The Garden Buzz

Happy National Pollinator Week!

Celebrate National Pollinator Week by planting trees, shrubs, flowers, herbs and fruits that attract and support these vital forms of wildlife. It's what puts the buzz in The Garden Buzz!

Check with your local extension office for lists of pollinator-friendly plants for your region, it's easy.

I've posted this article link below recently, however I'll repeat the link since it provides an emphasis on pollinators and their behaviors, along with plant information.

http://www.herbcompanion.com/gardening/attract-pollinators-to-your-garden.aspx

 

 

 

Buzzing for the Bees

It's not called The Garden Buzz for nothing! The Garden Buzz is always on alert for big and breaking news about bees; literally the buzz about bees. You know those adorable little guys that pollinate every third bite of food that goes into your mouth!

 

That's right. Without bees, no strawberry shortcake. Without bees, no coconut cream pie. Without bees, no blueberry cobbler. You get my drift.

Bees are busy despite facing threats from parasitic diseases, habitat loss and climate disturbance, but so are humans, making concerted efforts to help them out. Please make yourself aware of these worthy endeavors.

 

Check out Pollinator LIVE, a new distance learning adventure brought to you by the USDA Forest Service and their partners. A great tool for classrooms, and gardeners featuring programs about honeybees, native bees and gardening streaming live on selected dates and later archived for your viewing pleasure.

The Great Sunflower Project continues. Citizen scientists and curious gardeners (aren't we all) are encouraged to join. Their website is a wealth of bee knowledge and inspiration. They send the sunflower seeds, you grow them, then count and report the number of bees that pollinate the big beautiful flowers. I'll be giving away some of their 2011 calendars just before the holidays ( I was late last year), keep a lookout!

Finally, read this article about University of Minnesota professor Marla Spivak, who just won the MacArthur "Genius Grant" for her ground-breaking approach to bee breeding hoping to fight off parasitic mites that threaten this hugely important part of our existence. 

Know of a noteworthy or deserving bee story or project? I'd love to hear from you, or just tell me about the bees in your garden, what have you noticed lately?  BBBBBBBBBZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ!

 

 

Designing for Beneficial Insects: Buggy Chic

Isn't this homemade "bug box" cute? Wouldn't it make for an attractive vignette near a potting shed or work table in the garden? Yes, and yes, but first the serious business of biodiversity...

The International Year of Biodiversity is more than half over. I know! Gosh, I didn't even put up any lights. All joking aside, it's not to late to celebrate or support a cause that's near and dear to everyone of us, even if many people don't realize it.

Biodiversity is the rich web of life that makes our existence possible. Here's a quick summary of the "goods and services" rendered to us by ecosystems all over the planet.

• Food, fuel and fiber
• Shelter and building materials
• Purification of air and water
• Detoxification and decomposition of wastes
• Stabilization and moderation of climate
• Moderation of floods, drought and wind
• Generation and renewal of soil fertility
• Pollination of plants, many of them crops
• Control of pests and disease
• Maintenance of genetic resources for crop varieties and medicine
• Cultural and aesthetic quality

Yet we are losing that diversity at greater rates than ever, much of the cause, man-made. Overwhelming, I know. But there is potential in single individuals joining together for the great good. Close to home, creating habitat corridors is a simple way to help nature along.

Gardeners are more in tune with these issues already. One way is to encourage and support beneficial insects. These "good bugs" prey on "bad bugs" eliminating the need for pesticide and increasing crop yields. They in turn attract more birds and frogs and other animals that make up the vast food chain. Examples of good bugs are to name just a few; bees, ladybugs, parasitic wasps and lacewings.

Faced with more and more vast manicured landscapes and tidy yards, these insects find it hard to find suitable habitat to survive.

Constructing habitat where these insects can overwinter and reproduce is as simple as leaving brush or woodpiles around. However some of us, (and our neighbors) would like something a little more deliberate and well-designed. This "insect tower" features holes, hollow tubes and cavities where nesting can occur. With a little woodworking ability or a handy husband, using recycled lumber and scraps, this looks plenty doable. Art and habitat all in one.

Thanks to my favorite newspaper, The Times and The Sunday Times, of London for the photos!

The Dew Before the Frost

Yesterday I awoke to a John Milton poem; the morning, "glist'ring with dew, fragrant the fertile earth, After soft showers..." I grabbed my camera and headed outside, while Henry, my doodle dog whined inside at being left out of the excitement.

This was no ordinary dew, it was to paraphrase another poet, a world molded of fire and dew. The lower autumn sun illuminated the hedge while streaming through the woods, iconic rays beaming like a bad Easter card.

Dew on arborvitae hedge The Garden Buzz

Strange that we now build rain gardens to filter water back into our concrete-covered earth. (It reminds me of the email forwarded among gardeners that tells of God being confused and amused by the mortals raking up the fallen leaves, and then in turn, buying and heaving bags of mulch to dress their gardens.) 

During ancient times in England they built dew ponds on the highlands, collecting the precious moisture to water their cattle. Shallow saucers were dug, then lined with straw, clay, chalk and soot, creating an impervious and insulated basin that once filled, according to legend, never ran dry

I had heard of the dew ponds before and doubted their existence or at least, efficiency. Really, dew drops? But brush against that sparkling evergreen and feel your pajamas sag with the heaviness of the liquid. Apparently it is possible to harvest atmospheric humidity from rivers in the sky, just google air wells and fog fences.

Dew on Picea (Tollymore)    The Garden Buzz   

Henry meanwhile was pillaging the house; chewing up keys, discarded DQ cups and what's left of his bed. When he bounded outside he pushed his snout to the lawn and like a Hoover, vaccuumed the dew from the grass. I bet it tasted sweet.

Be a Part of the Miraculous Monarch Migration

Monarch butterfly numbers are alarmingly low in my garden and in others across the country. Lots of factors such as weather and habitat loss are to blame. As days shorten and temperatures drop, the Monarch butterfly prepares for the arduous journey south. Many obstacles come between them and their destinations in California and Mexico. Planting their larval host plant, milkweed (asclepias tuberosa, acslepias incarnata, etc) in your garden is the best thing you can do to help these beautiful creatures.  Right now many nurseries have milkweed and other native varieties on sale at great prices. Next summer the Monarch will eat and lay her eggs on the milkweed you plant now. Consider planting at least 10 plants and you can register your garden as a Monarch Waystation through the University of Kansas-based program, Monarch Watch. Learn more about Monarch Butterflies through www.monarchwatch.org

 

 The last generation of the season is physiologically different from  previous ones, and do not reproduce, but return to the wintering grounds to complete the life cycle.

Home is where the habitat is...

Since the automobile was invented there have always been boys bent over the hood, tweeking and tinkering. At the same time there have always been girls sitting in rusty lawn chairs watching with dewy-eyed adoration, just to be in close proximity. And before I am accused of sexism, I am sure that nowadays this situation is done in reverse.

When these boys grow up, some of them keep their cars in something called a motorplex; a series of upscale garages where they store their toys and maintain their "man-caves". Now, the now-wives visit and murmur encouragement and summon up enthusiasm for the collections of cars.

When I visit the motorplex, my favorite thing is to walk through the area that hasn't been developed yet, and gaze at the geese and other waterfowl down the hill in the pond. From a distance it seems a wasteland, a wild and scrubby, weedy field circled by the beginnings of a road and a few utility tie-ins poking from the ground.

As my dog and I ambled along, the field erupted with finches and waxwings that had been feasting upon browning thistles. Clover and Culver's root, ironweed and goldenrod, bustled with bees and buzzing insects. White butterflies fluttered haltingly as they do.  And I realized that this hardscrabble lot was habitat; a place where flora and fauna make do, adapt.

It would be gone by next year. How many seeds and tiny eggs would be lost under the concrete? What would the birds and bugs do, but look further afield. Not to single out the motorplex, this happens hundreds of times every day. But habitat isn't something over here, or way over there. Habitat is everywhere, right here.

I gathered some seeds from a purple legumy-like plant to scatter somewhere else, someplace safe. The case for planting native plants in our backyards, our front yards, our ditches; suddenly a lot more real.

Welcome to The Garden Buzz!

Not another gardening blog! For centuries mother have intoned to their children, "Just because everyone's doing it is no reason for you to do it.  Would you jump off a cliff....?" Blah, blah, blog. So many blogs, so much blather. Once you get past the obvious onomatopoeia, you just have to jump off that proverbial cliff and hope you don't embarrass yourself.

Then the next question is when to start said gardening blog. It would seem natural to begin with the burgeoning buds of May, when tender shoots of green, but more likely pale and pink, emerge from the sodden ground. Others would argue that the gardening year commences earlier when catalogs fill the mailbox, as gardeners sip steaming cups while contemplating the year yet to come. Maybe it is mid-June when the garden looks its best and a satisfied smugness seems appropriate.

I propose to start in the weed-weary days of late August, when you harbor secret guilt pangs for wishing it was all done. Yes, you are tired of gardening by now. However it is easy to lament that the lush landscape peaks then falls to frost too soon. Where did summer go?

It is precisely this time of year that we as gardeners survey our successes and re-evaluate our less than leafy outcomes. We congratulate ourselves on winning color combinations, make note to move a plant to more sun, perhaps moister soil, and dream of new landscape designs. Good gardeners are already thinking "Next year..." So just maybe the gardening year starts now.