Popup market at the Newton Farmers Market!

Next Market(s)

We’re excited to join Grow Native Massachusetts and three other native plant nurseries for a “popup market” at the Newton Farmers’ Market! This market is Tuesday, September 17, 2024, from 1:30pm to 6pm in Cold Spring Park (1094 Beacon Street) in Newton, MA.

The three other nurseries are Bluestem Natives, Checkerspot Farm, and Lady Fern Farm, all incredibly knowledgeable folks who care deeply about native ecosystems. Between the four of us, I’m sure you’ll find any native plant you could want!

On that note…

It’s time to plan(t) for next year!

Fall is a great time to plant perennials for next year. It’s less stressful for wee babby plants to go into the ground when it’s cooler and (generally!) wetter. They’ll also have a headstart for next year.

This also goes for first-year biennials, like the common evening primrose we have on offer. Biennials complete their entire life cycle in two years, with the flowers appearing in the second year. We currently have overstock of these plants available, so we’ve marked them down to $3 for a pint pot. A lot of people condemn this plant as a weed – it is tough as nails and can grow anywhere – but it’s the host plant for the beautiful primrose moth (Schinia florida) – one of the few US-native moths you’ll see in candy colors of pink and yellow.

Counterintuitively, you may even wish to plant annuals – even if the blooms have passed! This is because the fruits/seeds provide late fall and winter food to wildlife, especially birds. If you want to attract ruffed grouse, catbirds, wild turkeys, and various waterfowl to your yard, you could plant either of the two annuals we have available: American black nightshade (Solanum ptycanthum) or partridge pea (Chamaecrista fasciculata). Additionally, these two plants self-sow prolifically, so you may in fact see them pop up next year. We’ve marked the nightshade down to $2 for a pint pot and the partridge pea to $4 for a quart pot.

Whatever you plant, be sure it stays well-watered for at least a week or two after planting. Since it’s been so dry lately, this means watering it daily until it becomes established. Once native plants are established, though, they will generally not need much, if any, extra watering.

This year’s “learning experiences”

I hear so often from customers, “I have a black thumb.” I like to reply with “the first step to being good at plants is being bad at plants.” No one is born knowing how to take care of plants, so the only way to “git gud” is to, well… kill a lot of plants.

We’re still learning here, too! I struggled mightily with milkweeds this year, as well as dry-loving plants like pearly everlasting and pussytoes.

I figured I’d use this opportunity to update y’all on our personal “learning experiences” this year. Aka, items from this list that we can confidently say we won’t have available this year:

• Plantain-leaved pussytoes (Antennaria plantaginifolia). None of these even germinated (or if they did, they died young!)
• Pearly everlasting (Anaphalis margaritacea). These survived until they were repotted, but then died due (I’m pretty sure) to overwatering. For next year I’ll need to investigate a better-draining potting mix, I think.
• Heart-leaved alexanders (Zizia aptera). I have one (1) single seedling available, still sitting in a winter-sown milk jug. We’ll see if it survives up-potting. I may have killed most of them young by leaving the lid on too long. On that note…
• Showy tick-trefoil (Desmodium canadense). These germinated well… and then I left the lid on too long and they all fried ☹️

Field pussytoes is an iffy case – like the pearly everlasting, they survived until I potted them up to pint pots. But now many of them are looking shriveled and dead; there are only really two plants I think are (nearly!) ready to sell. It’s possible these will bounce back during this excessively dry period; we’ll see.

I also didn’t get enough slender false foxglove (Agalinis tenuifolia) to sell, though that is a trickier case. Their germination rate wasn’t great, first of all. They are hemiparasitic on grasses, too, and the little bluestem I planted to serve as host didn’t germinate well, either. Some didn’t survive up-potting, either. In total I only ended up with a handful of very small plants (like, 2-3" high), and since they are annuals, I didn’t feel like I could sell them. I will explore different methods for growing them next year.

Anyway, that’s it for today! Hope to see you in Newton next Tuesday ❤️

__

Featured image: White turtlehead (Chelone glabra). Photographed by Lise Fracalossi, September 2024, in the Lane Conservation Area, Lunenburg, MA

• Updates