Holy shit what a brutally hard but fully rewarding experience. Walking out to this everyday and then looking around at all my neighbors and how drab and boring their lawns/landscaping are truly baffles me as to why something like this isn’t more popular. Seeded it with coreopsis tinctoria, R. Hirta, and California poppy for immediate color. Planted ~100 seedlings of various species grown from milk jugs and then I’m gonna seed again this fall with the short and showy mix from prairie moon.
This is about 1000 sqft I would say. For prep I sprayed all the grass initially, and then dug and flipped it all to bury most of the remaining seed bank. That seemed to work pretty well, the only weed I’m dealing with now is crabgrass which I have accepted will probably be a multi year process but it’s pretty sparse and getting outcompeted already. My original plan was to just slowly keep expanding the garden bed I had year after year until it finally was my whole front yard, but I am an avid Crime Pays fan so I said fuck it and went 0-100 because it’s what he would do😂. Absolutely no regrets, my fucking heart is full with how much life surrounds my yard now.
Pittsburgh area
by SoupOfTheHairType
26 Comments
Hell yeah
Well hello neighbor, what an awesome inspiration you are! 👋🌟
Im in the Pittsburgh aera too! I have a small area with wildflowers and my neighbor keeps calling the borough on me and I have to chop them down. Have you had any issues like this?
Crab grass sucks
Uhhhh. This is a Native plants thread. California poppy? Coreopsis tinctoria which is native in the middle of the country and invasive in the east. I would spray it again this fall and seed with local Pa ecotype seed from Ernst seed in Meadville,Pa.
https://preview.redd.it/un3annd4vgdf1.png?width=4019&format=png&auto=webp&s=460428194fb44c6c3c615184dcc3c58e639fb611
Asterisk means invasive
[https://global.oup.com/academic/product/wildflowers-in-the-field-and-forest-9780195150056?cc=us&lang=en&](https://global.oup.com/academic/product/wildflowers-in-the-field-and-forest-9780195150056?cc=us&lang=en&😉
That’s gorgeous! 🙌🏻
I would love to see this when I walk out of my house everyday. Great job!
Crime pays is such a great role model, good on you for taking the action!!
This is gorgeous!
Yeah it’s mind boggling how much and on how many effing levels your yard is superior to a stereotypical lawn. Then again, across the board and from a young age, I’ve Often—like really often—been completely perplexed about what is considered ‘normal’ and ‘desired’ society vs what is considered to be abnormal and undesired. Why are we sooooooo slow to evolve? Humans as a species are really not doing what they should be doing with their intelligence, or so-called intelligence I should say,
Anywho, having said that, I bet half your neighbors come up to u sooner or later asking how to do what u did and say they want to do it too. 😆
Some jerk will be calling bylaw officers on you!
Nice work!
What does it look like other times of the year when there aren’t flowers blooming?
If I didn’t have dogs….i would so do this. That being said I’ve converted my 3/4ths of my acre lawn into native beds.
Oh how I crave this gorgeous goodness.
as a fellow pittsburgher i am so proud of you and your native black(ish) and yellow yard
I recognized that coreopsis tinctoria! You’re getting heat for your quick-start plant choices, but it is a common strategy to include quick aggressive annuals in a meadow mix to crowd out weeds. The state biologist helping me with my meadow included C. tinctoria even though he is generally a stickler for stuff native to me in a meadow mix.
That C. tinctoria understood the assignment and did exactly what you want the first year by crowding out and shading out weeds! It and the Bidens and BE Susan also showed up in force the second year, but have backed off exactly as planned this third year as the slower stuff comes in. Basically plants like that will reseed and show up again as needed.
Good luck with the stuff that you sowed and hasn’t shown up yet—a successful meadow is a long-term thing, but you’ve done a great job with site prep and flooding the zone the first year.
ETA: I’d think about using a native seed mix from Ernst rather than Prairie Moon. They’re a quality native seed company in PA, and they strive to provide local ecotypes when available. At a minimum, their ecotypes will be better adapted to your area than PM.
You rock
This is glorious!
Dang, how are other people’s year one yards looking this good??? My year two plants are still mustering up their will to live. I shook off all the seeds on my new natives last fall and patted them into the dirt (like nature does, right??) and no dice. Really hoping the “first year they sleep, second year they creep, third year they leap” holds true and mine are just gathering their energy to surprise me!!
Is it plains coreopsis? Beautiful regardless!
I tried to kill off 2/3 of my backyard, but about half didn’t work so I have more work to do this fall. The part that worked is nice though.
I love it!
Nice. Kinda still looks like a monoculture that could benefit from variety
Hahaha I forgot all about Crime Pays, thank you for the reminder. Your yard looks amazing!!
I’d love to have you as a neighbor! Any homes for sale next door?