This past Saturday night we had a hard frost that burned all the roses and brought an end to my outdoor vegetable garden. The timing of this frost didn’t work well for showing off my garden to some out of town dinner guests the next afternoon. The roses were burned and the vegetables were limp. Luckily my garden is more than flowers or vegetables.
One of my gardening interests is using native grasses as ornamentals. Grasses, native and non-native, do well here in the Great Basin and they still look great after a hard frost. One of my dinner guests was admiring my ‘Little Bluestem’ (Schizachyrium scoparium) that was just outside my dining room window. The sun was at just the right angle to show off the bearded seeds still clinging to their stalks.
‘Little Bluestem’ is not native to the Great Basin but does well here if you water it a little. In spite of it being native to the Great Plains and Eastern United States where natural summer moisture is more plentiful it’s still relatively drought tolerant. Although it won’t survive here without summer watering it requires much less water than most lawn grasses and needs no fertilization. In fact the only maintenance I give my ‘Little Bluestem’ besides drip irrigation through the summer is I clip it back to the ground early each spring.
One reason it won’t survive in the Great Basin without summer watering is that it’s a warm season grass and doesn’t send out an inflorescence until later in the summer. This is unlike most of the native grasses in the Great Basin which are cool season grasses and send out their inflorescence in the spring. The reason most native grasses in Great Basin are cool season is that most of our moisture falls in the winter and early spring.
Many non-native plants that are very hardy to an area can pose a threat to the local ecosystem if they are too well adapted and escape cultivation only to out compete the native vegetation. The possibility that ‘Little Bluestem’ would escape cultivation in Great Basin is not likely to be long lived since it needs summer moisture to complete its life cycle and the likely of summer moisture in the wilds of Nevada is slim and none.
One of my gardening interests is using native grasses as ornamentals. Grasses, native and non-native, do well here in the Great Basin and they still look great after a hard frost. One of my dinner guests was admiring my ‘Little Bluestem’ (Schizachyrium scoparium) that was just outside my dining room window. The sun was at just the right angle to show off the bearded seeds still clinging to their stalks.
‘Little Bluestem’ is not native to the Great Basin but does well here if you water it a little. In spite of it being native to the Great Plains and Eastern United States where natural summer moisture is more plentiful it’s still relatively drought tolerant. Although it won’t survive here without summer watering it requires much less water than most lawn grasses and needs no fertilization. In fact the only maintenance I give my ‘Little Bluestem’ besides drip irrigation through the summer is I clip it back to the ground early each spring.
One reason it won’t survive in the Great Basin without summer watering is that it’s a warm season grass and doesn’t send out an inflorescence until later in the summer. This is unlike most of the native grasses in the Great Basin which are cool season grasses and send out their inflorescence in the spring. The reason most native grasses in Great Basin are cool season is that most of our moisture falls in the winter and early spring.
Many non-native plants that are very hardy to an area can pose a threat to the local ecosystem if they are too well adapted and escape cultivation only to out compete the native vegetation. The possibility that ‘Little Bluestem’ would escape cultivation in Great Basin is not likely to be long lived since it needs summer moisture to complete its life cycle and the likely of summer moisture in the wilds of Nevada is slim and none.
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