Another Reason to Love Dandelions

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We Aren’t The Only Ones Who Love Dandelions

by Sandy Swegel

I may never pull another dandelion again.  Well, at least not in my yard.  But it was an utter joy to learn something new about dandelions yesterday while enjoying my morning coffee and looking out the window.  We’ve had a very late Spring with heavy snows and everyone is worried about the bees having enough food.  Dandelions started blooming seriously last week and I sat drinking coffee and watching at least forty bees feed on the patch of dandelions in pasture grass outside my window.  And then came the delight. A tiny house wren…one of those little birds that live by the hundreds in tree or thickets…flew down and delicately started pulling on the puffball of a dandelion seedhead.  With great industry, the bird pulled off two or three of the seeds at a time (and dandelion seeds are tiny) and teased them from the hairy chaff.  He stayed pulling off the seed and threshing them for several minutes.  Naturally by the time I got the camera he was back in the tree chirping away.

There’s so much beauty and bounty around us every moment.  All these years I’ve been gardening and I never noticed how much little birds depended on finding weed seeds.

 http://www.birdsinbackyards.neth

Soapy Water: The Answer to Most Problems

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Easy Solution for Small Garden Pests

We’ve been grateful all week for pollinators of all shapes and sizes and how crucial they are for feeding us and for making a beautiful world of flowers and trees.  We know you understand our first priority to help pollinators by which is to create a habitat with the plants they like.

The next most important thing you can do for pollinators is to not kill them accidentally when you are trying to control other pests in the yard.

That’s where soapy water comes in. A simple squirt of castile soap – Dr. Bronner’s is most people’s favorite – in a spray bottle will take care of most small garden pests.  (It doesn’t help much with the bunnies and raccoons.) Add in a tablespoon of baking soda and you can take care of most fungus too.   Soapy water works on what it’s sprayed on but doesn’t hurt most pollinators who come later to the plant. So many commercial products get into a plant “system” and kill good bugs who visit the plant later.  Or they get into the soil and kill soil microbes.

The simple recipe for insect control is:

1 teaspoon Dr. Bronner’s soap, any variety. 2 cups water. Spray bottle.

Turns out using soapy water to save pollinators is a lot cheaper too.  One key to using soapy water or any pest control is you have to repeat the process in another week or so to get the next life cycle of the insect.

Another use for soapy water in the garden is to have a bucket of soapy water for putting the big pests like squash bugs and cutworms that you collect by hand.

So thanks for loving our pollinators and creating beautiful, safe habitats for them!

Links: Entomologist Whitney Cranshaw on soap:http://www.ext.colostate.edu/pubs/insect/05547.html

Why you don’t add vinegar to soapy spray: http://lisa.drbronner.com/?p=292 

Natural Recipes for killing pests and fungus: http://faq.gardenweb.com/faq/lists/organic/2002081329023823.html

The Not-So-Dangerous Bee Swarm

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Why to Respect these Valuable Pollinators

It’s the stuff of Hollywood movies and spine-chilling stories — a swarm of bees attacking everything in their path. Mad, ruthless, and vicious buzzing creatures covering whatever strikes their fancy (usually a person) until they succumb to the deadly stings! This is how a swarm of bees behaves, right?
Well, not exactly.

First of all, let’s discuss what a honey bee swarm is and exactly why they’re swarming. A swarm is an entire colony of bees looking for a place to start up housekeeping. It includes a queen and up to 30,000 of her pals, the worker bees and drones. They do this without any anger, aggression, nor any plans to sting people.

Usually, a young queen is born into a colony and she takes the place of the old queen (no one said life as a queen was easy). The old queen sees the writing on the wall and starts packing for greener pastures. Don’t worry, she has some loyal subjects — she ends up taking about half of that colony with her to hang around a new castle.

The entourage is led by the queen bee and her pheromones — which has them following her beyond all reason. When the queen finds a comfy bush or tree branch, the swarm will settle there, as well. Ultimately what they’re looking for is an unoccupied cavity in which to call home. This is the time when a savvy beekeeper will place a beehive below the swarm to attract them. If the colony approves (and by “the colony”, I mean the Queen) then someone just got themselves a brand new hive, pollination team, and honey processing plant!

Let’s back up a bit. There’s a thick, black, buzzing cloud going through your yard and you’re supposed to believe that these guys don’t have your name at the top of their tiny, bee hit-list, right? That’s exactly right. And the reason that they don’t have stinging on their mind is that honey bees typically defend two things: their young (in the hive) and their honey (also in the hive).

They tend to get irked when you mess with these things — as well they should. In the honeybee’s defense, if you’re going to go into a hive and take either of those things, well…that actually makes you the aggressor.

That said, personally, I wouldn’t grab a broom and start flailing it around trying to swat at the swarm. I mean that probably falls under the definition of provocation, am I right?

If you find that a swarm of honeybees has landed at your home, garage, or porch and you not only don’t believe a word I’ve written here, but are getting ready to sue me because these bees are certainly going to kill you in your sleep…all I ask is that instead of taking matters into your own hands, please contact a local beekeeper to have them gently removed. Honey bees are one of our most valuable pollinators and they’re having a terrible time staying in existence.

Trivial Note: I’m not a honey beekeeper. Although, I am a Western Blue Mason Beekeeper, which isn’t of any importance to this article at all. I only mention it for the record.

Early-Risers, Hardworking and Charming Personalities!

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No Longer Ignore These Pollinators

Blue Mason (Osmia lignaria) or Orchard bees who have previously been all-but-ignored by the general public have recently enjoyed a newfound popularity. And why shouldn’t they? The non-aggressive little pollinators are not only top-notch pollinators, but they’re also early-risers, hardworking and some of the friendliest bees anywhere. Mason bees are docile by nature and the females are the only gender that has a stinger — and she isn’t very interested in using it.

Part of their relaxed demeanor may be due to the fact that they don’t make honey. In fact, they’re quite solitary and don’t even live in hives. With no hive dripping with the sweet stuff, there’s not a whole lot to protect. As an educator, I feel very comfortable letting kids get up-close-and-personal with these attractive little fellows. Kids enjoy watching insects as they go about their insect lives and bees can be especially fascinating.

These native bees live all over the United States and throughout Southern Canada. Orchard Mason bees are 1/3 of an inch long, blue-black in color, and have a metallic sheen to them. They have two pairs of wings and the boys are smaller than the girls and have a hairy-white face. While you may have seen them buzzing around flowers over the years —  you may not have recognized them as bees.  They tend to look more fly-like than bee-like.

There are a number of things that make Blue Mason bees stand-out both for home orchards as well as commercial types. The first thing is that these bees pollinate earlier in the season. They’re early spring pollinators and will fly around doing the pollination dance in cooler temperatures while honey bees hang out in their hives waiting for warmer weather. This makes Mason bees ideal pollinators for early blooming fruit trees.

In fact, they’re most attracted to the stone fruits such as cherries, plums, and peaches. But are great for apples and nearly everything else. The fact that the pollen is collected all over the mason bee’s hairy little bodies is another reason that they’re such effective pollinators.

If you’re considering purchasing (or attracting) mason bees for your home garden or orchard, you’ll want to provide them with a special mason bee house of straws where the female can deposit her eggs for next year’s bee population. The native mason bees around your home may or may not have an acceptable place to call home, so you’ll want to provide them with one.

Why are they called “mason” bees? Well, when the female lays her eggs in a straw (or another cavity in nature) she collects some mud and makes a wall at the back of the straw. Then she flies off to gather pollen and nectar and makes them into a little “loaf.” This loaf is placed onto the straw and an egg is laid on the pollen-nectar loaf. She makes individual cells by partitioning off the egg and pollen with another mud wall. After the straw is filled, she makes a final mud plug to protect her future kids that sleep inside. “Mason” seems to fit this industrious little bee.

While I’ve been going on and on about the spring Blue Mason Bees, it’s interesting to note that there are over 125 different species of mason bees out there just waiting to be invited into your yard or garden. So enthralled was I to learn about these endearing dudes that I decided that I had to have my own little colony at my home.

Last December is when my mason bee adventure began. To learn more about mason bees and possibly get some for yourself, check out what the experts have to say at Crown Bees.

*If you or a child is allergic to bee stings, take the same precautions that you would with any bee. Sweet-natured mason bees do very little stinging, however, the potential is there.

Armies of Cutworms are on the March!

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How to Control These Pests

In Colorado and the high plains, pest specialists say it’s going to be a banner year for cutworms and their adult form, miller moths.  Most nongardeners think miller moths are a nuisance because they fly in every open door and window on summer evenings, hovering around all your lights.  Gardeners, however, know cutworms as the horrid creatures that spend their late Spring nights decapitating your young garden plants. They especially like broccolis and cauliflowers but are happy to eat through the stem of your young tomato plants and peas too.

The easiest way to control cutworms is to pick them up and throw them out to birds to eat or dispose of them in some way.  These larvae are quite large and light colored so they are easy to see if you happen to be crawling through your garden.  They are most fond of overwintering under broadleaf weeds in your garden….so weeding your garden thoroughly in Fall is a good deterrent.

If you’ve had problems with cutworms in the past, you may want to grow broccoli and cauliflowers indoors to transplant rather than direct seed in the garden.  When it’s time to plant out into the garden, a  small collar around the stem of the plant is all it takes.  Saving all those empty toilet rolls is the most common collar, although plastic collars cut from water bottles or yogurt containers are also popular. Simple Dixie cups with the bottom cut out works well. Why do collars work? The cutworm doesn’t just start eating at one end of the stem and eat through…it wraps itself around the stem and then chews.  All you have to do is keep it from wrapping around the stem and your plant is safe.

If, alas, you go out and find some plants decapitated, take a moment to look through the top inch or so of soil around the plant.  You should find a nice fat cutworm resting from its big meal.  Pick it out so that at least that cutworm won’t be a threat to the neighboring plants.

A video from Oklahoma on controlling cutworms: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1T3wUp1AwE

Extension Slide Series http://tealeafgardens.wordpress.com/2013/04/03/a-toilet-roll-in-the-garden/

How to Outsmart Your Weeds

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Our Favorite Weeding Tips

by Sandy Swegel

It’s Spring.  Your plants are tiny and growing. Your weeds are huge and growing.  If you want a nice garden, you really do have to outsmart your weeds and deal with the weeds that are gobbling up your soil nutrients and drinking your water.  Weeding doesn’t have to be a horrible task if you address the problem areas early and try to learn to understand how weeds behave so you can be smarter than they are.

Prioritize.

Here’s the order I go in…tackling the worst weeds first and then moving on.

  1. Noxious Weeds – for your state’s noxious weed list, go to  http://plants.usda.gov/java/noxiousDriver. These are the weeds known to be a problem in your area.  You must ban them from your garden.
  2. Weeds you know to be a problem for your garden bed. These are the weeds that come up every year and make the same problems every year.  Time to stop that cycle.
  3. Weeds that are in the areas that really matter to you—the flower beds in your front yard, your vegetable garden.  There are no doubt weeds everywhere but start with the ones that spoil your gardening.

Know your Weed and Have a Strategy for Each Kind of Weed.

Weeding isn’t just an aerobic activity to do in a frenzy of spring energy. Different weeds require different methods of dealing with them.  I see four different kinds of weeds in my garden:

Weedy Grasses

Weedy grasses are easier to get very early in the year.  In late winter, the weedy grasses often green up first, making them visible a block away.  Dig these up thoroughly getting all the runners when possible.

Annual Weeds

These are the weeds that grow from seed every year.  Killing them is usually very easy when they are young because they have a very small root system and you can sometimes just pull them by hand, or run a hoe across them to slice off all their heads.  Small annual weeds also die when burned with a propane torch or soaked with boiling water. Approach when they are small and win!

Perennial Weeds

Yikes, these are the deep-rooted weeds that have grown in the same spot for years.  My strategy for dealing with them is to be more aggressive each time I see them.  I try to dig out the weed completely.  If it returns, I dig an extra four inches down to make sure I get it. If it returns again, I dig even deeper until I get the bottom of that weed or I exhaust its ability to regrow. Burning or boiling water only work if you repeat it for three or more days in a row.

Pernicious Weeds  

OK, so there are bindweed and weeds with subterranean runners. More than just perennial, these weeds seldom die by pulling alone. But you can control them by aggressively blocking out their light and reducing their water.  A sheet of cardboard or multiple layers of newspapers laid directly on the weed and soil and covered by mulch blocks out water and light…two crucial items for growth. Keep the area well mulched and you will eventually win. But you must be thorough and consistent.

You’ll notice I don’t have chemical controls on this list. I certainly try to limit the toxic chemicals I introduce into the environment, especially with things that might kill bees. But the real reason I don’t use chemicals is that the chemicals legally available aren’t always that effective.  Take Roundup, for example.  It works because you spray the Roundup on the foliage and the plant takes the chemical down into the roots.  But in the Spring, plants aren’t taking energy down to their roots, they’re sending it up making new leaves.  Roundup just doesn’t work that well in the Spring. And the time you spend standing over the weed dousing it in chemicals could have just as well been spent digging.

Front Yard Vegetable Gardens

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Heirloom Vegetable Seeds

I’m fortunate to know lots of gardeners.  They are a quiet bunch for the most part and sometimes rather eccentric.  But they are on the forefront of an environmental movement that is making a big difference in our community: turning front yards into vegetable gardens!  It begins as the gardener runs out of room in the backyard to make more garden beds, and starts looking wistfully out the front window at the expanse of green lawn. Going from backyard to front yard is like going to a different country.  The vegetables out back are grown organically with manures and compost. There are honey bees and birds and butterflies attracted to the flowers growing among the vegetables.  The front lawn is a pristine deep green thanks to synthetic fertilizers and weed killers but lacks the vitality and delight of the backyard.

For most people turning the front yard into a vegetable garden takes some negotiating with a significant other who likes the lawn, but the idea of not having to mow week after week often tilts the balance.

So what happens when you turn your front yard into a vegetable garden? In the beginning, neighbors eye you suspiciously, worried you’re going to lower property values.  By mid-June, as you’re starting to get some good produce and butterflies are flitting about, people are a bit curious and start to walk by on your side of the street.  A neighbor kid on a bike asks “Whatcha doin’?” when you’re out shoveling compost onto the new beds.  By mid-summer, tomatoes are coming in strong, and the guy next door is hanging out watching you build a vertical wood structure to handle the squash that wants to grow out into the street.  Finally, come Fall and pumpkin season (hey look, Halloween decorations are already growing right in the yard) you realize you know the names of some of your neighbors. And you’re going to have to plant a bigger garden next year to plan for sharing the bounty with your new friends.

It is a lot of work converting a front yard into a vegetable garden.  There can be serious digging involved. You have to change your practices from lawn management to building safe and healthy soil. You have to keep things tidy and attractive. The rewards of front yard vegetable gardens are many. More food, more space to garden, more people who understand the relationship between food and the environment, and best of all, sharing late summer produce with friends and kindred spirits right in your own front yard!

Very Basic Seed Starting

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Try These Seed Starting Tips

I teach basic seed starting for beginners classes every year and while there are often some people who are true beginners and have never started seeds before, more people who seek out a class are gardeners who have tried starting seeds and had some failures. So I like to keep seed starting very simple.  All I want you to do is think like a seed.

All I want you to remember is:

Seeds WANT to live. The very meaning of life for a seed is to germinate and make a plant. Most of the time, we just have to get out of the way.

Seeds need 5 Things:

Water Seeds need to be well hydrated to germinate.  Think about how we soak our peas to speed germination.  But they don’t want to be sitting in water.  You need to check the soil each day and make sure the top of the soil isn’t drying up and hardening.  Sometime even misting is enough.

Temperature Each seed needs the soil (not just the air) to reach a certain temperature before it starts to grow.  I learned early that just because I liked to plant peas on St. Patrick’s Day, that didn’t mean that worked in Colorado. Our soil warms up later than other places and the peas weren’t coming up until it was warmer.  Each seed has a temperature it prefers and it just sits in the soil until it gets that.

Light A few seeds like lettuce need light to germinate….so you can’t plant them beneath the soil.  Seeds also need light to keep growing, which is why they get weak and spindly growing inside away from bright light.

Air Notice that soil isn’t in this list.  Seeds don’t care much if the soil is full of amendments or a special seed starting mix. (The plant will have opinions later….but for now we’re just thinking about the seed.) Seeds by design carry their own food. They do need air.  Air in the soil they are growing in for their tender little roots to move in.  Heavy clay soil is tough for a tiny root…there’s no place for it to go.  Seeds also need air above ground. Breezes lightly flowing among young seedlings make the young plants strong and protect them from fungus.

Time Time is the most important issue for beginners.  Most often when beginners think they have failed, it isn’t because the seeds didn’t come up.  It’s because they didn’t come up YET! Don’t give up too quickly. Some seeds germinate immediately, but some need an extra week or two until conditions are just right.

All the information you need is on the back of each seed packet.  Don’t over think seed starting….just offer the seeds a little hospitality with a comfortable environment and they’ll do what seeds want to do.

Seeds WANT to  live.

Info and Photo: http://www.motherearthnews.com/Organic-Gardening/2005-12-01/Seed-Starting-Basics.aspx

Tools of the Trade: Row Cover

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Try This Secret of Success

Every pursuit has tools that make it easier to be successful. Ask any gardener and they’ll pull out their own favorite tool with a wry grin and and a long story about why you have to have this tool

Row Cover is one of my own top secrets of success. I use it in all seasons at all different times of the growing season.  Also known as frost cloth, it is a light-weight white fabric that looks just like interfacing. Row cover’s great attribute is that it creates a protective barrier between the seed, plant or soil against the ravages of sun, wind and cold. It’s also handy for protecting against insects like flea beetles. Here’s how I use it throughout the seasons:

Spring Right now, row cover is in the garden over areas that I’ve seeded that I want to help germinate.  The row cover protects the germinating seeds and seedling from getting too dry because the gardener forgets to water often enough.  It also is a physical barrier that protects against harsh sun, wind or hungry birds.  Temperature under the row cover is a few degrees warmer which is enough to speed up germination.

Any Season When you are transplanting, row cover can be the secret tool that enables your plants to survive transplanting.  I use it when I transplanting out seedlings I’ve grown indoors, or plants from the nursery, or even perennials I’m moving in my own yard.  Keeping leaves from desiccating from sun or wind is the keep to successful transplanting.

Mid Summer Lettuce lovers keep their greens from bolting too soon by covering them with row cover.  In Spring the row cover kept heat in…now, it keeps the hot summer sun out and lowers the temperature around the plants.  Lettuce stays sweeter longer.  Eventually, lettuce still bolts, but about the time that happens, it’s time to reseed the garden for fall greens.  Row covers then keep the seeds moist enough to grow.

Fall So often a frost comes one early fall night that kills lots of your warm season plants.  It’s a shame because there are often another two or three weeks of good growing time for tomatoes or other tender vegetables.  Five degrees of protection under row cover means your tomatoes survive a light frost.

Winter If you have a greenhouse, row cover inside the greenhouse and give you an extra zone’s warmth. I visited an unheated greenhouse in snowy Colorado this week that had lettuce planted last Fall and now being harvested for fresh greens.

When to take row cover off  The one-time row cover isn’t helpful is when your plants need to be pollinated. Bees and moths and butterflies need to be able to fly from flower to flower gather nectar and pollinating the plants.  Lettuces and greens don’t need the pollinators, but strawberries and peas and anything else that flowers and sets fruit does. Once you start to see flowers, you need to pull the row cover aside.

Keeping the row cover on OK, if you’re in a windy area that’s the biggest challenge. Big farming operations dig a trench alongside their beds, put the row cover in and then fill in the trench with soil to hold the row cover down.  Home gardeners can place a few rocks strategically placed or even a heavy piece of lumber.

more info:

http://tinyurl.com/b28755y

http://tinyurl.com/bh983my

Gardening for Beginners

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Try These First Timer Tips

If you are a beginner, you’ll soon learn that Gardening is both an art and science….and a bit of luck. You start by reading books and the backs of seed packets. You ask other gardeners and talk to strangers at the garden center. But mostly you observe. You watch what others are doing. You watch the plants in your garden. You pay attention to the weather and birds and insects and raccoons. And best of all, no matter what you know, or how long you’ve gardened, there is always something new to learn. It doesn’t matter either if you don’t have enough space outside to do gardening. You can easily just get something like these LED grow lights and do some gardening inside, or you could go see if there is a community garden center that you could partake in. There are loads of options.

The Very Basics you Need:

Light. Gardens do better in sun. You can get by with partial shade but if you want tomatoes and beans, you need at least six hours of sun a day. More preferably.

Soil. Roots need soil and air. If you have soil that needs a pickaxe to dig a hole, you need to add “amendments” like compost or composted manure, to lighten the soil. It doesn’t need to be fluffy like potting soil…but it needs to have enough air to receive water and to drain.

Water. With drought at record levels all over the country last year, it’s easy to understand that plants need water. When you’re starting seeds, the soil needs to be moist on the surface till the seeds germinate. Later, the soil needs to be moist an inch down when you put your finger in the soil. In the beginning, when plants are young, you might need to water every day. You have to keep checking. There’s a solution to this problem, if you have a look into the Powerblanket sizing chart and follow up by purchasing the recommended size, this will allow you to have a temperature controlled bucket which will preserve the water supply throughout summer.

Space. Plants need space both above and beneath the ground. Not too much space because they do like growing in groups and communities. But read your seed packet and be sure to give your plants at least a few inches of space.

Time. Gardening is a four-dimensional event. It changes dramatically over time. You need enough time for the plants to grow to full term. Lettuce is ready to eat in a few weeks. Winter squash can take 100 days. As the weather changes, what the plant needs changes, so you have to keep adapting. You also have to keep track of time and can’t let a week or two pass without checking on your garden.

Love. Gardens that children grow will often thrive even though the kids don’t do everything right. That’s the love factor. I look back at my first gardens and can’t believe I managed to get anything to eat. But I loved the process. I loved playing in the dirt and watching seeds germinate. I loved the idea of the garden even when I forgot to go out to water. I loved the red tomatoes in the sun. And the plants forgave my shortcomings and grew in that atmosphere of love.

Watch, Learn and Enjoy.

Or as we like to say at BBBSeed: Grow. Enjoy. Share.

Resources:

‘Organic Gardening’ magazine is a great resource. Years of articles are online. You can start with their basic how to garden. http://tinyurl.com/bhlqfcy

Square-foot Gardening was most helpful to me when I started learning. Gardening seemed like such a big project…but I could do 4 feet x 4 feet without feeling overwhelmed. http://www.squarefootgardening.org/

Gardening is very different in an arid climate like Colorado compared to humid places like Louisiana or Oregon. Check with your local Cooperative Extension (every state has an extension service from its ag university.)

Gardening for newcomers to Colorado is here: http://www.ext.colostate.edu/pubs/garden/07220.html

www.gardeninginfozone.com