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Index : Flowers - Perennials
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- 27. Seeding The Desert With Flowers - Top
- One of the great things about desert wildflowers, besides of course their beauty, are their descriptive names. You don’t have to see a picture to visualize colorful plants like: desert marigold, Arizona blue eyes, scarlet flax, and Mexican hat. Or how about Indian paintbrush, yellow blanket, desert bluebells, and wild poinsettia.
All these and many more can grace your landscape and provide perpetual color to bare expanses of desert soil and decomposed granite. You have many varieties to choose from. In fact, some 80 varieties are available in seed and can be grown in the Tucson area.
Now is a great time to plant wildflower seed. Local garden centers and nurseries have a good selection of seed for fall planting. You can buy seeds in pre-packaged mixes or select from packets of individual wildflower varieties. The smallest seed packets will cover small areas of only a few square feet. While one pound bags will seed a large area of approximately 2,000 square feet.
Whatever size area you can devote to wildflower planting, proper soil preparation is the key to success. If your converting granite mulched areas to wildflowers you’ll need to remove the mulch. To perpetuate themselves, wildflowers need to be able to seed out over the soil.
Prepare a seed bed by tilling up the soil to loosen it. For small areas use a garden shovel to turn the soil 8 or 10 inches deep. For larger areas, use a rototiller. Avoid over-working the soil. Lumpy soil from clods and stones provides good crevices for seeds to drop into and germinate. To get your wildflowers off to a faster start, work into the seedbed some ammonium phosphate fertilizer or similar analysis fertilizer. One pound per 100 square will be sufficient.
Many wildflower seeds are very small. To make it easier to spread them uniformly over the area to be planted, mix them with sand. Using a cyclone spreader, you can then evenly apply the sand-seed mix. Don’t count on success by just throwing on the seed and walking away. Like seed of any plants, some nurturing is required to get good germination and establishment.
After seeding, lightly rake the soil just enough to cover the seed. Next, spread some organic mulch material, such as compost or ground bark, over the area. This will help insulate the soil and keep the seeds moist between waterings.
To ensure a good stand of plants, water the seedbed thoroughly and keep it moist for about a month. With the recent warm weather, the seedbed may require daily watering until cooler temperatures prevail. When plants are 2 inches tall or when winter rains begin, water only when the soil dries and the plants begin to show signs of stress.
After the seedlings are 2 to 3 inches tall, thin out areas where overcrowding may occur. This will encourage stronger, healthier plants with extended blooming. Thinned out seedlings can be transplanted into bare spots.
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Written by John Begeman, College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, the University of Arizona 626-5161. Material originally appeared in Arizona Daily Star gardening column, on November 2, 1998
- Updated: November 2, 1998
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