Protecting pollinators

There’s good and bad news about neonicotinoid pesticides during this spring’s plant shopping season. A Vanderbilt study that exposed honey bees to low doses of neonics found that after three days, the bees were sleeping half as long as normal. That’s bad news, because sleep-deprived bees have trouble finding their way back to the hive and may starve and die. 

Neonic-exposed sleep-deprived bees can't navigate

    Bees memorize visual cues for short flights, but when they’re farther from the hive, they navigate by using their circadian clock and their position in relation to the sun. Neonics disrupt bees’ circadian rhythms and throw off this navigation process.

    We seem to be accumulating more and more evidence that these pesticides harm pollinators, but the Environmental Protection Agency still hasn’t made up its mind to ban them or restrict their use, as the European Union has done. A ruling is due this year.

    As I made my plant shopping lists, I had to decide again whether to buy from my favorite garden centers. Could I trust them not to sell neonic-treated plants? I got some good news from two sources. A nearby farm stand with a large garden shop told me that most of their seedlings are started on site, and they don’t use neonics. They’ve switched to biological controls. This opens up a good source for common annuals I buy every year, such as lobelias, marigolds, alyssum, and coleus.

Pollinator-friendly marigolds and Mexican sunflowers, neonic-free

    Jack Russell, the owner of Russell’s Garden Center in nearby Wayland, called back in response to my inquiry about whether plant offerings at Russell’s are neonic-treated. I was relieved to hear his qualified no. Jack said their vegetable plants are neonic-free. For perennials and annuals, he said, they try not to sell anything treated with neonics. 

    The problem for Russell’s and other garden centers is the number of stops plants make on their way to market. Russell’s can certify that their suppliers aren’t using the insecticides, but they can’t be sure that seedlings or seeds weren’t treated before they got to those wholesale producers. Unfortunately, neonics persist for years in plant tissues.

Before planting, I want to be sure native moss phlox doesn't carry poisonous neonics

 
    Some of the suppliers whose plants I buy at places like Russell’s have made a strong commitment not to use neonics. Proven Winners, which produces many of my annuals, has vowed not to treat their plants, although they don’t quite admit that neonics harm bees. Most of the herbs offered at garden centers that I frequent are produced organically at Gilbertie’s Herb Gardens in Connecticut, so I know they’re neonic-free.

 
    In general, edible plants are less likely to be treated than ornamentals. Apparently sellers understand that consumers want pesticide-free food, but they’re slower to grasp how concerned we are about poisoning pollinators.

It's a relief to be able to source neonic-free annuals

    The good news is that the retail market is gradually catching up with ecological gardeners’ preferences regarding neonics. I’m delighted to be able to revisit my favorite plant shopping venues. Now if the EPA issues a ban, we’ll really feel sure that our gardens are safe for pollinators.

Alyssum that's safe for pollinators

 

Sustainable sourcing

I’ve received the first seed catalog of the season! It’s time to start ordering seeds and planning plant purchases for next spring. I want to be realistic and environmentally sound. That poses some new challenges this year.

Previous years' seeds were stored in the refrigerator

    I love spending cold winter evenings mooning over catalog portraits of perfect vegetables and lush, bright flowers. A seed packet doesn’t cost much, and I convince myself that I’ll find space for that special squash vine or those five varieties of string beans. I also tend to over-estimate how many sunny spots there are for annual flowers in the insectary bed or the perennial borders.

Everything looks perfect in the catalog

    The miracle of seeds germinating and sending up their first leaves never gets old for me. I like sowing seeds and coddling seedlings through their first weeks under lights. I don’t do so well with the next stage, growing those seedlings into sturdy young plants bursting with energy for their move to the garden. When I compare my willowy seedlings to their hearty counterparts at the garden center, I often resolve to stop sowing seeds at home and depend on the experts.

My zinnia seedlings look puny compared to the garden center's

    This year things look more complicated for two reasons. First, I’m still trying to avoid introducing neonicotinoid insecticides into my yard. Even seeds may be treated with these pesticides, which are toxic to bees and other beneficial insects and persist for years in soil and plant tissues. I don’t want them here because I’m trying to foster native insects, not kill them. In addition to shopping for neonic-free plants, no easy task, I also aim to buy seeds that aren’t treated with pesticides.

Neonics poison bees when they visit flowers

    That’s why I prioritize organically-produced seeds, sure to be pesticide-free. It’s convenient that the year’s first seed catalog comes from The Natural Gardening Company, the oldest certified organic nursery in the country. This seed house emphasizes vegetables over flowers, and being in California, they don’t necessarily feature varieties suited for the Northeast.     

     Closer to home, there’s Johnny’s Selected Seeds in Maine, which offers lots of organic seeds. Even if they're not organic, Johnny’s seeds are untreated, and none contain neonicotinoids. Even Burpee offers some organic seeds. It’s hard to pass up beautiful new varieties in the catalogs that aren’t organic, but I have enough organic choices to make
it bearable.

Basil and borage growing from neonic-free organic seeds

    Second, I’ve made it a goal to buy less plastic with my garden purchases. That means trying to bring home fewer plastic six-packs and individual plastic pots of seedlings. For the last couple of years, my friend Jennifer and I have bought some of our herbs in fiber pots. These are theoretically compostable. At my house, they turn into dog chews before they can decompose. At least they’re plastic-free.

    What about the rest of my plant purchases? Almost all at local garden centers will be offered in plastic pots. 

Organically-grown seedlings, but they're in plastic pots

I’m going to look into bareroot options. Strawberry plants are often shipped this way without soil or containers, and I’ve read that other plants can be too. Let’s share sources!

                         Happy Holidays

Dying to be reborn

The autumnal equinox has passed, and leaves are starting to turn yellow, curl up, and brown at the edges, beginning the process that will end in their dropping off. Are shorter days and colder nights killing them? Yes and no.

Bleeding heart (Dicentra spectabilis) winding down

    Right in front of my kitchen window, a large pot of cucumber vines was burgeoning until two weeks ago, opening new yellow flowers and forming perfect little fruits that grew into delicious cucumbers much tastier than the waxed, store-bought versions.

July: cucumber vine flowering

Last week the leaves started to shrivel. One morning I looked out and saw the plants had turned completely brown. Was it because of a night temperature in the 40s, or was it just time? How do plants know when to die?

September: the season for cucumbers has ended

    Like us, plants need to maximize their utility, acquiring as much as they can of life’s necessities—in their case, water, sunlight, nutrients, and space to grow. They can’t chase after these things. But unlike us, they can add to their bodies, growing new roots and shoots all their lives. Plants don’t just grow randomly. To respond to surrounding conditions, they make adjustments to their growth mediated by hormones carrying chemical messages from roots to leaves and back. 

    Each plant makes unsentimental decisions minute to minute about which parts will get more resources and which have to go. The plant is continuously gathering feedback from its extremities and expecting each unit to pull its weight. It needs each root to bring in enough water and nutrients to make it worth “paying for” with sugars made through photosynthesis in the leaves. Similarly, it needs each leaf to produce enough of those carbohydrates to support the roots in their mission.

One cranesbill leaf too many

    I learned that there are two kinds of plant senescence, the ways plant tissues die. There’s stress-related senescence. That's what happens when I forget to water a container plant and some leaves turn yellow and die because the plant didn’t have enough water to support them. Those leaves became too expensive to support in drought conditions.

Elephant ear leaf saying, "Why didn't you water me?"

    The other way of plant death is pre-programmed for the end of the growing season. My cucumber vines (Cucumis sativus) are annuals, born to die about 70 days from planting, soon after they finish producing fruit. This strategy allows an annual species to put all its energy into preserving genetic diversity. As leaves get ready to drop, the plant pulls back nutrients they held and uses those nutrients to produce lots of seeds, each with a mix of genes from its parents. 

    Shrubs, trees, and perennials such as bloodroot (Sanguinaria canadensis) have chosen another option. 

Yellowing bloodroot leaves sending resources back to the roots

They store nutrients in roots and stems to use later. That gives them a jump on the annuals when spring comes. They’re poised to send up new shoots, push out new leaves and roots, and get the most from the early spring sunlight.

 

Bloodroot leaves and flowers opening in April

    I hate to see winter coming and the garden season ending, but it’s great to picture the plants laying up stores for next spring.

Not quite nonstop bloom

I’ve spent many winters trying to plan for continuous bloom in the garden. This holy grail of perennial gardeners is the elusive assemblage of plants that will follow each other into glorious display, like a symphony with no pauses between movements.

July in Minneapolis--admirably plentiful flowers

 
    When I started out, I pursued this quest in hopes of enjoying colorful flowers in the garden all season. Now that I’ve become more insect-friendly, my goal has shifted. I’m aiming to offer nectar and pollen throughout the growing season so that passing bugs will always have something to eat.

A bee snacking on some meadow rue pollen in my yard

     Mail order nurseries hold out the tantalizing possibility that a careful buyer can keep the blooms going nonstop. Each plant is listed with a putative bloom time. For example, in this spring’s White Flower Farm catalog, hellebores promise to bloom in March and April, bearded irises are listed as flowering in June (and September!), 

Bearded iris' gorgeous but temperamental flowers don't last long

reblooming daylilies offer to keep going all summer, and the asters are supposed to cover August and September. If only it were that simple!

    Hard experience has taught me that the average perennial really only blooms for about two weeks. There are a few that make flowers for months, but they aren’t just covered with flowers all the time—fortunately, because that would get boring fast. In reality they bloom, pause to regroup, and bloom again.

    Weather conditions can change everything. Those hellebores that flower in March may not help pollinators much if they’re buried under a foot of snow. 

A hyacinth caught in the snow

A heat wave in May can shorten the bloom time for spring flowers, and prolonged heat and drought in July and August often put the whole garden into a state of dormancy. 

     I’ve learned that I can rely on something flowering from late April through June and from mid-September until frost. But that carpet of bright flowers in the heat of August? It’s not happening in my garden.

Summertime, and the garden is boring

    To keep the insect buffet open, I’ve come to rely on a few free-flowering perennials for each time of year, with some annuals filling in the gaps.

    Starting around this time of year, we can count on the spring bulbs, and soon the flowering shrubs will get started. May is a riot of flowers, with lots of my favorites in full bloom.

     Bearded iris and peony flowers usually make it into June, but they don’t last long. 

Nothing's more romantic than peonies, but a rainstorm can knock them out

There’s a dull period in the heat of the summer.  A series of day lilies with overlapping bloom times stretch into August. The insectary bed keeps chugging along, with black-eyed Susan, oxe-eye sunflower, and swamp milkweed providing reliable bloom. 

     September brings cooler weather and a new wave of flowers. Asters and goldenrod flower for as much as two months, and annuals like zinnias and borage hold on into October. Fall offers lots of nectar and

pollen. 

Borage makes sky blue flowers all summer

    This year again I’m hoping to fill in those summer doldrums with more flowers. Seeds starting under lights might be the answer. Cosmos, here we come.

Seeds of change

Now is the time for what Steve calls the “hot stove league.” In baseball, that’s sharing happy visions of your team’s coming season. In gardening, it’s paging through seed catalogs full of beautiful pictures of vegetables and flowers. The photographers and graphic designers for these alluring publications can make even a humble cabbage or carrot look like a must-buy.

    This year I’m planning a new direction for seed buying. I’m going organic. I’d never thought it was important to start with organically produced seeds. I was not going to apply pesticides to my seedlings, so why did it matter? 

     Now I’m aware that commercial seeds may be treated with neonicotinoid pesticides that could be stored in plant tissues and kill pollinators all summer long. That’s motivated me to put aside my favorite catalog purveyors in favor of seed houses that use organic methods.

For the pollinators' sake I'll plant organic seeds

    For my insectary garden, I’m going to start cosmos, celosia, monkey flower, sunflowers, and black-eyed susans from seed. For cutting, I’ll add zinnias. For growing in containers, I usually buy coleus, torenia, browallia, impatiens, and other long-blooming annuals that catch my fancy. I’m less familiar with starting these at home, but if I begin early and give the seedlings reliable attention, I’m hopeful that I can do it.

Monkey plant (Mimulus guttatus) offers bees early browsing

   
     This year I’ll also have time for succession planting. That’s planting new rounds of favorite vegetables every couple of weeks, avoiding the usual boom and bust pattern of my vegetable garden. By frequently planting very short rows of lettuce, sugar snap peas, and green beans, I hope to enjoy these vegetables over longer periods and avoid wasting produce that’s too plentiful for our household of two to eat. 

Can I spread out my basil crop by planting a little at a time?

     After all, what’s sustainable about ordering seeds that are shipped from afar, starting them under lights, and watering them with purified drinking water, only to leave them un-harvested and then throw them on the compost pile? I’m sorry to say that’s been my pattern in past years.

    To get a jump on the growing season, I’ll plant seeds indoors using Organic Mechanics peat-free seed-starting mix or my own non-peat potting blend, both containing coir (coconut fiber). I mix four parts potting mix with one part warm water and fill the cells of seedling six-packs I’ve saved from last year’s purchases. 

Waste not, want not--reusing six-packs from last year

I poke a hole in the mix with a pencil and plant three seeds in each cell. The labeled packs fit into trays filled with capillary matting—that’s spongy synthetic material that holds water to keep the potting mix moist from below.

     I wrap the trays in clear plastic (old dry-cleaning bags) and set them under grow lights.

African violets under the grow lights

     Until they germinate, the most desirable seeds may get bottom heat from a thermostatically controlled mat that fits in the bottom of the tray. 

Capillary matting lies on top of the heating mat

This gives them their start. Most of the seeds do germinate, especially if they’re new, not saved from previous years. Then it’s up to me to help the little plants grow bigger until planting time.

Home-grown cucumbers are worth the effort

A reprieve for bees?

The clouds may be parting for gardeners who have been unknowingly poisoning bees and other insects. The bad news is that many of the flowers we buy to help pollinators may be treated with pesticides that poison them. The good news is that a campaign to stop this practice is bearing fruit.

This cosmos attracted a bee to my garden

     In 2014, Gardeners Beware, a report from Friends of the Earth, showed well-documented proof that insecticides called neonicotinoids (“neonics”) were present in more than half of bee-attracting commercial nursery plants bought at a broad sample of garden centers and big box stores in the United States and Canada.

     At commonly used concentrations, neonics kill bees. At lower levels, they cause neurotoxicity. Picture a bee that can’t remember how to get back to her hive. Friends of the Earth concluded, “. . . the chance of purchasing a plant contaminated with neonicotinoids is high. Therefore, many home gardens have likely become a source of exposure for bees.” 

Poisonous for bees?

     Growers treat annuals and perennials with the neonics in order to display plants unmarked by insects. The chemicals persist for years in plant tissues, including flowers, pollen, and nectar that bees touch. 

    I take this very personally. I don’t buy pesticides or spray them on my annuals or perennials. It’s upsetting that plants I used to create my insectary bed could have been killing insects rather than providing them with safe food as I intended.

I planted black-eyed Susans to feed insects, not poison them

    The good news is that thanks to pressure from activists, some major retailers have agreed to phase out neonics and plants treated with them. BJ’s Wholesale Clubs was the first major United States outlet to respond, requiring that its suppliers label plants treated with neonics and stop using them by the end of 2014. Home Depot has committed to stop selling treated plants by 2018 and Lowe’s by spring 2019. These retailers are way ahead of the Environmental Protection Agency, which still hasn’t put a moratorium on use of neonics while it reconsiders their registration for use in the US.

    Predictably, the chemical companies that make these pesticides, including Bayer and Ortho, blame the drastic bee population decline on diseases and non-native pests. The burden of scientific evidence now indicates these are less serious problems for bees than neonic toxicity. Restrictions on neonic use in France, Germany and Italy have sharply curtailed bee colony losses.

    I don’t know whether I’ve been buying neonic-treated plants at my favorite garden center. That will be my first question the next time I’m there.

     Marigolds, which I buy every year, tested positive at three quarters of the Massachusetts sites in the Friends of the Earth study. 

Marigold seedlings are fun and easy--but are they safe for bees?

Young annuals change hands several times from germination to sale. If any one of those handlers treats them with neonics, my bees are in trouble. 

    If I can’t get full assurances that plants I buy are safe for pollinators, I’ll have to go to Plan B (so to speak). That will be to buy only organically grown plants or seeds until this issue is fully resolved.