Talking sustainable Minnesota landscapes with the U of M

MINNEAPOLIS/ST. PAUL (05/12/2022) — Minnesota gardeners can’t be blamed for greeting Could with greater than the same old anticipation after April’s unrelenting chilly, moist days.  

Extension horticulture educator Julie Weisenhorn can relate, however she additionally says this can be a good time to decelerate and take inventory of how decisions made in our yards and gardens can have an effect on the surroundings in Minnesota and past. 

Q: Can we actually make a distinction for the surroundings via our yards and gardens? 
Completely. For instance, you’ll be able to preserve water by watering your garden occasionally and deeply as a substitute of sprinkling your garden typically. Deep and rare watering saturates soil and makes grass roots develop deeply, looking for that water and making a wholesome and resilient garden. Plant numerous lots of pollinator pleasant flowers, ensuring one thing is blooming in your backyard from April via October. Spring bulbs, summer season perennials and annuals, and fall-blooming native flowers present invaluable and nutritious nectar and pollen for bees of every kind who’re in our landscapes early spring via late fall. 

Q: Inform us extra about why plant range issues. 
There are every kind of interactions between vegetation and animals, together with bugs. A monoculture of a selected plant solely helps a small inhabitants with shelter and meals. Sure vegetation have advanced with bugs to assist one another. For instance, short-tongued bees forage on small flowers and pollinate the plant, and long-tongued bees feed on massive flowers, pollinating as they forage. Monocultures of vegetation can intensify illness. Consider the majestic American elms that lined our metropolis streets. Dutch elm illness (DED) moved from one tree to the subsequent. Now we’re seeing the identical with ash timber and emerald ash borer. So we stopped planting elms and now plant DED-resistant cultivars. Planting tomatoes yearly in the identical backyard mattress will perpetuate soil-borne illnesses on tomatoes. The answer is to plant different vegetation in that soil – referred to as “rotation” – that aren’t associated to tomatoes and thus don’t hold perpetuating the illnesses.

Q: How vital is it for a gardener to know their soil?
Consider soil as the muse of each yard and backyard. It’s vital to have an excellent basis as a result of the soil will have an effect on all the things you do in your panorama now and into the long run. Until soil is poisonous, we by no means suggest eradicating and changing present soil, however studying about it via a soil check after which amending it accordingly. Understanding your soil, together with the sunshine and area you must plant, is vital in the case of selecting vegetation that can thrive and never simply survive. 

Q: We will’t speak about yards and gardens with out mentioning plant choice, proper?
One in every of my favourite subjects! There are such a lot of nice vegetation for Minnesota yards and gardens. As I discussed, perceive the form of rising circumstances you could have obtainable to you – soil, area measurement, quantity of sunshine – after which search for vegetation with rising necessities that match the location circumstances. The “Plant Components of Design” plant choice instrument and video sequence is an efficient place to start out, and can assist us study to contemplate the plant options we wish and the location circumstances we’ve got earlier than shopping for vegetation that will not be appropriate. Yow will discover it on our web site, www.extension.umn.edu.

Q: What about individuals who don’t have a yard? 
The excellent news is you don’t must have a yard to have a backyard. Patio, deck and balcony gardens could be a haven for us. Containers of all shapes, sizes and types might be crammed with numerous vegetation that feed us, shield us, scent nice and entice and profit bees, butterflies and even birds. After which there are houseplants! They are often moved exterior in summer season after which again indoors to deliver the surface in throughout winter. There are fundamentals to preserving pests from pestering your houseplants (and also you) and methods so as to add supplemental lighting if your property lacks sufficient gentle.
The College of Minnesota Extension horticulture crew often publishes ‘Yard and Backyard Information’ free of charge. You can too study extra at extension.umn.edu/yard-and-garden.

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