Hold off on mowing, garden clean-up

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There are two simple things people can do for the environment when it comes to their own yards and both require choosing to do nothing.

Don’t be so quick to mow down those dandelions in the spring and hold off on hacking away at the garden in the fall. 

There are two schools of thoughts on dandelions, said Viki Reynolds of Not So Hollow Farm, because although they don’t offer total nutrition for bees they are an early source of nectar and pollen for all pollinators. Pollinators wake up when food sources should be available. In the country, there are fields of dandelions, so it is not as important to preserve them but they do provide bees an early source of an essential amino acid that the queen honeybee needs to lay her eggs. That amino acid, Lysine, in early spring is only produced by dandelions and willows.

“Dandelions drive a lot of people crazy but the idea is to let them flower before you mow them,” said Reynolds, “but move them before they go to seed if you don’t want them to spread all over.”

Fast forward to winter, and still, less is more when it comes to maintaining habitat. 

When autumn arrives, just sit back and let the leaves fall where they may. The leaves provide essential nutrients to the trees and other plants, even the grass, and serve as a protective blanket for roots and helps prevent soil erosion. 

Insects, like non-migratory butterflies and ladybugs, hunker down for the winter. Leaving any kind of debris, rocks and logs gives butterflies a place to spend the winter. Even the leaf litter provides shelter for the many insects, some of which will be food for the birds. 

Native ladybugs are a gardener’s friend because they eat garden pests and their eggs and they aren’t the only predatory insects sleeping away the winter in the garden. Assassin bugs, lacewings, big-eyed bugs, ground beetles and many others are taking refuge in garden refuse and they are the best reason not to clean up the garden in the fall.

Thank you to Viki Reynolds and Charlotte Vorstermans for sharing their knowledge and research. 

The birds and the bees

Ontario’s native bees have many different lifestyles. Some are social and some are solitary, some burrow in the ground to lay eggs and others nest in hollow plants. Leaving unplanted patches of soil in the garden and adding hollow stem varieties of plants like elderberry, box elder, Joe Pye weed, teasels, brambles, cup plant and bee balm helps increase bee habitat. 

There has been a growing amount of awareness about the importance of letting milkweed grow for the health of monarchs but other non-migratory butterflies have very specific tastes. Fritillary butterflies lay their eggs on violets and the larvae eat the leaves; the Baltimore checkerspot loves penstemon, speedwell and honeysuckle; painted lady feeds on yarrow, thistle, lupine, borage, sunflower and lambs quarters.

People put bird feeders out to attract birds to their yards but did you know that baby birds don’t eat birdseed? They eat baby worms. So in order to provide baby birds a food source, plant certain native trees. For example, a regular chickadee nest with six or seven babies would consume about 4,000 caterpillars before they leave the nest and an oak tree provides habitat for about 534 caterpillars, said Reynolds. She recommends reading Bringing Nature Home by Douglas Tallamy, which she says is pretty much considered the bible of native plants.

It is important for people to ask about the use of neonicotinoids because some bedding plants are still treated with them, as are many bulbs imported from Holland. The pesticide is being phased out because it is linked to the decline in bee populations. It is futile to try to improve habitat and increase food sources while they continue to be poisoned. 

Reynolds has a bee condo made out of a drilled log and uses phragmites, a destructive invasive species, in her bee houses.

They should be mounted about four feet off the ground, in a sunny south facing location.

The diameter and length of the reed is important, keeping them safe from predators. The female goes in and lays her eggs and the male nests closer to the front. 

Reynolds is running a bee nest workshop which will cover not only the construction, but also the after care required for a successful emergence. They workshop is at 10 a.m. on May 26. Register online at www.notsohollowfarm.ca. 

Ray McLellan said he saw all the good work the Horticultural Society, of which his wife Sharon is a member, was doing in the Hort Park and how they were trying to educate people about pollinators so he set to work making bee hotels (below). For mason bees, which are native to this area, he drills holes that are 5/16th in diameter and adds bamboo shoots and other hollow stocks from the garden. 

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