Gardening with Sugarbush

Pizza Gardening

2011-08-21T02:51:00.000-07:00

In honor of the Rt. 10 Organic Nursery and Farm Tour coming up next Saturday, August 27th, I am going to blog this week about my favorite organic gardening practices - both at home and in the nursery.

This gives me the opportunity to share with the world a brand new gardening term I've just coined: pizza gardening.

It is related to lasagna gardening, as you might expect. This is a gardening practice many people are familiar with - the concept of layering fresh organic matter, usually in a pit or trench, covering it with soil, and then planting (usually veggies) directly into it. The composting process happens at the same time the veggies are growing - no time lapse.

Pizza gardening is another no-till gardening method. It involves eating pizza as a necessary first step. Ah - if only more gardening tips started that way!

The idea first came to me when I discovered that recycling centers wouldn't take pizza boxes - or any other cardboard boxes that have directly contacted food. So, not being someone who throws anything away that is even remotely potentially recyclable, I held onto our pizza boxes, trusting that in the unknown future, I would be able to recycle them. The stack grew higher, and higher, and higher (I'm sure there were one or two kids' parties in there somewhere), until finally it came to me, in a rare flash of brilliance - "I'll just use these to make a new garden!"

And so I did. Killing off sod by smothering it is a tried and true organic gardening practice. It's the ultimate no-till method, as no soil is ever disturbed, except when you shovel into it to plant your shrub border. Tilling negatively impacts soil structure, which is a precious thing not easily restored. And have you ever tried removing sod by hand? It's back-breaking work, and then what do you with with all of that precious organic matter you have just removed? Yes, you can compost it, but wouldn't it be better to just leave it in place to keep working for you?

So, back to smothering. This is best done with thick layers of organic material that allow water to penetrate and will eventually completely decompose over time. You can use thick layers of newspaper covered with a few inches of grass clippings, or you can use cardboard, held down by whatever heavy objects are at hand.

This method does take a while, during which time you will have an area of your lawn that is covered in cardboard - or, in the case of pizza gardening, with rows of overlapping pizza boxes, in particular. Perhaps not the most attractive presentation, but it gets the job done: in about 2 months, you'll be able to plant directly through the pizza boxes, install your new garden, cover everything with a layer of mulch (preferably shredded leaves or compost), and voila! Your new garden is born, no back-breaking labor or sod removal required.

Before the cardboard returns to the elements entirely, it will keep the weeds down in your new bed for some time. The sod underneath the cardboard will provide organic matter in the top layer of soil.

So - who's up for some Dominoes?

Spring Ephemerals.....small flowers, big statements!

2011-04-29T02:28:00.000-07:00

I really don't get out much, but even on my daily commute, I am surrounded by gorgeous wildflowers. My daily ride through rural Chester County is especially beautiful in the spring, with a section of road completely given over to one of the miracles of spring in PA - spring ephemeral wildflowers! Here is Dutchman's Breeches (Dicentra cucullaria), close-up and then covering a hillside (someone's front lawn!!):

Whew! Don't you wish you could live there?

Then there are the intriguing flowers of trout lily or dog-tooth violet, Erythronium americanum. These little yellow, nodding flowers rise up from foliage that is attratively mottled. It can form colonies which are very large, but not particularly dense. Again, there is beauty both close up and from a distance:

I could go on and on, but I'll stop with Virginia Bluebells, Mertensia virginica. This incomparable blue beauty colonizes in low-lying areas that never completely dry out. Happily enough for the rest of us, it is also comfortable in drier soils, although it won't spread out so much there. When Virginia Bluebells finds a home it likes, it moves in for the long haul.

All of our spring ephemerals can happily co-exist with other perennials or shrubs that emerge or leaf out just a bit later. Once they die down after flowering, their place can be taken by ferns, wild ginger, or any number of flowering plants.

Spring Beauty!

2011-04-22T17:41:00.000-07:00

Spring beauty, indeed! I'm not just talking about the general phenomena - I'm talking about Claytonia virginica, aka Spring Beauty. This sweet little native wildflower is popping up everywhere now, and is especially noticeable in lawns. Have a look at these pictures taken over the last few days (April 20/21) along the back roads of Chester County:

This flower is diminutive in stature, but tough as nails once established. It is often found in moist woods in shade, but check out these beautiful stands growing in full sun right in a lawn (which was mowed a day after I took these pictures!):

Just imagine taking your morning walk along this road!

Spring beauty is easy to establish, and re-seeds itself readily. We have them now at Sugarbush, and they are blooming their little heads off in their pots!

I have to admit, I love these spring ephemeral wildflowers. Somehow the fact that they are with us for such a short period only adds to their charm. Requiring little attention from anyone, they complete their entire life cycle before the canopy leafs out. In fact, I think I have other posts coming for trout lily, Dutchman's breeches, bloodroot and Virginia bluebells!

Back to the Future with Native Plants

2010-04-01T02:36:00.000-07:00

A rather funny thing happened to me last summer, and I've been thinking about it for awhile now.

A gentleman came to the nursery from Kutztown, looking for elderberry bushes - not the ornamental elderberries from Europe sold in most nurseries, but the native variety with edible flowers and berries that you can use to make elderflower wine, elderberry pie, preserves, etc.

He said that this plant wasn't available in Kutztown, because Kutztown had become too modern, so he had a good feeling that places in our direction (southern Berks), which are more old-fashioned, would still be carrying plants like this. And sure enough, he said, he was right - we had it. He went back to Kutztown with a beautiful elderberry bush, Sambucus canadensis - the useful kind.

The funny thing about this exchange is how the scenario about this plant differed between me and the gentleman. He thought Kutztown was modern, and south of Reading was traditional, whereas I have exactly the opposite take. But more interestingly, he thought he found the plant because he came to an old-fashioned part of our county, but really, he came to a nursery owned by someone probably 30 years younger than himself, and definitely not operating out of an old-fashioned mentality in the least. In fact, I consider owning a native plants nursery a bit progressive - at least in the horticultural sense.

The reason I carry elderberry bushes - the useful native kind - has nothing to do with wanting to be traditional; it has everything to do with wanting to support the ecology of our landscape, by helping people re-introduce the plants that are supposed to be here back into the environment. To help re-establish crucial plant-insect-wildlife relationships. To heal a landscape fractured by human activity and fashion whims. To bring back our sense of place, the feeling we all get when we look around us and say, "Now, THIS feels like home."

And that actually feels pretty non-traditional. Much of our society is geared towards the new, the flashy, the thing that no one else has but WE do; and native plants are everything BUT. Natives are tried and true, hardy beyond question, will grow without coddling, beautiful but in typically understated ways, and they're everywhere....right?

The funny paradox here is that natives are supposed to be the plants all around us, what we see everyday (as one cynical passer-by told me at the EnergyFest last year - "Guess I could start a native nursery by digging up my weeds, too!") - but they're not anymore. These days, we are more likely to see non-native plants in the typical home landscape, and we even see them more and more in our wild areas.

In many ways, being progressive by planting natives is actually a step backwards into tradition and a simpler time, when our landscape was more untouched by humans. It is the re-creation of a landscape that many of us cannot even imagine, because we never saw what our woods looked like when trilliums, rather than garlic mustard, blanketed the forest floor, or when roadsides were lined with milkweed rather than purple loosestrife.

Thus, I feel the new marketing call for natives should be: "Go back to the future with native plants!"

(I know what you're thinking....I should keep my day job. Thanks for the advice - I will!)

Meadow Sightings

2009-07-14T03:04:00.000-07:00

It's a beautiful thing to see a managed meadow in full bloom! I've seen two recently, and wanted to share some pictures.

First up: Angelica Park in the city of Reading. This is a real "wow", especially if you haven't been there recently. As most locals know, the dam that held the small lake there broke in 2001, resulting in the loss of the lake and a messy build-up of sediment that covered the once-beautiful area. Fast forward 8 years, and Angelica Park is now an Environmental Education Center for the city of Reading. An environmental education building is planned to occupy the footprint of the old boat house (right: a view from the boat house). But for now, what's there is Angelica Creek, a small fishing pond, and an expansive "floodplain meadow", with meandering trails throughout. A trail from Angelica Park to the Ken-Grill Recreation Center has recently been completed, as well. Apparently, it goes right by the house where I grew up in Kenhorst (the bronze marker hasn't gone up yet). Read more info. on a proposed Angelica Greenway all the way to Nolde Forest here.

At the beginning of July, here's what that meadow looked like up close - and believe me, the pictures aren't doing this justice:

Above: Yellow Heliopsis and Blue Vervain (Verbena hastata) - the Vervain is the purplish wash that you can see in the pictures. The lower picture is what the individual plants look like up close.

Below: Wild Bergamot (Monarda fistulosa) is in the foreground, along with more yellow Heliopsis to the right.

Wouldn't this be a great place to take the family on a sunny Sunday afternoon?

Next up - a meadow in someone's front yard. Now, this is not just any old 'someone' - it's the front yard of Mike and Jan Slater, area botanical experts and enthusiasts and part of the founding group of the Berks Native Seed Bank Project. Jan also works at Sugarbush, and going to her house and seeing her garden confirmed my initial suspicion that she is just working at the nursery for entertainment purposes. But, no matter - we benefit from her expertise, even if she is light years ahead. Again - the pictures aren't doing this justice....

Above: the main front yard planting is, as of mid-July, between 2-15 ft. tall. It is mowed down completely every March. Too many species are planted here to name, but it includes lots of Helianthus, Joe-Pye (Eupatorium species), Cup Plant (Silphium species), goldenrod (Solidago species) and grasses.

Above: a rain garden captures water running off from the driveway with a mixture of species adapted to moist conditions: Common and Swamp Milkweed (Asclepias syriaca and incarnata), Buttonbush (Cephalanthus occidentalis), Pink Tickseed (Coreopsis rosea), Joe-Pye (Eupatorium species), and more. Below right: a gorgeous planting of Butterfly Weed (Asclepias tuberosa) - the strain they raise has distinctly reddish tones. Asclepias is the family that hosts Monarch butterflies.

This may not be what every homeowner dreams of doing to their front yard, but there's no question about the ecological benefits of this type of planting. Mike was walking around with a pair of binoculars around his neck, which came in helpful throughout our walk as he stopped to identify the different kinds of birds that called his front yard "home". He also sighted numerous species of butterflies, and talk about mowing the wild violets centered around whether or not the chrysalis' had been abandoned yet. Clearly, nature was thriving here - as is also apparent in the managed meadow at Angelica Park.

This blog entry is getting long, but in brief: good management and species diversity are important components of meadows, whether they are in public parks or your own back (or front!) yard.

The only reason there is not more invasive purple loosestrife than Blue Vervain at Angelica is because the purple loosestrife is managed aggressively - and even with those controls, there are still many plants there. And the miscanthus grass that Mike and Jan planted in their front yard meadow many years ago - one of the few non-native species included there - is being slowly replaced by them with native species, as it threatens to take over more than its share of space in the yard.

Species diversity also ensures that many different types of birds, butterflies, and other wildlife may find habitat that suits them perfectly - and provides food, shelter, and breeding grounds throughout the seasons.

Here's a good article on meadows that came out recently in the Hardy Plant Society newsletter - with some familiar names!

Local Homeowners Fighting the Good Fight....and Winning!

2009-06-05T17:41:00.000-07:00

This year, I have been invited to many people's houses to come and look at their natural areas and help them identify plants, and so far, I've had the opportunity to get to 3 of them. All 3 were so amazing, I just had to write a post about them!

The first was a property in Mount Penn. Contrary to my assumption that Mt. Penn was basically just Perkiomen Avenue, and perhaps a side street or two, I soon discovered that there is an entire village built right into the side of the mountain, which really shows how sheltered I've been that I didn't know this existed! Winding my way through the narrow streets, passing house after house that seemed to have been carved right out of the bedrock, each different and unique, many extremely quaint, I really had the sense that I wasn't in familiar territory. J. greeted me on the steps of her house, which had to be at least 30 ft. above street level, but was only about 10 feet from the street. Considering the extreme slope of her front yard, I vowed to never complain again, EVER, about my terrain. You saw it in writing here.

Turns out her property continued up at the same extreme angle in her backyard, so walking to look at plants felt a little like climbing Mount Everest. I was frankly amazed that J. managed to plant anything at all, considering how precarious it would be to set foot on one of those hills and attempt to dig a hole, but plant things she had. She chuckled when we passed the spicebush she'd paid $20 for the previous year, only to realize later that her property was covered with mature specimens already!

J.'s property, like the other 2 properties I visited, was a beautiful woodlands property, with a canopy of mature chestnut trees and an understory of - yes! - spicebush, but invasives were lurking everywhere. J.'s major problem plant appeared to be multiflora rose, but we also saw a new stand of mile-a-minute weed dangerously close to some beautiful colonies of Jack-in-the-pulpits. Our major discovery was a young paw-paw tree, which J. first thought she recognized, and then we confirmed - and not only that tree, but several babies all around it! J. was overjoyed, and we determined that her first priority would be to keep the multiflora rose away from that small stand, to let it continue to grow and develop. J. was fanatic about the invasives, and described to me her continuing efforts over the years. Even as we walked along, she was pulling them here and there. In addition to keeping close tabs on the invasives, she had industriously planted many natives throughout her property, including a hazelnut most recently.

The other 2 properties I visited were even closer to home, just a few minutes away in Robeson township. However, they could have been a world away for all I could recognize of the landscape - these two properties were like fairylands, yet they were inhabited by real people. Perhaps the feeling I was in fairyland was heightened by the amazing, sinuous cob wall at the front yard of the first property - a hand-made earthen wall, with a slate-tiled roof, and beautifully gnarled branches accenting and forming the windows and doors. Now that's just something you don't see every day!

But, back to the properties. Here was a situation where two neighbors, with contiguous properties, realized they were gardening soulmates, and have been jointly gardening and caring for their two properties ever since. Their properties were also on a hill - one at the top, one at the bottom - making for another steep descent and climb, although not nearly as extreme as Mt. Penn. And it was yet another example of people who have managed to coax the beauty back into their landscapes, which had been completely taken over by invasive plants when they first moved into the houses. D. described the property thus: "It was like the forest around Sleeping Beauty's castle - so dense, you couldn't even see your way in." D. also called the tree of heaven the tree of hell (just like I do!), and from her description, she and her husband had taken out hundreds of them, big and small, over the course of many years. The same with the multiflora rose, which undoubtedly was a major contributor to the Sleeping Beauty effect. And their efforts paid off - the understory was lush with Christmas fern, lady fern, cinnamon fern, spicebush, massive rosebay rhododendrons, pinxterbloom azaleas, and white wood aster.

The other D.'s property, nestled in a small valley at the bottom of the hill, boasted a babbling brook running right alongside the house, with a steep slope of mountain laurel, in full, gorgeous bloom, directly opposite. It really seemed like the kind of place that people would pay several hundred dollars a night just to have the opportunity to see that vista when they woke up. Everywhere we walked, they talked about their ongoing projects - here a native meadow border, there a new cob cottage, here planning to put some natural stairs near an amazing-looking rock formation, there clearing away the plants to reveal an old stone wall, nestled deep in the woods - and everywhere, how to best control the invasive plants encroaching from all angles. We identified a few plants they were dismayed to learn were invasive plants, which were in their woods - barberry, burning bush, and the first-year form of garlic mustard, which is just an attractive looking mound of leaves with pretty scalloped edges - in addition to commiserating about the ones they already knew about and were dealing with.

Coming away from these visits, I felt more invigorated than ever in my own small battle to take back the woods around my house, and the Sugarbush property, which is also a nearly impenetrable thicket of invasive plants - because these 3 homeowners had showed me what was possible, with some extreme dedication and time committment, to the task of managing the invasive plants. Perhaps my property doesn't have the same "wow!" potential that theirs do, even with lots of work, but I'm sure it can at least be a decent Pennsylvania woodlands, which is really all I want, since a decent PA woodlands is one of the most beautiful landscapes going. And if they can do it, so can I - and so can you!

Now would be a good time to mention a few good invasive plant websites that can help you ID your own invaders:

Weeds Gone Wild: http://www.nps.gov/plants/alien/factmain.htm

DCNR Invasive Plants Tutorial: http://www.dcnr.state.pa.us/Forestry/invasivetutorial/List.htm

Wishing us all good luck!

Spring inspiration is all around us!

2009-05-05T03:23:00.000-07:00

Did you ever notice this phenomenon: as soon as you learn to identify - or even begin to pay attention to - a certain flower, shrub, or tree, you begin noticing it everywhere?

I've had this happy occurrence many times this spring so far, and I've been very close to home when it happens - even at home, in one case!

Although the forest behind our house is cursed with every known invasive species of plant in PA, or so it seems, before all of the multiflora rose and Japanese bush honeysuckle leafed out again, I saw that I had spicebush (Lindera benzoin) growing far back in the woods - out of the reach, for now, of these aggressive invaders. I felt like I'd discovered a treasure! Seeing a stand of spicebush in the woods in early April is like looking through a haze of a fading yellow sunset - a far different experience from looking at the screaming yellow of forsythia, which overlaps in bloom, and is pretty hard on the eyes. I much prefer the understated beauty of spicebush, and once I saw it blooming this spring, I saw it everywhere.

Another is may apple. When this emerges in the spring, it looks for all the world like little fairy houses popping up where you least expect them. And they now seem to be everywhere, at least along my daily commute.

Speaking of commutes, my commute is one of the most beautiful drives there is, along the back roads of Chester County. There I started seeing great masses of Virginia Bluebells (Mertensia virginica) under the high canopies of the deciduous forest, and the most beautiful stand I saw was on the shore of a creek.

And it gets even better...look at this beautiful scene from a natural plant community at one of my favorite places, Camphill Special School - Beaver Run: right at the entrance to the school is a little hollow, also on the higher bank of a stream, where Virginia Bluebells were blooming along with bright yellow Golden Ragwort (Packera aurea) and wood poppy (Stylophorum diphyllum), fronted by the amazing foliage of may apple (Podophyllum peltatum), interspersed all around with ferns. The most experienced landscape designer couldn't have done a better job than Mother Nature did here, with each of the flower and foliage colors and forms complementing each other beautifully. This is the kind of scene that can inspire gardeners to try to recreate these pleasing plant communities in our own backyards.

Here's a wildflower I hadn't specifically known about before, except for having heard the common name from time to time: Quaker Ladies, or bluets. I first saw this lawn blooming along Rt. 10, and thought it must be moss pinks (Phlox subulata), but after seeing the same mass of color closer by on another roadside and pausing for a closer look, I realized it was not! It was my helper, Jan Slater, who clued me in to the true identity of Houstonia caerulea, and then, of course, I started seeing them everywhere. Funny that I've lived here for a long time and never noticed it before! Since it's not like these drifts of flowers just appeared this year, it must be because I haven't taken the time to notice them before.

Now, over to Nolde Forest....you don't have to walk far to find something amazing to draw inspiration from, even on wet, dreary days like the day I was there this weekend. Here's a stand of Canada Mayflower (Maianthemum canadense) just emerging right along a pathway. It won't ever knock you over, even in full flower, but even just the scattering of these diminutive, glossy green leaves among last fall's leaves is beautiful in an understated way.

Walk a little farther and you'll find the aforementioned spicebush blanketing a steep bank going towards a creek, with a lush carpet of wild ginger (Asarum canadense) and ferns at its feet. Even when not in bloom, the spicebush lend an elegant air to its companions, with its vase-like shape, dark brown bark, and of course, that wonderful spicy scent.

And wild violets? They take on a whole new persona when given free reign in a shady woodland setting. Wild violets seem to get a bad rap, for no reason that I can see....it's not often that beauty and ease of growth go together so effortlessly. And have I mentioned that violets (Viola spp.) are host plants for fritillary butterflies?

I hope you're enjoying this beautiful spring as much as I am. Stay awake to the possibilities of implementing some of these nature scenes close to home!

Nursery Update - beginning of April 2009

2009-04-04T02:56:00.000-07:00

We're a week away from opening, and are gearing up for the new season!

Our perennials are just breaking dormancy, so now is the time of year when I begin biting my nails wondering, "Are these plants going to look alive when the first customers roll in?" Since we overwinter all of our plants in our unheated barn, they are on exactly the same schedule as plants that have spent the winter outdoors, cozy in a garden....not forced into early greenery (or even blooms!) in a greenhouse. I'd take a plant grown this way any day, because it's already proven its hardiness. But it's not exactly instant gratification in the garden!

We've added native shrubs this year, and I have been busy lining these up from various growers, picking them up, and figuring out where we're going to put everything. Sugarbush is going to be packed this year!

As usual, the copy and print person on duty at Staples in the evening is going to be my new best friend for the next several weeks while I work on printing and laminating our customized bench cards that describe each plant we carry in great detail.

This year I am also really excited about all of the organic veggie plants we are going to be able to offer our customers. We've always done a rather bare-bones sort of veggie offering in the past, and most of it has been conventionally grown. But Erica Bowers Lavdanski, co-owner of B&H Organic Produce in Morgantown, is growing transplants for us this year (as well as speaking on small space vegetable gardening on April 18th!) - and we are going to be able to offer dozens of varieties of veggies! All will be grown organically (as her CSA farm is also managed).

Speaking of Erica, and speaking of speaking, this year we are also hosting a Speaker's Series, bringing in lots of great local people who are experts in their field and who will share their love of gardening with us. We'll have a new speaker every month, with a different and really interesting topic each time. Check out our Events page for more details.

On a final note, I would strongly advise anyone who will be visiting the nursery to WAIT to come until April 18th! The perennials will surely be looking more lively at that point, veggies will be here, and the first of the annuals and hanging baskets will also be here by then. Our April 11th opening won't be with our full complement of everything we will be offering this year. So kick back for another week, if you can! And then we'll hope to see you here soon for another great gardening season.

Gardening in Winter - Managing invasives has never been so much fun!

2009-01-11T04:14:00.000-08:00

Most gardeners are bored to tears in the winter months. With all of those seed catalogs flooding our mailboxes and inboxes, tempting us with the promise of spring, the wait till we can get our hands dirty again is pure torture. Fortunately, there is at least one activity that can be done in the dead of winter to satisfy those gardening blues - managing invasive plants.

There are a few very good reasons for doing this in the dead of winter. First, you've got some time on your hands, which is not true for most gardeners anytime the weather is warm. There is usually just too much weeding, mulching, planting, transplanting and the like to get anything else done. With all of those options unavailable in the winter, selectively "editing" plants from the landscape (I borrow that wonderful idea from Claire Sawyer's recent book, "The Authentic Garden") becomes a perfect activity.

It's easy to see the outline of shrubs and vines in the winter, and thus to know what to cut. In fact, the winter landscape, at least at my property, highlights the problems with invasive plants in the landscape perhaps even more than in the summer, when they are in all of their glory. It's easy to see the vines climbing over everything - way up into trees, and covering over shrubs - in my yard, those vines are mostly Porcelain-berry and Japanese honeysuckle vines. It's easy to pull most of those down, as well - unless they're 60 ft. up into the trees, that is, and then the next best thing is to just cut them at the base and pull down as much as you can.

The outlines of Japanese bush honeysuckles are also easy to pick out, even at a distance - strongly striated bark on mature shrubs, with ID confirmed by a hollow pith (cut a 1/2" branch and look in the middle).

It's also the best time to manage multiflora rose, a landscape pest par excellance. When in full leaf, it becomes a real challenge to deal with larger specimens - but in the winter, I've found that chopping 2' long pieces all around the shrub, to slowly be able to get at the base of the plant, is the most effective method yet.

While most gardening is productive - with gardeners helping to coax life from the earth - this kind of gardening is satisfyingly destructive. Wielding my saw, lopper and pruner on a foray into the wilderness of the edge of our woods, I feel the very image of Kali, the Hindu goddess of destruction. Or an invasive plant hit-man.

I am waiting for the balance of the scales to tip once again in the favor of the environment that is supposed to be predominant in our woods - that is, native plants. Right now, they are distressingly few and far between. In fact, my discovery late this summer of two tiny ferns growing in our woods - not planted by me - lead me on a week-long celebration that I found hard to explain to all of the people who just say, "That's nice.....but aren't ferns supposed to be in our woods?"

Of course they are - that is the point. But in places like mine, and in so many others, the plants that are supposed to be there are simply not there - outcompeted by invasives that germinate more quickly than natives, shade out natives at crucial times in the growing season, produce more seed than natives - you name it, the invasive plants have a strategy for domination that is hard to counter.

But I've heard enough stories about native plants re-emerging from apparently barren landscapes once the invasive plants have been adequately managed, with no other help from gardeners other than attempting to once again level the playing field. This is what I'm hoping for on our property, and if I'm successful, I'll give you a tour the next time you're around, and point out the fern grove growing just beyond that rise.

Nursery Update - Oct. 08

2008-10-28T03:39:00.000-07:00

The nursery is now closed for the season - we'll be re-opening again in mid-April 2009. I want to thank all of our customers this year for supporting us, and for "showing us the love" towards our new native line-up. Thanks to a demonstrated demand, we are going to be able to go 100% native as of 2009!

This is an exciting development, and I will be spending the winter researching the initial line-up of native trees and shrubs to add to our existing perennial inventory. If you have some favorites you'd like to be sure to see, please email me. What I'll be going for are native plants that have a high value in the landscape and that also have a high value to wildlife. Lucky for me, I already did some of this research last winter, and published the results on the Sugarbush site with a neat list compiled from two different sources. Be sure to check this out if you haven't already.

Some garden tips for the season:

Don't let your fall leaves go to waste! Raking them up and bagging them for the curb is like giving away money and nutrients. You can shred those leaves and add them to your compost pile, or shred them and spread them directly on your garden now as a mulch. Either use will provide numerous benefits for your garden. The shredding is an important step to expose more surface areas of the leaves - otherwise they take a long time to break down. You can buy a shredder (I have a Flowtron), run over a pile of leaves with your lawnmower, or suck them up in a leaf vaccum that will shred them for you.

Apply corn gluten meal now on your lawn to take care of the annual weeds that germinate about now. The next application time is spring, when the forsythia is blooming.

Gardening to Attract Butterflies...and Caterpillars

2008-08-17T18:19:00.000-07:00

If you weren't among the hordes of people here last weekend to hear me talk about butterflies, this blog entry is for you! (If you WERE among those hordes, you'll know how funny that intro. sentence was!)

The main gist of my talk was that attracting butterflies to your garden needs to go beyond providing flowers for butterflies. Butterfly gardens need to include trees, shrubs, and plants that can serve as food sources for baby butterflies (aka, caterpillars). Many gardeners are geared towards the end game only on the butterfly spectrum, but that is a crucial mistake.

What are Host Plants?

Many butterflies can only reproduce on one, or very few, species of plants with which they have a specific relationship. If those plants are not available in the landscape, the butterflies cannot reproduce, and we will not have those types of butterflies. Trees and shrubs support the largest numbers of butterfly species, as a general rule, although there are some butterflies that have herbaceous plants (perennials) as hosts. If you have lots of butterflies in your flower garden, you probably have a nearby wild area to thank for them. Most of the host plants for butterfly caterpillars are actually trees and shrubs, and many of those species of trees and shrubs are not common landscape plants anymore. Landscapers install, and garden centers recommend, plants that are quick-growing, easy to sell and establish, and new and exciting. These are often non-native plants, and many of them do not have any established relationships with butterfly caterpillars.

Insects and caterpillars cannot adjust quickly to a fundamental change in the plants in the landscape around them. They have co-evolved with those plants over millennia to be able to eat them and/or reproduce on them. When the plants in the landscape are replaced with primarily non-native plants, wildlife – including butterflies – directly suffers.

What are Nectar Plants?

Adults – butterflies - eat nectar from flowers. Nectar is similar tasting across plant species, so butterflies can take nectar from a wide variety of flowers. They are not limited when they are adults in their choice of food, in the same way they are when caterpillars. Butterflies prefer to feed on flowers that occur in tiny clusters, because there is a great abundance of nectar. Some examples are milkweed, Joe Pye Weed, mountain mint, asters, and purple coneflowers. Butterflies generally prefer to drink the nectar of native plants. However, they will also drink nectar from non-native plants, including butterfly bushes.

But, lest this be seen as an endorsement of butterfly bush, let me say in no uncertain terms that there are big problems with this pretty plant! They are on the watch list for invasive plants in Pennsylvania, due to their tendency to seed around, and displace native plants. Butterfly bushes are not host plants for any known species of butterfly. This means they are only good for butterflies when they are adults. Butterfly bushes may be covered with butterflies, but if native plants are nearby, the butterflies will usually prefer those plants. However, faced with a butterfly bush and few other food sources, the butterflies will drink the nectar from the butterfly bush. This would be like me, a vegetarian, eating at McDonald's - there's hardly anything to attract me there, but if I was hungry enough, I could eat the french fries. And I do, on occasion.

And it all boils down to...

Your garden should have a combination of host plants and nectar plants in order to support butterflies through all of their stages of growth and development. The nectar plants should have staggered bloom throughout the entire season, to provide food, and keep the butterflies in your garden.

Getting Started with your Butterfly Garden

It’s easy to incorporate key butterfly host plants in your garden.

A great one to try is parsley. It’s a host plant for Black Swallowtail butterflies. It’s a biennial, so it will stay in your garden for two years before dying; it’s cheap to buy; you can plant it among other ornamentals in your garden; and you can share it with the butterfly caterpillars for your meals. This is also a good one to try if space is limited, you garden on an apartment terrace or only have windowboxes.

If you have a shady area of your property that stays rather moist, you could plant paw paw (Asimina triloba). It’s one of only a couple of host plants for the Zebra Swallowtail butterfly.

Fritillaries use violets as their host plants. Violets make a great groundcover in the shade.

If you want to attract monarchs, you need to plant milkweeds on your property. Milkweeds are any plants in the genus Asclepias, some of which are very garden worthy. Monarch populations are in serious jeopardy due to loss of breeding sites. Monarchs make a yearly migration to the forest of Mexico, where they spend the winter. They return to the same spots in the spring and summer. Monarchs are losing habitat because stands of milkweed are being crowded out in many places by purple loosestrife, an invasive plant that thrives in the same conditions as milkweed.

Oaks are host plants for over 500 species of butterflies. Planting oaks on your property is a long-term investment towards having lots of butterflies on your property. The other major butterfly trees, in order, are cherry, willow, birch, poplar, crabapple, and maples.

Switching in native plants for non-native plants is almost always a good thing for butterflies. For example, native switchgrass (Panicum virgatum) is known to support at least 25 species of butterflies as a host plant. Non-native Miscanthus (silver-hair grass) is known to support just 1. I've got a large and very beautiful Miscanthus in front of my house which is going to be on the chopping block come spring, to make way for something more useful and just as beautiful...any takers, stake your claim now!

Also…

This may go without saying, but I'm not the silent type: Never use chemicals in your butterfly garden. Many chemicals used for weed or pest control will kill insects, including caterpillars and butterflies.

Some Additional Resources

"Bringing Nature Home", by Doug Tallamy, Timber Press, Nov. 2007. There's a great butterfly and host plant list at the back of this great book. All of my detailed info. comes from his website, where he is publishing his research on host plants for butterflies and moths: http://copland.udel.edu/~dtallamy/host/index.html.

http://home.dejazzd.com/kgard/bcn/butterflies2009.html:
Thanks to my helper this year, Jan Slater, for bringing this great site to my attention. It's a list of all of the butterfly species that have been actually sighted in Berks County in the last 5 years - much better than the larger, more theoretical lists of butterflies in PA that includes sometimes hundreds of species that may have only been sighted once, 46 years ago, in one county, by someone who may or may not have known what they were looking at. Greatly helpful as a cross-reference to Tallamy's list.

And last but not least, we've started a butterfly list as part of the Sugarbush website, identifying each known host plant that we carry that supports species of butterflies that have been sighted in Berks County, PA over the last 5 years. It's right on our plant list. Happy gardening!

The evil twin of native plants: invasives!

2008-07-15T19:26:00.000-07:00

It's growing faster than a speeding bullet...it's a bird, it's a plane, it's - Tree of Heaven?!

If only this line ended differently! Alas, it does not. Plants horribly out of their context are often the fastest-growing plants in our landscapes. No holds barred, they are not subject to the diseases, pests, and growing conditions of the place to which they are native, which always kept their growth in check before. There, they were in balance with their ecosystem. Here, they are like good farm boys from Iowa suddenly on a wild weekend in NYC with no parents, and a wallet full of money. You can hope everything's going to be okay, but chances are, those boys are going to let loose in ways they never would at home.

But, one major difference is that the farm boys can return to Iowa and repair their reputations, leaving NYC only slightly more chaotic than when they first arrived, while the invasive plants, with their unruly behavior, are here to stay. And just what is unruly behavior in a plant? If they germinate even a little more quickly, or grow taller a little more quickly than the native plants around them, the battle is over, and the invasives have won. And this is exactly why many invasives have earned themselves that name. Invasives displace native plants, along with the insects which prefer to feed or reproduce on native plants. To add insult to injury, they sometimes also release chemicals that actively kill other plants around them.

Controlling invasive plants is a major part of establishing - or protecting - natives in your home landscape. This is an ongoing task, because as soon as you think it's under control, some lovely birds - which you are attracting to your home with all of your native plants - will "deposit" seeds of some unwanted invasives, which will then germinate, and you'll start the cycle all over again.

But the situation will get better over time. Start with taking out all of the plants that are of fruiting age, because this is where the problems are starting. Then work your way down to the less mature plants, which are definitely taking up space, but are probably not going anywhere fast if they're not themselves setting seed. After a while, you'll be down to just the plants that are germinating every year, and these are easier to pull up.

How to get rid of the invasive trees and shrubs, like the aforementioned Tree of Heaven, my personal arch nemesis? Cutting them down will take away their ability to produce seed that season, but they'll resprout. You will need to kill the plant in order to keep it from coming back with a vengeance. Here are some methods to try for the larger trees and shrubs:

You could cover the stump with a layer of thick black plastic, well-attached to the ground, and keep that in place for a year, and see if that works.
You could keep on cutting off all of the sprouts from the stump or stem, as soon as they come out - eventually this will wear the plant out, and it will give up, but this may take a long time.
You could try to pull out the entire stump and root mass with a big truck and a chain - although with some plants, if you leave behind even small pieces of root, those will resprout.
Or, you could paint the newly-cut stems or stumps with a concentrated solution of glyphosate (aka the active ingredient in Round-up), to keep them from re-sprouting.

Of course, many invasives can be controlled by pulling them up when they are small, or simply cutting off their flowers, if they are annuals (like garlic mustard). These should always be the measures to turn to first, when they are options.

But - what if you don't know what's in your yard? Find out! The DCNR has some great tools to help homeowners identify, and learn how to control, many varieties of invasive plants. Here's a link to one of my favorites - a tutorial that includes pictures and control methods for each invasive variety:

http://www.dcnr.state.pa.us/Forestry/invasivetutorial/List.htm

Take heart! There's no way your property has more invasive plants than mine does, so if you need a sympathetic ear, you've got one here. Good luck!

Talking about natives - part 1 of ??

2008-06-12T19:19:00.000-07:00

Yesterday evening I had the very great pleasure of hearing Mike McGrath, organic gardening guru and host of WHYY's "You Bet Your Garden", speak at Camphill Village Kimberton Hills.

The storm the previous night had knocked out the power in the village, but this sort of mishap doesn't deter gardening fanatics. The entire audience sat in chairs outside the hall where the talk was to have taken place, with Mike right up front, perched on a step, talking to us as if we were all sitting around his living room.

The scene had that slightly otherworldly feel that you sometimes get in a Camphill village - like time had stopped about 50 years ago, when many of us were still connected with farms, in one way or another, and with our neighbors. Children of all ages fluttered behind the seated adults, looking for all the world as if they'd been birthed by fairies. I had the distinct impression that if you were to offer one of these waifs an X-Box, they'd look at you silently and curiously, wondering if perhaps it could be used as a footstool, helpful for reaching the limbs of taller trees.

Mike touched on a variety of creatures beneficial for organic gardens, including toads, birds, and spiders. But it was what he said about the bees that caught my imagination.

Honeybees are in serious decline across the country - and indeed, across the world. The mysterious diagnosis is termed "Colony Collapse Disorder". Nobody is really sure what all of the culprits are, but mites and viruses are on the list. This is important for everyone, as fully one third of all of our food in the US is pollinated by honeybees.

But, as Mike shared, much of the problem might have to do with the fact that honeybees aren't native to the US. Turns out, they're Italian, and quite well-adapted to that Mediterranean climate. Honeybees have never had an easy or a happy life over here in the US, where all sorts of mechanisms have to be employed to keep their hives going. They can't sustain themselves here - we sustain them, because we need them to pollinate our food crops.

The mantra of organic gardening is "right plant, right place" - because a plant well-adapted to the growing conditions of a particular site will be healthier, and better able to fend off pests and disease than one that is poorly adapted, and needs lots of coddling to make it. Sounds like the honeybees aren't in the right place, and now they're showing us why this was a bad idea to depend on them so heavily.

Unfortunately, many of the favorite foods we grow in the US are also not native here. "As American as apple pie?" Nope - apples are from central Asia, more Turkish or Russian than American. Maybe this is why it's difficult to grow apples without lots of coddling, at least anywhere east of the Rockies - they just aren't meant for this climate, and they show us why it was a bad idea to put them here by getting attacked by every pest known to man.

This all leads to some interesting questions about nativity. What does it mean to be native to a place? Does it mean to be born there, to be able to grow up to maturity, or even to thrive in a place? Or does it mean more than that?

I was born in Berks County, but I've never been able to identify myself as a Berks Countian. I realize this is because my parents weren't born here, but were both transplanted from other parts of the country. This means I grew up without the body of knowledge of what it means to be from Berks implanted in me from a young age. For example, all things Pennsylvania Dutch are foreign to me, including the foods. I've heard of chow-chow, but I have no idea what it is, and no inclination to seek it out and try it. Instead, I relate to a body of knowledge, values, and food that originated in other places, places where I have not even lived - the childhood places of my mother and father, in rural Minnesota and Rochester, New York. How strange that is!

Turns out plants act in much the same way. Plants relate to the growing conditions not where they've germinated and grown up, which could be anywhere, but to the growing conditions of their true native place. They may well be able to make a life for themselves outside of their native range, but there are missing elements to their transplanted experience. Crucial of these missing elements is their relationship with the insects around them.

And what, you may be asking, do insects have to do with anything? For that, I will need to introduce you to my new most favorite person in the world, Doug Tallamy. I haven't met him yet, but that will change in September when he comes to the Reading area to speak at the Berks Hort Club. He wrote a book, published Nov. 2007, called "Bringing Nature Home". In this book, he detailed the vital connection between native plants and native insects. Here's the crucial part: Native insects eat the leaves of native plants at a much higher rate than non-natives. In many cases, they cannot use the leaves of non-native plants at all.

We need to take one step further back until this makes sense. Plants capture energy from the sun and turn it into food, in the form of their bodies. All life depends on plants being able to photosynthesize, because plants pass this collected energy from the sun all the way up the food chain - ending with us. However, not all animals can use the energy contained in plants directly. We are surrounded by lots of green grass, but it's not usable food energy for us. However, some of us eat cows that can eat grass, so we get the energy from the grass that way. Humans are not unique among animals in our inability to digest most of the vegetation around us. However, luckily for us, insects can and do digest lots of vegetation. They are the most efficient converters of the energy in plants into a high-protein, animal form - in the form of their bodies. And insects are the preferred food of many small animals, which in turn are eaten by larger animals, which in turn are eaten by us. Thank you, insects, for keeping us alive!

Okay, now back to our gardens. Birds and butterflies are on the most wanted list of every gardener. But, in order to nurture the birds and butterflies, we need to make sure their babies are well-fed. Take birds first. Adult birds like to eat berries, but baby birds eat insects. Those mama birds dropping caterpillars into the scrawny beaks of their young? It's the high protein, easily digestible diet baby birds need to get off to a good start. This is not unlike baby humans, who need a different diet in their first months than the diet they will eventually adopt for the rest of their lives.

But, I digress. Caterpillars, in turn, eat leaves. Not just any old leaves, mind you - they eat the leaves of plants which are familiar to them, plants with which their ancestors co-evolved over thousands of years. It's a chemical thing. You can put a caterpillar on a butterfly bush (a non-native shrub), and he won't know what to do, other than climb down and find a plant he can actually eat. Once he's eaten the leaves of his preferred plant, metamorphosed and become a moth or butterfly, then he can eat the pollen from the flowers of the butterfly bush - but it didn't do him a bit of good when he was a young'un.

You see where this is heading? Not enough plants to feed the caterpillars in our yards, even if our gardens are full of beautiful plants...not enough caterpillars for mama birds to feed their babies...not as many baby birds being born or making it to adulthood...not as many birds. And the equation ends even earlier for butterflies. End of story.

The surprising truth is that most of our landscape plants come straight from - can you guess? - nowhere around here. We have Asian and European landscapes everywhere in American suburbia. And we're paying the price with wildlife that's struggling to survive, to find those plants that used to live here that we've squeezed out of our landscapes because they were too ordinary, or not as fashionable as the newest introductions from Europe or Asia. After all, it took the European plant breeders to recognize the beauty in our native purple coneflower, and to start choosing cultivars of it. Then they started to sell them back to us and we said, "Wow! Those are beautiful...why didn't we think of this before?"

Where did this all start? Ah, yes - nativity. So, what is a native plant? You can see from the above that the answer is very complex. It's a subject that interests me, so I will keep writing about it. Stay tuned!