The weather is cooling off (finally), and the leaves are starting to change. It’s fall, and t
Why clean up your microprairie? After all, aren’t we supposed to keep the dead plant debris on the prairie where it can break down and feed the microbial life while returning the carbon to the soil and keeping more carbon from escaping into the atmosphere?
True, out on the prairie, no one comes along to clean up the dead plants after they die back in the fall. But as much as we want to create a realistic and natural prairie environment, we have to balance that with keeping our microprairie alive and healthy.
Real, functioning prairies used to cover millions of acres and contained thousands of different plant and insect and animal species all working in a perfect cycle of growth, death, decay, and regrowth. Any diseases or plant-chewing insects that attacked wouldn’t be able to wipe out everything. They would only affect a comparatively small area, while the entire prairie continued to hum along as one big organism.
Our gardens are only a few dozen square feet, though, or maybe even just a few containers, so it’s easy for one gang of insects or one disease to show up and wreak some real havoc, like it did in my microprairie this summer when my garden was hit by leafhoppers carrying aster yellows, a disease that forced me to dig up and toss all of my coneflowers. (And since then, I’ve discovered that my lilac in the back yard is infected, too, and has to go. I was going to do a future post on pruning, but now I’ll have to do one on how to remove a forty-year-old shrub.)
It turns out that while this summer was a particularly bad one for leafhoppers, in any given year the leafhoppers that carry aster yellows can also overwinter in dead plant material. So as part of good integrated pest management (IPM), to make sure they don’t get a free ride this winter, it’s cleanup time.
Here are a few tips.
1. Year in Review.
Putting the garden to bed is a rite of autumn, but even though it looks like the season is over, it’s also the time to help you get some things set up for next year, too.
How did things go this summer? Whether it’s your first season with your microprairie or you’re an experienced gardener, it’s always good to take a look back. What worked and what didn’t work? Did you discover that some plants didn’t thrive where you put them? Did others thrive too well and take over everything? Did the deer like some plants better than others? Take this new knowledge and think about what you might do differently for next year.
2. Check with Extension.
Your state’s Extension program has a wealth of knowledge to share. Here are some options on how to clean up at the end of the season from the University of Minnesota Extension. Their post is mostly about putting a vegetable garden to bed, but some of it applies to microprairies and other perennial gardens, too.
3. Wait until things are really done.
The first step is to wait for things to die back completely. Now, if you have a plant that is diseased and dying, get it out of there sooner rather than later. But once things are good and dead above the ground and are of no use to the pollinators and beneficial insects we want around, you can start to carefully clean things up, composting any undiseased plant debris. For annuals and any vegetables you might have snuck into your microprairie, just pull them up. I’ll more about perennials a little farther down.
4. Watch out for residents!
Whether you’re trimming back your perennials or pulling up annuals, do it carefully, because there may be good creatures we want to protect overwintering in your microprairie. Late in the season, I found these black swallowtail caterpillars hanging out on my parsley plant. Their chrysalis can look a lot like a rolled up leaf, so I’m going to have to very careful as I walk and mess around in the area, especially in the mulch, so that I don’t accidentally destroy them.
I also found this big guy (below) hiding out under my prairie dropseed this summer. I would like to think this was a rare Great Plains toad. They like to burrow into the soil to wait out the winter. But even regular old American toads are becoming rare and endangered,, and they’re an important part of pest control in the natural world, so I definitely don’t to disturb him.
Also, some skipper butterfly caterpillars, including the endangered Dakota skipper, like to hang out deep down in the base of prairie dropseeds, hibernating over the winter there. Since I’ve had some skipper butterflies in my yard (not Dakota skippers so far), I’m going to wait to cut back the dead grasses until next spring when the new grass is starting to appear.
As for vegetables and other annuals that might have been sharing space with your microprairie, you can pull those up and compost them if they’re not diseased. Getting any diseased plants out of your vegetable garden is especially important, since many vegetable diseases can overwinter on dead plants and re-infect new plants in the spring. It’s also a good idea to make a note of where you planted vegetables in your garden this year so you can rotate your crops next year. Especially with tomatoes, it’s a good rule of thumb to not plants things in the same place for two, three or even four years in a row. Tomato blight and some bean diseases have a real habit of hanging out in the soil. So while you can do things next year like using mulch to keep soil from splashing up on your plants, with tomatoes it’s just best to pull up the plant, dispose of it, and plant the new ones in a different spot next year.
5. Try saving seeds.
This is the time to save seeds to plant next year, too. This is especially fun if you’re growing heirloom vegetables, you like to share plants with friends, or you just want to grow the same vegetables again next year but don’t want to have to buy—or hunt down—the seeds. Seed Savers in Decorah, IA, has this nice guide to saving seeds.
6. Leave things that give bees shelter.
Loss of habitat is a big factor in disappearance of local bees, so one important way you can help save them is to provide them with a place to spend the winter. A lot of bees like hollow stems. Cut off hollow-stemmed flower and plant stalks at least a foot above the ground for the bees to find and dispose of the rest.
You can also leave a little pile of brush or sticks in an unobtrusive place in the corner of your yard for bees that like to overwinter in brush piles.
7. Feed the birds.
I’m not going to cut down ever flower head, though. I’ll leave some of the dead flower heads and grass seed heads standing because they provide seeds during the winter that birds love. It’s kind of amazing (and pretty cute) to see a tiny junco or chickadee land on a dropseed seed head sticking out of a foot of snow and start chowing down while it bobs up and down in the breeze.
If your microprairie is in a pretty small space and you’re concerned about some of the plants reseeding out of control, go ahead and deadhead the flowers, or you can deadhead some but leave others for the birds.
And one last thing:
8. Clean up your tools.
Before you put them away for the fall, clean up your garden tools, especially if you were dealing with diseased plants. Leaving your garden tools covered in dirt and plant sap isn’t good for garden tools and can even shorten their lives. Plus, dirty tools can spread diseases to your healthy new plants next spring. So take a few minutes when your done in your microprairie for the winter, give those tools a good scrub, and if you know you were using them on diseased plants, sanitize them using a bleach solution or even just rubbing alcohol (at least 70%). Then set them up in good storage. Next spring, you’ll have a nice shiny set of garden tools so you can get going on a new season in your microprairie!