The Ants Go Marching

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The Journey of Seeds

by Sandy Swegel

Seeds have a big challenge this time of year. They’ve matured and are turning into the hard seeds we recognize in seed packets. Now their job is to disperse themselves near and far so they reproduce their species next year. This is a challenge because seeds have no feet for walking. So they have to get somebody else to do the work for them.

We know some of the most common ways that seeds get around. They get eaten by birds and pooped out in their next home. The wind takes some seeds and spreads them about. And then there are the workers who go a lot of trouble to disperse seed such as the humans who right now around the country are collecting seeds from plants so that we at BBB Seed can send the seeds to you.

Humans aren’t the only servants of our seed taskmasters. All over the world today, especially in woodland wild areas, ANTS are waking up this morning to disperse seeds. About five percent of flowering plants worldwide are dispersed by ants. There is a fifty-cent word to describe what is happening: Myrmecochory or seed dispersal by ants. Myrmecochorous plants coat their seeds with a fatty elaisomes (“food bodies” rich in lipids, amino acid, or other nutrients) that are excellent food for ants to eat and take back home for breakfast.

This is such an excellent survival method by the seed because the ants just eat the outside of the seed and then abandon the seed in the ant nest or under some nice decomposing leaves, slightly buried away from bird predators and covered with composting materials. A perfect place to germinate next Spring when temperatures rise.

So in my little part of the world, seeds on the move. Winds are blowing some. The birds are eating lots for winter. Some are being dispersed by the United States Postal Service delivering our seed packets. Squirrels burying bigger seeds in hidden treasure troves. And out in my neighbor’s garden where little cyclamen grow under pine trees, ants are lifting and pulling or pushing seeds across the yard down into their ant lairs. Right now I’m drinking coffee while little baby ant larvae are slurping yummy elaisomes all food of fats and sugars from the outside of the seeds.

The seeds. They’re enjoying the ride. They love to travel.

 

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Natures Goofballs

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Noticing the Silliness of Nature

by Sandy Swegel

Nature’s such a goofball. Friday afternoon I was busy carrying the weight of the world. My mom has become bedbound. My dog has pancreas problems and has to eat and poop every two hours. I broke a tooth and there was nothing for dinner because I forgot to go to the grocery.  You know the kind of day.

So I took the poodle for a quick walk at a nearby lake.  The dog ran free and I look at wildflowers.  As we hiked there was a crazy flash of yellow all around. I tried to see what it was but by the time I looked, it was gone. The dog jumped at one of the yellow flashes.  A few feet further and there were more…and then I understood.  The sulfur butterflies had just migrated in. Everywhere tiny Sulphurs were frenetically flying in great swoops or zig-zagging so fast I couldn’t catch a picture.  They had just filled up on the nectar of a field of bright yellow wildflowers and now were wildly playing in a sugar rush of joy and delight.  What goofballs I thought.  How am I supposed to be depressed and downtrodden when natures goofballs are flittering all over?

As if that wasn’t enough joy, we came upon the lake and it looked like it was Labrador dog day at the lake.  No less than seven labs were there bouncing in and out of the water chasing imaginary sticks or biting at the water.  Labs are definitely the goofballs of the dog kingdom.

It was all just too silly so I forgot about impending deaths and money worries.  Butterflies and labs are here to tell us that life is to be enjoyed like silly goofballs.

Photo credits:

http://www.cirrusimage.com/butterfly_orange_sulphur.htm

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-yW4XLl0p8Mc/TjH1HvxVwBI/AAAAAAAAArw/LuHkqNB5k_M/s1600/IMG_3918.jpg

 

Use Red to Make Your Garden Pop

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Why You Need to Incorporate Red

by Sandy Swegel 

A friend is a marketing guru and always talks about wanting to make things “pop” whether its brochures, interior design or gardens.  Fall is a great time when colors pop. We naturally think of New England with its amazing Fall display. In fact, East Coasters coming to Colorado are often disappointed their first Fall. It is gorgeous here, but it’s pretty darn yellow. Yellow aspens are beautiful, but yellow and brown don’t pop as red does.

 

A neighbor has a wild red unkempt thicket of shrubs and trees along his fence that makes people stop in the road to take pictures. The key to its glory (besides the fact that it requires virtually no upkeep except watering) is huge shrubs and small trees…all with lots of berries: orange pyracantha with blue euonymous, intermingled with red viburnum berries. The whole thing is held together by a wayward Virginia Creeper vine that is one of the plants that does red here in Colorado.

 

Most of our gardens may be better organized. But a wild uncontrolled area that “pops” with bright reds and oranges is a joy to behold as the growing season winds down. If you make your garden pop then the regular yellows and golden and brown of your xeric garden or your fading vegetable garden look beautiful against their red backdrop.

 

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What’s Wrong with this Leaf?

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Identify What’s Wrong With Your Plants

by Sandy Swegel

What do you do when one of your plants suddenly starts looking like it’s sick.  I mentally go through a list of things I’ve seen before. Is it powdery mildew? Is that grasshopper damage?  If the plant is next door to a yard that doesn’t have a single dandelion, I might ask myself if the problem is pesticide overspray or runoff from the neighbor’s chemical use.  But I learned yesterday there’s a whole category of plant injury I don’t often think about.  Ozone or air pollution damage.

A scientist from CU-Boulder and NCAR, as part of climate change research, planted two ‘ozone” gardens in Boulder to test the effects of air pollution on plants.  Yikes!  Unseen air pollution like ozone can really hurt plants. It may just be speckling on leaves, or it might be damage that kills the plant.  Our air looks and feels clean and crisp, but our plants tell the real story that invisible air pollution can hurt plants (and us).  Ozone air pollution especially affects plants close to the ground like watermelon, beans, even raspberries.

 

NASA has also done ozone research and concluded: “Ozone interferes with a plant’s ability to produce and store food. It weakens the plant, making it less resistant to disease and insect infestations.

Yikes, there’s not a lot you can do in your garden plot about ozone damage in mid-summer on plants in full sun. The plants are breathing in the ozone just like you are.  Some plants are more susceptible than others so if you live in an area with a lot of air pollution, you can grow more resistant plants.

Now when something is wrong with your plants, you have to ask yourself:

Is it a fungus? Is it a pest? Is it the water? Is it the soil? Is it the air?

Photo credit
http://plantdiagnostics.umd.edu/level3.cfm?causeID=312
http://science-edu.larc.nasa.gov/ozonegarden/detect-effects.php

 

 

More Wildflowers

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All About Wildflowers

by Sandy Swegel

The fields and meadows of the Rocky Mountains in Colorado are awash in wildflowers this year.  Lots of moisture in the Fall and Spring has turned our mountains into riots of color that started early and keeps going and going.  We, gardeners, keep playing hooky from our weeding tasks to hike along mountain meadows and enjoy the beauty of nature that doesn’t have to be weeded or watered.  We also get excited about how wildflowers make us very happy and we try to plant more of them in our gardens.

There’s a deeper story to the wildflower bloom.  It’s that we’ve actually been having longer wildflower seasons for years now.  I look at a good wildflower season as a reason to rejoice and do more wandering and hiking.  Scientists at the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory looked out their windows in Crested Butte, CO forty years ago and said, “Hmmm. What’s that about?” “Let’s collect some data.”  So for the last 39 years, they sent out scores of graduate students to count wildflowers.  They recorded when the flowers first bloomed, how many flowers were produced, how long the flowering lasted, etc. Now many years later, the wildflowers are telling an important story about climate change.  Turns out we do have more wildflowers.  Almost a full month’s worth more.  The flowers bloom earlier in the Spring and last longer in the Fall.

It’s still too early to know exactly what it means that we have an extra month of wildflower season.  Clearly, this is evidence of climate change. But what it means is less clear.  We get the first bloom six days earlier than 40 years ago. That means birds and pollinators have food earlier.  But we still get the same number of flowers which means the actual amount of nectar hasn’t changed.

Up in Crested Butte, the scientists still look out and ask “Hmmm? What’s that about? Let’s collect some data.”  Graduate students still count the number of flowers in little 30 foot plots across the mountain.  A new study is putting tiny radio transmitters on hummingbirds to see how their feeding is changing.

Meanwhile, the wildflowers give us abundant beauty …and… hard data that climate change is happening, rather rapidly.

Photo Credit: www.constantinealexander.net/2014/03/rocky-mountain-wildflower-season-lengthens-by-more-than-a-month.html

 

3 Ways to Enjoy Gardening More

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Revitalize Your Love For Gardening 

by Sandy Swegel

We had our first 100-degree day which always reminds me that I prefer to be a fair-weather gardener and garden where it is cool and partly shady.  Sometime mid-summer, gardening can become a chore rather than a delight. So on that hot day, I thought about what I could do to revitalize my love of gardening.

Put Down the Phone.

Really.  I know we’re all addicted to our phones and incoming text messages.  Scientists say it’s an actual chemical addiction with little dopamine rushes every time the alert sound goes off.  But it also means you are only half conscious in the garden.  How can you learn to listen to the fairies and devas if you’re always on the phone?  Or how can you see the early signs of pest infestations or the amazing tiny native pollinators if you’re not fully present?

Show the Garden to Someone Who Knows Nothing of Gardens.

City folk or small children are good subjects.  You’ll find out what you love when you’re doing show-and-tell to your garden newbie. You learn your attitude to dandelions has softened when you find yourself explaining that dandelions are the first foods of the year for bees.  And those caterpillars you might think of as pests….you love lifting the leaves to show off their hiding places. Your love of the mystery and surprise of nature shows up when you introduce a garden to someone new.

Forget that you know the difference between Plants and “Weeds”.

Every few years my town has an artists’ garden tour where we visit the homes and studios of local artists.  These artists have gardens with incredible detail to shapes and textures and color combinations.  They are often inexperienced gardeners but rather just using the green growing things as another medium in their art.  They don’t know that pretty purple flowers are thistles that should be yanked.  And uncut grassy weeds look nice blowing in the wind in their minds.  If you forget everything you know about plants and just walk around your garden looking at the pretty colors and textures and how the shapes look against the sky, you’ll have a whole new love for your garden.

Photo Credit: http://20minutegarden.com/2011/06/28/garden-advice-a-phone-call-away/

http://www.liveluvcreate.com/image/weeds_are_beautiful_too-123094.html

 

 

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How to get your Neighbors & Friends Interested in Pollinators

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Talking About Pollinators

by Sandy Swegel

You have finally come to understand how important pollinators are and why we need to protect them.  One of the challenges we who value pollinators face is how to educate other people to care and get your neighbors and friends interested in pollinators too.  Unfortunately, we’ll start to ramble about how bad chemicals are or how GMO crops harm the environment and if we pay attention we’ll notice our listeners’ eyes are glazing over and they’re looking for a quick exit.  Even with other people interested in the same topics, it’s not long till people get that bored “You’re preaching to the choir” look. When you’re passionate you want other people to be passionate too, and maybe take to the streets in pursuit of your cause…but that rarely happens.

So what can you do to educate others about protecting pollinators?  I’ve learned a lot from watching Niki, a member of our garden group, over the years.  Over time she had inspired many people to put in pollinator habitats or at least to stop pouring chemicals on their lawns.  And she did it without preaching.  So taking inspiration from her over the years, here’s an action list on how to gently inspire others to protect pollinators and the environment.

Make a demo garden in your front yard.  It was a slow start for Niki.  She lived in a typical suburban neighborhood and her decision to turn her front yard from perfect green grass to a xeric native habitat caused some upset in the ‘hood. At first, people thought she was bringing property values down with all those weeds.  But she kept the garden tidy and explained every plant she grew to anyone who stopped by.  She invited the kids over to watch butterflies.  She explained to people who asked why she was doing what she did.  Her friendly attitude and a “come pick out of my garden anytime” attitude built relationships.  Neighbors on their mowers noticed they were out doing yard work every weekend and she wasn’t.  Then she started to tell people how much money she was saving by not watering the lawn and using chemicals.  That changed a few people’s minds. She added in the info that you could protect your trees without the expensive sprays the tree companies wanted to do. Soon the whole neighborhood was just a little more pollinator friendly.

Teach the kids
Kids have open minds.  Have an inviting garden with butterflies everywhere, and kids will stop to look around.  They’ll ask questions and they’ll tell their families about the cool stuff they learned today.

Give away free stuff.
It’s pretty easy to collect seed from native plants or to put seed you have in little envelopes to give away.  People in the neighborhood learned they could get free seeds for lots of low-water flowering plants if they stopped at Niki’s.  They also learned they could get free plants.  She started seeds in her living room or dug up self-seeding plants and put them in tiny pots and gave them to anyone who would learn how to take care of them. Soon, that’s native food sources up and down the block.

Offer Free Public Classes
Soon the neighbors had all the free seeds and plants they could use.  So the next step was to offer free classes to the public. Our library offers meeting rooms for public groups for free so soon Niki was offering 2-hour Saturday classes on “Chemical-free gardening” or “Make your own natural cleaning products.” Another 2-hour Saturday project was the free Seed Swap in January which invited everyone to bring their extra seeds and swap with one another.  Gardeners meeting other gardeners is often all it takes.  Lots of people came to classes because they wanted to save money or have a safer environment for their kids.  They all left with that info and with an understanding of why chemicals can really hurt bees and other pollinators and how there’s an easier way to do things.  Not preachy…but well-researched information.  A heartfelt story about the impact of pesticides in Kansas on monarch butterflies all over the world helps people want to do the right thing.

Be generous with your time to talk to others
Soon gardeners and community members learned Niki and now her gardening circle friends would come to talk to their neighborhood association or school about native bees and butterflies.  Or they’d look at your suffering tomato plant and suggest a natural home-made remedy.  Everyone got on an email group together and ended up teaching each other about natural gardening and making homes for pollinators. Local media people saw the library classes and now had someone to call when they needed a radio show or newspaper article.

Photo Credits:

www.huffingtonpost.com

www.valleyviewfarms.blogspot.com

 

 

 

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Honey Bees vs Native Bees

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All About Bees

by Rebecca Hansen

Bees are one of our agricultural industry’s most important resources and indeed one of our planet’s most important resources, and the survival of the human race is in the hands of the pollinators.  The pollinator issue is a hot topic these days, but, there is more to pollinating a crop than meets the eye.  There is great complexity in the relationship between the bees and the plants in an agricultural setting and a lot to learn when it comes to honey bees vs native bees.  The needs of the plant species and the pollinators must match up pretty closely.  When it is all working together everybody benefits!  The farmer has successful crop yields and the bees are happy, healthy and well fed.  The flower structures, pollination method, pollen size and shape, nectar content are just some of the plant qualifications that a bee species looks for when ‘shopping’ for food and nectar.

Some bees such as the European Honey Bee (Apis mellifera) are polylectic which means that they will be able to find good food sources from many different plant species.  That is why a wildflower mix of several species is really great for the Honey Bee, as the time when nectar and pollen sources are available is lengthened.  Other bees are oligolectic, like the Alfalfa Leafcutter Bee (Megachile rotundata), that is very picky about the plant species that it chooses for its nourishment.  In fact, these bees primarily like alfalfa.  The Honey Bee has specialized pockets on its hind legs where it stores the pollen which it then takes back to the nest for food storage.  The Leafcutter Bee has special hairs on its front where it collects the pollen that is used and stored in the nest where the eggs are laid.  The honey bee is a social bee in that it lives in colonies with males and females with differentiated duties.  This allows for the nests to be collected and moved to various crop locations.  The leafcutter bee is a solitary bee in that, after mating, all females, individually, collect pollen and nectar and build their own nest for eggs and protection. But because they prefer to build their nests in close proximity to other leafcutter bees, they can be lured to man-made nests and can also be transported to other crop locations.

Both of these bee species are so different from each other but both are commercially used to pollinate different crops for just that reason.  They don’t compete with each other for the resources available. Take a bit of time to learn more about the pollinators in your pollinator gardens and look at the flowers that they most frequently go to for food.  Find out their ‘favorites’ so you can plant more of those.  All l those hardworking critters are “‘busy as bees” helping to ‘save the human race’ by making food and agriculture products for you and me.

 

Watch a movie on setting up a new Honey Beehive:
http://youtu.be/tqjP3-6prwM
Great learning video about the lifecycle of bees:
http://youtu.be/sSk_ev1eZec
Watch a Leafcutter Bee making a brood cell:
http://youtu.be/EjsZ419lmMY
Making a Leafcutting bee house:
http://youtu.be/chCu-pQxpB0

 

 

 

leafcutter bee photo: http://www.ars.usda.gov/images/docs/14415_14609/ALCB1.gif

 

Hooray for Hummingbirds!

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Support These Amazing Creatures

by Cheryl Soldati Clark


Hummingbirds may be cute little-winged creatures, but really they are tough as nails! These extremely important pollinators have the highest metabolic rate of any other animal on earth. They also have a high breathing rate, high heart rate and high body temperature. Their wings flap up to 90 times per second and their heart rate exceeds 1,200 beats per minute. In order to maintain their extremely high metabolism, hummingbirds have to eat up to 10-14 times their body weight in food every day for fuel. In preparation for migration, they have to eat twice this amount in order to fly thousands of miles.

A huge portion of a hummingbird’s diet consists of sugar that they acquire from flower nectar, tree sap and hummingbird feeders. They also have to eat plenty of insects and pollen for protein to build muscle. Hummingbirds cross-pollinate flowers while they are feeding on nectar because their heads become covered with pollen and they carry the pollen to the next bloom as they continue to feed. Several native plants rely on hummingbirds for pollination and would not be here today if it wasn’t for these efficient pollinators.

Hummingbirds are found in several different habitats, including wooded and forested areas, grasslands and desert environments. They also occur at altitudes ranging up to 14,000 feet in the South American Andes Mountains.

The male hummingbirds are usually brightly colored while the females are dull colored in order to camouflage them while nesting. Female hummingbirds rely on males for mating only and after that, they build the nest and raise their young as single parents. They have been known to fearlessly protect their young against large birds of prey, such as hawks and have even attacked humans that get too close to their nests. They usually lay up to two eggs which hatch within a few weeks. Hummingbirds can live 3-5 years in the wild, which varies by species, but making it through their first year of life is a challenge. Fledglings are particularly vulnerable between the time that they hatch and the time that they leave the nest. Larger species may live up to a decade.

In order to conserve energy at night, because they lack downy feathers to hold in body heat, hummingbirds enter a state of semi-hibernation called “torpor”. This allows them to lower their metabolic rate by almost 95% and also lower their body temperature to an almost hypothermic rate. During this time, hummingbirds perch on a branch and appear to be asleep. When the sun comes up and starts to warm the earth, it takes about 20 minutes, but the tiny birds will awake from their torpor state and start their feeding rituals.

Planting a lot of reds and purples in your garden and hanging hummingbird feeders around your yard will attract and help feed these little pollinator friends. In fact, BBB Seed has a Hummingbird Wildflower Mix specifically designed with these little guys in mind.  Please help to support these amazing creatures in your own backyard!

Hummingbird Favorites:

• Penstemon
• Columbine
• Delphinium
• Autumn Sage
• Four O’clock (Mirabilis jalapa)

• Scarlet Monkeyflower (Mimulus spp.)
• Texas Sage (Salvia coccinea)
• Chuparosa
• Ocotillo
• Tree Tobacco (Nicotiana glauca)
• Baja Fairy (Calliandra californica)
• Bottlebrush
• Desert Willow

• Scarlet Gilia (Ipomopsis aggregata)
• Lantana
• Agave
• Lily of the Nile

FUN LINKS:



Video on Hummingbird Tongues

Hummingbird Coloring Pages for Children

 

 

 

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Wildflowers for pollinators

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Bats are Beautiful!

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Learn More About These Important Pollinators

by Cheryl Soldati Clark

There are so many misconceptions out there about bats. Bats are not evil, blood-thirsty creatures that fly around at night trying to get caught in your hair. Bats are graceful and fascinating nocturnal creatures, which benefit humans by pollinating plants, dispersing seeds, and feeding on insect pests. In fact, we have bats to thank for pollinating over 300 species of fruits that we eat, such as, bananas, mangoes and guavas to name a few. These aerial mammals fly from sundown to sunrise, visiting flowers in the darkness and ingesting their sugary nectar and protein-rich pollen. They are also excellent pest managers eating up to 1,200 mosquitoes in one hour. A long-lived mammal, in the wild, bats can live for up to 20 years.

As pollinators, bats are attracted to green, purple and dull white flowers with very fragrant, fruit-like odor. They are also attracted to musky, fermented smelling flowers because they have an excellent sense of smell. They choose to feed on large, bell or bowl-shaped flowers (1-3.5 inches) that are open at night and have copious amounts of dilute nectar. The bat forces its head into the flower, trying to reach the nectar with its long tongue. Several species of night-blooming cacti are perfect candidates for bats to pollinate. Bats may eat the pollen, stamen and anthers of certain flowers while at the same time carrying large amounts of pollen on its face and coarse fur from flower to flower. Bats travel long distances every night thus making them effective cross-pollinators of plants that are widely spaced.

Bats can be found in almost every part of the world except in extremely hot and cold climates. They live on all continents except Antarctica. You can find more species of bats where the weather is nice and warm. Bats like to roost in groups in dark and humid environments.  They also roost in different structures, such as the underside of bridges, in caves, inside buildings, in cracks in between rocks, in mines, and in tree hollows.

Unfortunately, due to disease as well as human misunderstanding, many bat species are endangered and some have already gone extinct. Through the misuse of pesticides and habitat destruction, in the United States alone, nearly 40% of the native bat species are endangered. It is our job as human beings to protect these important pollinators by educating our children, friends and neighbors about the importance of bats and trying to eliminate the fear factor associated with these nocturnal mammals. Pollinator Week is a great time to start!

Great Bat Links:

A great video on how to safely & humanely remove a bat from your home

Build your own Bat House!

Bring a Bat program into your School

Beautiful Bat photos

Bat Facts

 

 

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