Wake up and smell the leaf mulch

Last fall I changed a longstanding fall garden clean-up routine: I didn’t rake fallen leaves from the garden beds and chop them up in the leaf shredder. I didn’t mulch those same beds with the chopped leaves. I didn’t cut the dead perennials’ foliage and flower stalks to the ground. I just let the tree leaves lie on top of the plants and left the dead stalks standing.

Meadow rue (Thalictrum aquilegiifolium) emerging through the leaf litter

    My reason for this change of approach was that I’d learned that native insects shelter and lay eggs under fallen leaves, in crowns of dormant perennials, and in those dead flower stalks. If I left those insects alone through the winter, they’d have a better chance of surviving, reproducing, and contributing to the garden ecosystem in spring. It was hard to hold myself back from cleaning up at the end of the garden season. I have to admit it was also a lot less work.

Beneficial lacewing finding winter cover

    Through the winter, I watched those ragged stalks and those whole leaves, especially on the new perennial bed that’s right next to the back deck. The leaves are mostly red oak, with some Norway maple mixed in. The garden’s usual winter look, bare but neatly tended, had morphed into either a sloppy mess or a more natural scene, depending how I felt on a given day. 

The backyard scene in March

Now is the time to assess how this lazy approach to preparing for winter worked out.

    I waited impatiently for daytime temperatures to stay in the fifties, indicating that the time had come for lifting the leaves off the new plants and moving them to the compost pile. I was anxious to know how the plants were doing under there. For the past two weeks I’ve been gradually uncovering the deck bed. 

Perennials and a dwarf juniper under the leaves

Dry leaves formed the top layer, but beneath these I uncovered wet, matted leaves plastered to the ground. I chose overcast days with rain in the forecast, not hard to find recently, for exposing the covered plants to the light. Their new foliage was pale from growing in the dark. I didn’t want them to get sunburned from sudden exposure to full sun.

    With the whole bed uncovered, I see that most of the new perennials made it through the winter. Of course, they benefited from other factors besides the leaf cover. Snow covered the bed during much of the winter, protecting the new plants from desiccation and temperature extremes, and there’s been plenty of rain this spring.

    To mulch the uncovered bed, I shredded leaves that I’d stored in the garage in paper yard waste bags. 

Shredding makes mulch that doesn't mat or blow around like the whole leaves

If insects took refuge in the bags last fall, they should have moved out by now. Birds are very active in the yard, which seems like an indication that they’re finding insects to eat. 

A cardinal couple is building a nest

     I’m hoping that more native insects will enrich the garden’s food web this year. Not only animals will benefit. I’m aiming for plant-friendly balanced populations of pollinators, leaf-eaters, and the beneficial insect predators that will keep leaf-eaters under control.

Leaf litter and native insects make congenial conditions for woodland plants

 

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.

Welcome visitors

Today is a banner day for my garden. A hummingbird appeared outside my kitchen window this morning, feeding at a tall stand of yellow Oriental lilies and even perching on one briefly before darting away. Because of her subdued coloring, I’m guessing she was an immature female of our region’s ruby-throated hummingbird; she wasn’t sporting the bright greens or reds of the adults pictured on the website of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.

            I rarely spot hummingbirds, and I’m going to credit this visit to my efforts this year to provide more plants that will attract wildlife. In addition to squeezing in native plants where I can in my already crowded landscape, I started an insectary garden this May to provide food and lodging for native insects. 

May 19, before the plants went in

It began with a few seedlings of cosmos and black-eyed Susans and some native perennials I chose because they were recommended by Jessica Walliser in her wonderful book Attracting Beneficial Bugs to Your Garden. For more about beneficials, check out Jessica's bug blog. 

Insectary bed July 25

           

 Thanks to her advice, I’ve now got a bed bursting with flowers and buzzing with new insect visitors. 

I can’t identify the bugs yet, but I’m optimistic that they’re contributing to a healthy balance in my garden’s insect population while also helping to pollinate my vegetables. 

Along with the swamp milkweed, yarrow, phlox and purple coneflower, I included a few zinnias and some sweet alyssum that insects like even though they’re not native to the Northeast. Today’s hummingbird visitor underscores Jessica’s point that some nonnative plants can provide services to wildlife. The Oriental lilies come from China, but their trumpet-shaped flowers apparently gave the hummingbird some nectar she needed. The new bed for insects has brought me a lot of fun, in addition to attracting hungry guests.

It’s been great to watch the new plants shooting up, making buds and opening their flowers. Besides encouraging beneficial insect predators, I also aim with this bed to provide food and shelter for native herbivorous insects near the base of my garden’s food web. When leaves are chewed, instead of worrying, I can count it as progress toward my goal.

           

Let the feast continue!

Bugs welcome

This spring, inspired by Jessica Walliser’s Attracting Beneficial Bugs to Your Garden, I’m planting an insectary bed, and it’s turning out to be a blast. 

            The idea is to devote an area of the garden to plants that provide forage, nectar, or reproductive quarters for native insects, which in turn will help me out by pollinating my flowers and vegetables and keeping leaf-eating competitors in balance. Working from Walliser’s list and the plants recommended by George Adams in Gardening for the Birds, I’ve so far planted native perennials yarrow (Achillea millefolium), swamp milkweed (Asclepias incarnata), bluebell (Campanula rotundifolia), purple coneflower (Echinacea purpurea), oxeye sunflower (Heliopsis helianthoides), garden phlox (Phlox paniculata 'David'), and two New England asters (Symphyotrichum novae-angliae). For annuals I chose cosmos and sweet alyssum, with sunflowers and zinnias to come. Under lights in my kitchen I grew a bunch of black-eyed Susans (Rudbeckia hirta) from seed and popped those in around the edges of the bed. I also started monkey flower (Mimulus ‘Magic Blotch’) for the first time and was amazed to see the seedlings flowering about three weeks after I’d planted the seed. I hope they’ll keep it up through the summer.

Newly planted monkey flower

            We were all sold a bill of goods during my childhood in the fifties and sixties by the makers of garden chemicals. When I started gardening, I had the idea that just about all insects were bad. I liked butterflies and ladybugs, which got good press and didn’t seem scary. My basic paradigm, though, was Gardeners Good, Insects Bad, Plants Defenseless. Now I learn from Doug Tallamy and others that this was all wrong, as well as a vast over-simplification. It turns out that the insect component of a garden ecosystem involves a complicated system of checks and balances, and plants are active players, sending out signals all the time that influence the insects and microbes around them.

            Reading Tallamy’s Bringing Nature Home woke me up. He argues convincingly that we humans have taken over almost all the land in the United States and covered it with nonnative vegetation, as well as pavement and buildings. That means there’s little forage or habitat left for the native insects we depend on at the base of the food web that allows us all to eat. I’m not ready to pull out all the nonnative plants in my garden, but I’ve resolved to choose natives whenever a space opens up. My insectary garden is part of this effort. Walliser and others point out that native insects benefit from some nonnative plants, especially as sources for nectar. That’s why I feel OK including zinnias, which originate in Mexico, and an edging of sweet alyssum, which came to us from southern Europe.

            The space I'm planting with these insect snacks is part of my designated vegetable-growing area.  The half that gets the most sun will still be for edible-podded peas, salad greens, tomatoes, cucumbers and green beans. The other half I’d half-heartedly used as a nursery bed, sinking pots of self-seeded bleeding heart and columbines and divided Siberian irises that I was saving for the PTO plant sale. I have to admit that it got infrequent weeding and looked like quite a mess by the end of last summer (Walliser actually recommends keeping certain weeds for the bugs—I can claim that’s what I was doing).

            I’m finding it surprisingly liberating to choose plants for the insectary bed without worrying about a color scheme. This time it’s not about good taste, it’s about tasting good. When I see the garish flower combination that ensues, I’ll probably change my mind and want to revise. Watch this space.