Ohio Spiderwort – Tradescantia Ohioensis Video from Earthyman

Earthyman shows Ohio Spiderwort – Tradescantia ohioensis blooming at Ion Exchange native seed and plant nursery. Spiderwort blooms in June and may bloom again in the fall.

Slender, erect stems, often with a purple tinge. Flowers are blue to purple, occasionally white and appear in dense clusters at the tops of the stems. Leaves are long and quite like those of an Iris. Found in dry to mesic praires and savannas and along roadsides and railroads. Relatively common to all but the northwest portions of the Tallgrass biome.

Seeds and plants and be purchased our Website Native Wildflowers & Seeds

 

Earthyman Responds to a Customers Question on Advice on Planting Butterfly Milkweed : Asclepias Tuberosa Seeds

Question:  Hi.  I recently received 6 packets from you of Butterfly milkweed.  Could you provide some advice on planting?  I have a small flower garden ( full sun,) as well as 15 acres of various prairie plants and grasses. Began as all  switchgrass but I am slowly planting more and more grasses and forbs. Thanks.  Stan

Response: Stan, you may start the seeds indoors after you have moist stratified them. Place the seeds in a zip lock back mixed with moist vermiculite. Leave them in a refrigerator for 30 days. Remove and plant in open flats or small pots with sterile soil medium at a depth of 1/8th to 1/4th inch. They must receive considerable light and warmth to adequately develop. Once they have started to form the white root, they can be transplanted to your garden or field. Keep the competition down from weeds and other plants. They prefer well drained to excessively drained soils in full sun. They do well in rocky poor soils with maximum exposure to the sun and wind. If you want to do a dormant seeding, you may spread the seed now or anytime the ground is exposed. Make sure your seeds are not on frozen ground as they may wash away. Wait until the ground thaws and spread your seed but only lightly cover with a sprinkling of soil or compost no deeper than 1/8 to 1/4 inch. Nature can then freeze and thaw offering the best stratification. Once plants are mature, you must be very careful when you attempt to transplant as the roots are very massive and at least 90% of the roots should be dug with plant and immediately transplanted. You should start seeing blooms the second year and thereafter the plants will grow much stronger and have many blooms in the following years. If your plants, for some reason die or disappear the following year after planting, they are probably in a poorly adaptable site for this species.

Thanks,

Howard aka “Earthyman”

To Purchase Butterfly Milkweed Visit our Website at Ion Exchange, Inc.

Helping You Create Your Own Natural Beauty

Howard Bright
800-291-2143
1878 Old Mission Drive
Harpers Ferry, IA 52146

Ion Exchange, Inc Website

Sand Dunes Video Explained by Earthyman on the South Padre Island in Texas

Earthyman views the relationship of Sea Oats in the stabilization of sand dunes on the South Padre Island in Texas

To Purchase Your Native Wildflowers & Prairie Plants Visit Our Nursery Website At  Ion Exchange, Inc.

Enhance Your Bird Feeding Station with White Wild Indigo Article

Many bird-feeding stations are barren of cover for birds at your feeders.  You can solve this problem by providing instant cover with fully mature fall or winter-harvested stems of the White Wild Indigo.  When the plants mature and fall comes, the plants will go dormant leaving their study and durable stems erect with dried leaves and stems still in tack.  This makes for the perfect little bush that will give birds a secure place to land.

Just break the stems off at ground level.  Get a two or three gallon container.  Fill with any soil.  Insert the stems into the soil for a secure upright position of the stems.  You may want to put a heavy rock in the bottom of the container to keep the wind from blowing it over.  Place the pots near your feeders.  When the birds land in the branches of the White Wild Indigo, they can rest there and feel protected against predators.

Within minutes you will have more birds right next to your feeders feeling secure and safe.  This will enable you to stand much closer to your feeders and observe birds up close.

You can plant White Wild Indigo from seed and they will mature in two to three years or you could plant them as live plants and they will mature faster.  Seeds should be scarified with sand paper to thin the hard seed coating if planted in the spring and place in a plastic bag with moist sand or vermiculite.  After 10 days you may plant the seed.  If planted in the fall they will not need scarification.  They grow to about four to five feet in height and have beautiful white flowers up and down the sturdy stems in early to mid-summer.  As they mature, they will develop black seedpods, which are very attractive.  They are native from Canada to Southern Texas and Florida and throughout the central region of the U.S.  They will thrive in most soils.

Howard Bright, aka Earthyman

To Purchase White Wild Indigo Visit Our Website At Ion Exchange, Inc. Native Wildflowers & Prairie Plants

Iowa Prairie Partners Program for Iowa Landowners Explained by Ion Exchange, Inc.

Howard Bright also Known as “Earthyman” is President of Ion Exchange, Inc., Seed and Plant Nursery

Here’s a Special Program that is a Cooperative Effort Between Iowa Native Seed Growers; Pheasants Forever & the Iowa DNR

It’s so we can Re-Create Iowa’s Natural Heritage including Savanna, Prairie & Wetlands

Iowa Landowners Get 50% Off so call  me at 563-535-7231 or email hbright@acegroup.cc and I will help and explain in Detail how this program works

Visit Our Website at Ion Exchange, Inc.

Sneezeweed Complete – Helenium autumnale Video by Earthyman from Ion Exchange, Inc.

Earthyman Views Sneezeweed (Helenium Autumnale at Ion Exchange Native Seed and Plant Nursery in NE Iowa

To Purchase this Native Wildflower Please Visit Us At Ion Exchange, Inc.

Earthyman’s Video on The Butterfly Attractor Kit For Your Butterfly Garden

Earthyman explains how you can create your own Butterfly Garden in your back yard using plants from Ion Exchange, native seed and plant nursery in NE Iowa

To Purchase This Excellent Butterfly Attractor Kit Click On Our Link Below

http://ionxchange.com/products/BIRD-%26–BUTTERFLY-ATTRACTOR-STA.html

Earthyman Video on Sneezeweed (Helenium autumnale) At Ion Exchange, Inc.

Earthyman views Sneezeweed (Helenium autumnale) at Ion Exchange native seed and plant nursery in NE Iowa. Sneezeweed is a wetland wildflower

To Purchase This Native Wildflower Click On Our Link Below

http://ionxchange.com/products/HELENIUM-AUTUMNALE-%7C-Sneezeweed.html

 

 

Tiny Climates Article By Earthyman

By Howard Bright, hbright@acegroup.cc

Have you ever thought about how little it takes to change the climate?  Pay attention the next time you walk down a lane, street or natural area.  They all will show you what nature does.  It may sound very simple but did you notice that the temperature dropped 10 degrees beneath the shade of a tree as you stopped to catch your breath on a hot 90-degree day?  Did you ever sit on the south side of hot sunny slope and feel the heat from the sun.  As you walked up the steep slope and down on the other side, you sat down on this north facing slope under a tree and now you actually experienced a chill as the temperature suddenly was reduced and no direct sunlight was found there.

Nature’s plants are finely tuned with these tiny climatic conditions known as microclimates.  That’s why we find plants such as Hepaticas, Snow Trilliums, Harebells and Trout Lilies on north facing slopes.  Ever noticed that the moss grows thick on the north side of a tree?  Ever noticed how your inner self-feelings can change as you face different directions.  Native Americans knew this and recognized the different directions in their everyday rituals in greeting the new day.

Tune your senses to your “tiny climate” and notice what is going on in your world and how easy it is to change your outlook on life.  Happy climate change to you!

Earthyman

http://ionxchange.com/

Wildflowers…Following Nature’s Design

By: Howard Bright aka Earthyman http://ionxchange.com/

In nature, certain species are found growing together and they form a specific community called a “plant community”. Native plants always grow in association with other native plantsto create plant communities that are essentially associations of indigenous species that have evolved over thousands of years and adapted to the specific geography, hydrology and climate of a particular area. The resulting “communities” are really groups of plants that exist together because of the given conditions.

We can use these native plant communities as a prescription from nature in designing our wildflower gardens or landscapes.  There are four broad categories of native plant communities here in the Midwest and hundreds of sub categories as we break each of them down into more specific site conditions.  It is important to recognize which one of the four categories you would like to create or reconstruct.  The four major plant communities of the Midwest are:

• Prairies
• Savannas
• Wetlands
• Woodlands

In this article, we are only going to discuss the Prairie sub communities.

Within each of these categories we narrow down our site conditions and begin our design of what native species of wildflowers, grasses and sedges will work best for our site. For instance, if we have an open area that gets full sunlight, we have a perfect opportunity to create a “Prairie”.  Within the Prairie Community, we can further break down our site conditions to reflect:

• Wet Prairie
• Wet-Mesic Prairie
• Mesic Prairie
• Dry-Mesic Prairie
• Dry Prairie

Now this may sound too complicated for the normal gardener but it really isn’t.  Here are a few tips to allow you to identify where your site fits in.  First of all let’s talk about your soil.  You may say that you don’t know anything about soils and that’s o.k.  You can still come close to what your soil is like by asking yourself the following questions:

1. When you walk across your site with tennis shoes on, do your feet get wet throughout the growing season?  If so, you can bet this is a site for a Wet Prairie Plant Community.
2. Is the ground soggy at times but eventually dries out and then becomes soggy again?  This could be a good place to establish your Wet-Mesic Plant Community.
3. Would your site be a good place for a vegetable garden, not too wet, not too dry with fertile rich soil?  Here I would select a Mesic-Prairie Plant Community.
4. If you think your site is a little bit on the dry side but not extremely dry, you would choose a Dry-Mesic Plant Community.
5. If your site is really dry and maybe has no topsoil, maybe rocky or sandy I would choose a Dry Prairie Plant Community.

Now, after you have decided which plant community you want to create, here are some examples of wildflowers and grasses to consider for each community:

1.     Wet-Prairie Plant Community

• Swamp Milkweed
• Swamp Aster
• Turtlehead
• Boneset
• Blue Flag Iris
• Marsh Blazingstar
• Great Blue Lobelia
• Monkey Flower
• Mountain Mint
• Buttonbush
• Sneezeweed
• Sweet Black-eyed Susan
• Ironweed
• Joe Pye Weed
• Riddell’s Goldenrod
• Blue Vervain
• Mana Grasses
• Wool Grass
• Dark Green Bulrush
• Bottlebrush Sedge.

2.  Wet-Mesic Plant Community

• Canada Anemone
• Sneezeweed
• Boneset
• Great St. John’s Wort
• Wild Quinine
• Nodding Onion
• Great Blue Lobelia
• Cardinal Flower
• Sawtooth Sunflower
• Blue Flag Iris
• Blue Vervain
• Mountain Mint
• Swamp Milkweed
• Prairie Cordgrass
• Fox Sedge
• Big Bluestem
• New England Aster
• Prairie Blazingstar
• Marsh Blazingstar

3.  Mesic Plant Community

• Anise Hyssop
• New England Aster
• Partridge Pea
• Cream Gentian
• Prairie Blazingstar
• Foxglove Beardtongue
• Wild Senna
• Foxglove Beardtongue
• Yellow Coneflower
• Compass Plant
• Pale Purple Coneflower
• Purple Coneflower
• Ox-eye Sunflower
• White Prairie Clover
• Purple Prairie Clover
• Black-eyed Susan
• Butterfly Milkweed
• Canada Milkvetch
• Prairie Coreopsis
• Sweet Black-eyed Susan
• Smooth Blue Aster
• Golden Alexanders
• Rattlesnake Master
• Big Bluestem
• Indiangrass
• Little Bluestem
• Prairie Dropseed
• Canada Wild Rye

4.  Dry-Mesic Prairie Plant Community

• Anise Hyssop
• Sky Blue Aster
• Smooth Blue Aster
• Showy Goldenrod
• White Prairie Clover
• Purple Prairie Clover
• Black-eyed Susan
• Stiff Goldenrod
• Prairie Alum Root
• Wild Bergamot
• Butterfly Milkweed
• Ohio Spiderwort
• Pale Purple Coneflower
• Purple Coneflower
• Yellow Coneflower
• Leadplant
• Partridge Pea
• Little Bluestem
• Sideoats Grama
• Rough Dropseed
• Canada Wild Rye

5.  Dry Prairie Plant Community

• Butterfly Milkweed
• Sky Blue Aster
• Silky Aster
• Cream Wild Indigo
• Partridge Pea
• Flowering Spurge
• Showy Sunflower
• Old Field Goldenrod
• Alumroot
• Rough Blazing Star
• Wild Lupine
• Spotted Bee Balm
• Large-flowered Beardtongue
• Purple Prairie Clover
• Ohio Spiderwort
• Hoary Vervain
• Lead Plant
• Wild Senna
• Little Bluestem
• Side-oats Grama
• Sand Love Grass
• June Grass
• Blue Grama

Remember, nature has these self-made recipes for your wildflower gardens and reconstuction areas.

 To Purchase Native Wildflowers & Prairie Plants Visit Us At http://ionxchange.com/