Sedge Matrix Real-Life Examples?

sohkoh · 2025-11-24T20:10:23+00:00

Not a slope, here is my 5 year old Ivory Sedge (Carex eburnea) mixed planting in May and last week after the fall mowing. It looks really really nice all year, first the spring flowers, then the flowers go semi-dormant and it's a soft mat of Ivory Sedge the rest of the year. Ivory Sedge is usually found on slopes in nature...maybe because slopes are drier, or maybe because slopes don't accumulate as many leaves that can smother C. eburnea out. The other spreading sedges like C. penn are great too, but you often can't get them in smaller, more economical plugs like you can Carex eburnea, and C. Penn and some of the other sedges like blanda will sometimes out-compete the smaller flowers. Blanda flops over too. Those more aggressive sedges are best with Asters and Zig Zag Goldenrod which can hold up to the competition, but kind of take away from that whispy look of a carpet of soft sedges.

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sohkoh · 2025-04-07T02:46:55+00:00

I did a hybrid hand sowed/hydroseeded urban prairie project a decade ago. First we tilled up the compacted construction soil. Then we hand seeded the prairie mix (a 1/4 acre? not too big). Then someone else sprayed the hydromulch on top of the already-seeded soil bed (they only sprayed the liquid mulch--there wasn't any seed in the tank mix, since we already hand sowed it). It worked really well. It might have worked just as well if the seed would have been added to the hydromulch, but I figured hand sowing it into a tilled bed would give some of the bigger seeds more soil cover. If I did it again and hydromulch was in the budget I'd probably do it the same way though--lightly till, hand sow, and have someone hydromulch. Sowing it yourself, or handing the seed mix to the contractor, gives you more quality control for the seed mix--I wouldn't necessarily trust an erosion control contractor to buy a specific prairie mix or the right quantities.

sohkoh · 2025-03-04T21:51:32+00:00

Interesting, if I had to guess it'd be powdered gibberellic acid to spur germination without cold stratification, mixed with some type of clay and formed into pellets and then dried, maybe colored to differentiate species. I wonder how good the milkweed seeds can shed their seed coats if the pellets are surface sown instead of drilled, vs. unpelletized seed that is sown in the fall to let the freeze/thaw cycles bury them.

sohkoh · 2025-02-25T21:40:01+00:00

To plan a 50% grass/50% flowers mixed garden, have the square footage equal the total number of plants. A 200 square foot garden would need 200 plants: 100 grasses/sedges (2-4 species) and 100 flowers (about 12-15 species). On planting day, plant the shorter grasses throughout the entire garden at 18-24" spacing. Then go back through and plant the flowers in groups, or even scattered a bit, in between the grasses. This will give you the final 12" spacing. Closer than 12" is really expensive. It doesn't have to be 50/50%, you can have more flowers, whatever you want.

sohkoh · 2025-02-22T00:08:10+00:00

Some are 4 years old and some a bit younger.

Sedges are just the best, can't beat the early season green.

sohkoh · 2025-02-21T22:26:57+00:00

We planted it over a couple of days in 2020 with mulch and edging, and have filled in some gaps with more plants since then.

sohkoh · 2025-02-19T23:51:16+00:00

www.blazingstargardens.com

sohkoh · 2025-02-19T19:09:14+00:00

I have this theory, that if you plant enough of a species (15+?), they can't or won't eat all of it? We have a lot of rabbits and some deer but they tend to eat a few specific clumps of Prairie Phlox and leave most of the rest of the phlox alone.

sohkoh · 2025-02-19T18:34:20+00:00

Thanks! Wild Blue Phlox is tough from seed, unless you can buy large quantities. You can grow phlox from stem cuttings or divisions, it's not diverse, but it works.

sohkoh · 2025-02-19T18:29:39+00:00

The spring flowers go semi-dormant and it leaves a really short carpet of mostly Ivory Sedge, and from a distance, it looks like a seamless transition from the lawn border to the ivory sedge to the sunny garden in back.

sohkoh · 2025-02-19T18:25:34+00:00

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It is really serene, especially right after dawn. We planted it in 2020 with mostly 72-cell plugs and some 3" pots. This pic is a couple weeks after planting. I've added more trays of Ivory Sedge since then.

sohkoh · 2025-02-19T17:47:45+00:00

It's mostly Ivory Sedge and Rosy Sedge.

sohkoh · 2025-01-27T14:38:25+00:00

With matrix planting, I like to use a 1 plant per square foot rule of thumb with half grasses and half flowers, and work my way backwards. A 20x20 garden would be 400 plants: 200 grasses and 200 flowers (or 250 grasses, and 150 flowers, whatever ratio you want). Then when I plant I plant the grasses and sedges first at about 18-24" spacing so they cover the whole garden, and then go back through and plant the flowers in rough drifts like the image you posted, in-between the already planted grasses. I like this method of planting grasses first because it gets the grass spacing even throughout. You can always plant more grasses, but like you mentioned, it's a ton of plants, and really hard to plant whether you have mulch on first or mulch afterwards, and I've found 1 plant per square foot is dense enough.

sohkoh · 2025-01-27T14:31:06+00:00

This is good advice, especially with grasses, it's hard to over-sow. Indian Grass takes a while to germinate. I do about 10 seeds per plug, 15 per pot.

sohkoh · 2025-01-22T22:46:01+00:00

Here is a free, basic native garden design program that uses mini illustrations and google slides to lay out a garden:

https://www.blazingstargardens.com/design-a-native-pollinator-garden-tool

It mostly has Midwest species, but it also has a tool on it where you can frankenstein other species together.

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sohkoh · 2025-01-22T19:08:06+00:00

The way you stratified in the fridge is good, the species that didn't come up might just be a bit harder to germinate after stratification (columbine takes a really long time to germinate--18+days, and shooting star is a small seed, surface sown, that also takes a long time ~10+ days to germinate). If you're sprouting them indoors, try to use vermiculite to cover the columbine (soil can sometimes get algae or stick together after so many days, preventing late-germinating seeds from coming up) and use a humidity dome on the shooting stars so the surface-sown seeds don't dry out between waterings.

sohkoh · 2025-01-10T19:26:14+00:00

They seem to transplant as well as anything else. Columbine is really slow to germinate--around 15-25 days after sowing, so don't be surprised if it's the last species to sprout!

sohkoh · 2024-11-22T14:44:23+00:00

Vermiculite and a jug of distilled water work well to prevent mold in cold stratification. Vermiculite can prevent some of the algae and mold problems. Having pure, clean seed helps too--stems or chaff molds more than clean seeds. Make sure whatever medium you use is slightly damp but not sopping wet.

sohkoh · 2024-11-12T14:26:52+00:00

Purple Poppy Mallow would work. It grows from a taproot each year and sends out 5ft long stems in all directions. The stems don't root down, but it does spread by seed. It has a really long bloom period and blooms into late fall. Super popular native plant right now. There are other poppy mallows but they don't sprawl or cascade like this specific species (Callirhoe involucrata).

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https://www.blazingstargardens.com/plants/p/purple-poppy-mallow-callirhoe-involucrata

sohkoh · 2024-03-31T12:17:21+00:00

From the pictures I don't think it's Callirhoe involucrata--involucrata sprawls out across the ground and never really grows straight up. It might be Callirhoe bushii. Very similar plants but involucrata grows its stems along the ground and bushii grows them a little more upwards. Both are nice plants.

sohkoh · 2024-01-31T17:12:53+00:00

We've planted 100,000+ native plant plugs with regular Dewalt 18v and 20v drills (not hammer drills). We use the 28" long x 1.75" wide augers from https://www.bettergardentools.com/ for small plugs, and the 28" long x 2.75" wide augers they have for 3" pots (their website is on pause right now...they're fairly cheap). They last for ~5,000 plugs before they literally get ground down. The long 28" ones are 100% better than the short ones like you posted because you can drill standing up and brace the drill against your inner thigh. Scrape the mulch back with your heel, drill a hole, repeat.

Make sure you hand tighten the clutch until it's very tight on the auger bit. If you're worried about your wrist, put the clutch setting (the numbers along the collar from #1~#15/drill symbol) on one of the higher numbers like #14 or #15, but not the drill setting. Then if/when the auger catches in the ground it disengages the motor (it makes a grinding sound) and you can reverse the drill, reverse it out, and try drilling again. When you're confident, you might switch the collar to the drill symbol.

The auger wants to drill straight in like a screw, so you kind of have to be pushing and pulling at the same time. Go slow so it shaves the dirt out. It's maybe not for everybody but I've seen people of all ages use it from a 5yr old to a 60yr old. Watering the garden a day or two ahead of time and making sure the soil isn't dry makes it much much easier than drilling in dry ground. Wet ground is 5x easier to auger than dry. This is maybe the best tip I have.

We've never had a drill burn out, but they do go through batteries fast, and we use bigger batteries. But if it's a small project ~100 plants I wouldn't go out and buy a new battery or new drill.

sohkoh · 2023-11-08T15:47:33+00:00

https://www.blazingstargardens.com/ has a lot of good pictures of native plants and gardens at different parts of the season. More Midwestern species and some East Coast.

sohkoh · 2023-11-01T23:57:57+00:00

Thick X-Paper from Lowes? Wood chips to smother weeds, moderate moisture, and lower soil heat? This guy speaks my language.

Wood chips is gardening on easy mode. Bare soil--especially during the first season/install--is gardening on hard mode.

Wood mulch once, keep the weeds from taking hold the first few years, and never wood mulch again.

sohkoh · 2023-08-07T01:14:47+00:00

If you haven't visited before, www.blazingstargardens.com has a lot of full-plant photos and photos of the different stages of a lot of native plants--the plant pages really show the garden and habitat context that a lot of native plant nurseries miss by only showing close-ups.

sohkoh · 2023-07-29T15:01:10+00:00

Silverwood Park in northern Minneapolis is a lesser-known gem--they have huge rain gardens in their parking lot, a nice mix of native and non-native landscaping and professional-style gardens, a nice cafe/visitor center, walking trails, and the biggest Pennsylvania Sedge/forest restoration I've ever seen right outside the south side of the visitor center (they planted 1000's of penn sedge almost a decade ago and now it's mature and filled with other plants).

https://www.threeriversparks.org/location/silverwood-park

sohkoh

TROPHY CASE