Monday, March 11, 2013

Maarch 2013


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

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.

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