My family moved into a new construction townhouse in Chicago last year. The developer had planted some uninspiring options for a mulched area in the front of the south-facing units. I’ve had success with some potted natives (showy goldenrod, wild bergamot, anise hyssop) and a raised bed vegetable garden on the roof, but I want to expand that and tackle this area now.
1st picture is a neighbor’s place to show what I started with (although ours looked far worse for some reason) – boxwood, hydrangea, and some sort of grass that looks like prairie blue-eyed grass, but probably isn’t? I’m not well-versed at this point. It was heavily mulched with wood chips last year and then again in April, which then fully crusted over.
2nd picture is what I’ve done so far – pulled up the boxwood & hydrangea and broken up the mulch. I assume the soil they put in wasn’t great, so I sprinkled some compost in that I could spare, even though I know that’s not generally best practice for natives.
I’ve gone overboard (I’m sure many of you will understand) and bought 20 or so seed packets on Prairie Moon. My initial thought was just to mix them all together, outdoor sow the whole area in November sometime, and see what happens, but after a lot of reading this subreddit and watching some YouTube videos, that maybe seems overly optimistic.
Questions:
1) Are there any additional steps I should take to prep the area/soil?
2) Is outdoor sowing like this the wrong move?
3) If I do outdoor sow, should I create sections with certain varieties rather than everything mixed together?
4) Should I do some milk/water jugs as a backup?
5) If I figure out that this grass isn’t native, should I pull it up even though it’s doing fine and is ecologically a prairie grass similar to what I might plant?
Separately,
I’m planting on adding some long 8” deep planters on the roof with natives. Any suggestions for varieties that will do well in containers?
Seeds I have:
Purple Prairie Clover (Dalea purpurea)
Purple Coneflower (Echinacea purpurea)
Wild Bergamot (Monarda fistulosa)
Black-eyed Susan (Rudbeckia hirta)
Little Bluestem (Schizachyrium scoparium)
Smooth Blue Aster (Symphyotrichum laeve)
Pycnanthemum tenuifolium – Slender Mountain Mint
Agastache scrophulariifolia – Purple Giant Hyssop
Symphyotrichum novae-angliae – New England Aster
Boltonia decurrens – Decurrent False Aster
Coreopsis lanceolata – Lance-leaf Coreopsis
Solidago speciosa – Showy Goldenrod
Sisyrinchium campestre – Prairie Blue-eyed Grass
Aquilegia canadensis – Columbine
Asclepias verticillata – Whorled Milkweed
Asclepias syriaca – Common Milkweed
Amsonia illustris – Ozark Bluestar
Geum aleppicum – Yellow Avens
Asclepias tuberosa – Butterfly Weed
Blephilia ciliata – Downy Wood Mint
Castilleja coccinea – Indian Paintbrush
Helianthus occidentalis – Western Sunflower
Sorry for what turned out to be a super long post. Thank you in advance for any advice! I’m really excited to get this going with what little space I have.
by Ok-Theory-312