{"id":6974,"date":"2015-03-12T12:00:01","date_gmt":"2015-03-12T16:00:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.whatgrowsthere.com\/grow\/?p=6974"},"modified":"2014-11-19T10:49:56","modified_gmt":"2014-11-19T15:49:56","slug":"little-bluestem-beautiful-and-environmentally-correct","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/whatgrowsthere.com\/grow\/2015\/03\/12\/little-bluestem-beautiful-and-environmentally-correct\/","title":{"rendered":"Little Bluestem – Beautiful And Environmentally Correct"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Schizachyrium_scoparium<\/a>

Schizachyrium_scoparium ‘StandingOvation’ (photo courtesy of North Creek Nurseries, Landenberg, PA<\/p><\/div>\n

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Little Blustem at Brooklyn Botanical Gardens in NY in October 2014<\/p><\/div>\n

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Little Bluestem (Schizachyrium scoparium<\/i>) grows in old fields, meadows and prairies, and along roadsides across the United States and Eastern Canada (USDA hardiness zones 3-8). It forms dense clumps 2- 3 feet tall and 12 -18 inches wide. This warm season grass prefers a well-drained soil and full to part sun site.\u00a0It looks its\u00a0best in low nutrient soils;\u00a0when\u00a0fertilized or frequently irrigated, clumps tend to flop over. It grows easily from seed. It is very drought tolerant and survives over many years. A new seeding of little bluestem will be very small its first year as this native grass puts much of its\u00a0energy into growing roots first.\u2018Standing Ovation\u2019 is an outstanding vegetatively propagated cultivar introduced by North Creek Nursery in Landenberg, PA.\u00a0 It maintains a tight, upright habit throughout the entire season. Sturdy erect stems start out with a bluish cast; grass blades and stems turn\u00a0fiery shades of yellow, orange, brown, red and purple in fall and winter.<\/p>\n

Gardeners and landscapers should take advantage of its strong vertical presence of this unique cultivar. It grows 3-4 feet tall and only 6-12 inches wide. Leaf blades\u00a0tend to be\u00a0thicker than on other bluestem; disease and insect problems are rare and usually caused by poor site selection.<\/p>\n

Plant little bluestems to edge a garden path, driveway or\u00a0sunny flower border to catch textural contrasts. Little bluestem is highly deer-resistant. Several species of skipper butterfly caterpillars feed on the leaves and birds use it for cover and for nesting material.<\/p>\n

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                Little Bluestem (Schizachyrium scoparium) grows in old fields, meadows and prairies, and along roadsides across the United States and Eastern Canada (USDA hardiness zones 3-8). It forms dense clumps 2- 3 feet tall and 12 -18 inches wide. This warm season grass prefers a well-drained soil and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[444,398,749,1150,778,674,806,665,853,1183,627,688,625,843,812,1059,777,630,706,646,113,455],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/whatgrowsthere.com\/grow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6974"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/whatgrowsthere.com\/grow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/whatgrowsthere.com\/grow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whatgrowsthere.com\/grow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whatgrowsthere.com\/grow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6974"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/whatgrowsthere.com\/grow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6974\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7017,"href":"https:\/\/whatgrowsthere.com\/grow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6974\/revisions\/7017"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/whatgrowsthere.com\/grow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6974"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whatgrowsthere.com\/grow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6974"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whatgrowsthere.com\/grow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6974"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}