Tag Archives: pollinators

Garden Advice

It’s National Pollinator Week!

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National Pollinator Week was started by the Pollinator Partnership and approved and designated by the U.S. Senate 15 years ago. It’s a celebration of pollinators and what they do for us. It’s also a time to raise awareness about pollinators and their declining populations. If you love nature, gardening, and pollinators, it’s a wonderful week to get involved.

Butterfly on flower (pollinator week)Fun Facts About Pollinators

  • There are about 350,000 species of pollinators worldwide. These species include birds, butterflies, bees, flies, bats, moths, beetles, wasps, small mammals, and even lizards!
  • Native pollinators, especially bees, are estimated to contribute $3 billion to the value of crop pollination in the U.S..
  • The southeastern blueberry bee is an excellent example of the importance of native pollinators. In her few weeks as an adult, a single female bee visits about 50,000 blueberry flowers, resulting in over 6,000 marketable blueberries worth about $75.
  • There are approximately 4,000 native bee species in the United States, 10% of which have not been named or described.
  • About 20%-45% of native bees are pollen specialists, meaning they use only pollen from one plant species (or genus). They often do a better job with these plants than non-specialized species. 
  • Most plants, more than 70 percent of species, depend on pollinators for reproduction.
  • Pollinator decline has been reported on every continent except Antarctica.
  • Estimates showed that wild bees declined 23 percent across the United States between 2008 and 2013. 
  • There are several factors causing pollinator decline, including diseases and pathogens, conversion of natural habitats to row crops, pesticide use, and habitat loss and fragmentation.

Identifying Pollinators

From moths to bumblees, identifying specific species of polliantors, particularly insects, can be challenging. Today, there are many apps that can help along with some quality guidebooks like Common Bees of Eastern North America by Olivia J. Messinger Carril and Joseph S. Wilson. 

Another great resource is iNaturalist, a joint initiative of the California Academy of Sciences and the National Geographic Society that allows you to share observations and get confirmed identifications from other naturalists.

2023 National Pollinator Week

The 2023 National Pollinator Week is focused on the connection between pollinator decline and climate change. They now face increased disease pressure, food source and habitat loss, rising temperatures, and more frequent natural disasters, all of which have impacted their ability to survive.

Bee on Jewels of Opar (pollinator week)How Do I Get Involved with Pollinator Week?

  • Find Pollinator Week activities in your area or add your own activities to the map and invite others to join in. 
  • Build an insect hotel or native bee house. 
  • Plan or start a pollinator garden.
  • Share information about pollinators on social media.
  • Host a native plant and seed sale or exchange. 
  • Watch or screen a pollinator documentary. 
  • Eliminate pesticide usage in your garden. 
  • Write to local, state, or federal officials and encourage them to take climate change and the plight of pollinators seriously.
  • Turn more of your lawn into garden or native plantings. 

Ideally, we think about pollinators and do right by them every day. However, Pollinator Week is a good time to reflect on our current practices and encourage others to do so as well. It can be as simple as talking about pollinators with your family and friends or sharing some native seeds with a neighbor, or as involved as campaigning for systematic changes in your state or community. 

Garden Advice

Pests & Pollination: Attract Beneficial Insects

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Last week we discussed strategies for conquering weeds in an organic garden. This week we’re moving on to another chore loathed by natural farmers, gardeners, and growers everywhere, controlling pests. One excellent way to ensure pest populations don’t get out of control is to ensure you have plenty of beneficial insects. When we think of beneficial insects, we often think of pollinators like bees and butterflies, but insects have so much more to offer us, gardeners! Many beneficial insects prey on pests and their eggs and larvae. Learn how to attract beneficial insects to your garden.

A lacewing on a leaf (attract beneficial insects)
Lacewing (Chrysopidae spp.)

What are Beneficial Insects?

Beneficial insects help us in the garden by pollinating plants, feeding on pests, and parasitizing pests. In our area, some of these include:

  • Wheel Bug (Arilus cristatus)
  • Wolf Spider (Lycosidae spp.)
  • Rusty Patched BumbleBee (Bombus affinis)
  • Black Swallowtail (Papilio polyxenes)
  • Carolina Mantis (Stagmomantis Carolina)
  • Yellow Garden Spider (Argiope aurantia)
  • Orange Sulfur (Colias eurytheme)
  • Braconid Wasp (Cotesia congregates)
  • Damsel Bugs (Nabidae spp.)
  • Mabel Orchard Orbweaver Spider (Leucauge argyrobapta)
  • Southeastern Blueberry Bee (Habropoda laboriosa)
  • Lacewing (Chrysopidae spp.)
  • Big-Eyed Bug (Geocoris spp.)
  • Blue Orchard Mason Bee (Osmia lignaria)
  • Striped Lynx Spider (Oxyopes salticus)
  • American Copper Butterfly (Lycaena phlaeas Americana)

These are just a fraction of the insect species hard at work in our yards and gardens! Of course, there are beneficial animals too. Birds and bats can also help keep pest populations down and pollinate plants.

Further Reading:

dead leaves (attract beneficial insects)
Dead leaves are excellent habitat for many beneficial insects.

Habitat Features to Attract Beneficial Insects

All these helpful insects need a habitat that provides the essentials of food, water, and shelter, just like we do. 

Don’t Clean Up Too Much

Many beneficial insects need places for themselves or their eggs to overwinter. Blue Orchard Mason Bees, for example, overwinter their eggs in cavities in plants like the hollow stems of flowers or reeds. Depending on the species, Lacewings over winter in their adult or pupa stage in piles of dead leaves or other organic debris. Resisting the urge to keep your garden spotless can provide these insects with better habitat.

Plant a Windbreak

Sometimes, gardeners will plant windbreaks to help with wind-related issues like lodging corn, but few people probably consider that it makes life much easier for beneficial insects. A windbreak or hedgerow can help slow wind through your garden, creating calmer flying conditions for bees, dragonflies, lady beetles, and other flyers.

Provide Water

Especially in the hot dry days of summer, insects need water just like people do. If you have water on your property like a pond or creek you can help keep it full and cool by allowing the banks to grow in trees and shrubs that will shade it. If you don’t have a natural water source, don’t worry you can make an insect waterer! All you need is some sort of clean small trough and stones to place in it. The stones are critical, as insects need an easy way to get down to the water and to climb out. Change the water regularly. 

Avoid Pesticides of Any Kind

Sometimes when we see the organic label we assume something is safe. Unfortunately, it isn’t that simple. Organic pesticides may be much safer for people and often waterways than conventional pesticides. However, both conventional and organic pesticides kill insects and neither of them differentiate between types of insects. If you have something that kills caterpillars to get rid of the cabbage loopers any swallowtail caterpillar that comes into contact with it will be effected too.

Flowers & Plants that Attract Beneficial Insects

Flowers aren’t just for bees and butterflies! Lacewings, parasitic wasps, lady beetles, and other insects use them too. For example, the larval stage of Convergent Lady Beetles feeds on insects, but the adult stage feeds on nectar, pollen, and honeydew. The females need a certain amount of these foods before laying eggs.

Conversely, many species, including bees and butterflies, need plants that aren’t in their flowering stage. For example, the caterpillars of the Black Swallowtail Butterfly will feed on the leaves of carrots, dill, fennel, and parsley.

Selecting Plants & Flowers

While poppies, roses, tulips, and hydrangeas are all stunning flowers that are great for human enjoyment, they may not be a favorite among beneficial insects. Flowers that are native or user-friendly typically will attract and support more beneficial insects.

Native Plants
Native Shrubs
  • Eastern Sweetshrub (Calycanthus floridus)
  • Southern Highbush Blueberry (Vaccinium formosum)
  • Allegheny Serviceberry (Amelanchier laevis)
  • False Indigo Bush (Amorpha fruticosa)
  • American Beautyberry (Callicarpa americana)
Native Trees
  • Eastern Redbud (Cercis canadensis)
  • Sourwood (Oxydendrum arboreum)
  • Tulip Poplar (Liriodendron tulipifera)
  • Sugar Maple (Acer saccharum)
  • Black Cherry (Prunus serotina)

Your local extension agency may also be able to provide more information on native species specifically suited to your area.

User-Friendly Flowers

Generally, beneficial insects find get the most food from a few different types of flowers: those with flat umbels of tiny flowers (looks a bit like a lace umbrella) like Queen Anne’s Lace, those with daisy-like flowers made up of tiny flowers like sunflowers, and those with loose spikes of tube-like flowers like mint.

These are just a few plants beneficial insects love. While it’s still perfectly fine to have and enjoy other flowers and plants, it’s important to plant some that consider our local insects.

Incorporating these strategies into your garden plan can help you attract beneficial insects and have a successful season. Happy growing!

 

 

Garden Advice

Wildlife Friendly Garden: Fall Clean-Up

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This fall, we’ve loved seeing an increased awareness about how pollinators and other beneficial insects are affected by garden clean-up. These creatures overwinter in organic debris such as plant stems, seed pods, and leaves. Overwintering songbirds also utilize this debris for habitat and food sources. 

So do we leave our garden as is in the fall for wildlife? No, we remove some material, leave some, and add some. These autumn chores are essential for the health and productivity of next year’s garden. Here’s what we recommend to keep your garden healthy and give wildlife a helping hand:

Clean up diseased plants.

In the fall, any diseased plant material should be removed from the garden and burnt, buried away from any garden beds, or composted in a well-managed compost pile that reaches at least 140°F. 

Nightshades or members of the Solanaceae family, including peppers, potatoes, tomatoes, and eggplants, are common candidates. These plants are affected by fungal diseases such as Alternaria (early blight), late blight, verticillium wilt, and fusarium wilt, which can overwinter in dead plant material.

You should also remove plants like cucumbers and squashes that have been affected by Downey Mildew.

Don’t leave soil bare over the winter. 

If your first frost is still several weeks away, you should be sowing cover crops like clover, Austrian winter peas, or winter rye in open beds. Cover crops prevent erosion, suppress weeds, add organic matter and nutrients to the soil, and provide habitat for beneficial insects, bacteria, and fungi.

However, depending on what zone you’re in, if you haven’t sown any fall cover crops at this point, you may want to use mulch instead. A thick layer of mulch can help provide a winter habitat for beneficial insects, bacteria, and fungi. It also suppresses weeds, slowly adds organic matter as it breaks down, and protects the soil from winter weather. We talked more in-depth about mulch in a previous post, but you can use straw, hay, old leaves, or wood chips.

Leave the leaves!

We’ve been taught that our yards and gardens should look tidy, but there’s nothing wrong with leaving autumn leaves right where they fall. They’ll break down and add organic matter and nutrients to your lawn and garden.

If you have places you want to remove leaves from, such as pathways to your home, there are a couple of great uses for them. You can add them to your compost pile; they’re a great source of carbon. You can also use leaves as an excellent free mulch to protect soil or perennial and overwintering plants like garlic, fruit trees and shrubs, strawberries, rhubarb, or tulips.

Don’t cut back seed-bearing flower heads.

Dead flower stalks are some of our favorite plants to leave standing. A few great choices include sunflowers, echinacea (coneflowers), bee balm (monarda), and rudbeckia (black-eyed Susans). The stems from many species are ideal places for native bees. You might also spot songbirds using them as winter perches and searching them for any leftover seed. They also add a bit of beauty to the winter landscape. Frost-covered seed heads are a lovely morning view. 

Plant more flowers.

Depending on your zone, you may still be able to sneak in a few flower seeds and bulbs. Many native flowers are excellent choices for fall sowing because their seeds are adapted to spending the winter in the soil in our climate. Check out our post, Spring Flowers: Fall Sowing, for a list of flowers that can be fall sown. 

Do cut back pest-infested material.

Another instance where we opt to remove and burn plant material is when it is infested with pests that may overwinter in the material. An excellent example of this is asparagus stalks that were infested with asparagus beetles. After they turn brown and die back in the fall, it’s a good idea to cut them about 2 inches above the soil and burn them. 

Other November odds and ends:

  • Drain the gas from rototillers and other equipment that will sit all winter.
  • Bring in terracotta pots that can crack during freeze and thaws.
  • Drain and store hoses and sprinklers. 
  • Clean and oil garden tools before storing them. This also helps fungal diseases from being transmitted to other garden beds.

As organic gardeners, we strive to work with nature. Following these simple ideas can limit time spent on clean-up, help build healthy soil, and increase the number of birds and beneficial insects in and around our gardens.