Rethinking the garden after a disaster
The drought finally broke in the garden this week, at least for a while, but drought or no drought, the wild bergamot burst into bloom, each blossom like little lavender fireworks, and the bees went wild for it.
So while I was pretty down for a couple days about having to dig up and compost my coneflowers, the bergamot and bees reminded me and my itty bitty perfectionist streak that life goes on, and that a microprairie—like any garden—is not an end goal but an on going journey, and that in nature there really is a circle of life. (Cue Elton John.) Things grow, bloom, produce seeds, get sick, die. It happens.
But I still have a big hole in my garden that needs to be filled.
So, now what? Well, if you find yourself in this situation, you can try what I did:.
- I focused on the bigger picture. Yes, I was pretty sad about losing those coneflowers, and even worse, realizing that the dandelions in my yard were also infected and were probably the way the aster leafhoppers, which carry the disease, carried it right over to my coneflowers. How as I going to plant coneflowers again if they were just going to keep getting infected? How would I ever get rid of all those dandelions without using pesticides? It all seemed a little overwhelming and made me ask myself if I really wanted to keep doing this and why. The answer to that question was easy every time I stepped into my microprairie and watched the little honeybees and big fat bumblebees buzzing from one bloom to the next. Those coneflowers were my favorite part of my garden—but they were only one part of it. The garden is still an oasis, a nice big buffet of bergamot and hopefully milkweed soon. I also get real joy from watching butterflies discover my garden, from knowing I’m helping to reduce our carbon footprint, even a little bit, beautifying the neighborhood, and helping to restore just a tiny bit of the millions of acres of prairie that used to cover my part of the world.
- Research. Being a professional researcher, I did a little research on aster yellows, as I mentioned in last week’s post. A big part of dealing with disease and pests in the garden involves knowing how plants get infected and what carries the disease so that carrier can be avoided. That’s how I found out that dandelions are among the 300 or so plants aster yellows affects and that they’re often what makes the disease available to the aster leafhopper. When I first moved into this house, I discovered a lot of strange, mutant-looking dandelions in the yard. Now I know why. If I can get rid of the dandelions, that will help a lot.
- I got some expert advice. I talked to an expert at one garden center about aster yellows. He wasn’t all that helpful, so I talked to someone at another garden center. I learned a lot more from her, including the fact that aster yellows infects mostly flowers with petals like daisies, mums, and of course asters and coneflowers (that I learned from my own reading), but it doesn’t usually attack spiky kinds of flowers (that I did not know) like salvia and vervain, and also not milkweed. Often, the best way to deal with a disease or pest problem in a plant is to not use that plant. So I picked up more milkweed plants. And a white prairie clover. I’ve been wanting one of those for a while but didn’t know where I could fit it in. Now I have all sorts of space. That’s called making lemonade.
I’ll try coneflowers again once I’ve dealt with the dandelions, but until then, I have some new plants to play with: the white prairie clover, another showy milkweed to replace one that didn’t make it in the heat, my third attempt this year at a butterfly weed, a whorled milkweed—that’s a new one I haven’t tried yet—and another blazing star to add to the two I already have. It’s all good 🙂
How are your plants doing?
