But, as I was in there while this plant was in bloom initially, I knew that it was a gem I had forgotten. Also, I knew that this plant had properties I had not realized until I started on this new journey of learning about Permaculture. This is the blue False Indigo, Baptisia australis,a native plant usually found in woods and thickets.
I had gotten the seeds years ago and had one plant develop and then forgot all about it. It produces a lovely blue flower spike, and numerous seeds.
It is in the Pea family, and as such provides a great service to surrounding plants. It produces nitrogen in the soil. So this makes it a major player in the Permaculture process. Also, in walking around the edge of the woods, I found another one of these plants struggling to survive mixed in with the thicket at the edge of the woods by the road. Need to get that one moved, too.
So I cleared out the area with the hydrangea in preparation to move it. It will be going into the Spruce bed to supply nitrogen to all the vegetables I will be growing there from now on.
3 comments:
I've got to get some of this for my garden. :) I bet www.easywildflowers.com has seeds. . . I have been resisting buying more plants, but I may have to place an order for seeds to try winter-sowing.
Cheers!
I have some seeds I collected from this plant when I rediscovered it. I am getting ready to do my fall seed planting. Got plant markers ready for all. Used a new technique, cutting up the slats of mini blinds and marking top and bottom, so the bottom part, also with the plant name will go under the soil line to be available for reference next year!! A freecycler gave me the method from a gardening magazine she reads!
Years ago I grew a lot of perennials from seed. There were just so many varieties that I wanted to try and I could not afford to buy the plants. I found great success with several species. And also I started to not mulch my gardens until all my seedlings had come up so that I could keep those of the perennials for more stock. THis past season, because of such a great interest in my seeds, I decided to let all my plants go to seed and see how that went. Well, I am now overrun with seeds!! But that is a good thing as I will now get many of them into the new seed bed to have plants available next year to share with others. Also I have been collecting seeds from wild edibles and will start several new varieties to see how well we like them! as most of my plants have reseeded themselves with no help from me, I will be doing minimal preparation for them, just create a little furrow, put in some peat, the seeds, cover with peat and then mulch between the rows, with newspaper or cotton fabric. At this time of year there is not much else you need to do other than to check to make sure they don't get dried out.
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