Pocket Prairies

| Gardening, Resource
Notes from the January 2022 Meeting of Wild Ones SoKY Chapter
Guest Speaker: Robert of Roundstone Seed
The most important thing for establishing a native plant pocket prairie or pollinator patch is to make sure all grass and unwanted weeds are dead before sowing seed or planting. Robert said this is the most important step and is the most common cause of failure and regularly takes a year to achieve.
If you are killing grass and weeds with Roundup you will have to treat the unwanted plants when they are growing, so a warm-season treatment and cool-season treatment at a minimum will be required. He said 2-3 treatments at a minimum are required. Solarization via plastic, either black or clear, will take a long time as well, probably a year.
There are many online resources for growing a prairie, pollinator garden, removing and replacing lawn with native plants, etc.