Would I have a chance growing Prairie Smoke?

(Geum triflorum)

I am in the right zone (5b), but I'm in the mountains of North Carolina. While we are dry this year, we are normally very wet. I do grow some other geums in the hottest, dryest sections of my gardens, but I am wondering if anyone here has tried this prairie plant in a wetter climate?

Its a neat plant but I haven't tried to grow it because I have thick clay soil.

I think it would probably by okay as long as your soil was sandy, drained quickly and the soil was not wet & moist through winter.

You know the old addage, you must attempt to grow a plant and kill it twice before you can confidently say it won't grow there...

As much as I want to give it a go, I think I'm going to pass. Yes, I know well the kill-it-twice theory (actually I thought it was kill-it-thrice? LOL!) BUT, we are just too wet here and we have a lot of snow in winter. I don't think it would stand a chance. Our soil has no sand either.

Oh, that's too bad! I bought some last year and I can't believe how much it grew! It was the first thing for me to green up and the first to "flower". I'm just starting in this yard, so next year will probably be different. When we lived in TN, I wanted to grow Chrysogonum virginianum var. virginianum 'Green-And-Gold, Goldenstar'. Our soil, if you could even call it soil, was clay and rock. Icky mucky slippery sloppy clay. I bought sand, dug (pick axed it really) a huge hole, I mean wide and deep, filled it with sand and planted it. I mulched it with pea gravel. It did great! Geum triflorum is such a neat plant, I would try it.

I admire you perservation to dig a big hole and fill it full of sand... but many native enthusiasts prefer to grow plants that will work in the in-situ soil condition, rather than trying to artificially create conditions to grow a certain type of plant that normally would not grow there....

Yep, I know joe. I'm no different. It was the only plant I did it for. All the others had to like clay. Just something about that plant that intrigued me. I got it from a native plant sale too. Actually all the plants were dug up at the arboretum. I don't have a clue where there's sand down there. Everything I read though, said to plant, if possible, in straight sand. So alrighty. Nothing else, just my one poor lonely plant.

Not everyone who plants native plants has to follow that philosophy. But I do think that is the difference between a "gardener" and a native enthusiats. Generally native enthusiasts are lazy and try to minimize as much work as possible. ;- )

Well, I used to try to follow the native plantings only philosophy, and I do indeed have mostly native plants, but I got so interested in some others over the years that I have pushed zones, etc. on many occasions. We are normally so wet here that I have added rock or gravel into planting holes with pretty good success. I remember wanting Mexican Hat so much I tried everything for several years. Even finally tossed up my hands and tried to simply grow it as an annual and even that didn't work.

I'm not following what you're saying joe. I do plant natives. Most of them are indigenous to my county, some go out to a 100 mile range. I consider myself a native enthusiast and a gardener. I can't be lazy here, there's too many weeds to pull. I also can't be lazy when it comes to my parents place. Somebody's got to rid the place of all the invasives.

I was being self deprecating... I plant natives because I am too lazy to be a gardener....

I hate messing with pesticides and fertilizers and watering ....

But it was a native joe. I just picked a hole with my trusty pick ax and filled it with sand that's all. It didn't get any more water than anything else. If it didn't like the sand and croaked, then it croaked. The only thing special I did was fill the hole with sand. No pesticides, no fertilizers. They did get water in the first year until they were established though.

I know it was native, but you had to amend the soil to get it to grow there, which is something that I would be too lazy to do... (I wasn't calling you lazy, I was calling myself a lazy, non-gardener...)

I'm not that far from you. Do you want to grow something in particular and you need a pond for instance? I've always wanted to build one. Yours would be my first. :o)

Hey thanks for the offer. I would like a pond... but I wouldn't know where to put it.

Actaully I do have a rain garden... which is altering soil conditions similar to, but opposite of the sand hole... I rented a sod cutter and removed the sod in area just below where the downspout drains. The removed sod was piled up on the low end similar to a mini-berm. So the downspout rain water floods this area and I grow plants that like moist soil... like asclepias incanarta, lobelia cardinalis, echinacea angustifolia, cephalanthus occidentalis.

My soil is so icky clay I probably could grow those plants without having the rain garden.

But you know what I do want built.... I have about an 3/4 acre woodland ravine. I would love to build a stairway that would make it easier to access the bottom of the ravine, where I could build a little dam and create a pond down there.

My short term plan is to clean out a bunch of the sugar maples and open up the canopy there. I have a few mayapples and trilliums that naturally occur in this area. I am confident that if I open up the overgrown canopy - alot more natives would grow there without seeding it.

I used to travel to Princeton frequently for work. How does your tap water taste? Has Princeton built their new water tower and treatment plant yet?

Joe, I forgot to click on watch this thread. Building a stairway would be cool. I have a friend who works for a nursery down in TN. He does a lot of landscaping on the side. He was able to build a walkway, a staircase and a pond with left over material from jobs at his house.

Tap water tastes good. I know they built a new water tower at the North end of town in the new tech park, but I haven't heard anything about a new tower for in town or a treatment plant. Which in no way means it didn't or isn't going to happen....it shows how much attention I pay. It's not gardening, see? The current water tower is a block away from me. Same one that's been there for as long as I can remember. Hmmm.......

I've done alot of work at the water treatment plant in Princeton. I know Mike Scott pretty well, although I haven't talked to him in a long time.

I just saw him the other day. Next time I see him, I'll tell him joepyeweed says hello! :o) I need to start paying more attention to the paper I would guess. I was laying down newspapers to put mulch on top of today, and I had to stop a few times because something in the Peoria Journal Star (got those from my parents) caught my attention.

Mike would have no idea who joepyeweed is, but if you tell him that you chat with his "favorite engineer" - that will let him know who I am...

I will do that! It's too bad Mike doesn't know Joe Pye Weed. Did you know they planted orange poppies out by the new "Flags of Freedom"? Would have looked so much better with some Joe Pye Weed in there! The orange poppies are part of our beautification project. See? Gardening. I know that stuff. I also want to ask him what's up with the weed n feeding done around the tower and tanks across the street. Not chemlawn, but it still has those little signs telling you not to walk on the grass.

Terry