Good point about seed timing, when I have planted prairie seeds in the spring I usually had them at least in the freezer first or tried to stratify them myself first. I have planted seeds both spring and fall at my former house and some 'empty' land I still own. Where I am now I have a few times smothered patches of dirt with plywood or cardboard and then sown it in the fall with seeds I have saved from other areas of my property, and 2 that I bought (blue flax and purple coneflower.) We do have a LOT of native prairie and woodland plants here, and I assure you they mostly brought themselves here. The land was owned by my family for almost 50 years. I have seen photos from long ago and it was clearly a big cultivated field before my family moved in. If you leave land alone long enough, the native species come out as well as weeds. A combination of seed bank, wind, birds, and animals. I keep finding trilliums popping up here and there, and we have a few nice patches of False Solomon's seal. Those aren't prairie plants, but they are definitely native plants that came to call. We have lovely wild violets everywhere we mow. Besides some lovely types of goldenrod and both white and purple asters, we also have purple prairie clover, violet monarda, cinquefoil, milkweed, yarrow, wild strawberries, coreopsis, white and purplish fleabane, and several things I can't think of the name of right off. Introduced by me were the black-eyed susans and purple coneflower (it's great to give your mother plants and then buy her house later and have them there) and a tenant introduced wild geraniums. We also have some interesting grasses which I cannot name for you, side-oats grama (?) and foxtail are 2 I actually know the name of. I assure you most of the wild plants put themselves here. My family was always into organic gardening, which helped. Wild trees even grow, like wild plum, painful but great smelling this time of year, and blackhaw, which I have found is very rare in WI and only found in 2 counties. We also have many red currant, gooseberry, and high bush cranberry bushes all over, mainly planted by birds. So humans interfered once in a while, my father planted fruit trees all over, and we plant vegies and flowers here and there. Some areas were mowed at some times, mostly just paths, so nature has had a lot of time to do her work. We would mow more now if our mower worked. :-) A non-native specie that I now consider a prairie plant is mullein, which I love, as birds perch on it and eat the seeds. Anyway, what my point was supposed to be is that if given enough time and some native species, you will attract wildlife, and get more native species via them. So it is a matter of gardening by subtraction with occasional strategic additions. Dug, if you like, I can send you some black-eyed susan seeds, these are the tall wild kind, smaller flowers than the modern varieties, but more flowers per plant. In the prairie they are about 2 to 3 feet tall, in a watered garden they get up to 5 feet. They are originally from North Dakota prairie via hubby's great-grandmother, and passed around the family since. They spread themselves very nicely. Marcia

I understand yer trepidation, vegangirl. I have another list, Planet Ohio, which I started back in 1998. It eventually fell prey to spam so I now approve or deny all new memberships, and anyone you sneaks through and tries to spam us, I kick 'em off. I can also make it so that I have final approval of all messages before they are posted. We're still small at the wildflower list; the spammers haven't found us yet, but take my word for it, once one shows his or her ugly face, I'll nip it in the bud... In other words, spamming may happen once, but then never again... I'd really like to have ya join; you clearly have a love and knowledge of wildflowers to share with others, and I think the most important thing of all is that ol' sense o' kindred spirit... If too many daily emails concerns ya ... in addition to that spam ... you can choose to receive a daily digest of the day's messages, or to not receive email, but read all the messages at the web site. no spam'll get at ya that way! I'd love to hear more of your life story. It sounds fascinating ... book material. My wife and I have been to Maine/New England a few times, and up to Grand Marais, MN and Superior National Forest, all beautiful, beautiful places... I have a friend who has PhD in entomolgy who lives up in Maine, he works with the apple growers... Last time we drove up to Maine, in late Sept 1999, the Monarchs were migrating ... we were driving into Vermont, I think it was, and they were flying by at a rate of one every minute or so. It was great... And I do hope ya consider joinin' in ... you'll have so many spring widflowers to share with us. I'm postin' a few of my wildflower articles on the list to stir things up a little, and tryin' to find some wildflower news from out west to pass on as well... Happy spring!!!!

All the salvias are incredible . How did I forget about them. Shame on me. Salvia madrensis is good for part shade to shade-, Black and blue salvia makes a great bed in the sun to part sun, Salvia regla likes sun with a little protection from afternoon sun is a gorgious fall and spring bloomer but it needs drainage and might not like your clay.. If you can plant it where it gets a slash of setting sun hitting it late october to light up the blooms. what a treat. The Mexican sages like lolly jackson are great performers and beautiful Salvia invulcrata also won't mind the clay and moisture. Salvia farenacia is good. Salvia Augusta duelberg is a stunning white salvia and it will take full sun. blue oak salvia is sweet in ful sun. So many salvias will fit your bill. And don't forget the Texas sages (not a salvia)for late summer color.Intense sun won't faze them and no water will not hurt them either.Salvia coccinea are anual salvias that will seed themselves in full shade and part sun. cedar salvias will seed themselves and form a groundcover slowly under cedar trees.

Something that helps me is to have a backbone of plants that get aphids but are not adversely affected by them. That way you have a constant "backlog" of predatory bugs ready to pounce when other things get infected. In my yard this is the attractive ever-blooming FL native firebush shrub which hosts a lot of lacewings and ladybugs, I have never seen the specific aphid species that likes it move to my veggies but this might be chance. Also I have tons and tons of predatory and parasitic wasps that are brought in by my many pollinator-friendly flowers. Flowers good for this in FL are: Lantana (VERY easy to root via cuttings, I do it without hormone in about a week) Porterweed (do not grow in South FL if u do not have native species) Butterfly bush (fragrant and easy. I prefer large old-fashioned ones like Black Knight and White Profusion because they choke out weeds/fend for themselves) Blanketflower Zinnia (cheap and easy to grow from seed, you probably are familiar with them. My favorite is the heirloom 'Envy'.) Gaura (long-lived perennial native to Southern USA. interesting flower shapes) Pentas (tolerates more shade than others on this list, available basically everywhere in FL for a reason) All of those have very long bloom times (porterweed and lantana are ever blooming if there's no frost). Winter cassia, Chaste tree, Purple coneflower, Flatwoods plum are also great but their bloom times aren't quite as long. You might also want to experiment with "sacrificial plants". I've only had lubbers once but they only ate my sweet potato vine (grows like a weed so I don't care) and my zinnias, perhaps they prefer them over the others? Might be worth testing. But that's just me/my view. I don't like spraying and also I don't have the time to spray, I work and go to college. I'll let the bugs eat each other instead LOL Other than that raised beds definitely helped when I grew tomatoes. Peppers in my experience are basically pest-free, they're just heavy feeders is all. Also they perform best in protected/partial sun for me. Epsom salt is good against slugs if those become a problem after heavy rain. It's literally magnesium so it doesn't hurt plants and personally my FL soil is deficient in the mineral so plants appreciate it. My last tip: don't bother growing squash. Hope that helps and best of luck