Pollinator Garden Update: Improving Soil, Using the Most Prolific Plants

Canada goldenrod, Jerusalem artichoke, swamp marigold and yellow wingstem spread rapidly, sinking living roots into the ground, jump starting the soil food web. Add oats as a fall cover crop

I recently authored an article entitled: What Good is a Pollinator Garden?

In it, I made the case for the many benefits of a pollinator garden, not least of all because it gives us a daily reminder of how nature works, at least during the growing season. Here, I focus on how a pollinator garden can improve your soil.

Let’s look at a few photos and see where that leads.

Issues to be addressed:

1. How to improve soil and why

2. What are the Five Principles of Soil Health?

3. Why plants are the best thing for your soil

4. Why I plant oats in the fall

5. Why use wood chips as mulch

6. What are some of the most prolific plants?

7. Why I have fallen in and out of love with Canada goldenrod, and now we’re back

8. What do monarch butterflies like best?

9. How to make seed balls

10. What are my most prolific native plants? Why you sometimes need plants that are not “well-behaved.”

As I write, it is October 8, the tail end of the growing season. The pictures I show you are all mine and are all recent.

I have two parcels in urban Louisville, Kentucky. Each is ⅛ acre. One is my home. The other is a vacant lot three doors down.

My goal is to use native plants to improve the soil to the point where I can grow food with minimal added water.

Why not add water?

I have nothing against adding water, except that in some future time or place when water might be limited, I would like to have the skill and know-how to grow as much food as possible with as little water as possible.

If we work to improve our soil, this minimizes the need for water. While some crops, like tomatoes, may always need some added water, others like winter squash could grow quite well with no added water, especially if you have good soil.

Good soil is achievable in most places if you follow the Principles of Soil Health.

I am a follower of Gabe Brown, author of Dirt to Soil, in which I learned the Five Principles of Soil Health.

The Five Principles of Soil Health are as follows:

1. Minimize disturbance, including physical disturbance (like tillage) and chemical disturbance (like synthetic fertilizers and pesticides).

2. Armor the soil surface. This means cover the soil surface with organic matter. I like wood chips.

3. Keep living roots in the ground. Nothing is as good for the soil as plant roots, because they infuse the soil with carbon compounds, like sugars, thereby feeding the soil biology, such as bacteria and fungi, etc., which define healthy soil.

4. Build diversity. It’s best to have as much diversity as possible, starting with the diversity of your plants. A diverse plant community will engender a diverse community of soil microorganisms, which operate to build good soil.

5. Incorporate animals. This generally refers to livestock, since Gabe Brown’s audience is farmers. I don’t have a general formula for how gardeners can incorporate animals, except to refrain from eradicating animals, wherever possible. Animals are good for your soil biology, so tolerate them as much as possible.

These are the principles and practices that build healthy soil.

What are the benefits of healthy soil?

Healthy soil delivers nutrients to your plants, making them healthy, resilient and nutritious.

Also, healthy soil is porous. Healthy soil is about 40% pore spaces. The pore spaces hold onto rainfall. Therefore, healthy soil creates a landscape that is much more drought resistant because it holds onto the water in between rain events.

Let’s take a tour

Let’s look around my home landscape and see how I am striving to follow these principles and create healthy soil. Along the way, I will give you a tour of my plants, my seeds, my wood chips and also some of the insects that visit me during the growing season.

Here is my vacant lot (below).

This lot is 20 feet wide and 220 feet long.

You see here a large pile of wood chips. I use wood chips to “armor the soil surface,” according to Soil Health Principle #2.

The importance of mulch

My first pollinator garden in 2018 utterly failed, primarily because I did not know the importance of using wood chips, or some sort of mulch.

Wood chips hold onto moisture. They control weeds. And over the course of time, they decompose and become soil. I get my wood chips free from chipdrop.com.

Oats as living roots

In the picture above, you’ll notice a narrow strip of green grass to the left of the wood chip pile. This is oats, a cover crop.

This illustrates Soil Health Principle #3, keep living roots in the ground. What I did here was to plant oats, which I ordered from Roundstone Native Seed. (This is not a paid announcement.)

Here’s why I sowed the oats. I know that the soil here is poor. I know that plants improve soil. So I cast out these oats, suspecting that this is the quickest way to put living roots into the ground.

I cast these seeds about three weeks ago. I was so happy with how quickly they sprouted that I ordered a whole other 50-pound bag, which has yet to arrive.

But I ordered it because I got greedy for the benefits that these oats would afford me. I have tried to grow plants in this area, with limited success.

The photo below shows a white snakeroot plant that has done reasonably well.

But in the upper right of this photo I tried to plant common evening primrose and Jerusalem artichoke, both of which are vigorous species but are languishing in this location. They are not dead, but they have not grown nearly as well as their counterparts in other locations.

So we’ll see how that goes. I’ll let you know.

This photo (above) is swamp marigold (Bidens aristosa).

This photo (below) shows my vacant lot when swamp marigold was at its peak, about two weeks ago.

On the day that I took this picture, I also saw eight monarch butterflies at one time in this area, and an additional five monarchs in my nearby backyard at the very same time. The monarchs were fueling up for their southward migration.

This picture (below) is a monarch photographed in my front yard, nectaring on a New England aster.

Here is another New England aster, below.

New England aster is in the genus Symphyotricum, which is one of the top genera for specialist pollinators, according to various sources, like famed entomologist Dr. Doug Tallamy and also Flock Finger Lakes, a YouTube channel.

My journey with Canada goldenrod

Below is a Canada goldenrod.

I fell out of love with Canada goldenrod two years ago because, although it is an ecologically valuable native plant, it seemed to be too aggressive, eliminating its neighboring plants. However, I now recognize the need for aggressive species. I need aggressive plants in my areas with poor soil.

I am currently sowing or planting the following prolific or aggressive species (Canada goldenrod, Jerusalem artichoke, swamp marigold and yellow wingstem) in this and other areas with poor soil.

All summer long, I brooded over how to deal with my bare spots and my bad soil. Canada goldenrod became a partial solution. I retrieved some leftover seeds, brushed aside the wood chips in several places, sprinkled the seeds and covered them back up.

White snakeroot

Speaking of prolific plants, here is some white snakeroot playing nicely with New England aster.

I have no small amount of white snakeroot. The great thing about it is that it grows in both sun and shade. Because it grows in the shade, I will be gathering lots of white snakeroot seeds this fall and making sure I sow them or plant them in my shady areas.

And here is a Video of a bee having fun on some white snakeroot.

Gathering seeds

It is seed gathering time. Gathering seeds is a major strategy for growing a maximum diversity of plants as quickly as possible.

This picture (below) shows milkweed seeds, with a fluffy tuft that helps it fly around.

Here is a seed mix that includes milkweed.

The same mix also includes the following:

The seed mix goes into a tub like the one below.

After mixing with dirt and water, I roll them into seed balls like this and place them on the ground.

Milkweed and monarchs

With any luck, some of these seed balls will produce milkweed plants that will host monarch butterfly caterpillars, like this one.

Here is another monarch caterpillar.

Here is a milkweed plant in my front yard.

The interesting thing about this milkweed plant is that jewelweed (an annual) used to be in this spot. I decided to pull some, not all, of the jewelweed, because I wanted to plant some mountainmint here, back in July. And when the milkweed plant felt the sun, it started to grow. Funny how that works.

Here is a milkweed seed pod covered with “large milkweed bugs.”

Incidentally, the large milkweed bugs don’t hurt the plant or the seed pod. But they are part of the food chain.

Unfortunately, I must end abruptly here. In a subsequent post, I will show you my seed mixes and common evening primrose, and how I deploy them in the service of pollinators and healthy soil.

Don’t forget to check out my free webinar!

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Urban Pollinator Garden Update. Friday, October 10 @ 3:00 PM (Eastern Time)

Come see the latest pictures from my 2/8 of an acre in urban Louisville. You will see lush green plants, colorful blooms, insect visitors, rich soil and invisible water cycles. This is highly relevant to climate change, biodiversity and social justice.

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