SAN ANTONIO – Sunflowers, indian blanket and tickseed are just some of the native pollinating flowers that have popped up all over South Texas.
South Texas is experiencing a native bloom boom, bigger than what we’ve seen in the past three years.
“Can we say that we’ve had rain this year?” David Rodriguez, a horticulturist with Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service Bexar County. “So the abundance and wild time rainfall through late winter through the spring has really woke up a lot of these plants compared to this time last year.”
He explains that after three years of extreme drought, the recent rain has woken up some of those dormant wildflower seeds.
“Survivability,” Rodriguez said. “So these seeds can stay dormant in the soil for a long period of time when the temperatures correct, the moisture is correct and the timing is correct. They wake up.”
And the more blooms, the better. We need our native flowers for pollinators to maintain the foundation of our local ecosystems.
“It’s a part of our natural ecosystem,” Rodriguez said. “You know, you have the wildlife, the birds, because a lot of birds might come in later to eat some of the seeds as well. You know, survivability and beneficial to insects, particularly bees, the bees are very important.”
The bees are even having a baby boom, because of the bloom boom.
KSAT12′s Patty Santos spoke with local beekeepers about this, you can check out her story on KSAT.com.
The butterflies also love it.
But sunflowers and wildflowers can sometimes grow aggressively and overwhelm your gardens. So how do you keep them from getting out of hand, especially if you have strict home owner association rules?
Rodriguez said to pull the weeds to keep them out of the grow patch or by mowing parts or all of them down when they are ready.
“Like the highway department does, the highway department with the big stands of blue bonnet and other stands of other and in paint brush and Galata, they time it right when most of those seeds are just splitting and dropping, they wait a week or two,” Rodriguez said. “Then they go in there and they do the the prescribed mow in some areas.”
Rodriguez said you can tell it’s the right time to mow them back once the flower heads have dropped their petals, browned and dropped their seeds. He said mowing them back doesn’t mean they won’t come back, those flowers may sprout again for a second time in the fall and of course will bloom again in the spring.
Also don’t forget to pull weeds or grasses that are overwhelming the wildflowers you want to keep.