What Grows In Clay?
This is what Randy Powers asked everyone that attended his presentation at the Conference. Randy is a restoration ecologist and owner of Prairie Future Seed Company in Menomonee Falls. Randy deals in natural landscaping with prairie plants. I especially wanted to take this class as we were selling prairie plants at our plant sale and I also have some clay in my soil at home. So I found that this class was very informative for me. Randy told us about the common mistakes that people make, number one being mulching “true” meadow species in garden situations. Doing this causes damping off of plants. Number two is the “soda straw effect” as he puts it using a sand base for planting a wildflower garden. People like to plant cultivars into areas that aren’t conductive to the growing conditions of the plant (putting dry and sand prairie species into a solid clay soil). They can’t exist for very long. Plants of this type (dry and sand species) prefer well-drained soil with no moisture retention
