With a switch to more seasonable weather, fall is starting to take hold. While drought and heat stress have some of our maples turning color already, the big show this time of year is the wildflowers in our meadows. Goldenrod, Queen Anne's lace and asters are blooming. These fall wildflowers are an essential food source for butterflies and insects. While you certainly can plant a wildflower meadow and enjoy the beauty of the annual and perennial flowers, managing your existing meadow is also important.
Butterflies and pollinators are tuned into wildflowers that have grown in our meadows for generations. The key is to manage your planted or natural wildflower meadow properly. This time of year I see home owners brush hogging or mowing their meadows to clean them up for fall. Brush hogging is important because it kills trees and other woody plants that invariably want to turn every Vermont meadow into a forest. It suspends this natural evolution at a stage where herbaceous wildflowers can thrive. But timing is important, too. Waiting until after most of the fall wildflowers have passed their flowering peak allows the native bees and butterflies a chance to feed late into the season and disperses the wildflower seeds around the meadow.
We can edit the wildflower meadows as well by eliminating invasives. Using the Vermont Invasive Species List as a guide, dig out shrubs such as buckthorn and herbaceous invasives such as purple loosestrife. Invasive vines, such as black swallow wort, are particularly a problem for Monarch butterflies. Monarch butterflies lay eggs on this milkweed family vine. But the swallow wort leaves are toxic to the Monarch butterfly larvae when eaten.
A meadow filled with herbaceous flowers, grasses and native shrubs for birds can be a beautiful thing and essential for our winged friends.
Now for this week's tip: sprinkle seeds of cover crops such as winter rye and hairy vetch as soon as you start pulling spent vegetables from this year's garden. Prepare the seed bed as you would any crop.
