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an update

Hello Quiet Ones,

Just wanted to post an update on my prairie planting of 10 months ago.

I took my monthly trip up to NE Iowa last weekend to look at the
planting and was, for the most part, pleased. It has been mowed 7 times
this year but the pidgeon grass (that's what my farmer calls it) is tall
and seeding out. The farmer thought it might not seed before frost and
that since it is a fall annual grass it wouldn't be much competition for
next year. He also thought that having taller stuff would help protect
the seeding through winter. I went with his advice.

Some places there seemed to be not much of anything except mowed weeds.
But in some places there seemed to be way too many plants per square
foot. Not a single grass (8 or 9 species planted) anywhere! Yet. But
even after all that mowing I had the following in bloom, or recognizable
as small plants.
2 white aster types
New England aster
blue aster type
blue vervain
haory vervain
yarrow
tall sunflower
corepsis
b. eyed susan
grey headed cone flower
rough leaved goldenrod
deptford pink-alien, the only alien I planted, all other species are 
Iowa ecotype
sweet everlasting
Great blue lobelia
swamp betony
and something I had never even seen before, Geradia paupercula

And as I was walking down by the river I found a patch of prairie plants
about 5-6 species, two of which I didn't have in my planting.

And my prairie friend and I have added about 10 new species to the list
to be planted this fall which will make the total 150. And we are trying
to decide if between us we have a total of 3 or 4 species of Indian
Plantain. Does anyone know about the Indian Plantains?

Also, is anyone familiar with hogwort, Croton capitalus? It fascinates
me. It's an annual, looks weedy (my definition as I almost weeded it out
of my prairie nursery), intersting smell, nice color in fall, unusual
flowers that ripen and throw it's seed over a long period of time. I
finally just had to put a white towel on the ground to catch the seed.

MJ Hatfield
middle of Iowa
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