Seed-starting time

It’s time to gear up again for starting seeds indoors.

Early life under lights

This year I’m returning to the purveyors of organically-produced seeds that I had the best luck with last year. Two of my favorites are Johnny’s Selected Seeds in Maine and The Natural Gardening Company in California. 

    There are several areas where I aspire to improve my seed-starting performance. First, it makes a difference when I plant the seeds. If it’s too early, they spend too long in the relatively weak indoor light, become spindly and flop over before it’s time to move them outdoors. 

Cosmos getting floppy

If I start them too late, they may not be ready before hot weather sets in. This year the web site of The Farmer’s Almanac is going to send me email reminders of when to plant each vegetable, determined by my zip code.

    Second, I’ve been reading about a way to germinate seeds that takes less space. You can sprout them on damp paper towels sealed in reclosable plastic bags set in a warm place in the house, such as on top of the refrigerator. 

Germinating seeds

When the seeds sprout, you grasp each tiny seedling with tweezers and plant it in growing medium. In my case, that will be Organic Mechanics peat-free seed-starting mix or homemade potting mix made from coconut fiber and compost. With this method, I won’t waste pots on seeds that fail to germinate. Germination is such a cool process. I’d love to watch it unfolding day by day.

    I suspect that one reason my seedlings don’t turn out as sturdy-looking as the ones at the garden center is that I handle them too gingerly. I usually plant three seeds in each cell of a recycled six-pack. I hang back from editing that down to one seedling per cell. 

These basil seedlings need room to grow

Cutting out two with scissors would give the biggest and strongest seedling more space for its roots and more light for its leaves. Then once it’s produced a few sets of leaves, I should pinch it to encourage it to branch, instead of elongating its one stem. I’ve read that a gentle breeze from a fan makes seedlings more robust.

    To get my young plants used to outdoor conditions, I move them to the back porch each morning and back indoors at night for a few days. That way they’re ready for full sunlight when it’s time to plant them out.

Hardening off on the porch

    The next stage is where I often have most attrition. This year I’ll try to protect the seedlings better when I move them to the garden. One problem is wildlife. I suspect squirrels of dining on the young plants. I’ve got some plastic cloches—clear covers--I can put over seedlings for the first week, and I should be able to rig up some protection for others with translucent fabric row cover.

Row cover

    I can’t wait to see sprouts emerging from the soil again. It’s a happy, hopeful time of the gardening year.

What's native enough?

Because of the persuasive writing of entomologist Doug Tallamy, among others, I’ve changed my plant choices to prioritize native plants. What’s the evidence for the argument they’re needed to foster native insects? Why can’t insects just live off whatever flowers and plants they encounter?

Won't any leaf do? photo Toby Hudson

     Key to Tallamy’s call to plant natives is the assertion that most native insects are specialists that can only live off a small number of native plants. They’ve evolved over thousands of generations to be able to overcome the physiologic defenses of those plants, such as toxins that make leaves less appealing and digestible. They’ve synchronized their life cycles with those plants' and adapted to be able to sense them in their surroundings. 

     Is this true? The evolving evidence is that it’s more complicated. Some native insects really need particular native plants. We all know how monarch butterflies are suffering from decreased populations of native milkweeds, which their caterpillars need for food. 

Monarch caterpillar chewing a milkweed leaf-photo Judy Gallagher

But it turns out that some insects can cope with a broader selection of food plants, and some are already evolving to be able to live off nonnative plants. With short lifetimes, insects are able to evolve more quickly than longer-lived species such as humans.

     It’s relevant to distinguish between leaf-eating insects and pollinators. An insect that chews leaves for food may truly need its chosen plant species to survive. An insect that collects pollen and nectar may choose from a variety of plants, including some nonnatives. 

Eastern tiger swallowtail nectaring on nonnative butterfly bush

Pollinators can deal with cultivars selected from native populations for new characteristics such as different flower colors or variegated foliage.

A bee doesn't object to this black-eyed Susan's ornamental petal colors

     Tallamy and his team are refining their theory with ongoing research on which plants are attractive to insects. At the Mt. Cuba Center, a Delaware botanic garden, they’re counting insects on a list of native trees and comparing them to counts on “nativars,” selected varieties of the same species that differ from the straight natives in characteristics such as growth habit, disease resistance, foliage color, and berry size. So far they’ve found that blueberry bushes with larger berries actually attracted more insects, disease-resistant American elms drew as many insects as the unimproved species that succumbed to Dutch elm disease, and trees with ornamental purple leaves were less popular with insects than trees with green leaves.

Disease-resistant elm selections are OK for native insects-photo Msact

     This kind of painstaking species-by-species research is what will provide gardeners with meaningful planting guidelines. There are other choices to make. Do we need plants from our local ecoregion, or will other North American natives do just as well? Will we choose organic or conventionally grown plants? Locally sourced or not? Will we use clones, plants that are produced asexually through cuttings or tissue culture?

     So far I’m not feeling cramped by prioritizing native plants. There are plenty of appealing native shrubs and perennials I haven’t grown yet. I do prefer insecticide-free plants because of my concern about harm done by neonicotinoids. I’m looking forward to more information on “nativars” to guide future shopping trips.

Native purple coneflowers enliven a curb strip

What's the best way to feed hummingbirds?

A 3-gram bird that can hover, fly backward, beat its wings 50 times per second, migrate 3000 miles between Canada and Mexico twice every year, and cope with more G force than a fighter pilot. 

Hovering to harvest nectar from a zinnia-photo A Reago & C McClarren

Hummingbirds are beautiful and impressive birds that are thrilling to see in your yard. No wonder lots of people try out hummingbird feeders. My friend Jennifer asked about these feeders last week in response to my post about feeding birdseed to backyard birds. Are hummingbird feeders sparrow-proof and safe?

     Hummingbirds are nectar feeders, which is why you can supplement their food with sugar water. They like pink, orange and red trumpet-shaped blossoms that accommodate their long beaks. 

Ruby-throated hummingbirds like this one inhabit the eastern US

A hummingbird visits up to 2000 flowers per day. As it harvests nectar, it acts as an important pollinator. It can also pluck flying insects from the air, and nestlings are fed exclusively on insects.

Hummingbirds feeding insects to their chick

     Ornithologists say it's OK to put out hummingbird feeders, but they also suggest planting flowers that feed hummingbirds. You can create artificial nectar by combining tap water and white table sugar at one cup of water to 1/4 cup of sugar and boiling the solution for a couple of minutes. Using honey, brown sugar, or molasses is potentially dangerous, and red food coloring is unnecessary. Typical feeder ports are ringed in red and yellow glass or plastic flower-like decorations to attract hummingbirds. 

The feeders are definitely sparrow-proof but could attract other nectar feeders, such as orioles. I read that placing several small feeders at a distance from each other is better than hanging one with many ports, because the hummingbirds are territorial and will fight each other for access.

     Maintaining a hummingbird feeder is a heavy responsibility. The sugar water quickly becomes moldy, contaminated with bacteria, or fermented, so you need to change it and wash the feeder thoroughly every other day, daily in hot weather. It should hang in the shade to keep the “nectar” fresh longer. You can’t run the feeder through the dishwasher, because soap is potentially harmful to hummingbirds. You’re supposed to wash it with a bottle brush and a vinegar solution. This means the best feeder is one that’s very easy to disassemble and clean.

     I’ve tried a couple of these feeders, and I have to admit that I didn’t keep up with the washing schedule. That means I put visiting hummingbirds at risk for infection. I also never saw a hummingbird using the feeders.

     Instead of trying to keep up with cleaning a feeder, I’m planning to work on offering more red and orange trumpet-shaped flowers near the house, where I’ll have a chance to see hummingbirds if they come. I did have one glorious sighting last summer, a visitor to an anise-scented sage (Salvia guaranitica) I grew in a pot on the deck. 

Even though they're blue, these long-throated flowers attracted a hummingbird

At Jennifer’s house, we spotted a hummingbird feeding on her very floriferous trumpet honeysuckle (Lonicera sempervirens). 

Honeysuckles are popular with hummingbirds

Let's hope our flowers make us good hosts. Here’s a link to a list of flowers that hummingbirds like.

Winter rations, summer forage

Coming to you through the miracle of voice recognition software, I thought I’d reflect this week on changes I’ve made in my policy toward feeding birds. For several years I filled two bird feeders every week. Then I read Gardening for the Birds, by George Adams.

    Adams recommends growing plants that feed birds and provide them with shelter. 

Cedar waxwing eating fruit of a native serviceberry

He’s not a fan of bird feeders in the warm months. He points out that bird feeders can attract aggressive birds and invasive bird species like European sparrows that hog all the food and drive away shyer birds. Rodents attracted by birdseed may eat eggs and baby birds.

    To tell the truth, I was beginning to feel that birds were eating us out of house and home. Flocks of European sparrows showed up every time I filled the feeders and snapped up all the food within a few hours. While I regard individual sparrows as having a legitimate right to live, even if their ancestors are not from North America, I was attracting too many of them and not feeding other species I’d like to welcome to my yard.

One sparrow is endearing. Twenty take over a bird feeder.

    Following Adams’ advice, I started to emphasize trees, shrubs, and perennials whose fruit and seeds would provide food for birds. I already had some of them: balsam fir (Abies balsemea), shadblow (Amelanchier arborea), trumpet honeysuckle (Lonicera sempervirens), and lowbush blueberry (Vaccinium corymbosum). I added American elder (Sambucus canadensis) and American cranberry (Viburnum trilobum) for more bird-friendly fruit.

Mockingbird finds winter berries

    While I was choosing native perennials to attract native insects, I threw in some Eastern purple coneflowers (Echinacea purpurea), sunflowers (Helianthus species), and milkweeds (Ascelepias species), whose seeds birds could eat.

Purple coneflower seeds feed goldfinches

    One of Adams’ warnings was that birds might become dependent on food from feeders. If I suddenly stopped putting out seed, perhaps they would starve. I was interested to read an article in this month’s Atlantic that cites a Wisconsin study showing this didn’t happen in a population of black-capped chickadees. 

Black-capped chickadee--photo Alain Wolf

Researchers compared mortality among birds accustomed to getting some of their food from feeders and birds that foraged completely on their own. When feeder food stopped being available, the birds that had been fed did just as well as they had before. They were only taking 21 percent of their food from the feeders, continuing to forage widely despite this food source.  Bird feeders did help the chickadees get through the worst winter weather.

Bird feeders help birds survive the coldest days

    Scientists have also found that birdseed provided by humans is influencing birds’ evolution. Species are developing heavier beaks for opening sunflower seeds they find at feeders but not in their natural habitat.

    This year I’m putting out birdseed only in winter. I was happy to see that the native birds soon reappeared at the feeders this December, but the European sparrows aren’t back. I can’t judge yet whether more birds or bird species have been attracted by my plantings. All I can say is, there are lots of birds flitting around in spring and summer. I hope I’m heading in the right direction.

A sight I'd like to see

Let them stand

In the last few years, I’ve been transitioning away from doing a fall clean-up in the garden. I used to think it was important to cut perennial stalks to the ground when they died and turned brown.

Flowers gone to seed used to get chopped down

     The idea was that this would prevent insects from overwintering. Now I want insects to overwinter, both beneficial insects and some of the leaf eaters that feed them. Pollinators such as queen bumblebees need dead plants to hide under during winter. Persisting fruits and seeds provide food for birds.

Winter forage for birds

     A side benefit of this approach, I’m finding, is that the seed heads left standing can be pretty. With the leaves down, the fine details of these holdouts become more noticeable. Some plants, such as clematis, are known for their beautiful seed heads, but as I look more closely, I notice that many winter survivors have beautiful architecture.

 

Clematis after flowering

There are several shrubs whose red fruits persist through the winter, offering welcome bright spot in the drab brown and gray landscape. I like to snap close-up photos at this time of year. Here are some winter sights I’ve enjoyed.

Spiraea

Clethra

Winterberry

Pine cones

     I'm holding out for spring too. I hope to be back up to speed in a couple of weeks.

Dead but still needed

“No kidding! Tell me something I don’t already know.” That was my reaction back in the 1980s when I read a prominent garden writer’s pronouncement, “Dead trees are not an enhancement to the landscape.” Flash forward to the 21st century. Whatever your aesthetic preference, for a sustainable garden, the expert and I were both dead wrong.

Downed logs do add to the sustainable landscape

    I’m thinking about dead wood because recent high winds brought down sizable branches from a white pine in our yard. 

Branch torn from the white pine by wind gusts

Fortunately they made it to the ground without crushing anything below. My initial thought was that I’d have to cut them up as yard waste later this winter when pruning season starts. Then I realized they’ll be more useful staying on the ground here in the garden.

    Dead trees were long thought of as unattractive and messy. Managers of parks and public gardens cleared them away to keep the landscape looking neat. I learned that the tide turned on this issue in 1986 with publication of an influential scientific study showing the many ways dead trees serve the ecosystem. In fact, it turns out that dead trees may provide more food for insects, birds, and mammals than live trees do.

Modern forestry lets dead trees lie

    Snags, or standing dead trees, and downed logs provide food and shelter for insects, which in turn feed birds and small animals, especially in winter. They also provide good spots for nests and dens. 

Some people make live trees into snags to offer birds housing and insects for food

As they decompose, they feed fungi that enrich soil and feed plants. Fungal hyphae transmit water and nutrients to roots.

    This is a great time of year to notice beautiful lichens in the woods. 

Lichens can grow on both live and dead trees

Back in your school days, you probably heard lichens cited as the classic example of symbiosis. They’re a partnership of mosses and fungi that are often seen on downed logs. Mosses share the sugars they make through photosynthesis; fungi contribute water and minerals they gather from the soil. Lichens don’t infect live trees, though.

    After consideration, I revised my plan for the downed pine branches. Instead of sending them out as yard waste, I’ll relocate them to inconspicuous areas of the yard where they can rot quietly and provide food and habitat.

I'll hope to see lots of growth on the dead pine branches

For those who would like more scientific information about neonicotinoid insecticides, I found an excellent report compiled by the Xerces Society. Here’s a link.

Friends, this post is abbreviated because I broke my wrist, and I’m having trouble typing. I may not be able to post next week. I hope to be back to you as soon as possible.

Buyer bee-ware

It’s seed ordering time again. I’m receiving fat catalogs every week bursting with alluring color photos of flowers and vegetables to grow from seed. Last year I wrote about trying to adapt my seed and plant purchases to avoid neonicotinoids, bee-killing pesticides ubiquitous in the nursery trade. What’s the point of a pollinator garden that kills pollinators?

When you plant for pollinators, you don't want toxic flowers

    To refresh your memory, in 2013, Friends of the Earth (FOE) conducted a landmark study, publicized in their report Gardeners Beware. Sampling plants from garden centers and big box stores across the country, they found widespread presence of neonicotinoids (called neonics for short) in the plants offered to consumers. 

    FOE’s Bee Action campaign continues. With other environmental organizations as allies, they’ve succeeded in mobilizing consumers to oppose use of these pesticides. 

Shoppers prefer their flowers without insecticides

There’s good information regarding neonics on the Friends of the Earth website, including a handout on how to recognize and avoid the neonics sold in the US: acetamiprid, clothianidin, dinotefuran, imidacloprid, and thiamethoxam. 

     You can watch for these names and avoid pesticide sprays that contain them, such as Ortho Flower, Fruit and Vegetable Insecticide and Bayer Advanced Complete Insect Killer. I’ve never been desperate enough to resort to these broad-spectrum insecticides in my garden, but I understand how gardeners can panic and reach for a spray bottle.

Before spraying chewed leaves, give beneficial insects time to solve the problem by eating leaf-eaters

    Neonics are systemic insecticides that insects take in when they eat or touch treated plant tissues, as when bees collect pollen from flowers of treated plants. 

Neonic-treated pollen can poison bees

They may die immediately, become disoriented, or pass on the poison to others in the hive. Once treated, plant tissues continue to hold the toxins almost indefinitely. 

    Neonics are widely used to maximize yield and keep plant foliage looking clean and unchewed as plants pass from growers to distributors to garden centers. We don’t have to spray neonics ourselves to poison pollinators in our yards; our plant purchases will be toxic to insects unless we purposely avoid neonic-treated plants.

Garden center seedlings may be contaminated with neonics

    The Friends of the Earth campaign has convinced some major retailers to stop using neonics or label treated plants: here’s a link to their list. BJ’s Wholesale Club promised that their plants would be neonic-free or labeled by the end of 2017. Home Depot committed to completing its neonic phase-out by 2018. Lowe’s pledged to work on it. True Value says their plants will be neonic-free by spring 2018.

    Unfortunately Massachusetts is not a leader in this effort. National campaigns like FOE’s have more leverage with big nationally visible chains than with local businesses, apparently. I’ve had luck shopping at Allandale Farm in Chestnut Hill, which doesn’t use conventional pesticides and commits to sustainable practices. 

    As I plan my seed purchases for 2018, I’ll let you know where I find organic seeds and pesticide-free seeds. 

They don't make seed catalogs like they used to

I believe this is a temporary problem; eventually the nursery business will bow to consumer pressure and provide us with reliably neonic-free seeds and plants. Will they convert to pollinator-friendly methods? That depends on whether we keep up the pressure.

At the Climate March, April 2017