Urban Garden Resource

Vertical gardens for beginners

August 28, 2011 By Leslie Leave a Comment

Vertical gardening is a method for growing more food in less space.

For example, in traditional vegetable gardening, tomatoes sprawl over and around their cages. However, you can grow your tomatoes along a trellis, a post, or even a single strong string with relative ease. This method allows you to plant more tomato plants in your garden as you eliminate tomato plant sprawl.

My favorite method of vertical gardening—again, I’m a lazy gardener—is against stakes. This method has worked particularly well for me with tomatoes. I prefer wooden stakes that are an inch square and five or six feet tall. Simply buy as many stakes as you have tomato plants, and when you put the plants in the ground, set the stakes in the ground at the same time, being careful not to stab the roots of the young plants. As the young plants grow, gently tie the thicker branches of each plant to the stake, using either strips of fabric or a vinyl stretch tie.

For this method to work best–to keep the plant put its energy into growing up instead of out–you need to pinch off new growth at the point where the existing branches join the main stalk of the plant. I typically do this once a week; it only takes a few minutes, and once your tomatoes are trained up the stake, these little extra sprouts are easy to spot and remove.

This is an effective, but not necessarily the sturdiest or most attractive, way to grow vegetables vertically. If you’re looking to grow heavier vegetables–like squash or even pumpkins–vertically, you’re going to need something more substantial. If you’d like to see how to build a simple but tall and strong support for heavier plants, I recommend All New Square Foot Gardening by Mel Bartholomew, as the book has plans for constructing, with only a few tools, an affordable but substantial trellis. The book also explains where to situate your trellis (hint: don’t place it in such a way that the vegetables growing on the trellis will shade out those in the garden bed), how to best secure the netting that forms the ladders up which the plants climb, which plants grow best vertically, how to train plants up the trellis, how to increase your tomato yield by planting one tomato plant hortizontally (!), and how to secure the trellis if the plants become heavy at the end of the season.

If you’re ready to tackle slightly more advanced vertical garden methods–many of them exceptionally beautiful–I recommend you get your hands on the lavishly illustrated and highly inspirational book Garden Up! The book has a chapter on growing edibles up, against, and hanging from walls, with a special focus on how to irrigate plants in such a system. The chapter also covers growing on espaliers, using containers creatively in vertical plantings, making “potato condos,” and constructing nontraditional trellises.

Photo by digika, and used under a Creative Commons license

Have You Tried Strawberry Pots?

August 22, 2011 By Leslie Leave a Comment

When I was a kid, I was fascinated with the strawberry pots my mom kept in an especially sunny spot in the backyard. Every year plants tucked into the pockets of the strawberry pots produced lots of strawberries. Best of all, the strawberries hung over the edge of the pots’ pockets, dangling in the air instead of sitting in the dirt. Not only were these pots full of strawberries lovely–the strawberries were less prone to destruction by slugs or damage from sitting on the moist soil. (This year I planted my strawberries in traditional containers and the slugs are having a feast. Ugh. Next year: back to strawberry pots!)

Need I even mention that strawberries you grow at home–especially if you choose your variety carefully–are so much tastier than those that have been shipped to grocery stores on big, refrigerated trucks?

You don’t need a large backyard, however, to keep strawberry pots–they’re just the right size for patios and even tiny balconies. And you may not even need much sun–a friend of mine successfully grows tasty strawberries almost entirely in the shade.

Some tips for success with your strawberry pot:

Pick a place where the pot will get sun on all sides. You don’t want to place it right up against a wall or a fence because the strawberries planted in the pockets nearest the fence likely won’t get enough sun. You want your strawberries to get at least six hours of sun a day, and more is better (although, as I mentioned above, in some cases you don’t need that much sun).

Try ever-bearing or day-neutral strawberries. These tend to do better in strawberry pots that some of the June-bearing varieties, and they don’t seem to care as much about the length of day, so they produce fruit throughout the season. Choose a soil with a lot of organic matter—ask your local nursery or garden center what kind of organic potting soil they most recommend—and fill the pot with it until you get to the level of the first pocket. Plant one strawberry plant in that pocket, then continue this process until all the pockets have been planted and you reach the top of the pot.

Don’t let the soil get too dry. Most strawberry pots are terracotta, and on hot days, terracotta can lose moisture very quickly—especially since strawberry pots have all those pockets through which moisture can evaporate. Check every day to be sure the soil is at least faintly moist–you want to be sure the water is getting to the roots of each plant, so check the pockets as well as the top of the pot. (In fact, before you plant anything in a terracotta pot, it’s a good idea to submerge the pot in water for an hour, so that the water in the soil doesn’t immediately get wicked through the terracotta sides of the pot.)

Don’t let the soil get sodden. Strawberry plant roots need good drainage. To be sure all the roots are getting the water they need, but that they don’t get too wet, install a drainage pipe down the middle of the pot. Simply take a piece of PVC pipe—an inch-wide one will do, but you can experiment with larger ones if you like—and drill several holes in it, then center it in the pot; leave a couple inches of pipe sticking out of the pot. (It may not look pretty, but soon your healthy strawberry plants will be hiding it from view.) Pouring water down the pipe, as well as on the surface of the soil, ensures that the water is more evenly distributed to the strawberries planted in pockets. Be sure that you haven’t blocked the drain hole on the bottom of the pot with the pipe–you want any extra water in the soil to drain out through that hole.

By the way, I really like the design of this strawberry pot, even though it isn’t actual terracotta, because it has nice big pockets for ease of planting. (Note that there’s both a 30- and 14-quart version.)

Image credits: Strawberries by odonata98, and used under a Creative Commons license; strawberry pot by Corey Harmon, and used under a Creative Commons license.

Filed Under: Container gardening, Fruit and vegetable gardening

Keeping Cats Out of the Garden

August 22, 2011 By Leslie Leave a Comment

I like cats–I really do. If my spouse wasn’t allergic to them, we’d definitely have a couple. However, one of the neighbor’s cats has decided the square-foot piece of garden immediately next to my front door is the world’s best litter box. I’ve been interested, then, in ways to dissuade cats from digging around in the garden. Here’s are some techniques my research has turned up so far, but I’d love to hear your ideas—especially inexpensive ones—on how to keep cat poop out of the spots where I might want to grow food.

Water. Set up a motion-detecting sprinkler system. If there’s motion in the garden, the sprinklers will come on. Of course, you’re going to want a system that you can turn off easily–the computerized sprinkler system at the house we rent is not one of those–so that you’re not drenched when you work in the garden.

Dense vegetation. Plant flowers, or vegetables that are OK with being crowded, close together. Many cats don’t like to squeeze between leaves (though some will do so happily). As I’ve learned recently, an open patch of soil = great place for cat poop.

Crushed red pepper or cayenne pepper. Apparently cats don’t like strong smells like these, so you can spread ground hot peppers around the border of the garden, or even on spots within the garden.

Pinecones or stones. If there’s a spot the cat likes to target in the garden, place some pinecones there to discourage them from inhabiting that space. Pinecones are uncomfortable to walk on—or, I imagine, squat on—and stones, if placed in the ground a bit, make digging difficult.

Give in and build a cat garden. Set aside a small portion of the garden for the cat to use. Plant catnip, cat thyme, and cat mint. I don’t think this is an option for me, as I’m not about to put a welcome mat for the cat right by the front door. That said, maybe cultivating a cat garden in another part of the yard might lure the cat from the front door.

Or, do the opposite: plant an anti-cat garden. Apparently cats don’t like lavender, geraniums, or rue, a—like red and cayenne pepper—the scents are too strong. With my luck, my neighbor’s cat—or cats, I’m really not sure—would be lavender lovers, but it’s worth a try, I think.

Spiked mats. You can see one type here: Cat Scat Mats. These are mats featuring small plastic spikes that stick up about an inch or so from the ground. Alas, these mats will also discourage you from walking barefoot into the garden. (But hey–you’re probably not walking into your garden barefoot if, like me, there’s a half-hidden stash of cat poop in it.)

If you’ve had this problem, how did you solve it? (Please tell me there’s a solution, as I don’t like welcoming guests with cat poop by the front door.)

Cat photo by zenera, and used under a Creative Commons license.

Filed Under: Garden pests, Techniques

Some gardeners I admire

August 8, 2011 By Leslie 1 Comment

A view of Barbara Ganley’s amazing Open View Gardens. (Photo by Barbara Ganley, and used under a Creative Commons license.)

I’ve been surrounded by gardeners all my life–it’s a peril of having spent three decades in the western half of California, where year-round growing is pretty easy. In my perambulations around the country and the web, however, I’ve come to know (as friends or merely as a website lurker) some people who have a really deep relationship with their gardens, and I’d like to give some of them a shout-out here, as they’re an inspiration.

First, if we’re talking about floriculture, my mom is at the very top of my gardening idols. Her yard boasts a few dozen lovely and fragrant rosebushes and I’m guessing at least a dozen varieties of begonia. My parents have lived in their Southern California home since 1968, so they’ve had plenty of time to improve the soil, and it shows–her garden blossoms year-round thanks to nearly a hundred tall and prolific perennials whose names I never seem able to remember.

Next on my floriculture list would be a number of women you’ve likely never heard of–none of them are alive today–but who all contributed in one way or another to California floriculture or to the understanding of California’s native plants: Lester Rowntree, Theodosia Shepherd, Alice Eastwood, Gerda Isenberg, Susanna Bixby Bryant, and Kate Sessions. (I’m in the process of becoming a California garden historian of sorts, so admiring late floricultural and horticultural pioneers is becoming a vocational hazard.)

If we’re going to talk about edible horticulture, however, then I’m eager to list people I’ve met and people I want to meet but thus far know only online.

My friend Barbara Ganley runs Open View Gardens adjacent to her home in rural Vermont. While she’s not technically an urban gardener, Barbara’s methods are applicable to intensive gardening of food, and her passion for her work is inspirational. I admire the way she has launched a business that supports her passions through truly one-of-a-kind cooking workshops, a lovely shop packed with dried herbs and peppers, syrups, jams, jellies, condiments, and more from her garden and kitchen, and subscriptions to special ingredients from Barbara’s kitchen, as well as recipes and menus that call for those ingredients. Her site also boasts a ton of recipes drawn from cuisines around the world–and all infused with Barbara’s brilliance as a gardener, chef, and all-around creative thinker.

I’ve had the pleasure of crossing paths with Bryan Alexander at a number of education technology conferences; he lives just up the mountain from Barbara, but–as he emphasized in a guest post on Barbara’s blog–his gardening takes on additional urgency in the face of the isolation winter brings to his community. Bryan blogs about the Gothic at Infocult (not a site for the queasy of stomach or those prone to nightmares, I assure you) and is the author of The New Digital Storytelling, but for gardeners his most interesting site is likely Scaling the Peak, “a blog about peak oil and a family attempting to cope.” On that blog he chronicles his family’s agricultural adventures on what he affectionately terms “the doomstead.” Again, Bryan’s homestead isn’t urban, but his experiments remain relevant to those of us in cities and suburbs; check out, for example, his post on early July homestead activities or planting potatoes in June.

When I lived in California, I found the blogs of northern denizens like Barbara and Bryan to be really interesting and inspiring. Since my move to Idaho, I’ve found them instructional as well. Definitely add them to your feed reader or bookmarks, especially if like me you’re challenged by a late last frost date and a short growing season.

My pseudonymous friend Garden Grrrl, who blogs at Gardensong, is always ready and willing to ease my muddling through the garden. Like me, she has a passion for informal science education and the democratization of knowledge about horticulture and the natural world. Though she hasn’t been the most prolific blogger lately, I’m delighted to number her among my good friends–and thrilled that I have her phone number for good conversation and garden emergencies.

I’ve never met the Dervaes family, but I hope one of my regular visits to Southern California will soon take me by their Pasadena urban homestead (a term the family has registered as a trademark, to much chagrin–OK, indignation–in the urban ag community). On one-tenth of an acre, the Dervaes produce more than three tons of organic food annually.

I’m just learning about the saga of the South Central farmers of Los Angeles. They’ve seen their community farm’s acreage decline dramatically, and they’re fighting to retain access to one final sliver of land. Check out their site to see how you might help.

I also admire the myriad community gardeners in Oakland, California. (Urban farming and community gardening has absolutely taken off in the San Francisco Bay Area.) There are Oakland neighborhoods without a grocery store, so it’s difficult to get fresh produce. Activists, neighbors, and entrepreneurs have teamed up to bring ultra-local fresh food to the residents in the form of gardens and urban farms.

Which gardeners do you admire, and why?

Filed Under: Community, Fruit and vegetable gardening

Urban gardening round-up #1

August 7, 2011 By Leslie Leave a Comment

Because (like many of you, I suspect) I’m on a budget and I rent the home I live in, I can’t build an extravagant gardening infrastructure on my property. That doesn’t keep me, however, from dreaming of bigger plots and collaborating with my community on gardens. Here are some recent posts and articles I found inspirational in one way or another:

Margaret Roach reminds us that, even if we live in climates without year-round growing seasons, there’s still time to put certain cooler-weather plants in the ground. Check out her list for seeds and seedlings that it might not yet be too late to plant.

Slugs have attacked my strawberry pots, so I’m experiencing a shortage of strawberries. Barbara Ganley’s video on how to make French-style strawberry jam, however, makes me want to buy bushels of strawberries from a local farm.*

Inside Urban Green provides tips on how to transform your ceramic pots into sub-irrigated planters–without having to drill an extra hole in the side of the pots.

The thriving community garden movement in Oakland is both metaphorically and literally in full bloom. Oakland’s efforts to bring local food to communities that lack even grocery stores has brought into partnership some really great organizations. Definitely click through to find out what they’re up to.

Thinking of growing the scale of your gardening, and making the transition from urban gardening to urban agriculture? You might find some inspiration in Inhabitat’s post about the top 5 urban farms in New York City.

Meanwhile, urban farmers in Los Angeles are trying to save South Central Farm. Visit their site to see what you can do to help.

What urban gardening and urban farming news and techniques are you finding interesting these days? Feel free to leave links (even to your own gardening sites) in the comments.

* That fledgling directory of Treasure Valley (Idaho) farms emerged from a student project in my public history course. Their Facebook page is still a work in progress, but the project is the brainchild of some amazing young women, so I encourage you to “Like” their page so you can stay posted about their work.

Image credits: Good greens by seanpants, and used under a Creative Commons license; strawberries by @joefoodie, and used under a Creative Commons license.

[Readers, please ignore: Temporary info for Technorati blog claim: YS4HJ86RYUCA ]

Filed Under: Urban gardening news round-up

Crappy Soil? Try Raised Bed Gardening

July 24, 2011 By Leslie Leave a Comment

The two things I least look forward to at the beginning of each spring are turning over compacted soil and pulling weeds from hard ground. Even though I’m enthusiastic about gardening, I also have a lazy streak in me, so I appreciate a good, honest workaround for these two challenges.

I found one solution in raised bed gardening. It’s a bit of work up front–you’ll need to build (or buy and snap together) the frame for the raised bed, then haul a bunch of soil to it. But once those two steps are complete, gardening becomes sooooo much easier.

Raised beds offer a number of advantages (for all gardeners, not just lazy ones like me):

You can control what kind of soil your food grows in. If you rent your house, or you’re the second or third owner, or if your house is build on former brownfields or even fill land, who knows what’s in the soil? Find your favorite organic soil–or gather up your compost–and use it to fill the bed.

Raised beds tend to have a higher yield. Because you’re filling your raised bed with quality soil instead of whatever happens to be in your garden, you’re going to have more nutrient-rich soil, which usually translates to more vegetables and flowers. Be the envy of your neighbors!

Raised beds can be cultivated at a variety of heights. I tend to make my raised beds only about nine inches deep, but again, I’m lazy and not likely to invest in constructing bed beyond the frame. If you have back or joint problems, you can raise your beds off the ground completely. You can find a variety of raised bed garden construction plans online (at Sunset, Popular Mechanics, HGTV, and Micro-Eco Farming, for example–that last one has plans that are accessible for people with mobility disabilities). If, like me, your woodworking prowess ends with screwing four boards together in a rectangle and plunking it on the ground, but you want something more attractive and accessible, you can buy a raised garden bed that resembles a table.

Raised beds reduce soil compaction. Most raised beds are no more than four feet across, which means most people can reach all parts of the bed from its edges (with a little stretching). Because you’re not walking on the soil in the bed, the soil doesn’t become as compacted. That’s not only good news for you–you’ll spend less time struggling to turn over compacted soil at planting time–but also for your plants, as less compacted soil allows more air to reach your plants’ roots.

Raised beds have better drainage. In part because the soil is less compacted, raised beds allow excess water to seep away relatively quickly. Again, this helps air reach plants’ roots. If you live in an area with saturated or clayey soil, a raised bed filled with good soil can do wonders for your garden’s drainage.

Raised beds tend to have fewer weeds. If you’ve filled your raised bed with weed-free soil (and why wouldn’t you?), and if you put a weed barrier under at the bottom of your raised bed (under the soil you added), you’re probably not going to get a lot of weeds. Those that do pop up should be easy to pull because, as described above, raised beds tend not to have compacted soil, which can make it difficult to extricate weeds’ roots.

Raised beds can deter mammalian invaders. If you have a problem with gophers or rabbits, you can place chicken wire or a similar barrier at the bottom of the raised bed. Similarly, you can put a cage over the top of the garden to prevent incursions from above. This also keeps cats from using your garden as a litter box–a problem I’m dealing with myself right now.

Further resources

There are a ton of resources online about raised beds, but they’re of uneven quality. There are, however, some excellent books about raised bed gardening, and they’re packed with useful, actionable information. My favorite is Mel Bartholomew’s All New Square Foot Gardening.

There are also many raised bed garden kits available. This one is really impressive. It is large, attractive, and, because it’s made from cedar, ecologically friendly. It features a built-in trellis, automated irrigation system, and even a gate. This one has two tiers, which also can be really attractive.

If you’re battling garden critters but don’t want to poison them, and if, like me, you’re not particularly handy with building things from scratch or are just plain impatient (also like me), you can simply buy a small-animal barrier.

If you have experience with raised bed gardening, what suggestions do you have for others? And if you’ve never tried it, what questions do you have?

Photo by Andrew of All Things Michigan, and used under a Creative Commons license

Filed Under: Garden pests, Garden planning and design, Raised bed gardening, Small space gardening, Soil, Techniques

Why Urban Gardening Matters

July 22, 2011 By Leslie Leave a Comment

If there’s one word that captures the potential of urban gardening, it’s transformative. Even if I didn’t love gardening, I would be compelled to write about urban gardening and urban agriculture just because I find so alluring this transformative potential.

I’m not pulling this adjective out of thin air–there’s a ton of research backing up my claim. Here are the highlights:

According to the Royal Horticulture Society’s report (PDF) on urban gardening, gardens make cities more sustainable and increase city dwellers’ quality of life because

plants and trees in an urban environment cool the air and temper urban heat waves.
strategically placed vegetation around homes can decrease residents’ energy consumption by serving as a wind break for cold air, and by serving as a form of insulation.
gardens can prevent flooding in cities by slowing runoff, which would otherwise speed toward urban drains.
gardening requires regular exercise, which can reduce stress and contribute to both physical and psychological well-being.
even urban gardens attract and support an impressive range of wildlife. Says the report, “Some animal species are now more common in cities, and particularly domestic gardens, than in rural areas.”

These aren’t the only benefits of urban gardening, however. Members of the Community Food Security Coalition’s North American Initiative on Urban Agriculture published a paper (PDF) on the health benefits of urban gardening. Among them are

People who grow food consume it, and the food grown in home gardens tends to be closer to the organic end of the food production spectrum than food grown on large commercial farms.
Urban agriculture and gardening promote the development of safe, healthy, green neighborhoods, sometimes transforming residential yards, school campuses, and abandoned areas into informal neighborhood meeting spaces.

Some researchers have suggested that urban gardening is a sound solution (PDF) to brownfields.

Sprouts in the Sidewalk offers another list of benefits. Socially, Sprouts points out, urban gardening strengthens communities; connects individuals with food production and empowers them to take responsibility for their food’s security; greens the city; teaches self-sufficiency; creates jobs, income, and food; combats hunger in communities; and instills respect for safe, green food production. Environmentally, gardens clean the urban air and water, slows erosion, decreases a community’s garden footprint because food need not be trucked in, encourages composting, and directly impacts urban ecological health. Gardening, Sprouts emphasizes, also has economic benefits: It creates jobs and income from spaces that may previously have been abandoned or otherwise unproductive, helps people regardless of socioeconomic class, creates a vibrant local food economy, and allows people to pool resources (particularly those, such as compost, that would otherwise go to waste in an urban environment).

Gardening’s impact on urban communities can’t be overestimated. Gardening brings people out into their yards–and increasingly their front and side yards, where they may be visible to their neighbors. In some cases, these connections spark small businesses, as entrepreneurial neighbors collaborate to create community-supported agriculture subscriptions.

What about you? What draws you to urban gardening or urban agriculture? How has gardening changed your yard, your immediate neighborhood, or your larger community?

Garden photo by Irene Kightley, and used under a Creative Commons license

Filed Under: Community, Health benefits of gardening, Weather and climate, Wildlife

Attracting pollinators to your urban garden

July 16, 2011 By Leslie Leave a Comment

In an age of colony collapse disorder, it can be difficult to attract European honeybees–until recently one of North America’s most prolific pollinators–to your garden. Fortunately, there are about 4,000 species of bees in the United States alone, so just because managed hives are collapsing, it doesn’t mean your garden has to go without pollinators. There are steps you can take to attract additional species of bees and pollinators such as other insects, birds, and bats.

Provide nectar and pollen

Not surprisingly, each species of pollinator has its favorite flowers or combination of flowers.

Let’s look at bees for a moment, since they’re usually the most populous pollinators in a garden. Research at UC Berkeley has shown that gardens with at least ten kinds of attractive plants bring the most bees to the garden. This same research team discovered that bees were particularly drawn to homogeneous groupings of the same kind of flowering plant, spaced closely together and planted in at least 1.5-meter square plantings. Because different kinds of native bees may be active at different times of the year (depending on your climate and location, of course), it’s a good idea to include in your garden a variety of plants that flower in different seasons.

More specifically, bees’ selective color vision means they are drawn to white, yellow, blue, and purple flowers. Look for flowers with only one row of petals (as opposed to having multiple rows of petals, like carnations or roses). In her book Urban Homesteading: Heirloom Skills for Sustainable Living, Rachel Kaplan lists these plants as being especially attractive to bees: mint (or anything in the Lamiaceae family), lavender, yarrow, clarkia, gaillardia, delphinium, poppies, penstemon, milkweed, ceanothus, grindelia, fireweed, verbena, and dusty miller. Also check out bee balm, thyme, sage, buttercups, clematis, clover, cosmos, dahlias, echinacea, geraniums, hyssop, sunflowers (and actually any kind of Asteraceae), and zinnias. Trees with high nectar content include Korean Evodia, crabapple, mountain ash, buckeye, and magnolia.

Don’t discount wasps, either. While many people consider wasps to be pests, they can be beneficial in eradicating garden pests, including caterpillars and hornworms. Some kinds of wasps are drawn to flowers of plants in the carrot family (Apiaceae), which includes fennel, dill, cilantro, parsley, and chervil.

Hummingbirds are among the pollinators most popular with gardeners. To attract hummingbirds, grow nectar-rich plants like fuschia, salvia, lupine, penstemon, columbine, coral bells, and butterfly bush. When flowers aren’t in bloom, you can attract hummingbirds with a feeder.

Finally, some species of bats are pollinators, but because bats are active at night, you need to provide night-blooming variations of plants like moonflower, cleome, evening primrose, datura, four-o’clock, yucca, water lily, jessamine, and nicotiana.

Reduce (or better yet, eliminate) pesticides

Pesticides can pose a hazard to any pollinators, but they can be especially hazardous to bees.

Different pesticides affect bees in different ways; the most bee-friendly gardens are completely free of pesticides. There are two basic kinds of pesticides: contact and systemic. Contact pesticides are sprayed or powdered on the plants, while systemic pesticides are applied to the soil—or are bred right into the seed—and thus are taken up by the entire plant, including its nectar and pollen. Bees are susceptible to these pesticides while pollinating flowers; they appear to be especially sensitive to dust and powder pesticides.

Actual damage to bee populations is a function of toxicity and exposure of the compound, in combination with the mode of application. A systemic pesticide, which is incorporated into the soil or coated on seeds, may kill soil-dwelling insects, such as grubs or mole crickets as well as other insects, including bees, that are exposed to the leaves, fruits, pollen, and nectar of the treated plants.”

Provide shelter–and materials for shelter

One really awesome way to attract beneficial wildlife to your garden is to build a bat house. Depending on the species, bats can pollinate your plants or eat insect pests. Bat houses are actually fairly easy to build, and they may be much smaller than you might first assume, so they’re quite unobtrusive. I haven’t yet built a bat house for my garden, but I own–and will be using when I do eventually build a bat house–The Bat House Builder’s Handbook. Amazon.com’s description calls it “the definitive source for bat house information,” and it really is–it’s a slim, straightforward book packed with great information, and it’s a great value.

You can also encourage hummingbirds to nest by providing both nesting material–including downy material like mildweed, thistle, cattail, fireweed down, spider webs, and lichen–and a place to establish their nests. These tiny birds like to nest between one and 15 meters from the ground, near the end of a branch that is sheltered by leaves above it. They seem drawn to ironwood, beech, yellow birch, oak, hackberry, maple, and pine, though this is by no means an exhaustive list.

You don’t need to set up a honeybee box to maintain a bee presence in your garden. Not all bees live in hives or colonies. In fact, many bees build nests in soil, so it’s a good idea to disturb the soil as little as possible if you see bees hovering near the ground. In addition, bees may have difficulty nesting in hard, compact soil. Other bees nest in cavities; most of these bees are opportunistic, nesting in holes in trees or human-made structures, but some, like carpenter bees, chew their own cavities into wood.

In addition to protection from predators, butterflies’ delicate constitution means they also need to be shielded from wind and rain. I’ve seen butterflies take shelter from rain under a variety of large-leaved plants, but you can also add shrubs to your garden that have relatively dense foliage and attract butterflies. Try planting butterfly bush, spicebush, and lilac, or provide evergreens or even rocks large enough shelter butterflies on their lee side.

Provide fresh water

A simple birdbath will provide sufficient water for pollinators. Bees and butterflies, however, can drown in the birdbath unless you provide a perch for them. Try leaning a few sticks or twigs on the edge of the birdbath, with one end floating on or sinking into the water.

Be sure to dump and refresh the water regularly, not only because fresh water is better for pollinators, but because mosquitos can lay eggs in standing water and reproduce very quickly.

Additional resources

Pollinator Conservation Handbook: A Guide to Understanding, Protecting, and Providing Habitat for Native Pollinator Insects (2003)

Created by the two leading organizations in pollinator conservation, the Xerces Society and Bee Works, The Pollinator Conservation Handbook is an indispensable resource for gardeners, farmers, and managers of parks, recreational areas, and wild lands. It will guide you through the steps for creating and improving habitat for insect pollinators, including selecting and planting forage flowers, providing nesting and egg-laying sites, and caring for your pollinator habitat over time.

Attracting Native Pollinators: The Xerces Society Guide to Conserving North American Bees and Butterflies and Their Habitat

According to the National Academy of Sciences, close to 75 percent of all flowering plants rely to some degree on pollinators in order to set seed or fruit. The recent decline of the European honey bee and other pollinators in North America poses a serious challenge to maintaining our food supply and ecological health. From these plants comes one-third of the planet’s food, including fruit and vegetable crops, as well as forage seed crops such as alfalfa, which are critical to dairy and meat production. Attracting Native Pollinators is a comprehensive guidebook for gardeners, small farmers, orchardists, beekeepers, naturalists, environmentalists, and public land managers on how to protect and encourage the activity of the native pollinators of North America, including bees, flies, butterflies, wasps, and moths. In this book you’ll find positive solutions for how to provide bountiful harvests on farms and gardens, maintain healthy plant communinities in wildlands, provide food for wildlife, and beautify the landscape with flowers.

The Forgotten Pollinators

The Forgotten Pollinators delves into the fascinating world of pollination. The authors, an entomologist and an ethnobotanist and nature writer, illustrate the importance of this interaction between insect and plant, which provides the world with one-third of its food source. Using colorful examples–including a moth that rappels down cliffs to pollinate a plant in Hawaii–they also explain how modern developments are threatening this essential process. Published through the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum, the book is aimed at raising awareness about the potential loss of pollinators and their plants, while showing the larger picture of a fragile ecosystem through the eyes of some of its more unnoticed inhabitants.

Attracting Butterflies and Hummingbirds to Your Backyard

Attracting Butterfles and Hummingbirds to Your Backyard reveals the secrets for creating irresistible gardens and a welcoming landscape, which will lure these amazing creatures up close and personal for your enjoyment and wonder. Author Sally Roth knows the best plants, feeders, and water features that appeal to butterflies and hummingbirds, plus she offers an entertaining and insightful guide to butterfly and hummingbird behavior.

How do you attract pollinators to your garden?

Image credits: Bee by Holly Occhipinti, and used under a Creative Commons license; spectacled fruit bat by Shek Graham, and used under a Creative Commons license; bat house by colmmcsky, and used under a Creative Commons license.

Filed Under: Flower gardening, Insects, Uncategorized, Wildlife

Choosing Healthy Plants at the Nursery

July 3, 2011 By Leslie Leave a Comment

photo credit: Marcy Reiford

As a gardener, I’ve been feeling overwhelmed this spring and summer.

When I walked into a gardening center in California, I was familiar with the plants there, and I had a huge selection of plants from which to choose.

Here in Idaho, nurseries are fewer and far between–and they’re only open for a month or two, often closing by the end of June, the point at which all your plants should be in the ground–and the selection at the garden centers at the bigger home and garden stores (e.g. Home Depot) is not particularly impressive. (Shade plants, I’m finding, are especially difficult to find in any kind of diversity.)

All I have going for me, then, is that I know how to pick out healthy plants. I may not yet know which are best for my soil and microclimate, but I’m pretty confident that I can tell a soon-to-be-sick plant from one that will thrive.

Here. then, are my tips for picking out healthy, robust plants for your garden.

Look at the foliage.

Unless the plant is supposed to have leaves of another color (I’m looking at you, heuchera), be sure the leaves are a vibrant green.
The plant should have sufficient foliage. It shouldn’t look thin or “leggy”–meaning the stem has grown so tall and thin that it can’t support the foliage, flowers, or fruit of the plant.
Leaves should be full, not wilted or turning yellow or dry at the tips.
Brown, dry leaf tips may indicate a plant hasn’t been getting enough water.
Conversely, limp, waxy leaves with yellow tips are a telltale sign that a plant has been overwatered.
Thin, bleached-out leaves can be a sign of infestation, as can leaves that show damage on their undersides or that have pieces missing from their edges.
Leaves that are brown and wilted or that have odd spots of color on them may be a clue to a fungal infection.
Plants with broken stems are weak; they may have been handled roughly by the staff at the nursery.

Peek at the roots.

Yes, it’s difficult to see the roots of the plant while it’s still in its nursery container, but these are the plant’s life-support system (they transport water and nutrients from the soil), so you want to be sure the plant has strong roots. A little gentle probing can give you an idea of a plant’s roots’ health.

Tip the plant to one side, and gently scoop away a bit of dirt, checking first one side then the other. You also might be able to (gently) slide the larger, more robust plants (this works best for half-gallon containers and larger) a few inches from their plastic pots so that you can see the top of the root ball.
You want to see roots that are full and spread out. This is key.
Avoid plants that are “root-bound”–meaning they roots are all tangled up together, and have begun spiraling around, shaping themselves to the plant’s container. It’s difficult for plants to recover from this condition; while some new root growth will expand into adjacent soil when you plant it, the original roots will continue to strangle one another.

A typical root-bound plant looks like this; in extreme cases the roots wrap themselves even near the top of the container.

photo credit: madaise

What are your tips for choosing healthy plants at the nursery?

Filed Under: Flower gardening, Fruit and vegetable gardening, Techniques