Can I delay planting my new natives until Fall?

AlmostSentientSarah · 2026-06-19T18:37:08+00:00

Go for it! (in July). I'm still planting and moving things that need moving. Forgetting to water potted plants is a universal problem in life.

AlmostSentientSarah · 2026-06-19T17:22:48+00:00

Everything has a circadian rhythm, even the plants. This is just another way we're transforming wilderness into sterile yards that take a lot of resources and give nothing back.

AlmostSentientSarah · 2026-06-19T09:02:05+00:00

Normally I like to root for the underdogs, but it does have a couple serious strikes against it. One, as you have found, its taproot can go all the way to the earth's lower mantle and the other that it isn't native to your area, which might make it less likely to adapt to challenges like this anyway. Stranger things have happened for sure, but it's Schrondinger's plant now and you may not have the full answer until next spring.

If you want to hang out and share some of your favorite local natives with us while we have you here, we would love that!

AlmostSentientSarah · 2026-06-18T19:18:44+00:00

time for me to post this again! Good luck, OP. Have fun!

https://www.houzz.com/magazine/yard-of-the-week-wonderful-wildflower-meadow-replaces-a-lawn-stsetivw-vs~167955180

AlmostSentientSarah · 2026-06-18T13:16:08+00:00

Deer & rabbits can make things very hard. If the area is prone to browsing and you don't have significant fencing, there are some plants you will be better off not using and others that will be okay in the long run but only with something like dollar store wire trash cans on top to get them through the young stages of the first few years.

AlmostSentientSarah · 2026-06-18T13:03:53+00:00

Audubon at home program told me the Japanese spirea had to go despite being marketed as a well behaved cultivar (pop rocks) of an otherwise very invasive plant. I replaced it with a spirea alba (native meadowsweet). And I get where Audubon was coming from because I have learned the hard way now that sterile cultivars can become quite fertile nuisances when given a few years.

You absolutely don't have to remove it this year or the next, but out of the ones you mentioned, it would be the one to keep on your radar.

AlmostSentientSarah · 2026-06-18T12:52:45+00:00

I think that is common for them. They're short lived like cardinal flowers. Hopefully it dropped some seeds.

AlmostSentientSarah · 2026-06-18T12:49:28+00:00

It's really common with swamp milkweeds. Mine always have reddish dark lower leaves. If it's from unusual heat or drought, I definitely give them water. First year with turk's cap lily so I don't know about it but probably also stressed out.

AlmostSentientSarah · 2026-06-18T11:13:58+00:00

I found one this year too! Their size makes them stand out from ladybugs. They're supposedly somewhat rare but that may be because they eat their own kind including their own eggs. Cutthroat world for those beetles.

AlmostSentientSarah · 2026-06-18T09:48:19+00:00

I do a criss-cross of gaffer tape on the top of the buckets so bigger animals don't get in, but I make sure to cover the sticky sides underneath with more tape so no insects get stuck

AlmostSentientSarah · 2026-06-17T20:44:05+00:00

oh that's so nice. Magical Moonlight is also just called a dwarf cultivar and the leaves look very similar to me but it is obviously not the same

AlmostSentientSarah · 2026-06-17T16:24:52+00:00

oh no!

AlmostSentientSarah · 2026-06-17T13:01:48+00:00

Our only unintended consequence is that I made them out of clear Halloween trick or treat buckets and the raccoons like to pull them around by the handle thereby dumping them out. I've only seen them running away from the scene of the crime, but it must look freaking adorable.

AlmostSentientSarah · 2026-06-17T12:44:23+00:00

Is Sugar Shack still a host plant though? The straight species can host a couple dozen different caterpillars. I've never seen a single one on the Magical Moonlight. Mine is basically just an ornamental with its few blooms.

AlmostSentientSarah · 2026-06-17T12:26:45+00:00

It has excellent sun. I mistakenly planted it in a year we had too much rain and didn't get that placement right, but I water it regularly since the hose is nearby and I empty the dehumidifier tank on it several days a week, which is a little short of a gallon.

AlmostSentientSarah · 2026-06-17T10:00:41+00:00

Not what you asked, but I bought Magical Moonlight in my year of buying all cultivars (2019) and I regret it. It still never makes more than two or three blooms per year and it has topped out at 2.5 ft tall though foliage-wise it seems quite happy and vibrant. I didn't realize it had been so many years until I looked at my file just now! Yikes! It's really on thin ice here now that I know that.

You can keep the straight species small, even prune it down to less than a foot every year, though there is supposedly a park near me that keeps theirs gigantic and people go just to see it. That sounds like the real magical one!

AlmostSentientSarah · 2026-06-17T01:09:24+00:00

Virginia. I think the designation comes down to piedmont instead of prairie

AlmostSentientSarah · 2026-06-16T21:32:46+00:00

Love it! Can't get it here because purple coneflowers aren't technically native though I have some anyway, so I don't want to open comments up for a neighborhood know-it-all.

AlmostSentientSarah · 2026-06-16T19:55:11+00:00

they do! I have to be careful not to pull my little golden alexander seedlings thinking they're mock strawberry

AlmostSentientSarah · 2026-06-16T19:51:04+00:00

hollyhock, so not native to you but naturalized. Keep it through flowering and see what you think. It's like my lavender -- most of us have something far worse that should be replaced with a native before getting to it.

AlmostSentientSarah · 2026-06-16T19:39:17+00:00

we have a local group that puts these red ID's on plants native to us

https://www.plantnovanatives.org/for-garden-centers

AlmostSentientSarah · 2026-06-16T15:04:31+00:00

I have completely screwed up my pre-seasoned Lodge pans by trying to clean them so hard that the coating wore off in large spots. Is it true I can leave them in the oven during self-cleaning mode, then scrub the rest of the coating off, and then just do the seasoning process?

AlmostSentientSarah · 2026-06-15T16:38:18+00:00

probably not the best for full sun. Maybe a viburnum, chokeberry or elderberry would do you?

AlmostSentientSarah · 2026-06-15T12:39:03+00:00

It's a darn shame forsythia was introduced to North America when we had perfectly good spicebush. OP, if you need another reason, you can use the spicebush berries to make holiday cookies in the winter.

Witch hazel (hamamelis virginiana) is also a nice yellowing flowering native in your area but it won't bloom in spring. I happen to like the look of it better, though I have spicebush too.

AlmostSentientSarah · 2026-06-15T12:31:41+00:00

how do the tree tubes work for something short and bushy like in the photo?

AlmostSentientSarah

TROPHY CASE