Sustainable Gardening Blog

A tipping point has clearly been crossed because all of a sudden the need for sustainable fishing practices is everywhere.  And not just at The Slow Cook,  which I read religiously, despite my lack of interest in cooking.  It’s also here, here and - oh, everywhere.

So I was primed to try the new Georgetown hot spot Hook, the first restaurant in D.C. that adheres strictly to sustainable fishing practices.  Chef Barton Seaver, called a "visionary" in this Washington Post review, visits all his suppliers to make sure they’re not using such widespread practices as overfishing, collection techniques that destroy habitat, or farming with the use of antibiotics.

So how do sustainable fish taste?  Like real food, the real meat of
creatures of the sea, but with a touch of Barton’s culinary magic.  I’m no food critic but yum!

Each customer receives a wallet-sized brochure outlining in detail the fish to avoid and the fish to eat with impunity, a brochure brought to us with the help of Patagonia and the Blue Ocean Institute.  (The brochure’s supposed to be on line here, but that link isn’t working at the moment.)  And Earth Echo International is also involved somehow and my dinner companion was their secretary-treasurer, the charming Jan Cousteau, whom I’d met at the DC opening of "The Green" on the Sundance Channel.

So that’s what I was doing at a "glam new watering hole" that’s "swimming with the young and pretty."  A little off my usual beat. 

Photo of Jan Cousteau and Chef Barton Seaver, taken with a camera whose flash wasn’t working at that particular moment.

Okay, there’s nothing new happening in my garden this time of year and I need diversions.  Netflix is a big help but what I miss most on frigid days is connecting with nature, so I recently purchased a bat-house.  It holds up to 100 bats and cost $45 (part of which goes toward conservation efforts, I’m told.)

But buying the house brought so much more than this lovely tree ornament; it revealed to me a whole world of bat conservation.  There’s the Organization for Bat Conservation out of Michigan, from which I ordered my bat-house.   Their site holds a wealth of great info, including how to arrange an in-person program for school kids - too bad it’s only available in Michigan (not to mention only for kids).  The site has a bat-house-owner forum, too, where I found tales of owners counting the bats return to the house in early morning, using their binoculars to identify the species, and more wildlife excitement.  See, I’m such a lousy birder that I’ve experienced only failure at identifying birds, but there are so few bat species in my area, I have a fighting a chance.

Another amazing site is produced by Bat Conservation International, based in Austin (there it is again, one of the coolest city in the U.S.)  On their site you can join their Adopt a Bat program and receive an "endearing letter from your bat."  Okay, that’s not my favorite part, but how about learning about their backward-facing knees and locking claws make hanging upside down easy?  And then there’s the Latin American bat that eats only blood, the legendary vampire.  So legendary, in fact, that the Wikipedia entry for vampires is about the legends, not the actual animal.  Hey, bat conservation people, how about amending the entry?

Best of all, I learn that a small insect-eating bat can eat up to 2,000 mosquito-size insects in one night - GO TEAM!

I’ve committed to writing a bunch of columns about wildlife as part of my town’s campaign to become certified as a Wildlife Habitat Community, so you’ll be reading more soon about bats, pollinating bees, and good old butterfly gardens.

ADDENDUM, in response to a commenter, about WHERE TO PUT THE BAT-HOUSE.  From the Organization for Bat Conservation site:

In the Northeast: Where you mount your bat house plays a major role in the internal temperature.  Houses can be mounted on such structures as poles, sides of buildings and tall trees without obstructions. Houses placed on poles and structures tend to become occupied quicker than houses placed on trees. Bat houses should face south to southeast to take advantage of the morning sun. In northern states and Canada, bat houses need to receive at least 6 to 8 hours of direct sunlight. It is also advantageous to paint the house black to absorb plenty of heat (when baby bats are born, they need it very warm). Use non-toxic, latex paint to paint your bat house and only paint the outside.  Your bat house should be mounted at least 15 feet above the ground, the higher the house the greater the chance of attracting bats.   

Bats return from migration and awaken from hibernation as early as March in most of the U.S., but stay active year-round in the extreme southern U.S. They will be abundant through out the summer and into late fall. Most houses used by bats are occupied in the first 1 to 6 months (during the first summer the bat house was erected). If bats do not roost in your house by the end of the second summer, move the house to another location.

MORE ON WHETHER THEY WORK:  I once heard a wildlife gardening expert say that it may take a while for the bats to discover the house, but once they find it, it works well.

Here’s a little piece of garden art that always starts a conversation - and raises questions I can’t answer, leading me to shrug stupidly and sputter disjointed bits of information.  So I decided it’s time to stop embarassing myself and do a little Googling.

So, what you see is an artificial nest for orchard mason bees, pollinating bees that are native to the U.S.  Solitary and therefore not hive-building, these bees lay their eggs in mud-walled cells like these drill holes, or straws packed in a coffee can that’s then mounted a few feet off the ground facing the morning sun. Although the person who sold me this nest-holder raved about the pollinating abilities of these bees, they can’t be managed directly by humans - say, hauled around to different farmers’ fields - and thus aren’t suitable to large-scale agricultural use. Even worse, most native pollinating bees nest in the ground, so any disturbance and they’re history.  The use of pesticides has also reduced their numbers.

All of which helps in explaining why honeybees were brought here from Europe to pollinate crops for our growing population.  But the recent destruction of about half the American honeybee population by a parasitic mite has highlighted the dangers of overreliance on any  particular species.  So I’m right there, offering these little drill holes to the wandering orchard mason bee looking for a nest site.  I know it won’t make much difference in the scheme of things but hey, it’s something.  And not a bad-looking garden ornament, either.

RANDOM HONEYBEE FACTS:  The average honeybee hive holds 50,000 bees.  It takes the nectar of about 2 million flowers to produce one pound of honey.  Honeybees are used in the pollination of 130 agricultural crops in the U.S. and add $14 billion to crop yield and quality. 15 to 30 percent of our diet relies on honeybees.

FUN TREND:  Reportedly, a "deeply cool and trendy" new hobby in British cities is beekeeping, on rooftops and in tiny backyards.  One advocate describes it as a "fashionable thing to do something for the environment."  Don’t look for this trend to jump the pond and land in Washington, D.C. any time soon, though.  Beekeeping is banned in D.C. and many other stinger-fearing jurisdictions.

My recent post about this National Wildlife Foundation program elicited some questions - does my community have this? - so here’s a link to the communities that have either completed the process and been certified, or have registered, meaning they’re working toward certification.  Three more communities have registered since the list was updated: Burlington, VT;  Clarksville/Buffalo Junction, VA, a rural community on the NC border; and Lawrence Township in the Indianapolis area.

So if your community isn’t on these lists, maybe you can help make that happen.

And Readers, thanks for generously offering your photos for the cause.  They’ll be accompanied by links to your sites and blogs.

A really cool program I’ve recently jumped on board is the National Wildlife Foundation’s BACKYARD WILDLIFE HABITAT PROGRAM. You might have seen one of their signs designating a certified backyard - one that attracts wildlife with food, water, cover, and places to raise their young.  But I hasten to add it’s the birds and bees we want to attract, not raccoons, deer, or rats.  Not a big turn-on, those critters, so birds and bees it is.  But this program that’s been quietly changing front and backyards across America since 1973 has gotten bigger and better.

SUSTAINABLE GARDENING - a term ya gotta love - has recently been added to the requirements for certification, and here they mean things like using mulch, reducing the use of chemicals, and growing more drought-tolerant plants.  And I say Hooray for the NWF coz just reading through the application for certification educates homeowners about healthier ways to treat their property.

HABITAT COMMUNITIES, a much newer program, applies the same criteria to whole towns or counties, combining healthier individual backyards with similar improvements to public, nonprofit and businesss-owned sites to achieve a multiplier effect and create wildlife corridors. Imagine wildlife-friendly plantings in schoolyards, churchyards, parks, or along city streets. Points are also awarded for events like stream clean-ups and invasive plant round-ups.  Plus, don’t forget, the use of sustainable gardening practices - the gardening practices we’re all trying to get people to adopt these days, despite the public’s persistent addiction to perfect lawns and everblooming everything. 

Now that you know what I’m talking about, why am I writing about it and how can you help? It all started on our local gardening listserv when someone mentioned the Community Habitat program and the fact that of the 15 certified communities in the U.S. so far, 3 are in Virginia and none are in Maryland - yep, a big zip. And if you’re not from these parts let me explain something about the mindset around here: Maryland is blue and Virginia is red, so we Marylanders expect to beat the pants off Virginians when it comes to anything remotely progressive.  And eating Virginia’s dust in this really cool environmental program?  It hurts.

So meetings have been held and the citizenry of Crunchy Takoma (nuclear-free and don’t you dare laugh) are determined to be the first town in Maryland to accomplish community certification, thereby salvaging our city pride, at least.  And I have two volunteer assignments, both of which will earn us points toward certification: writing articles and updates about the program in a local newspaper - easy enough to do with my new gig as a gardening columnist - and "having a website" about the program.

Now Readers, if your assignment were to create a "website," would it be a traditional, static, official-looking but boring site, or would it be something dynamic, interactive, fun and hip - to wit, a blog?  I’m preaching to the choir and of course you’d all choose the blog.  And Blogger is free and easy, so I’m there!

And here’s where you come in. The photos you see here are the sum total of my wildlife-related photos for possible use on the new blog, WildWildTakoma.  So readers, and especially gardening bloggers, we need photos of:
    - birds, bees, frogs or turtles in your garden
    - plants in your garden that are loved by any of these critters, or
    - ponds, birdhouses, or other features that attract them.
What the hell, I’ll even take stories of plants and features that attract wildlife.  Just point me in the right direction on your blog and I’ll take it from there, giving you photo credits, of course. I’ll eventually be forwarding the fruits of our labors to the NWF, so someday your photos may show up on WildWildToledo or WildWildEugene - who knows? 

[Photos: My birdhouses by Julie Wyatt of the Takoma Voice Newspaper, and a pollenating bee eggholder in my garden. God, can that really be what it’s called? Help me out here.]

For this review of Jim’s talk last night to the Takoma Horticulture Club, I Google-imaged his name to see if I could find him, cursing under my breath that I hadn’t brought my camera and done it myself.  This is one of the resulting photos and it’s so not Jim I had to laugh.  It’s some other Jim Gallion who hasn’t created, with his wife Teresa, the most beautiful replica of nature I’ve ever seen on their property near Frederick, if his PowerPoint show can be believed.

Yes, I’m happy to report that someone is achieving the ideal of combining the love of nature with a love of beauty.  And right up front he told us he wouldn’t be encouraging us to get rid of all our nonnative plants, meaning almost every plant in our gardens - he even grows them himself.  So we could relax and be seduced by his gorgeous photographs of the birds, bugs, rabbits, frogs and plants in his garden.

In his gentle way, Jim’s on a mission to spread the word.  He and Teresa work through their design/consult firm, Gardening Adventures, to help homeowners move toward harmony with nature and enhance the beauty of their surroundings.  And on top of what they get paid to do, they contribute 300 or so hours a year in community service, which is 275 more than what’s required to maintain their Master Gardener status.  And judging by Jim’s talk, he’s a great teacher for the cause because his love of nature is infectious.

More good news - their excellent articles on such topics as wildlife in the garden, native plants, and turf reduction can be found on line.  Here they’re listed with other Master Gardener articles, so scroll down alphabetically to Theresa and Jim Gallion.

Among Gallion’s words last night:
- "If you don’t have some nonnatives, you’re missing out on a lot of really cool plants," so he’s not a "native plant elitist."
- You can create a habitat even if you only have a balcony to work with.
- His winterberry has tons of berries and has become the guarded territory of a mockingbird couple.
- Hang your suet-holder upside down to discourage the "junk birds."
- Turtles love colonies of May apples.
- To attract the Zebra Swallowtail, grow Paw Paw, but only if you have room for them to spread.
- To attract Ruby-Throated Hummingbird (in photo), grow the native columbine. It’s a good groundcover in partial shade, reseeding freely.
- Neither toadhouses nor butterfly houses work.  Bat houses work once they’re discovered by the bats, which may take a while.
- Leaving dead wood to decay in place is great for the critters, and looks good, too.  A standing dead tree will attract even more woodpeckers if you drill some one-inch starter holes along it.
- Gardening with successions of petunias and zinnias isn’t gardening; it’s yard decorating.
- Butterfly bushes are like "McDonald’s drive-throughs."
- Recommends National Wildlife Federation’s Attracting Birds, Butterflies, and Other Backyard Wildlife and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Native Plants for Wildlife Habitat and Conservation of Land, Chesapeake Bay Watershed Edison.
- Recommends The Wild Ones at www.for-wild.org.

Can you tell I was won over? Yeah, I want frogs and some more woodpeckers, just for starters.  I’ll try to remember that Jim also suggested going slow and not expecting overnight results.

Last but never least, thanks to Kathy Jentz for bringing Jim to the club.

This just in - a photo of the our Jim Gallion.  Ah, that’s better.

Here’s a nature pick-me-up for a dreary winter day - this fabulous documentary about a flock of escaped parrots in SF and the man who’s dedicated his life to them.  A smart and lovable aging hippie, Mark Bittner was determined to spend his life doing only what he loved, whether it was his music or later, spending time with these and other large birds, even if it meant being very poor.  So about 10 minutes into the movie old Mark had me questioning my very way of life.

Then there’s the birds themselves, just as lovable and even more watchable than Mark.  Bottom line - I want one, or more.  Do you think my cats would mind?  (Hell, no; they’d love a change of diet.) And in their own way, the birds, too, challenged my thinking, especially my assumption that nonnative animals in the wild are a terrible thing.  Upon learning that some environmental groups had tried to have these wonderful animals exterminated I was shocked and appalled.   Killer bees from Africa? Go ahead and nuke ‘em.  Nutria clogging the Chesapeake Bay?  Well, they’re bigger and almost cute, so go ahead but don’t show me any photos.  Hey, they never asked to be brought here from South America. These parrots were spared, at least for now, but with flocks now living wild in various U.S. cities, the issue of what to do about them will surely rise again and I’m just hoping we come up with the funds to send them back to the wilds of Argentina, if it comes to that.  And I thought invasive plants were a hot issue.

But don’t worry; the movie isn’t about controversy.  It’s really about romance, in various forms.

A final note: If you rent this little gem I recommend getting the DVD version (assuming it’s even available in VCR) because of the terrific extras, like little stories about bird sanctuaries and Mark’s home movies, every bit as mesmerizing as the movie itself.

Happy Winter Solstice! My little gift to you is a terrific site I just discovered, though it’s been loved by many for years.  It’s all about the solstice, with lots about its ancient and cross-cultural observance.  At Candlegrove I also found this basic science that blew me away.

"Today brings the Winter Solstice. The actual moment of the Sun’s lowest latitude in the sky is 10:35 am, PST. Welcome Yule!

"Solstice means "standing still sun." Daylight won’t begin to
lengthen significantly for a few days. For example, here in San
Francisco, at winter solstice we have 9 hours, 33 minutes of daylight.
Our day will remain that length in minutes until Christmas, before
gaining a minute more.

"In fact, even though winter solstice brings the shortest day of the
year, it doesn’t feel like it to many people. That’s because more
people experience sunsets than sunrises. At mid-northern latitudes, the
earliest sunsets occur during the first week of December. Sunset
actually occurs a little bit later each day as we move closer to the
winter solstice. The days really are getting shorter, but it’s because
the sun is rising later each morning. That’s why the days at the
beginning of December usually feel the shortest. This tidbit from Jack
Horkheimer of the PBS program, Stargazer."

I was prompted to do this bit of research after noticing the sun’s position in the sky this morning, when it looked exactly like this photo.  Actually, I’ve been noticing its progression up and down the latitudes all year - yet another reason to spend time in the garden.  Though it was only 30 degrees when I went out this morning (just below freezing for readers living in more science-friendly nations) it felt great.  That’s thanks to enough layers of clothes and being really active - collecting and hauling those leaves I keep talking about.  And that’s coming from a warmth-loving Southerner.

I had the pleasure this week of hearing a symposium in D.C. called "Growing a Green Community" where I heard something that’s stuck with me. "If we take the human benefits of contact with nature seriously, then what you want to do is build in more green minutes each day." 

Exactly, and no one has to convince us gardeners of the benefits of being in nature.  And while lately "green" has become the popular metaphor for harmony with nature, this time of year we appreciate the subtler colors of winter - the point again being to just experience nature.  I remembered that when I was "checking my garden" this morning in the subfreezing air.  Skiers and winter campers may not tempt me to join them but they inspire me nonetheless.

You may be interested to know the answer proposed by the speaker:  "That means either bringing green into the places that people are spending a lot of time — those retail areas that are intensely used could be greener - and then also finding ways of pulling people into parks and the green spaces."

It’s exciting that people are thinking this way, and finally starting to be heard by the powers that be.

This is where I took my daily walk while I was in Tucson - Sabino Canyon, part of the National Forest system.  But check out the sign.  "High Mountain Lion Activity - Enter at Your Own Risk."  Like "Falling Rock," it’s one of those signs that probably does more to prevent litigation than accidental deaths.  Well, I didn’t see one but here’s what they look like. Yeah, that would get my attention.  And the spotted one below is what we actually did see roaming the condo community  where I was staying - the bobcat or wildcat.  Kinda like our suburban deer, only lethal.  And the bears mentioned are black bears, also common in the canyon. 

And moving beyond Dorothy’s trio of horrors, there’s the all-night howling of coyotes, and lots of white-tailed deer and rabbits, just to name the larger wildlife.

You could say that Toto and I were definitely not in Maryland anymore.