I ran into an unexpected hurdle in my wintersowing.... chickens! After carefully germinating my seeds and nurturing the seedlings through winter and spring, and then planting them out, here come my trio of chickens scratching them all up! I made a low fence of flexible bamboo canes. They walked right through. The lesson I'm taking is to wait for plants to get more substantial before transplanting.

Are your chickens loose? My sister has chickens, but she has terrible trouble with predators. Hawks get them from above if they are out, and then raccoons, weasels, foxes and possum find ways to break into her barn, though it's secured better than Fort Knox. She lost around 18 young heirloom chicks in one night. Maybe you could put up a temporary fence around your garden area? Just until the seedlings are big enough to be less vulnerable? In general, the plants grow best once they are in the ground, and it seems like they would need to be quite large before they would be safe from chickens. Good luck. That is a challenge.

Greetings Martha! I hesitate to post here after being shunned by trudi years ago. I'd love it if this was once again a place I could come to share garden news/ideas/concerns/questions with like-minded folks. My garden beds have fully matured over the years thanks to winter sowing. Wish I could share pictures but don't know how after so many years of being away from the forums as well as the Houzz takeover. Suffice it to say everything other than Aquilegia/columbine sprouted and the plants are thriving in my various garden beds. The apple & pear tree seeds my neighbor asked me to WS back in 2007 have grown to trees that are taller than I am.

We're in a drought here in Southern New England so everything is thirsty. I have terra cotta "plant nannies" with up-ended recycled 1-liter bottles of water to sustain them.

gardenweed, the way I post photos is:

1. I drag the picture I want to post onto my desktop.

2. Then select Houzz Photo at the bottom-----the box you see below appears on my screen.

3. Press 'Choose File'------ everything you have on your desktop should come up & you select the one you want from your computer.

4. Then press 'Upload'. You should see the picture you selected appear on the box shown below.

5. Then you press 'Insert' at the bottom. That should load it onto the post.

When I select the camera icon with the word 'Photo' next to it, nothing happens on my computer so I have no idea how people get that one to work. There was someone else over on the Perennials Forum a while back that kept trying to upload using the 'Photo' button and they couldn't get it to work either but the 'Houzz Photo' worked fine for them too.

The 'Link' icon works just fine too when I want to add a link.

texasranger2 - sincerely, thanks SO much for that step-by-step tutorial for posting photos! I haven't taken many pics in recent years but I do go walkabout my garden beds each day to see how they're doing. They've matured over the years but this past snow-less winter + an infestation of gypsy moth caterpillars destroyed my five mature oak trees' leaf inventory. That left my shaded garden beds exposed to full sun for the first time in a decade. The caterpillars stripped all five oaks, my mature crabapple tree and moved on to consume my coral bells. We don't have your heat but the sun in July is just as strong here in southern New England.

Fingers crossed I eventually get my garden back. If I do, I'll print out your step-by-step help and post "recovery" pictures.

gardenweed, as much as it hurts to see shade plants fry it seems like that might open up a larger world of choices of sun loving plants. I find such a wider selection a person can grow in more sun and usually they are plants that appeal to me more because they bloom more.

I wish something like Gypsy Moths would come down here now and chomp down the forest of Hackberry trees in the unkempt yard next door. Of course, these are not beloved and valuable oaks I planted with my own hands (ouch), instead they are ratty looking, volunteer nuisance trees that are only there due to neglect.

As far as natural pests this year goes, I'm seeing more and more webworms in trees around the city, looks like it might be one of those ugly WW years but I don't think they actually kill trees, they just look disgusting is all. They look disgusting because they are, you know if you've ever looked at one up close.

I've got some areas I'm trying to work on, the ones that never end up as glamour shots I post publicly on GW. Maybe we ought to all get brave and show our troubled areas rather than always shooting photos of the pretty stuff. I think it would make me feel better sometimes to see other peoples unsightly areas they are either re-working or that got killed by trees gone down etc. No one's garden is perfect, at least I hope not. Currently I'm taking the prairie plunge and planting large areas of grasses. It'll either turn out looking good or its going to be a real mess earning me a citation for tall weeds from the city. I read that when it comes to grasses you either "go big or don't go" and I'm really going whole hog on massing them in. Its an act of faith.

texasranger2 -Chances are my full sun garden beds won't be full sun next year. I'm determined to let my garden beds thrive or survive on their own* since my mindset is, if it's meant to be, it will be. The gypsy moth caterpillars (and, next spring, the moths) are here briefly (based on the infestation here back in the late 1980's).

I set *terra cotta plant "nannies" in the soil at the base of my perennials--those thirsty as well as newly-planted. I fill recycled 1-liter bottles with water, add a few drops of organic seaweed extract and up-end them in the plant nannies. The water/organic fertilizer is disbursed via osmosis at the base of the plants. So far, despite the drought, everybody's thriving.

I'm in southern New England which is almost another planet from where you are in Texas so our growing conditions are vastly different. Normally we can expect sufficient rainfall where I am so supplemental watering isn't necessary. This year it is.

I moved to this house when I was 12. Lived here until I went away to college. My folks practiced organic gardening all their lives (aside from the years my brother used chemicals). They gifted me with slightly acidic organic sandy loam.

When designing my garden beds, I incorporated a number of grasses (Carex, fountain grass, feather reed grass 'Karl Foerster') as well as plants that sustained pollinators.

While pollinators + I love blooms, I don't garden strictly for flowers. Secondary to sustaining pollinators, I garden for curb appeal. For a small town, mine is a pretty busy street.

gardenweed, I'm located in Oklahoma not Texas.

Curb appeal is very important to me too, I hope I didn't give the wrong impression as if anything goes and I don't care what the neighbors think.

I have many plants that attract pollinators and ones that bloom but my main interest is mixing textures. My goal is to have the grasses, spiky xeric plants and cactus serving as the main feature with the flowers serving as accents like precious jewels here and there. Its a process and I'm working on it in stages by inter-planting volunteers with the idea to cull out plants later, that way its gradual and eliminates having whole areas denuded.

The prairie grasses look wonderful when massed because they form a unified 'whole' allowing their more subtle and muted colors to work. The result is texture as opposed to a lot of colorful flowers vying for attention but then it also makes each bit of color important and noticeable in a way they otherwise do not have when planted among many flowering plants. I don't care for spaced out grasses done in an artificial way, I'm trying to keep it 'prairie-like' and more natural. What is unnatural is the cactus, agave and yucca, they do well here but are not native to Oklahoma. They add definition & the 'landscaped factor' because after all, I'm located in an urban setting close to downtown.

Winter interest is very important too. We don't get much snow here and when we do, its only around for a couple days or so, otherwise Oklahoma is mostly shades of buff, browns & grays.

Sorry - my bad on your location.

Like you I garden to sustain pollinators. My neighbor is a bee keeper so there are plenty of them looking for sustenance. I designed my various garden beds with them in mind but also with aesthetics. My garden beds needed to please my eye and make me smile or grin depending on the season. I planted lavender because my Mom was convinced she couldn't grow it. I also planted clematis for the same reason. The clematis have all done well--no surprise. The lavender surprised me for the first time this year (after several previous attempts failed) and not only came through the winter, it bloomed.

I also designed and planted my next-door neighbors' foundation beds. The day I moved in (late 2005), he got in my face and told me, in no uncertain terms, that henceforth HE would mow my lawn. My mom would never let him and it frosted him she paid a landscaper to do it. He's in law enforcement and he's a really big guy so I just told him to have at it. He's also a terrifically nice guy. I planted wintersown perennials along his foundation, edged & mulched the beds.

We live in a small southern New England town where folks/neighbors help each other when there's severe weather or a crisis. We've had our share of both over the years, including the Halloween storm of 2011 if I remember correctly. I lost power for 12 days. I have a well so I also had no water. In our town, houses have to be built on an acre or more of land so houses are pretty widely spaced. My neighbor ran heavy duty power cords from his house to mine when his power was restored. I lost power for longer--the wires were ripped out of my house by falling tree branches. A branch from HIS tree impaled itself through my garage roof. The sound of melting snow dripping on my P/U truck inside the garage alerted me to the problem.

This past winter we had zero snow, lending credence to the expression, 'If you don't like the weather in New England, wait a minute. It'll change.'

That last part made me laugh. I'm beginning to think every state says "if you don't like the weather in (state)...." I hear it all the time on the news here and I check in on the Rocky Mt Forum because I like native plants from the SW and they say that there too pretty often. Oklahoma is very friendly, visitors comment on how people just wave, talk to strangers and are easy to get to know, the people around here are pretty ordinary 'just plain folks' types and neighborly.

Thank you for sharing the story. You are fortunate to have such a large space. I have a fairly large lot but nothing close to that. Our house was built in the 1920's back when they were each different and I like being in the inner urban part of the city.

Its interesting to read about the goals and intentions of other gardeners. I have to be honest and admit I don't garden to sustain pollinators and never had the remotest thoughts in that direction (even though it does sound good and I now admire others who do that). I often read people saying this but truthfully in my case its just a result. My main reasons are far less noble and more selfish. I just like being outside playing around with plants. Several years ago I got bored with the typical gardening fare, tired of trying to keep it looking decent in summer and started checking out what was growing wild along the roadside, I was really tired of watering and still having it look cooked and the same ole same ole in plant choices but mostly I fell in love with what they did at the History Center here, a large garden all planted in prairie grasses with late afternoon sun shining through the seed heads. It just screamed Oklahoma & I was simply a goner after that. Its been a blast I must say, more fun than any gardening I've ever done and yea, the bugs are nice too.

I guess I took a page out of my Mom & Dad's gardening journal and just fixed on organic gardening based on their 40+-year commitment to not introducing toxic chemicals to their soil. I can't speak for their thoughts, but they were firm in avoiding chemicals.

As I've mentioned, I'm the primary caretaker of an acre of property in southern New England where my parents practiced organic gardening for 40+ years. Monsanto Chemicals is based less than 40 miles to the north in Springfield, Massachusetts. Even back when I temp'd for them when I was 18, I didn't like working there.

The earth has sustained itself without intervention from humans for quite a few millennia so I figure it knows what it's doing. My goal is not to throw roadblocks in its way.

That's interesting. I didn't know that 'If you don't like the weather in [ ]...' was so widespread.

Just because you like being outside doesn't mean you aren't sustaining pollinators even though it isn't your focus or purpose. Just doing what you do sustains them so kudos to you for doing it. Like you, when I was able I liked being outside tending my garden beds. I'd still be doing it if I could. Nowadays I have to rely on my established garden beds to do it for me.

True, and like I said its a result but if I was planting mostly for pollinators I wouldn't be working toward a goal of having predominantly prairie grasses with flowers serving as contrast & accents for visual purposes, I'd be working the other way around with a completely different goal in mind. My choices of flowering plants is based on how they contrast and blend with the grasses.

Living in the middle of a large city I can't fool myself. I'm not going to get much in the way of insect variety here nor will I make a difference with a city sized lot. I enjoy the occasional dragonfly or butterfly but its never what I'd call a lot of pollinators and it never will be. I could have a whole yard full of pollinators but if they aren't around it doesn't matter. I know this because I grew up in small town and both grandparents lived on farms in north central Oklahoma. The comparison is quite ridiculous considering what small % fly into a major city filled with concrete streets. The best proof of this is the car windshield & grill rarely gets bug spattered here in the Metroplex but if I'm driving say from Pond Creek to Nash, I'd have to stop and clean it off to be able to see every 50 miles or so like my dad had to do when I was a kid.

Its much easier to meet people who are into pollinators, butterflies and flowers but I keep thinking there must be at least one or two other like minded persons out there who are into the grasses in a big way.

I've never lived in a city so you have the advantage of me there. I've always lived rural and was never tempted to change that.

A few years back I rang up my Mom in August to let her know I was driving to Maine to go sailing aboard one of the Maine Windjammer schooners as I did every year. She said her doctor had told her she had lung cancer. She lived 53 days. I didn't go sailing that year. The property was left to my brother and me--our older brother died of lung cancer a few months before Mom. Younger bro' lives in Florida so my time was taken up for the next year sorting out the legal cr*p.

I'd been renting the house I lived in east of here for 25+ years so I moved back here knowing it needed a LOT of work (the driveway was still dirt and it sloped downhill from the road). I deliberately participated in two Outward Bound survival school programs when my kids were still in elementary school. I wanted to demonstrate the only limitations they had were those they placed on themselves. Last winter my son hiked up Mt. Washington in the Presidential Range of the White Mountains and snowboarded down Tuckerman Ravine and videotaped the descent with a camera on his hat. My daughter's a freelance photographer. They're both pretty amazing.

When I started researching garden ideas after moving to this address, I explored SO many types of perennials. I wanted curb appeal as well as sustaining pollinators since it was important to me that I myself grinned when I pulled down the driveway at the end of each workday. I initially asked my son to bring me a truck full of bark mulch for Mother's Day. When Mother's Day rolled around I told him to scratch the mulch--I wanted 3,500 lbs. of granite instead. There's now a granite path from the edge of the driveway across to the front step.

Guess I had ideas in my head that eventually became realities that I continue to be content with.

Gardeners, in my experience, have some good ideas about the way they want their gardens to look. Mine fits that image.