Blooming Mash-up
Today’s post is a hodgepodge with lots of video and images:
A giant new perennial bed, update and new plants!
What’s happening at the pond? (Hmmmm, tadpoles?)
An inspirational video about a kick-ass older woman
Summary of an experiment to measure insect diversity as an outcome of urban greening with native plants
Why it matters? Oh, I don’t know. There’s a little bit of this and a little bit of that and some of it will be interesting and at least one thing might make you laugh.
Giant new perennial bed finally ready for plants!
I started a giant new perennial bed a few weeks ago and finally finished preparing it for plants yesterday. I’ve got a lot of new plants coming, including:
Lots of bulbs
Several peonies
Take a look at this beast. Losing lawn, gaining life!
I’ve covered this area with a layer of brown paper, a mix of soil and compost (I ordered 4 yards), and straw. I’ll leave all of this in place and it will both kill the grass and add a bit of organic matter. When the plants come, I’ll just plant right into this. All the paper and most of the straw should decompose by next year.
Yesterday, I went to nearby native plant nursery and community treasure, Wildtype Nursery, for their fall public sale. I went with a nice, short list of five plants and planned to buy no more than five of each, returning home with a significant, yet manageable, number of plants. I came home with close to 50 plants. I don’t have any buyer’s remorse, but I really cannot set foot in a nursery until next year.
It doesn't look like 46 plants, but it is!!I won’t list all the plants I bought, but will note that I’m particularly excited about the goat’s rue and horsemint, which I planted yesterday, and the Gray’s sedge and Southern blue flag, which will be the first two plants going into the rain garden.
Pond update. Do you think I’m going to be seeing tadpoles?
Hunting Burmese Pythons in the Everglades
Ever since I visited the Everglades earlier this year and heard from locals how absolutely devastating invasive Burmese Pythons are, literally wiping out close to 100% of local fauna, I’ve been tuned into efforts to deal with them. This woman is in her 60s and has caught close to 500 pythons. The job is cool no matter who is doing it, but I like hearing about older women doing bad ass things, and this qualifies.
Research Article: Large positive ecological changes of small urban greening actions
I sometimes wonder just how much difference I’m making with my suburban garden. I live in a neighborhood where most of the green space is lawn, and many of the plants people have are non-native and not too diverse.
I spend a ton of money and a ton of time on my yard. I choose to plant mostly native plants that pollinators need because I believe and hope that I’m doing the right thing for the planet, but I do wonder how much of an impact I can make.
It’s nice to hear about actual research that finds that even small spaces can have major benefits for insect populations.
The article is free to read, and is here https://besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2688-8319.12259.
The major takeaway:
Our findings therefore demonstrate that large ecological changes may be derived from investing in small urban greening actions, even in highly urbanised landscapes such as this study, and that these may bring indigenous insect species back to urban areas where they have become rare or been extirpated.
And this, which will cause me to look at plants in my garden, and the insects that live there, in new ways. I’m providing a whole world for these insects!
Our field protocol recorded an insect–plant interaction every time an insect was observed on a plant. These interactions, therefore, are likely to represent different types of associations between the insects and the plants; while herbivores are likely directly feeding on the plants…other groups may have more distal, indirect relationships with those plants, using them, for example, as shelter, hunting grounds and reproduction and oviposition sites.
Okay, I’m off to weed and prepare to sow cover crops in the annual beds!
Bouquet of the week: Dahlia, calendula, lisianthus, basil, echinacea, echinops, and daphne