Beginner Gardening: What should i do with my native plants still in containers?, 1 by greenbunny

greenbunny wrote:
Ohhh, I feel so bad!!! I've been working on converting my yard to an all-native prairie status. Since we have such a SMALL yard, i didn't think it would be so much work! I don't have a car, so this spring when native plants came close enough to us at the Friends School plant sale, I bought about 20 plants. I was still in the process of learning our soil type, our light patterns, etc. so I couldn't just throw them in. I drew up a layout of our yard, and came up with some ideas.

The first spot I tackled was alongside our house, where we inevitably have water dripping from the rainspout or from the spigot. I decided to make that a rain-garden. That's going well, except the monkey flower, cardinal flower and bellflower aren't shooting up like I was hoping. The brown fox sedge grass and turtle-flowers are doing lovely. (btw, no water probs in our basement like some feared, very well sealed). That took in 27 plants.

I redid the sunny area in front of our porch with sunflowers, to draw up heavy metals from our yard, so we can later plant food there. They're doing fine except for the d**ned unsustainable squirrel keeps eating the heads. Oh well, wasn't planning on eating anyhow. (OK, stems are getting a bit yellow, not sure if that's normal, over-watered or missing a nutrient suddenly.) And also got a row of Velvet Queen sunflowers (from seed) in along the front picket fence. One of them is over 7' tall! These are *just* about to bloom.

I got a black-eyed susan in on the other side of the steps in front of the porch, with a late re-transplanted sunflower (squirrel) next to him. And a nice cup plant went in, and a purple giant hyssop that's doing well.

I also hand-pulled ALL the weeds in the front yard (about 220 sq. ft), and laid down the mulch so we have a space for our picnic table, and my son can have a play-space for his slide and mini-picnic table.

But, I still have about seven plants I never got in. We have a yard FULL of tall white sweet clover, common violets, yellow foxtail (just pulled as much as I could), burdock, oaxalis, shepard's purse, etc. I dug up soil that I threw in our compost, and laid down 2-3" of compost on areas that I planted. But now I've been learning about mycelium and the no-till method.

I really want to get these other plants in the ground, but since they're native, they all have deep taproots, and wherever they go in, that's where they're going to stay. I don't want to plant them without really getting ALL the weeds out of there first. I just don't have the time to do what I did this spring - it took me a FULL day's worth of work just to get ground prepared, and then a week or more for planting. I have a 2-yr-old and have to cook ALL our food from scratch (i have food issues).

I have no help, despite plenty of roommates. ***What should I do?*** Is it too late to just plop them in the ground? Does anyone know if I can still get mycelium in after the plants are in? Anyone live in Minneapolis want to come help me???

The plants are (as best I remember): blue oats grass (spikey), blue-eyed grass, a beautiful ohio spiderwort, an aster, leadplant, a wild bergamot, and two black-eyed susans.

Thank you for advice!

Peace,
Carrie Anne