2021 Introduction

I am Darci. I love gardening.

I decided to start this blog to document what I am learning for myself and others, if they would enjoy following along. This space will cover vegetable gardens and flower beds, my budding (see what I did there) interest in native plants, gathering seeds from heirlooms, and focusing on pollinators. It will also touch on new-to-me planting methods like “no dig”, winter sowing, and growing indoors. I plan to note the books and other influences that I come across as I continue to study and learn. My writing will include my plans each month and the reality.

I will not be 100% native. I will not be 100% heirloom. I will not be 100% successful. Hopefully, I will figure out how to add in pictures. I live in Wisconsin, USA, zone 4B though some years have a zone 3 winter so error on the side of caution when selecting plants.

This first entry will be a longer one. I am planning the monthly updates will be quite short. But first… Here is some history.

My grandmother on my father’s side was a gardener. She had a small patch of veggies, herbs, and flowers on the hill outside her kitchen door. I remember harvesting some of the produce while we fixed meals. It felt magical.

I told my parents I wanted a garden of my own. They let me have a patch of earth just outside our backdoor. I planted seeds and watched them come up. Partway through the summer they decided to add a carport and its location was over my garden. It felt devastating.

My first home of my own was in a trailer court and I was limited to gardening in pots. A couple years later I bought a house with a yard. This was in the 1980’s and Square Foot Gardening had been born. I watched every show on PBS and built a small SFG in the back yard from railroad ties I picked up for free. I moved nine years later and built a little bigger SFG.

That garden lasted until 2012. I decided the railroad ties needed to go. They had begun rotting and I was learning the chemicals they contained was not good for my soil health. I upgraded to cedar and created six four-foot square beds surrounded by a nice fence. I was an incredibly happy gardener.

I started a garden bed for the monarch butterflies around the backyard trees in 2015. I filled it with three types of milkweed as well as other pollinator friendly plants and registered it as a Monarch Waystation with Monarch Watch. I had planted mostly natives without thinking much about it because I focused on plants that attracted butterflies.

In 2019 I decided to start a butterfly garden in my front yard because I loved watching them in the back yard. I was beginning to learn about the importance of using native plants after reading Bringing Nature Home by Douglas Tallamy, so I filled this garden with natives.

When 2020 came along I was given the opportunity for more time in the garden and more time to read and watch YouTube to learn. I asked our village if I could take over caring for the struggling milkweed plot, they had attempted to start in the park next-door to my house. Within the week they had built me a five-foot by ten-foot raised bed. I casually mentioned to them that if I had 100 square feet, I could register it as a Monarch Waystation in the future and within another week a second raised bed appeared. I refer to them as East-bed and West-bed.

In July, my son’s family moved in with me for a few weeks and I thought it would be fun to have the grandkids experience the transformation of the Monarch Butterfly. It was the first time I had attempted to help keep the caterpillars safe in an enclosure while they became butterflies. We watched butterflies go from egg to taking flight and we were all mesmerized. I helped two of my neighbor children each raise one as well. I promised to start some extra milkweed for their house this year.

Now I am committed! I am responding to the call to plant natives. I have 100 square feet of park to play in. I am planning a second native garden for my front yard. I still have my SFG and am learning more about “no dig” gardening so will explore that in my vegetable beds. I am also diving into seed saving after having some seeds unavailable last spring.

I am closing this introduction with my influences and progress in 2020.

2020 Pre-December:

I had some pots of flowers and decided to add them to the East-bed in the park. By the end of the summer, it had two orange butterfly-weed, three white coneflower seedlings, two common milkweed, and one swamp milkweed. It immediately attracted butterflies and had caterpillars its first season.

I developed a planting plan and bought multiple native plant seeds from Prairie Moon Nursery. I planted Golden Alexanders in a section of the park’s West-bed in late fall because they were listed as “difficult” and direct sowing was recommended. I ordered additional grow-light shelves in November from Gardener's Supply. 

2020 December:
Plan
Start Lisianthus mid-month. This is not native for me but it is a lovely flower.
Reality
12/12 Planted Lisianthus in three peat pots under grow lights
12/25 Lisianthus is sprouting
Designed new front native bed.
Developed seed starting plan.
Put my monthly plan into electronic form.
Ordered more trays.

Books so far:
December
Pollinators of Native Plants by Heather N. Holm
Attracting Native Pollinators by The Xerces Society
The Midwest Native Plant Primer by Alan Branhangen
Nature’s Best Hope by Douglas W. Tallamy
Growing Under Cover by Niki Jabbour
Earlier purchases – late 2019 and 2020
The Northwest Garden Manifesto by John Albers
The Well-Tended Perennial Garden by Tracy DiSabato-Aust
The Life Cycles of Butterflies by Judy Burris
Planting in a Post-Wild World by Thomas Rainer
The Living Landscape by Rick Darke and Douglas W. Tallamy
Native plants of the Midwest by Alan Branhagen
Bringing Nature Home by Douglas Tallamy

Facebook Groups:
Native Plant Gardens in the Upper Midwest
The Beautiful Monarch
JoeGardener
Winter Sowers
Pollinator Gardening
GreenStalk Gardeners
Backyard Bird and Wildlife Lovers
Hummingbirds and Gardening
Square Foot Gardening
Building a Butterfly Garden

YouTube Follows:
Charles Dowding (Father of ‘no dig’ gardening)
Garden Answer
Growing a Greener World
Gary Pilarchik (The Rusted Garden)
Huw Richards
MIgardener
WisconsinGarden
Land Conservancy of McHenry County
GrowVeg
MrLundScience (for his Monarch related videos)
Nature’s Always Right
OurStoneyAcres
MNNativePlants
The Wisconsin Vegetable Gardener
Gardenerd
Rainbow Gardens
Urban Farmer Curtis Stone