Posted on January 22, 2023January 22, 202301/16/2023 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!