31. May 2010 by Carol Whitaker.

To those of you who have contacted me about free seeds, thanks for registering. Be sure to drop me a note and let me know you are interested so I can save some for you.

Thanks

Posted in Green Gardening | 10 Comments »

25. May 2010 by Carol Whitaker.

As children, most of us over a certain age, let’s say the baby boomers, remember a story from our childhood about a nasty bee sting. Or maybe it was a wasp. If it wasn’t you, it was your sister or brother or best friend or neighbor who was stung.

These were days when children still played outside in unstructured activities, days before terms like Nature-Deficit Disorder – a term coined by author, Richard Louv, were a part of the discourse.

Days when lawns were coming into prominence as the method of landscape for single family homes. Days when gardens were diminishing with the rise of super markets where already grown food was plentiful. Days when natural forests were being cut down to make room for development of suburbs and strip malls. Days when our industrial nation became wealthier and more women went to work outside the home, unlike their mothers who gardened and proudly prepared vegetables from the garden for the family dinner table.

Bee sting stories pepper the histories of those of us raised in rural environments, before so much of development changed the landscape from a mostly living landscape to a more architectural one constructed of concrete and harvested trees and tar.

I still hear those stories today, of the dangers of bees in the garden, from people who have created what they hope are sterile gardens and want only to keep them that way. As they are afraid and expecting a killer attack from an insect or bee if they dare cut back on the pesticides or allow a blooming flower into their tightly managed, highly engineered, hard pruned landscape of well cut turf grass, and monoculture of green foundation hedges, planted close to the house or the perimeter of the lawn.

These well meaning people, with their highly engineered landscapes often mistakenly believe that they are contributing in a positive fashion to the world, just like they often believe and hope their gardens are sterile. But that is wrong. So utterly incorrect. Gardens and lawns engineered with regular pesticide, herbicide and chemical fertilizers are gardens that are more than likely highly polluted. They are gardens unlikely to host a living bee visitor, or a bee using the garden as habitat.

And that garden and bee problem, or non-bee problem, is one that parallels an ongoing problem of our industrial food crops today. The dwindling native bee population, and the dwindling imported bee population, responsible for pollinating much of our fruits and vegetables in this country is being affected by the highly engineered, chemically dependent and therefore often polluted landscape.

Still, what’s that got to do with my garden, a garden without bees, what’s the big deal, you may be thinking.

The big deal is that our gardens are part of the living landscape, and together are part of the greater ecosystem, an ecosystem which includes the solitary native bees of this country, which help to pollinate the food crops, but are also important as part of our terrestrial ecosystem.

Bees are essential to the integrity of many ecosystems, from forest understory and pastures to fields, meadows, orchards, vegetable and flower gardens, our own gardens and roadsides. Without them we loose the sustainability and productivity of these ecosystems. Eventually, without bees, many flower plants would become extinct.

I suspect that many folks with polluted gardens that they hoped would be sterile, would likely tell you if you asked them, that they think sustainability is important and that they support conservation and preservation. Many are unaware of the irony of the way they garden and the fact that highly engineered, chemically maintained gardens contribute to pollution and the demise of desirable pollinators and the local ecology.

Why aren’t bees living in chemically engineered landscapes? When the plants and soils harbor pesticides and herbicides, and other pollutants commonly found in chemical fertilizers today, the plant often takes up the poison and it is passed on to the foraging pollinators through the flower nectar. This makes the bees and other pollinators sick or in many cases kills them.

This problem of ecosystem chemical poisoning is one of the many maladies affecting imported honeybees and native bees.

Unfortunately, this is not news and the problem has been getting worse for decades according James Ellis, an entomologist at the University of Florida. Ellis studies bees, including imported honey bees, which are the main pollinators of our food crops in the US today. Read my next blog to learn more.

So, how you ask does the honey bees’ plight have anything to do with local gardens, with our gardens? We all can make a difference and do our part, as I do in my garden, hosting native bees in a healthy living landscape by keeping a garden which accommodates them. Grow lots of flowering plants and plenty of native plants, a sure way to encourage foraging pollinators like bees and butterflies. The living healthy bees will surely do their part, even though some are selective, to pollinate food crops, and contribute to the vital biodiversity of our broader ecosystem.

And as far as the bee sting worries, I have none. While some bees don’t sting, the one’s who might, always have flowers, pollen and nectar to keep them busy in my garden, where I have never been stung by a bee.

My theory - bees in my garden never mistake me for a flower, as they might if I were the only colorful thing among a broad expanse of turf grass and tightly pruned hedges with no flowers.

If you are looking for some advice about plants to grow in your garden to attract pollinators, leave me a comment, and I’ll get back to you soon.

Posted in Sustainability Issues | 4 Comments »

4. May 2010 by Carol Whitaker.

I heard a couple people say they couldn’t register today. To register, look to the right at the pink column. Follow it down under the category Meta, after Archives, maybe half way down the page. Click on Register.Thanks

Posted in Green Gardening | 3 Comments »