Planters
Punchlines
Men’s Garden Club of Wethersfield
March 2013
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Next
Meeting
Monday
March 26, 7:00 pm @ The
Pitkin Community Center
Kathy Bagley,
Director of Wethersfield Parks & Recreation Dept., will discuss the plans
for improvements to the Frank Weston Rose Garden.
Compostable Matter
By Jim Meehan
Remember the “Seven Deadly Sins”?
No, they are not the latest Punk
Rock Band. Or the newest Reality TV
program. According to Wikipedia “The seven deadly sins, also known as the
capital vices or cardinal sins, is a classification of objectionable vices
(part of Christian ethics) that have been used since early Christian times to
educate and instruct Christians concerning fallen humanity's tendency to sin.
The currently recognized version of the sins are usually given as wrath, greed,
sloth, pride, lust, envy, and gluttony.”
Now it may seem to some of us that
no one pays any attention to these moral bedrocks any more. But that need not be. For example, I think each of these anti-virtues
can have a place in helping us to more accurately describe the creatures of the
world – some of which we come into contact with on a daily basis. In fact it is already happening.
We all know that a band of lions is
referred to as a “pride” – a group name, which I believe perfectly conveys the
consciousness of their own dignity with which these ferocious animals appear to
conduct themselves.
Which of course leads me to believe
that other members of the animal kingdom also deserve more appropriate
collective nouns to more accurately portray the way they appear to the rest of
us unclassifiable folks.
Thus I propose the following:
A “Lust” of Sparrows (Just watch
these hot-to-trot little finches hot-trotting among the bushes in between
filching seeds from your feeders – or if you are more academically inclined
read about the “Most Promiscuous Birds in the world” in this very newsletter.)
A “Gluttony” of Woodchucks (You may
already know that a Wolverine is also named a “Glutton”. Really!
But we don’t have any of those pointy-toothed, sharp-clawed midwestern
critters in our neck of the woods.
However we do have their fat, effete eastern relative – the Groundhog –
and once they get into your garden they do a pretty good impersonation of a
Glutton.)
A “Greed” of Squirrels (Look out your
window at that pudgy, gray furry tree-rat gnawing through your sunflower seed
feeder. Need I say more?)
A “Wrath” of Crows. (It’s sunrise. You are trying desperately for that extra few
minutes of quiet rest. CAW! CAW! CAW!
You give up and get up. After
breakfast you walk out to your car scattering the horde of large black birds
that are storm-trooping across your front lawn pillaging food. They fly up to the surrounding trees. CAW1 CAW! CAW! You get the idea.)
And finally. The other morning while on the elliptical
machine at our health club I was watching the Today show. One of the wildlife experts who frequent such
programs had brought along one of those slow-moving tropical American mammals
that hang upside down from the branches of trees using its long limbs and
hooked claw. The furry creature was
lounging on its back across the lap of one of the comely co-hosts of the
program. She was rubbing its stomach and
petting its head.
Which brings me to the final two
vices - An “Envy” of “Sloths.”
Meet the Garden Good Guys: Snakes, Toads, Spiders, and Bats
http://www.vegetablegardener.com by Des Kennedy
With all the talk of wildlife
gardening nowadays, most of the attention goes to birds, butterflies, and
beneficial insects. But an equally compelling case can be made for enticing
reptiles, amphibians, arachnids, and bats into the garden.
While the snake, the toad, the
spider, and the bat can improve almost any garden, each is burdened with an
unsavory reputation. Secretive and reclusive in habit, all are, or have been,
objects of human fear and loathing, despised as dirty and dangerous. All four
were once reviled as the familiars of witches, assisting evil crones in their
sinister business. Small wonder that butterflies and hummingbirds rate higher
on the wildlife gardening agenda.
But once we emerge from the dark
shadow of superstition, we see the true value of these four creatures. All are
superb pest suppressants. Yet as urbanization advances across the landscape,
some of them are threatened. Increasingly, they are creatures in need of
sanctuary. Furthermore, I’ve come to believe that the more elements of a local
ecosystem a garden contains, the more it becomes a healthy and desirable place.
We may not want to throw the gates open to thieving raccoons or ravenous deer,
but for the most part, these four ugly pugs will do no harm and an immense
amount of good.
Snakes on slug patrol:
Slug patrol is the primary duty of
snakes at our place, slugs being a principal garden pest in the Pacific
Northwest. Occasionally I’ll come upon a garter snake with a banana slug
bulging from its mouth. I tiptoe away, gratified. The northern brown snake is
reputed to be good for slug control, too. In the southern and central states,
various species of green snake feed upon hornworms, crickets, and grasshoppers.
The mole snake hunts mice and moles in their tunnels. The deep South and
Southwest are richest in snake species, and while most of us would just as soon
do without rattlesnakes, copperheads, and water moccasins, I wouldn’t mind
having a few big rat snakes or corn snakes around to keep the rodents in check.
Shy and retiring creatures, most
snakes don’t fare well where humans congregate. Dogs and cats are a menace to
snakes, and so are numskull gardeners; I once heard one bragging about how he’d
just sliced a garter snake in two with his spade. Lawn mowers are another
menace, especially for grass-dwelling snakes like the garters.
Shelter is the prime requisite for
a snake-friendly garden. Snakes need lots of crannies into which they can
quickly retreat. Rock piles and dry stone walls with crevices are invaluable,
as are undisturbed banks, ditches, and other wild areas. Our garter snakes
overwinter in subterranean dens called hibernacula. Their favorite location is
deep under big tree stumps, and a would-be wildlife gardener thinks very
carefully before removing any large tree stump from the garden, so many are its
advantages. Rock piles can also make good hibernacula.
Once active, snakes need to raise
their body temperature by basking, for which they require safe and sunny
exposed spots with shelter close by. Large flat rocks with southern exposure
are ideal.
Toads are cutworm eaters:
Garters and other snakes prey on
toads and frogs, which is problematic because toads especially are
breathtakingly good pest predators. In one night, a toad may gobble up as many
as 100 army worms or cutworms, snails or slugs, tent caterpillars or sow bugs.
“All 18 species of toads found in the United States have feeding habits that
are of value to the gardener or agriculturist,” writes John V. Dennis in The
Wildlife Gardener. To my mind, anything that eats sow bugs should be loved
without restraint, but, unhappily, we have no native toad on the little island
where I live.
Like the snake,
the toad needs shelter if it is to survive, for it’s hunted by skunks, snakes,
and predatory birds. Dogs and cats are less of a problem, as they quickly learn
to leave a toad alone after a taste of it. Daytime shelter is essential, and
toads will squat in a cool spot under old boards or rocks. You can make a
classier toad hole using a concrete drain pipe set at an angle into a rockery
or beneath a dry stone wall leading into an underground cavity with soft sand
at the bottom. A toad hole must be situated so the toad can emerge into a
sheltered area. As with snakes, swaths of uncut grass or other undisturbed
patches are required.
Water is the other toad requisite,
because the creature drinks by sitting in water and absorbing moisture through
its skin. An amphibian pool is easy to install, and my experience has been that
as soon as you introduce a water feature into your yard wonderful things begin
to happen. The pool should be located in a secluded site in semi-shade and
within easy reach of a hose so the water level can be kept constant. Something
about 4 feet long, 3 feet wide, and 8 inches deep is appropriate, with one side
sloping gently to the edge. (Swimming pools and sunken bath tubs can be deadly,
because toads cannot climb out their vertical sides.) A pool can be lined with
either cement or a heavy pool liner. Concrete needs to be cured for several
months before it is safe for amphibians.
A few inches of soil are spread on
the bottom, then covered with fine gravel. Several larger rocks and a small log
or two help, as does some aquatic vegetation, along with grasses or other
cover-providing plants around the edges. Fishing herons and raccoons can be
kept out with a poultry wire screen stretched over the pool and fastened to a
wooden frame. In the best of all possible worlds, toads will breed in the pool,
and as a single female can lay many thousands of eggs, a healthy toad
population should ensue.
Mulch as a home for hunting spiders
Unlike snakes and toads, spiders
don’t need much encouragement to live in the garden—other than keeping the
pesticide sprayer in the shed. And what marvelous garden creatures they are! I
vividly remember the day one of our tree peonies bloomed for the first time, a
single huge blossom of creamy white petals flushed with a hint of pink
streaking. Looking into the heart of the enormous flower, I discovered a large
spider living there; her bulging cream-colored abdomen bore a faint pink stripe
down either side, a brilliant duplication of her flowery house. She had a
well-stocked pantry of mummified bees, wasps, and flies tucked among the golden
anthers. Later I wondered what would become of her when the petals of her
gorgeous dwelling fell away; then somebody told me this species of spider takes
up summer residence in the Shasta daisies.
I suspect it was a crab spider,
noted for its ability to change its coloring to mimic the blossoms within which
it lurks. A number of spiders have this chameleon quality for blending into
different backgrounds. These are primarily hunting spiders, typified by
muscular tarantulas and wolf spiders, that catch their prey by either stalking
it or by lying in ambush and suddenly rushing out upon it. They comprise about
40 percent of all spider species, the web spinners about 60 percent.
I stumbled inadvertently upon one
very good way to encourage hunting spiders in the vegetable garden through our
use of a thick mulch of grass clippings. We grow all our vegetables in raised beds
mulched with grass. The primary purpose of the mulch is weed suppression and
soil moisture retention, but I began noticing in summertime that wherever the
mulch lay thick, it was alive with small black hunting spiders, whereas any
bare earth nearby would have none. The mulch, in fact, is recreating the
hunting and hiding opportunities spiders would naturally find in a meadow.
This is just the sort of thing
we’re after, ensuring that spiders are among the dominant predators in our
garden. One census taken in an English meadow in late summer found that each
hectare contained about 5 million spiders. In such concentrations, spiders
consume many times the number of insects eaten by birds. I’m not certain
precisely that insects they’re eating in our vegetable patch, but I’m hopeful
that at least some pestilential carrot rust flies, root maggots, and cutworms
are being pounced upon by vicious hunting spiders.
The spiders that spin webs to trap
their prey are equally adept at insect control. Their webs—space webs, sheet
webs, orb webs, cobwebs, or funnel webs—form structures of great beauty that
enhance the texture of a well-formed garden. And never more so than in autumn,
when tiny beads of dew are strung along the silken strands, creating tapestries
as gorgeous as anything the garden has to offer. Last spring, I came upon a
little hummingbird nest balanced on the twig of a cedar tree with three tiny
dark nestlings inside, each scarcely larger than a house fly. I was intrigued
to discover that the nest was knitted together and lashed to its supporting
twig with lengths of spider web. What more reason could there be for having
multiple spinners of silk in the yard?
Bats with a high insect-eating metabolism:
Another, less poetic, wildlife
interaction we endured last spring was a house invasion by brown bats that had
taken up residence in a seldom-used chimney. Come evening, they’d work their
way down the chimney and through a tiny gap in the Franklin stove into our
living room, then spend the better part of the evening swooping around inside the darkened house and declining to
exit through the doors and windows we’d throw wide open for that purpose.
This is the sort of behavior that
gives bats a bad name, conjuring fears of their getting snared in your hair, of
rabid biting and vampire blood-sucking. And there’s no excuse for it at our
place because we have plenty of wildlife trees—huge snags of old-growth Douglas
fir in whose cavities bats are naturally at home. But for some reason, they
prefer our house.
Mostly we see little brown bats, a
species found as far north as Alaska and clear across the continent. This
little bat is frequently seen in urban areas, where it will roost in buildings
and hunt flying insects conveniently gathered under street lights. Using echolocation
to pinpoint their prey, and employing spectacular aerobatics, bats are
extraordinarily efficient hunters. To feed their high metabolism, insect-eating
bats consume about half their body weight in insects every night. A little
brown bat can catch and consume 600 insects an hour. Prey species include
midges, may flies, caddis flies, and mosquitoes, as well as many moths, some of
which are garden or forest pests.
Bat houses are a good way to
accommodate bats without having to share your living room with them. Long
popular in Britain, bat houses have been gaining favor in North America lately.
These are bottomless rectangular boxes with dividers made of untreated,
rough-sided wood spaced 1-1⁄4 to 2-1⁄2 inches apart to accommodate bats of
varying sizes. A bat house is ideally located 12 to 15 feet above ground, out
of the reach of predators, facing southeast, and close to a permanent source of
fresh water.
Some people like to encourage
hunting bats by leaving a light on at night to which flying insects are
attracted. Again, the light should be 12 to 15 feet above ground so that cats
or raccoons can’t use it as a place to catch bats. therwise, bat populations
can be encouraged through citizen action to preserve ponds and marshes critical
for foraging, trees and snags for roosting, and caves and old mines for
hibernating. As for the rabies scare, scientists estimate that only 0.5 percent
of bats carry rabies. Statistically, you’re far more likely to be maimed by a
lawn mower than bitten by a rabid bat.
By bringing in bats, toads,
spiders, and snakes, we as gardeners are well on our way to solving some of our
worst pest problems, at the same time immeasurably enriching the garden
ecoscape, and adding an element of beauty and magic that makes the garden a more
richly textured and intriguing place to be.
Woman faces jail time for vegetable garden
Julie, Julie, how does your garden
grow? Ask around Julie Bass’ Oak Park, Michigan neighborhood and you’ll hear an
array of opinions. Some love it, some hate it and some don’t care.
The city’s government, however,
completely detests her organic vegetable garden. Now the city is considering
putting her behind bars if she doesn’t ditch her veggie patch.
Bass has been charged with a
misdemeanor for violating a city code that says yards must have “suitable,
live, plant material.”
"It's definitely live. It's
definitely plant. It's definitely material. We think it's suitable," she
tells station WJBK.
Oak Park City Planner Kevin
Rulkowski isn’t happy with it though and says to the station that the site is
“not what we want to see in a front yard.” If Bass continues to ignore the
town’s tickets and citations, she could be looking at jail time.
Bass says she began the garden,
which contains five planter boxes of basil, cabbage, carrots and more, when the
price of organic food just became too high. She said that a front-yawd garden,
rather than a back yard one, would be, well, “really cool.”
“The kids love it. The kids from
the neighborhood all come and help.”
Some neighbors are turned off,
however, by the grotesque site of hideous, thriving plantlife in front of their
very own eyes. “They say, ‘Why should you grow things in the front?’" says
Bass. “Well, why shouldn't I? They're fine. They're pretty. They're well
maintained.”
Oak Park’s government — and a few
picky neighbors whose parents clearly never taught them the importance of
eating their veggies when they were younger — says it has to go, though.
“I know there’s a back yard. Do it
in the back yard,” one neighbor tells the station.
"They don't have (anything)
else to do (if) they're going to take her to court for a garden," said
neighbor Ora Goodwin.
Rulkowski says, "If you look
at the definition of what suitable is in Webster's dictionary, it will say
common. So, if you look around and you look in any other community, what's
common to a front yard is a nice, grass yard with beautiful trees and bushes
and flowers."
But a growing, nurtured bevy of
beds of budding produce? That’s just bizarre.
How bizarre? If Bass doesn’t move
her bushes to the back, she stands to spend up to 93 days in jail.
Horti-Culture Corner
By Dave Barry
Your first job is to
prepare the soil.
The best tool for
this is your neighbor's garden tiller.
If your neighbor does
not own a garden tiller,
suggest that he buy
one.
Researchers Identify the Most Promiscuous Birds in the World
http://m.phys.org/birds-chicks-mating_news179575597.html
Saltmarsh Sparrows practically
blend into the grays and browns of the marshes they inhabit along a narrow
fringe of coast in Connecticut and other eastern states. But as new research by
CLAS faculty member Chris Elphick and colleagues shows, these shoreline birds
are remarkable for their “extreme levels of multiple mating” and are thought to
be the most promiscuous birds in the world.
Elphick’s work was carried out in
collaboration with Christopher E. Hill from Coastal Carolina University and
Carina Gjerdrum of the Canadian Wildlife Service. In an article in The Auk, a
premier ornithological journal, the scientists describe mating patterns that
give new meaning to the term “multiple paternity.”
Fifty-seven out of 60 broods had at
least two chicks with different fathers. At least 97 percent of females were
mating with more than one male. In any one nest, it was impossible to tell who
the fathers were of all the chicks without checking DNA.
While most small birds have
monogamous relationships, ornithologists say that low levels of “extra-pair
mating” happen in many species. Even so, the promiscuity levels seen in
Saltmarsh Sparrows are extraordinarily high. Only the Greater Vasa Parrot of
Madagascar and the Superb Fairy-Wren of Australia are known to come close.
The researchers didn’t set out to
track the sexual habits of the sparrows. But as an offshoot of their long-term
research on the birds, funded by Connecticut Sea Grant, the US Environmental
Protection Agency, and the Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection,
they decided to track whether reports of unusual mating patterns were true.
Elphick, an assistant professor of ecology and evolutionary biology, and
Gjerdrum, then an EEB research technician who now works for the Canadian
Wildlife Service, collected data on sparrow paternity for two summers in nine
marshes along the Connecticut coast. To do their sparrow research, they catch
the birds in fine mesh nets and band them. For this study, they took blood
samples to test the birds’ DNA. Chicks in the nest were also sampled.
Chris Hill, a biologist at Coastal
Carolina University, did the molecular analyses for the study. It was easy to
determine maternity of the chicks, because the mothers sit on the nests,
Elphick says: “The tricky part is the fathers.” Male Saltmarsh Sparrows take no
part in chick rearing, so the only way to associate a male with a brood is to
catch all the males in an area and conduct paternity tests. Easier to figure
out was whether the chicks in a nest had the same father, and the DNA analyses
showed how rare that was.
The Saltmarsh Sparrows face
multiple habitat threats, and their conservation is the focus of Elphick’s
research. They live only in a narrow fringe of coastal land from Virginia to
Maine, a habitat favored by humans for development and seaside homes. Their
saltmarsh nests are flooded regularly, so many chicks drown. As sea levels rise
with global warming, the birds’ very existence is threatened.
But for now, they hold the world’s
record for promiscuity in the bird world. More information: An abstract of the
article is available online at The Auk website, where the full article is also
available to subscribers. It will appear in print in April 2010.
Home Vegetable Garden Techniques: Hand Pollination of Squash in Small
Gardens
Ed Thralls and Danielle Treadwell - http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/hs398
A small vegetable garden can
provide homeowners with fresh, healthful food, assist household finances during
a time of increasing food costs, and provide a family activity that is both
recreational and educational
A bountiful harvest from a small garden depends on many
factors. One factor to consider is the successful pollination needed for fruit
set on certain vegetable crops, including cantaloupe, cucumbers, squash, and
watermelon.
In a small garden space, one
located in a residential landscape setting, there may not be an established
population of insects necessary for pollination. As a result, pollination can
be sporadic, and yield may be meager to nonexistent. However, it is possible to
pollinate some of the most popular vegetable crops by hand. For more
information, please refer to EDIS publication RF-AA091, Beekeeping: Watermelon
Pollination, http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/AA091, and EDIS publication HS-675,
Squash, Zucchini – Cucurbita pepo L, http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/MV142.
The EDIS publication you are
reading now addresses techniques for hand pollination of squash and corn.
Yellow crookneck squash and zucchini squash are among the most popular crops
for home vegetable gardeners. These crops thrive in summer heat and can produce
a bounty of vegetables up to the first killing frost. However, these crops also
depend on bees to carry pollen. By contrast, crops of corn depend on wind to
carry pollen from the tassels to the silks. Even in large, commercial
operations, corn stalks along the edges of a field may not receive sufficient
amounts of pollen to produce strong yields. Knowing the basics of flower
structure and the steps to cross-fertilization can help ensure a good harvest.
Techniques for hand pollinating squashes
All squashes are members of the
plant family Cucurbitaceae. This family, commonly called the Gourd Family,
includes more than 700 species of fast-growing, cold-tender plants throughout
the world. Well known members of this plant family include pumpkins, squash,
cucumbers, and melons. For more information, refer to Manual of Cultivated
Plants by L.H. Bailey.
All squash have male flowers and
female flowers on the same vine or bush. The ratio of males to females varies with
the type of squash. The first step is to identify male and female flower
structure because only the female flowers bear fruit. Males have a plain stem
beneath their flower. Peeling the petals back reveals the male anther. Bright
orange-yellow pollen grains will rub off on contact. They do not transfer by
wind. These grains of pollen need to be transferred to the female by direct
touch.
The female flowers exhibit the form
of a rudimentary squash just below their petals. Peel these petals off, and you
will see the “stigma,” a raised, yellow-orange structure in the center. Apply
the pollen to the stigma by touching the male anther to the female stigma or by using a paint brush; pick up pollen on
the brush from the anther and “paint” the stigma with pollen. You have just
accomplished pollination.
Gardeners frequently note that
their squash blooms profusely, yet fruit does not develop as they expect. The
plants may produce only male flowers or only female flowers. Flower sex is
influenced by temperature, seasonal day length, plant maturity and hormones.
For more information, refer to Wyman's Gardening Encyclopedia by Donald Wyman.
Both male and female flowers are
open in the morning and are ready for pollination to occur, and then they close
up by evening. Pollination is best done in the morning, when high humidity
helps to activate the pollen. One male flower can be used to pollinate several
female flowers. Male flowers can be cut, like a cut flower, and held in water
over night to pollinate available female
flowers the next morning. Male flowers may also be stored by laying them on
moist paper towels in a storage container in a refrigerator for three to four
days. When storing male flowers in a refrigerator, remove the petals by hand or
with scissors. Be sure to prevent the pollen from directly contacting the moist
paper towel.
Hand pollination ensures varietal
consistency in the next generation of squash plants. Gardeners who save their
seeds for the next crop need to be aware that pumpkins, squash and gourds will
cross-pollinate. While the fruit is edible and delicious, the seed from such a
cross, if saved and replanted, will not grow to look or taste true to the
parent plant. Therefore, some separation in the garden to prevent cross
pollination may be necessary for those gardeners who save their seeds for the
next crop of straight necks, crooknecks, spaghetti squash, pumpkins and others.
For more information, refer to Wyman's Gardening Encyclopedia, p. 1064.
