I’ve got a soft spot for native plants, but jumpseed jumped to the top of my shit list this year.
I’m going to war with the jumpseed in my yard. When I moved in two years ago, the side yard was overrun by thistle, dandelions, and invasive, weedy things that thrive in moist soil and semi-shade. The giant hostas planted there did just fine in this environment, so I left them alone. The first year I was here I spent hours filling dozens of lawn bags with noxious, invasive plants that have no business in my backyard. But in my choice to remove all the nonnative plants, I made a mistake in leaving the jumpseed. It has since taken over, and it’s even starting to crowd out the giant hostas.
Jumpseed is a native plant, which is why I left it there in the first place. It’s not as pretty as its cousins, smartweed, and knotweed, which thrive in sunnier conditions than jumpseed does. Its flowers attract honeybees, bumblebees, wasps, and ants, who are all good. It also attracts stink bugs and leafhoppers, which are less cool.
It’s crowding out the giant hostas, for funk’s sake.
It’s called jumpseed because it practically jumps right out of the ground, with alternative leaves splitting into pairs off of a singular stalk. The seeds themselves also jump as far as 10 or 13 feet from the plant when ripe. From that, almost overnight, the seed stalk jumps up, growing tall. It’s a prolific self-seeder, and it’s starting to spread to the front yard.
These jumpseeds took root in the dark space beneath a juniper bush and my front steps.
This labor day weekend I spent a long, sweaty hour on the west side of my house pulling jumpseed. I know I pulled it too late, and it’s going to do it again next year. Immediately after every part of my body remotely exposed to the task was itchy, and jumpseeds had gripped tightly onto my hair. I spent 30 minutes in the shower just washing seeds down the drain. This is another reason jumpseed is such a prolific spreader. It’s seeds have tiny hooks that easily grab onto the hair or fur of traveling wildlife, including me.
Be careful, these little guys stick to everything.
I put down a seed mix I got from my brother, who works with a native plant restoration company in central Illinois. That mix includes obedient plant, new England asters, swamp milkweed, rosemallow, bundeflower and indigo
Next spring I will go out there early with my clippers and snip all the little jumpseed leafs I can find before they go to seed. I’ll probably do this for many years to come. If we’re lucky in a few years the seed mix will outcompete the jumpseed. By then the front and back prairies should be established well enough that I’ll be in a beautiful little prairie oasis on my little slice of an urban acre.
It took me about half as long just to de-seed my hair, as it did to de-seed the yard.
This point in spring means two things for me: Time to plant my garden, and time to support animal welfare in Chicago. I work for The Anti-Cruelty Society, helping them raise the money it takes to care for thousands of animals every year. Spring means it’s time to Bark From The Heart, and raise the money it takes to keep an open door for any animal in need. It also means anxiously checking the weather to determine when it’s safe to plant your garden.
This year, I’m combining two of my favorite things: The seeds I collected from my garden last year, and my dog, Dixie, who I adopted from the Society in March 2020. (She likes playing fetch in the garden while I drink my coffee in the morning.)
Donate any amount to my fundraiser and you will get your choice of mammoth sunflower seeds, Aztec marigolds, bottle gourds, or milkweed. Keep reading to learn what’s so dang cool about these amazing plants.
A perfect furry friend, but she would be a better model if she just sat still.
Your gift as seed money:
The Anti-Cruelty Society is the oldest animal welfare organization in Chicago. It was founded in 1899, first as an organization that lobbied for more humane conditions for Chicago’s children, and horses. Later, the focus of their work shifted to only animal welfare, and that is at the core of their mission today.
This Chicago dog is heads and tails above the rest.
Fun Chicago Fact: The Society moved into its building at 157 W. Grand Ave. in 1910, and the neighborhood has just kind of grown around it. Over the decades, the Society has expanded and built into other adjoining buildings on the block. That makes navigating the internals of the building a confusing mess, with rich history behind every single door.
The last year has been a challenging one for the Society, but they have navigated the pandemic expertly and swiftly, with the safety of all staff, volunteers, adopters, and every animal as the number one priority. At the core of what the Society does today is to create a more humane world for both people and pets. In the last year the Society placed over 4,000 animals into their forever homes, engaged over 5,100 people in our virtual programming, fostered nearly 1,500 pets, and distributed almost 550,000 meals to pets whose owners were economically affected by the pandemic. They keep an open door, and won’t turn any animal in need away regardless of age, condition, species or temperament.
Mammoth sunflowers, and sunflowers of all kinds, are hearty plants. Like, every good prairie plant its root systems are deep and strong, that’s how it’s able to hold itself up, and move along with the sun all day. Mammoth sunflower roots can push themselves four feet (or more) down beneath the surface, that’s why they’re so great for gardens with less-than-ideal soil. Their roots push down with enough force to break up hardened clay and move small rocks. Once down there, the roots introduce new beneficial bacteria and allow for helpful insects to make their way below ground.
Sunflowers are not picky about soil quality, in fact, they’re very useful at pulling bad gunk out of your dirt. (The word for this is phytoremediation.) Sunflowers are the enthusiastic cleanup crew for soil contaminated by polluted groundwater, lead, heavy metals, and other poisonous chemicals. If you visit Chernobyl and Fukushima, you may find fields of sunflowers pulling radiation directly from the dirt. A friend recently told me about a nonprofit based in Tulane City, Louisiana that filled some of the worst-hit neighborhoods in New Orleans with sunflowers following the devastating damage from hurricanes Katrina and Rita.
These particular sunflower seeds are my personal heirloom variety. They grow as high as 14 feet tall, in the bed of clay and rocks in my backyard.
Marigolds are also known as “companion plants” that help other plants in your garden to grow, and keeps away pests like squash bugs, aphids and even rabbits. If you grow squash, melons, tomatoes, cucumbers, potatoes, lettuce, pumpkins, beans, asparagus or onions, plant marigolds for a heartier harvest.
Taller than you think!
Bottle gourds for fresh foliage:
When we’re talking about the plant, we call them bottle gourds. When we’re talking about the fruit, we call it a calabash. Either way, these trellis-loving climbers will grow large enough to create a wall of foliage to beautify your garden all season. These particular seeds were harvested from last year’s longest gourd, Bert, and the most squat, Ernie. And yes, you can eat them.
Bert, in his youth.
Milkweeds for monarchs:
If you don’t have a green thumb, but do have a patch of dirt you can find, milkweed is the ideal plant for you. This native, weedy plant is a vital part of our landscape and the only host plant for caterpillars of the monarch butterfly. The monarch butterfly is about the coolest species of butterfly you’ll find. Monarchs every year migrate from Canada to central Mexico and back, which is astonishing in its own right. It actually takes three generations of monarchs to make the trip. The first two generations are the ones you’ll see most of the time, they flap those little orange and black wings north every spring. The third generation is what’s known as a super generation – it’s huge. The super generation of monarch is bigger and stronger than its parents or grandparents. It lives eight times longer and travels ten times farther. But the one thing that it needs at every leg of that journey, is milkweed. This is especially true right here in the Great Lakes region because we are often the first or last pit stop for migrating wildlife before or after crossing the lakes.
Photo credit to: US Fish & Wildlife Service, apparently I haven’t got a good milkweed picture.
When we moved into our house last June, the backyard had been neglected for a long time. The previous owners were keen to half-finish projects and generally let the yard go unused, except apparently as a place to store used Juul pods. Concrete pavers occupied a fair amount of space, and we saw the opportunity to remove those, add topsoil, and create a garden fairly easily.
Common Star of Bethlehem (not native, but it was here when I moved in.)
To my eyes, the space along the fence presented the most opportunity for garden experimentation. This long plot of dirt, about 18-20 inches wide and about 40 feet long, was overgrown with weeds peeking up through the cracks in the pavers and untamed mint plants that the neighbor planted on their side of the fence years ago. I decided to plant a prairie here.
The Prairie Moon Nursery seed mix
Last October, Dave and I, using a pry bar and a 10 foot long pipe to create a fulcrum, removed dozens of pavers from the ground. Then, exhausted and sweaty, we covered the now-exposed sand beneath with a layer of straw and let it decay over winter. Prairies require a cold, dormant season for their seeds to sprout and begin growing. In February, on a lovely about-freezing afternoon, I put on a heavy wool sweater and some leggings, grabbed my shovel and removed about a foot of sand from the tract along the fence. Honestly, it was a refreshing activity. I filled it in with top soil and let it go through a few more freeze/thaw cycles.
Sweaty work.
When I felt enough time had passed, and when they arrived in the mail, I cast a tallgrass exposed clay subsoil prairie seed mix along that length of the yard. This is the start of my urban prairie.
Prairie seeds require a cold dormancy, so that’s why this all happened in winter.
Why a prairie? Prairies are great. They are beautiful four seasons out of the year. Tallgrasses and a season-long showcase of florals that attract pollinators and birds? Yes, please. Illinois is the Prairie State but we have less than 1% of our prairie left. Native plants attract pollinators, which will help your vegetables produce more food, and their thick and deep root systems soak up water, which helps keep it out of your basement. Beyond that, they provide season-long blooms in a huge array of colors and if you don’t find 10 foot-tall bluegrass stems impressive, I’m not sure what to tell you. They were good enough for Frank Lloyd Wright.
Let’s just look around and try and figure out how Ol’ Frank Lloyd Wright got the idea for those windows.
Restoring a prairie takes a few years. These hearty, tall, gorgeous plants have a deep root structure, the eight-foot-tall big bluestems I’m hoping for will have roots that push down four feet into the earth. Once these perennial plants are established they will require next-to-no work from me. They will also provide a winter haven for insects and a natural landscape I can enjoy all four seasons. For the first two or three years, I will never be able to quit weeding.
I straight-up have no idea what this plant is.
I chose the tallgrass exposed clay subsoil seed mix from Prairie Moon Nursery. It was the simplest way to get the most diversity of plants that were known to be native to my home region. Now that they are all starting to sprout, I find myself out there most days eyeing tiny flowers and vines. My Seek app is full of things I put there and can’t recognize. Mostly, it’s because they are too small and I am impatient. I know what I planted there, because I have the list of seeds in that mix, so what I need now is a place to catalog what I find.
Common Lamb’s Quarters (native)
Below, is the list of seeds that I ordered from Prairie Moon. Over the course of the season, I’ll be cataloging what I find so that I can better understand what exactly I have done in my backyard. I will likely re-seed next fall, to fill in some patches and create a little more diversity. Once things get taller, I may have to mow, which considering the size of the acreage will probably happen with scissors. Eventually, we’ll have to talk about a controlled burn but that’s not today. I would be a fool to tell you there aren’t way more plants in that bed than there are listed here. It’s a big, open exposed bed of topsoil with no groundcover. I’m fighting weeds I don’t want, and not fighting weeds I think are cute.
Botanical name
Common name
Wildflowers
Agastache foeniculum
Anise Hyssop
Arnoglossum atriplicifolium
Pale Indian Plantain
Asclepias syriaca
Common Milkweed
Astragalus canadensis
Canada Milk Vetch
Baptisia alba
White Wild Indigo
Chamaecrista fasciculata
Partridge Pea
Dalea candida
White Prairie Clover
Dalea purpurea
Purple Prairie Clover
Echinacea pallida
Pale Purple Coneflower
Echinacea purpurea
Purple Coneflower
Gaura biennis
Biennial Gaura
Heliopsis helianthoides
Early Sunflower
Lespedeza capitata
Round-headed Bush Clover
Monarda fistulosa
Wild Bergamot
Napaea dioica
Glade Mallow
Oligoneuron rigidum
Stiff Goldenrod
Penstemon digitalis
Foxglove Beardtongue
Pycnanthemum virginianum
Mountain Mint
Ratibida pinnata
Yellow Coneflower
Rudbeckia hirta
Black-eyed Susan
Rudbeckia subtomentosa
Sweet Black-eyed Susan
Rudbeckia triloba
Brown-eyed Susan
Senna hebecarpa
Wild Senna
Silphium laciniatum
Compass Plant
Silphium terebinthinaceum
Prairie Dock
Symphyotrichum laeve
Smooth Blue Aster
Symphyotrichum novae-angliae
New England Aster
Verbena hastata
Blue Vervain
Verbena stricta
Hoary Vervain
Trees, shrubs and vines
Ceanothus americanus
New Jersey Tea
Grasses, sedges and rushes
Andropogon gerardii
Big Bluestem
Elymus canadensis
Canada Wild Rye
Elymus virginicus
Virginia Wild Rye
Juncus dudleyi
Dudley’s Rush
Panicum virgatum
Switch Grass
Sorghastrum nutans
Indian Grass
Not sure what this is yet, but I’m hoping it’s milkweed.
