It’s still March, and I should know better. These lovely sunny warm days in early, early spring…. I think you know what I’m talking about! I have to remind myself that it’s still March in Chicago.
But for this summer, because of BBGP, the planning started early. One of the objectives was to find ways to grow our own butterfly friendly plants from seed, instead of buying plants, so efforts needed to start last fall:
Lilly dug up a section of her parkway and planted milkweed seeds in her “milkweed nursery”. The seedlings are already peeking out from the soil! She should have a bounty of milkweed plants.
I made a raised bed in my parkway to sow seeds that prefer sowing in the fall. I sowed a variety of natives that I have never attempted to grow from seed before. The Princess Victoria Louise Poppy seeds (ok, not a native) that I collected from my yard actually germinated in November! Damn, that was not supposed to happen. I guess those will be a fail. I also don’t hold high hopes for the natives whose seeds were fine as dust and require light for germination. But, one never knows, and it never hurts to try.
And then there is the winter sowing experiment. Never tried this before. We’ll see. Kind of fun to look at the picture now. For those of you who provided me with the gallon milk jugs, here they are in action.
I’ve got another batch of seeds going through their cold stratification in my refrigerator right now. Those will get sown indoors by the end of this month.
Lilly got some milkweed seeds going already indoors. Milkweeds really love this woman. They will grow for her no matter what.
Based on how these seed starting efforts go, we’ll try to share plants with the neighbors.
In the meantime, I have reached out to Nick Urhausen at Urhausen Greenhouses and provided him with a plant list. I’m hoping that he grows some that are on that list. I’ll let you know when I hear back from him.
So, hoping that when you plan your gardens this year, you’ll think about choosing some of the plants that you can find on the pages on this web site. And maybe you will create some new flower beds somewhere! Every little bit helps.
Let’s make more urban pollinator habitats!