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01/16/2023 creating a special caliche/barrens habitat in containers

Visited home last weekend and Mom and Dad kindly let us take home some calcareous soil from an already disturbed area – the “lake”.
I had planned to shovel the soil but they kindly offered the much easier method of front-end loader. 🙂 We did scrape in a few small little bluestems and other plants that I have kept!
Since the soil was heavy, I carefully moved it into a bucket I could lift, and also searched for those little plants I mentioned got scraped in.
Paula and I put careful layers of soil and water to get it compact in the planters by the front door.
Paula smoothed them nicely and added water.
You can see the plants I found in the background, sitting on the porch. This is the final picture with a dusting of cactus/succulent/citrus potting soil on top.
Shackleton helped me sort the calcareous soil/barrens specialist seeds that Mom gave me.
Here are all the seeds in place with little markers! I also put one each little bluestem in the pot, a possible Oldplainsman in each, and a mystery round-leafed green plant. We’ll see what they become!
I did the two planters symmetrical but mirror images since they are on either side of the porch. Fingers crossed we get some sprouts in the spring!
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01/08/2023 pepper seeds

Experimenting with deep pots and shallow soil. These are yogurt containers. Since peppers and ground cherries can grow roots from the stem, as the plants grow I plant to add more soil. This hopefully reducing the number of repotting events that need to occur.
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01/02/2023 Oklahoma selected tepary beans

I have decided to mix our tepary beans next year to cross pollinate and see what does best here with our spring rainy season. This photo shows the general mix with three randomly selected handfuls (the three pictures below). The remaining beans will be eaten! I started with 1:1:1:2:3 mix of blue-speckled, yellow, San Ignacio, Pinacate, and black tepary beans in 2022, planted in same-variety blocks along the south trellis, plus a very small amount of the surviving wild type tepary beans (planted Aaap, Santa Catalina, Sycamore Canyon, and Kitt Peak varieties intermixed so whatever survived best from those) from nativeseeds.org). For 2023 and later (ie this upcoming season), we will plant these together and see what happens.
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10/16/2022 after 3/4” rain

Heath asters from TX have started blooming.
I think these may be sand lovegrass seedlings. I put them in a lot of pots with native flower seeds as a potential nurse plant.
This is the Muhlenbergia schreberi grass from Abby. It has a fun common name. I wanted to ensure I don’t lose it or mistake it for something like a skinny bermudagrass in the shade.
This is the planter of soil from Jeanne that had a big patch of annual Sedum nuttallii. There are a bunch of sedum-looking seedlings but also plenty of other interesting looking babies too!!
I seeded these cowpen daisies pretty late and didn’t know if they’d come up until next year. Instead, they seem to have noticed the declining day length and have made the world’s tiniest cowpen daisy blooms. This is normally a medium size plant!
At least one Carolina snailseed root from Abby has produced new leaves.

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10/09/2022 Saxon park

Schinia gaurae moth (the clouded crimson) caterpillar on false gaura! We counted nine around our 1.75 mi loop.
The tall rosettes of the false gaura were nice to see since they look just like my garden one.
A Schinia moth I haven’t identified feeding on aster flowers.
This bumblebee loved the Salvia azurea.
Back of two spotted bumblebee where you can see the spots!
Funnel web spider says no pictures, please.
A tree cricket hiding on Liatris.
The seed pod of a Baptisia. Mom said possibly B. australis var. minor
Paula found two big beautiful lynx spider mommas! Wow! This is one guarding its egg sac.
A tiny caterpillar on false gaura.
The first Solomon’s seal I’ve seen in the wild! We have several in the yard but no idea if they’re volunteers or planted.
Probably a buckwheat, the botany consulting committee says.
Abby, Mom, and Jeanne also agreed this was probably a dwarf lead plant.
Paula found a magnificent sumac leaf turning yellow to red.
The Sumac is really turning beautiful reds all over!
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09/24/2022 rock garden

The NPSOT plant sale rain lily has seeds!
Another friend from that plant sale, the Justicia pilosella, seems much happier here up front in the sandy soil of the rock garden than it did in the backyard.
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09/10/2022 rain lily seed pod

The rain lily seed pod has three lobes. It’s still green.
A mistflower in a pot is flowering! None of the ones in the ground are flowering yet.
The showy milkweed that died back earlier this summer is alive!!! Yay desert perennials.
The Mexican sage from Judy has started to bloom!
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09/04/2022 seeds!!!

The two leaf senna had at least two seed pods! The second plant doesn’t have any buds but is growing new leaves.
This sprouted after another surprise rain this morning and I don’t know what it is.
Cowpen daisies I bought are sprouting!
The scurf pea (Psoralea/Pediomelium latestipulata) from Mom has its first adult leaf!
Little seedlings sprouting. Could be what I planted (Scarlet globemallow), could be volunteers.
More cowpen daisies in a pot where I put them and some Rosa sp from Mom from Fannin Co TX.
Tiny seedlings in the soil from Jeanne that contains the annual Sedum nutallii!
Little seedlings sprouting. Again, could be what I planted, could be volunteers. This hope is Verbena halei.