times I wish I could go back and stop him or her! Seriously, they destroy everything in their path!

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  6. Maybe I'm more of a "Malthusian" than a "Darwinian". Here in central PA, the main chore of gardening is killing plants (in particular, weeds), because everything grows like crazy. I've learned to pit the good plants against the bad plants, because eventually the good plants kind of take over. For example, we have this awful invasive garlic-vine-creepy thing that's taken over my lawn. At the edge of my garden, I planted oregano, which is its own kind of garden bully. Between the oregano flexing its muscles and a semi-regular war-games that I inflict on the creepy vines, I've managed to hold the bad guys at bay.

    I will admit that I also don't worry too much about the wet-paper-towel germination tests on seeds. If I already have the seed packets, I figure the seeds have a better chance of growing in the ground than in my drawer. If they're not going to grow, why the heck not bury them now anyway? As a result, I occasionally get wonderful surprises, when seeds I'd forgotten about become, miraculously, plants.

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    1. Ha! I'm always jealous of people who live in wetter areas where things grow without having to water all the time, but I guess there are some drawbacks as well.

      And speaking of oregano. I planted a tiny little sprig of it 20 years ago, and it's now taken over a huge section of my backyard garden. The stuff even comes up in the cracks of the driveway! But it blooms all summer and attracts bees like crazy, so I'm planning on digging some up and transplanting it to the front yard. If it can grow in the driveway, surely it can survive the neglect it will receive in the front yard! :-)

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  7. You can never go wrong with wildflower seeds. That's our plan for all our flowers in our yard: just thrown wildflower seeds at it and see what sticks. Nature, she will make something pretty happen, I'm sure!

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    1. We'll see how it goes. But the "nothing left to lose" aspect of this situation is quite freeing!

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  8. I have weeds I've tried killing and pulling since I moved here. Now I'm thinking of digging them out but I know it's going to take a toll on my body so I'm really impressed by how much work you put in to dig out your weeds.

    I mainly stick to what I know will work rather than wasting money on experiments that said last year I purchased bulbs at the dollar store since that's the only local source I have for flowers. Darn things didn't grow so trying again this year. I'm better with plants than starting things from seeds.

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    1. Well, I've gotta tell you, digging out the bindweed is hard work! It's much easier in the spots where the grass is dead, but is still ain't easy.

      My method is to stick the pitchfork in, and turn over a big clump. It tends to turn naturally at the level where the grass roots (either living or dead) go. If there are any tap roots sticking out in the cavity, I'll dig down about a foot or so and try to get as much as I can out. Then I sift through the hunk I turned over, returning as much soil to the ground as possible and tossing all of the roots and what grass is left into the compost.

      I wouldn't try to compost the bindweed roots myself since that's a recipe for disaster, but the municipal compost program will happily take them, as they have a setup that gets hot enough to destroy them.

      It's sort of a slow and arduous process, and the most tiring part is that I spend the whole time alternating between standing and kneeling, so it's sorta like doing deep knee bends for hours at a time. I think it might be hard to manage from a chair, but it would certainly help to strengthen your core muscles!

      I'm sure I haven't gotten it all, but there are only a few places where the bindweed is trying to come back, so I have to call that a win. The thistles, on the other hand are much more persistent. I think each one has a very long root as opposed to the bindweed where the roots are mostly horizontal except for the occasional tap going down. Oy.

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