The Great Bluebonnet Project

[jinman]

Do you think Bluebonnets would grow in Alabama?

Norris: I do think you can grow bluebonnets in Alabama, but I suspect it will take some real soil modification to have a successful crop. Bluebonnets like extremely high PH basic soils. Those soils are often also nitrogen depleted and that's why the addition of rhizobium bacteria is very helpful. If you can raise the PH of your soil to around 7 and add a little nitrogen fertilizer, you may be able to grow a few bluebonnets. Just don't expect them to spread on their own to surrounding acid soils. They won't do it. You can also improve your germination yield by scarifying the seeds. You can scarify them by roughing them between two pieces of course sandpaper. That will help more of the seeds germinate the first year. The reason I didn't do that, is I'm talking about a lot of seeds and I don't have anything to do the scarification with. I guess if I shelled out the seeds, I could put them in my cement mixer with a bit of sand and crushed rock. I could run the mixer for a couple of hours and that should have the seeds scarified pretty well. I guess the trick would be to find the point where they were scarified, but not pulverized.

Here's a link to the Ladybird Johnson Wildflower Center's expert on plants.

Mr. Smarty Plants

Bird: I think the seeds they sow on the roads have been innoculated and scarified. They are also best on the sides of hills where there is very little topsoil and most likely the PH is high. Haven't you noticed how they seem to grow best on the sides of slopes where they cut the highway through hillsides or put in an overpass? There's no telling how many billions of seeds they plant. Once strarted though, it's easy for them to spread when they mow the ROWs. I always think of bluebonnets growing well in the same environment as grassburrs. Bluebonnets are the spring crop and grassburrs are the summer and fall crop.

Eddie, Ron, two_bit_score, jimmyj and theboman: Thanks for the encouragement and nice words. I hope I don't disappoint you next spring and have lots of bluebonnet pictures.

Robs: We have bluebells here, but they are called Texas Bluebells. They grow along waterlines and around other moist areas along drainage swales. I also have lots of them, but they aren't as showy as the bluebonnets. Here is a link to a bunch of pictures: Texas Bluebells

ronjhall: The bluebonnets are just beyond where you put your motorhome. When I spread the bluebonnet seeds after they dry, I'll spread them to a point just on the border of where you park. If you come next year, you may get to park in the middle of bluebonnets. Either the ground will be blue or I will be.

 

[Bird]

Jim, of course you're right about the locations where I see most of the bluebonnets. I just never thought about that.

 

[JohnDeere4300]

Nice pictures!!!

I dug these in the mountains and they are called "four o-clock"....They bloom from spring to fall....BUT, the flower only opens up from 4:00am to 4:00pm and then closes back up until the next morning.

I have several of these on my property, and the place in the mountain that i got these was covering about 1-1/2 acres....and these are real hardy.

 

[The Dougster]

I'm no authority on bluebonnets but I seem to remember reading that mowing time is crucial to the production of bluebonnets... if'n I was curious enough, I'd stop and visit with the local office for TxDOT...

 

[aggiehortguy91]

Sounds like you know a thing or two about growing bluebonnets! If you don't mind, I'll add a few points.

First, bluebonnets are technically biennials. That means that they germinate in the fall, overwinter in a relatively dormant state, grow and flower the next spring, then die. The seeds can take 1 to 7 years (or longer!) to germinate because of their extremely hard seed coat. Seed is usually scarified when being prepared for sale. This weakens the seed coat so that water can get in and allow germination to begin.

I have grown bluebonnets in East TX, Indiana, and Florida. The seed that I have collect has been viable, but the plants do not propagate on their own. I have always had to replant the next season. If planting bluebonnets outside of their native region, plant in the spring rather than the fall.

An easy way to scarify the seed in your wild planting is to brush hog after the seed ripens but before it falls to the ground. Your ag extension agent would probably have better information for this since I've never actually done this and it has been a really long time since I've had to advise people on doing this. I'm sure the good folks at Ladybird's place would be able to help as well.

BTW, the Texas Bluebells that you have on your property are where the bluebells that the garden centers sell come from. This is the history as I understand it. Some Texas growers tried to raise bluebells commercially, but the germination rate was terrible. After quite a bit of trying, a Japanese breeder was able to develop a variety that had better germination and more showy flowers. The new seed was introduced back to the American market and now you can buy bluebells all over the country as bedding plants. Also, and more importantly, you can now buy Bluebell Ice Cream down here in S. FL!!!

Congratulations on your bluebonnet project. It looks great. Hopefully your transplanting experiment will go well for you. Please keep us posted.

 

[wushaw]

I'm no authority on bluebonnets but I seem to remember reading that mowing time is crucial to the production of bluebonnets... if'n I was curious enough, I'd stop and visit with the local office for TxDOT...

It's the 2nd week of June or later, or ya just look at em to make sure they have seeded out before ya mow, I just cringe when they get mowed along side the road before the 2nd week just because they can take so long to get nice and thick.
I wait till July first before mowing my Bluebonnets just to be on the safe side.

November is when you will first see Bluebonnet plants up just hugging the ground flat till Febuary then they start shooting up. A wet fall is good for Bluebonnets.

I have been watching my Bluebonnets for 7 years on how they work and I leave em be as much as possible.

 

[jinman]

Nice pictures!!!

I dug these in the mountains and they are called "four o-clock"....They bloom from spring to fall....BUT, the flower only opens up from 4:00am to 4:00pm and then closes back up until the next morning.

Those flowers don't have many of the characteristics of 4 o'clocks I'm familiar with, but I've learned that many things are called by the same informal or common name. It just depends on where you are. They remind me a lot of the erect dayflower we have, but the dayflower only has two blue petals on the bloom and its common name is widow's tears.

 

[jinman]

BTW, the Texas Bluebells that you have on your property are where the bluebells that the garden centers sell come from. This is the history as I understand it. Some Texas growers tried to raise bluebells commercially, but the germination rate was terrible. After quite a bit of trying, a Japanese breeder was able to develop a variety that had better germination and more showy flowers. The new seed was introduced back to the American market and now you can buy bluebells all over the country as bedding plants. Also, and more importantly, you can now buy Bluebell Ice Cream down here in S. FL!!!

Congratulations on your bluebonnet project. It looks great. Hopefully your transplanting experiment will go well for you. Please keep us posted.

Thanks aggiehortguy91. I had heard the Japanese had been able to cultivate Texas bluebells and was selling them back in the U.S. Ours just seem to come up every year in the same general locations just like the foxglove in early spring. I've also been amused to see purple coneflowers (echinacea), indian blanket (gaillardia), and brown-eyed susans (rudbeckia) at many box store garden centers. Heck! I have thousands of those plants every year.

Thanks for your encouragement on this project. I'll be thrilled if along about October or November I see the little leaf florets growing close to the ground as usual. My whole idea with this project is to transplant the seeds with their native soil and at the same time of the year that mother nature plants them. I'm lucky that where I want to plant them is similar soil and so close to where I have so many plants.

 

[JohnDeere4300]

Those flowers don't have many of the characteristics of 4 o'clocks I'm familiar with, but I've learned that many things are called by the same informal or common name. It just depends on where you are. They remind me a lot of the erect dayflower we have, but the dayflower only has two blue petals on the bloom and its common name is widow's tears.

Jim,

I had a young man call them "bluebells" and i knew they wasn't called that.....If you look at the picture and you can see other blooms that isn't out, and that's why he called them that

I have several spaced out over my property, and an old couple in their 90's came down one day to look at our garden...He saw the flowers and knew exactly where i got them, and i ask him & his wife what is the name of these....He said those are four o-clocks, because of the time that the bloom opens up.

I didn't argue will him because i didn't know the real name.....I just knew that they were an old flower, and they are beautiful when the flower opens up.

I guess it all depends on who you talk to...and what county or state you live in

*The picture that you showed of the bluebonnets are beautiful.....I love blue or purple colored flowers.....I showed my wife your picture & she really liked it.

I wished i could get a picture of the place where i got these flowers...It's about 1 1/2 acres and really nice to look at, and it takes me over an hour to get to the place in the mountains on an ATV.....I just don't know how they got started there, and that's the only place that i have ever seen them.....If i went back there right now, the weeds would be high...AND I would have to fight with the snakes, copperheads & rattlesnakes.....I might could leave early one morning, and i will try to go one day & get a picture.

 

[jinman]

Time for an update. . . .

I contacted the Ladybird Johnson Wildflower Center about my project and they want me to document how I do it and what the results are over the next two or three years. That's a lot of additional work, but what the heck? I have plenty of retirement time to do it.

This last week we got 1/4" of rain and the temperature dropped by over 10 degrees to the 90s. That meant there is very little dust, but not enough moisture to cause it to be muddy. I thought that would be perfect conditions to build a drag and spread out the bluebonnet seeds even more than I was able to do by backdragging with the FEL. As much as I know this is supposed to be a tractor project, I just could not see why this wasn't a perfect job to do with our Kawasaki Mule.

I had an old 10' chainlink fence gate on my junkpile, so I decided to make a drag out of it. I turned it upside down so the chanlink was on the bottom and then weighted it with rocks and a section of railroad rail I had laying around. I tied the rail on with wire, but didn't secure the rocks at all. It turns out that the gate rail is just high enough to keep the rocks from falling off. What could be simpler? I hooked on a chain and looped it around my trailer ball on the Mule. Since our Mule is 4wd, it also has a low range just for jobs like this. Using 4wd and low range worked perfectly to pull the drag in all conditions. The pictures below show the drag and my patches after dragging. I dragged in one direction and then went back and cross-dragged perpendicular to my original drag. All the seed clumps have now been spread completely and evenly over the entire 1-acre area.