Wildflowers, Sunflowers, and a Garden Pest

Welcome back.

As promised, this week I will take a break from the veggies and dedicate my post to the flowers in my garden.

Preparing the garden to plant wildflowers is pretty much the same as it is for vegetables, as far as rototiling, etc.  I have a small raised portion of my lower garden that I have been using for the wildflowers for the past 4 or 5 years.  Prior to that I planted sunflowers there.

After rototilling, the next step is to rake the soil.  However, I take a little more time to remove as many stones and coarse material as possible.  The seeds are very fine, actually similar in size to lettuce seeds.

There are many different mixtures of wildflower seeds you can purchase.  The mixtures are categorized according to region of the country, color, plant height, sun preference, moisture preference, etc.  Some mixes are designed to attract butterflies.   Following is one of the packages I used this year..  I also used a butterfly mixture:

Wildflower mixture that contains Chrysanthemum,  Dianthus, Coreopsis, Cosmos, Alyssum and more

After preparing the soil, sprinkle the seeds on the surface according to the package directions.  Most packages will tell you how many square feet the seeds will cover.

Next, I use a rake to gently rake in the seeds to an approximate depth of one quarter of an inch.  The idea is to mix the seeds with the soil to prevent them from washing away, and also to keep them moist to promote germination.  As an added precaution, I put a very light coating of grass clippings over the top to further prevent erosion of the seeds and to retain moisture.

One very important aspect is to water daily until germination occurs.  The seeds are so tiny, therefore they must be kept moist.

Unfortunately, I didn't take any photos at the time of planting, however I did take one about 2 weeks later near the end of May:

Wildflower Bed

If you look closely, you can see that the seeds have begun to sprout.

The flowers have been blooming for a month or more, and are starting to fill in nicely  Following are a few photos I took this past Sunday, August 10th:

Also, as you may remember, I planted sunflowers as I wrote about in my post on June 23, 2014 (http://dansgardening.blogspot.com.br/2014/06/sunflowers-and-nesting-tree-swallows.html).  In that post I also described how I moved some of the plants to create an evenly spaced plot.

This past Sunday I also took a few photos of the sunflowers:

Finally, a certain garden pest has been nibbling in my garden, mostly affecting the beans.  I planted the pole beans 3 times, each time they were mysteriously eaten,  After the third planting, I even put a little fence around the bean poles, however that didn't work either.  Can any of you guess who the culprit was?

Scroll down for my guess......

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Until next time.