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February 14, 2013 · 6 Comments

The DIY Meadow Project

How to· Plants

meadow 2011

This is the area I’m hoping to improve this year, with more wildflowers and native grasses.

The biggest garden project I have planned for 2013 is to plant more prairie-style plants in the meadow behind my house, which runs adjacent to a city-owned walking path. It’s my DIY meadow project for the year. While I planted wildflowers in it when we first moved out here, this area has become overrun with wild parsnip, giant ragweed and a few other real bad-boys of the plant world. I’ve undertaken some steps to remove the invasives and plan to replace them with grasses and wildflowers native to Minnesota. My hope is that this area will provide lots of nectar for butterflies and bees, seeds and nesting sites for birds and beauty for all the humans that pass by it each day.

I’ve ordered both plants and seeds from Prairie Moon Nursery in Winona for the DIY meadow, which is one of several outstanding native plants nurseries in our area. Why order both plants and seeds? Insurance — plain and simple. The plants will come in May, all ready to grow, having been started and nurtured by the pros at Prairie Moon. That’s great, but the plants are not cheap. Seeds, on the other hand, are cheap, so I’m hoping to get more plants at a lower cost by growing some myself for the DIY meadow.

sunflowers in meadow

Sunflowers have done well in my meadow, but I’m hoping to add greater variety of native plants.

Since most wildflowers require what’s called cold stratification, winter sowing is the perfect method for starting wildflower seeds. Cold stratification means that the seeds need to experience the cold of winter before they will germinate. I put out a call on Facebook for some milk jugs to use for winter sowing, and so far — thank to my friends Betsy and Marcia — I have about 25 jugs.

The idea behind winter sowing is that you create a little greenhouse for the seeds, by filling the milk jug with very wet potting soil, planting the seeds, sealing it up and putting it out in the cold. The seeds will freeze and thaw and refreeze as the weather moves from winter to spring. Eventually they will start sprouting, at which point you begin exposing them to more air and opening up the little greenhouses.

Tomorrow I’ll write more about how to set up winter sowing containers. Here are the seeds I’ll be starting in my containers:

Golden Alexanders (Zizia aurea)

Foxglove beardtongue (Penstemon digitalis)

Sweet Joe Pye weed (Euptorium purpureum)

Short’s aster (Aster shortii)

Nodding onion (Allium cernuum)

Butterfly weed (Asclepias tuberosa)

Rattlesnake master (Eryngium yuccifolium)

Common ironweed (Vernonia fasciculata)

White prairie clover (Dalea candida)

Spotted beebalm (Monarda punctata)

Meadow blazing star (Liatris ligulistylis)

What are your favorite prairie plants?

Related posts:

  1. How to Use the Winter Sowing Method to Start Seeds Outdoors It’s still a bit early for starting seeds indoors in...
  2. Weed of the Week: Wild Parsnip We’ve had an early spring this year, and I’ve been...
  3. Book Review: Wildflowers of Minnesota A Gardener’s Reading, 10 of 30 By Stan Tekiela (Adventure...
« Favorite Garden Photos of 2012
How to Winter Sow Wildflowers »

Trackbacks

  1. How to Winter Sow Wildflowers | My Northern Garden says:
    February 15, 2013 at 9:42 am

    […] ← The Meadow Project […]

  2. Winter Sowing Native Plants, Two Ways | My Northern Garden says:
    February 16, 2015 at 10:52 am

    […] pleasant 30-degree weather here in Minnesota, perfect weather for winter sowing native plants for the meadow I maintain behind my house. The meadow has been challenging, to say the least. There is a lot of […]

  3. Winter Sowing Native Plants, Two Ways – My Northern Garden says:
    August 10, 2018 at 3:17 pm

    […] pleasant 30-degree weather here in Minnesota, perfect weather for winter sowing native plants for the meadow I maintain behind my house. The meadow has been challenging, to say the least. There is a lot of […]

  4. How to Winter Sow Wildflowers says:
    October 6, 2018 at 10:06 pm

    […] part of my big project for 2013, I’ll be using winter sowing containers to grow several kinds of wildflowers from seed. […]

  5. Update on the Meadow Project 2 says:
    October 6, 2018 at 10:23 pm

    […] in?” Those are insurance — a guarantee that I won’t accidentally pull one of the native plants I’m putting in this wild […]

  6. Update on the Winter Sowing Containers - My Northern Garden says:
    May 28, 2020 at 2:33 pm

    […] let the plants get up to size and then, over time, transplant them out to the meadow where they will add color to the grasses and other plants I purchased from Prairie Moon […]

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Winter ❄️ sowing? Have you tried it? Today’s Winter ❄️ sowing? Have you tried it? Today’s guest on the Grow it, Minnesota podcast is Michelle Mero Riedel, who introduced me and readers of Northern Gardener to the concept more than a decade ago. It’s been one of  our most popular articles ever. 

In winter sowing, you create mini-greenhouses out of milk jugs and other recyclables. Perennial flowers 💐 can be planted in February and March, while annuals, vegetables and herbs can be set out in April. Mother Nature does most of the work. It’s a budget friendly way to grow lots of plants! 

For more info, check out the podcast or a new blog post over on mynortherngarden.com. Links to all in bio. 
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What is this? Like day 10 or 12 with temps below z What is this? Like day 10 or 12 with temps below zero? Time to ramble back to June when the penstemon was covered in bees and the veronica looked so pretty. June is my second favorite month in the garden (believe it or not, September is number one for me). What’s your favorite month? P.S. only 14 weeks until June! 
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What’s a northern gardener to do all winter? In What’s a northern gardener to do all winter? In these pandemic times, I’ve been having fun making quilts. Small, easy, no stress quilts. And, these garden themed fabrics on discount through Etsy were irresistible. 

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