Guess Who's Coming To Dinner?

Inviting Hummingbirds and Butterflies Into Your Garden

Despite our best efforts, early Spring (certainly NOT where we are NOW) are pretty sparse for hungry hummingbirds. Intercept those spring migrants and hold onto them as potential nesting birds. Hang your hummingbird feeders out in mid-March in the Rogue Valley. The males will arrive first. From that day forward, the hummers will be regulars at your feeder and in the treetops as they chase spiders and other small insects (yes, hummers eat other things besides nectar). The constant source of food that a feeder provides in a garden that is always changing, and where nectar is not constant, may be what entices a hummer to nest in your yard or perhaps nearby.

The proper solution for hummingbird feeders is one cup of sugar to four cups of water. Making it stronger will not help the hummingbirds; it is hard to digest and could cause liver damage. You can make it up a quart at a time and store it in the refrigerator. Red dye is unnecessary and generally discouraged. Most hummingbird feeders have red parts that serve quite well to attract the birds. Whatever you do, DON’T use honey in your feeders! It can lead to a fatal fungus disease in hummingbirds.

There is a responsibility that comes with the enjoyment that feeder brings and that is maintenance. Cleanliness and making sure that you are offering fresh, unfermented solution. Feeders must be cleaned thoroughly with hot, soapy water and then rinsed with hot, clean water at least once a week, more frequently during the extreme heat of summer. Refill with fresh solution, even if the birds are not diminishing the supply. Old solution will ferment and could even be harmful if it turns into alcohol. In the early spring, only fill your feeders with a couple of inches of solution due to the lower activity at the feeders. Really, the only time you need to top up the feeders is from around mid-June to late September or so.

People often wonder if feeders are “bad”. No, they are not, as long as they’re maintained and not the only source of food in your yard. Feeders should complement yards full of nectar sources and healthy insect populations. This means NO PESTICIDES that can harm hummers or butterflies that visit your yard. Use, instead, organic and low impact, non-poisonous solutions. This mix of food – evolving gardens and always-available feeders) is what may entice a hummingbird to nest in or near your yard. When their favored sources are blooming, hummingbirds generally ignore feeders.

Many flowering plants attract hummers. Most are tubular in shape and many are red, though certainly not all of them. A successful hummingbird garden provides nectar sources from May through the first hard frost. There is a great temptation to plant acres of Bee Balm or Cardinal Flower, two of the hummer’s favorite nectar sources. In each case, however, nectar from those sources would be available for just a brief period in a hummer’s life. The wise gardener selects an assortment of flowering plants with overlapping bloom periods, mixes perennials and annuals and allows nature’s wildflowers and even some weeds to remain, many of which are favored by hummers and butterflies.

And what is a hummingbird garden without the added dazzle of butterflies and moths? Quite simply, plants chosen to attract hummers will often attract butterflies and moths too. The core of a great hummingbird garden is a large corridor of Tropical Sage, a dozen Butterfly Bushes and sizable patches of Bee Balm, Butterfly Weed, Common and Swamp Milkweed, Joe-Pye-Weed, Mistflower, Phlox, Purple Coneflower, Asters, Goldenrod, Zinnias, Sedum, Vervain and Mexican Sunflowers. All this is interspersed with many other flowers, herbs, and volunteer weeds like Queen Anne’s Lace, Lamb’s Quarters, Curled Dock and flowering trees, shrubs and vines.

Plant a butterfly and hummingbird garden and they will come. Lure butterflies right into your own yard so that you can enjoy them. You’ll first notice the big, showy swallowtails – who could miss THEM? – but actually most butterflies are tiny and easily overlooked. Be sure to look about with binoculars when you go out to enjoy your garden. Butterflies are easily flushed by movement, so be sure to look ahead at your flowers for visitors. A butterfly’s camouflage is amazing and the naked eye can’t be counted on to detect many of them. Binoculars are essential. A camera is fun, too, but be sure to move in slowly and low so as not to cross over them with your shadow and you might get a surprisingly good photo.

Most moths are active at night. Treat yourself on a moonlit night to a stroll through your gardens to see another world unfold, as many of the flowers that are attractive to butterflies by day are littered with moths by night. By day you may see hummingbird moths in your gardens; the two species to expect are the Hummingbird Clearwing and the Snowberry Clearwing.

Butterflies often have unusual preferences in food. You can make a butterfly feeder out of a plate hung in a plant hanger in a tree. They like watermelon and frozen, defrosted bananas. A little orange juice added each day keeps the bananas moist and attractive a while longer to the elusive butterflies.

Providing water adds another enticement into your yard. Garden sprinklers draw in hummingbirds and mud puddles please butterflies. Misters and drips are a more permanent solution than a garden sprinkler. They are easy to set up and readily available now that gardening for wildlife has become so popular. Let your mister spray down through tree branches and into a series of birdbaths. Take advantage of that moist ground and plant some Cardinal Flower, Joe-Pye-Weed and other plants that like having wet feet. Hummingbirds find misters irresistible and will fly through the mist and bathe in the drips collected on the leaves.

While I am the first one to harp about keeping your garden clean and tidy, there is at least one good reason to be a lazy gardener in the fall. Many butterflies actually pass the winter in our gardens, not as adults by as eggs on a plant, a caterpillar in a curled up leaf or down in the leaf litter or a chrysalis attached to a plant stem in a sheltered spot. The adult butterflies died months before, after laying their eggs. For this reason alone, you might want to consider leaving at least some portion of your garden standing through the winter. You could be adding next year’s potential butterflies to the compost pile as you tidy up. When things start to warm up a bit, in March or so, some of the butterflies that winter as an egg, caterpillar or chrysalis, are beginning to complete their metamorphosis and emerge as adult butterflies. By April, more and more adults will have emerged to decorate your garden as fluttering jewels.

NEXT WEEK: Plant It & They Will Come – Planning The Garden

GARDENING JOBS FOR JUNE:

Place beer-filled plastic tubs or saucers in the garden, set level with the soil, to lure snails and slugs to a drunken death. Studies show they prefer imported beer. Or place a few old boards in the garden and turn them over every morning to find slugs as they sleep. Dispose of them by dropping them into soapy water or get the kids to squish them with a brick.

Mulch around your trees to create a safe zone where your mower won’t go. Nicking a tree trunk can seriously damage even a well-established tree.

Mow your lawn according to the needs of the grass and not the calendar. Don’t mow every Saturday, just because you’ve ALWAYS mowed every Saturday. Grasses thicken and provide better cover when regularly clipped at the proper height. Adjust your lawn mower blades to cut the grass at 2 or 3 inches rather than 1-1/2 inches. Instead of mowing this Saturday, why not take your lady out for a morning of breakfast and garage saling?

Prune rhododendrons after they flower. On young and old plants, snap off the spent flower stalks by bending them over until they break away from their stems. Be careful not to damage growth buds at the base of each flower stalk.

Don’t trim iris leaves into scallops or fan shapes after the flowers fade. Leaves carry on photosynthesis and develop nourishment for next year’s growth. Cut off brown tips and remove the flowering stalk down to the rhizome. If you’re dividing irises, cut the leaves back by about half just before you move them.

Spuds

While I realize that it might be somewhat late in the year to start with potatoes, I did recently have someone ask me to write something about how to grow them and some of the alternative methods of growing rather than in the ground.

The Inca Indians in Peru first cultivated potatoes, around 200 B.C. In 1537, the Spanish Conquistadors “discovered” the potato and brought them back to Europe on their return trip. The first potatoes arrived in North America around 1621. Today, potatoes are one of the largest food crops in the world, with the United States alone growing about 35 BILLION pounds of potatoes every year.

Potatoes are truly one of the easiest root crops to grow. Plus, they’re fun to grow and a small area can provide a nice yield of this tasty and popular vegetable. The low-carb diet craze has put the potato off of lots of people’s radar, but I say, “All Things In Moderation!” Have a potato from time to time; just don’t eat piles of fries every day. Choices. It’s all about choices…but I digress.

One of the bonuses of growing potatoes is that you can eat them at various stages of growth. The young “new” potatoes are often harvested and cooked with peas and gravy (Yum!) while most are allowed to reach maturity and are eaten or stored for use throughout the winter.

Potatoes require full sun to grow. Because they are aggressively rooting plants, they will produce the best crop when planted in a light, loose, well drained but moisture retentive loam. They like a slightly acid soil with a pH of about 5.8 to 6.5. Potatoes are very adaptable and will still produce a respectable crop even when soil conditions are less than perfect. Potatoes should be rotated on a 3-year schedule. This means you will need three suitable sites if you want to grow potatoes every year.

Potatoes may be planted as soon as the ground can be worked in the early spring, but you need to use good judgment. Potato plants will not begin to grow until the soil temperature has reached 45 degrees. The soil should be evenly moist, but not wet or soggy. If the soil is water logged, your potatoes could rot before they even start to grow. Potatoes can tolerate a light frost, but you should provide some frost-protection for the plants when they are young. This can be a loose covering of straw or a temporary plastic tent or – my personal favorite, a gallon milk jug with the bottom cut off. You can remove the lid for ventilation. If you plan on storing potatoes through the winter, you can plant a second crop at mid-summer.

Now, I have heard from a number of places that you should never, ever use anything but CERTIFIED seed potatoes. You can get these from nurseries, garden centers and the ever-popular mail order catalogs (and – of course – online). I have talked with probably twice as many senior gardeners who swear by purchasing the kind of potato they like to eat at the grocery store or saving potatoes from a successful crop the year before and cutting those up for their seed potatoes. Since I personally feel that our senior community is an absolute WEALTH of information, I would tend to trust that particular tidbit of information. Your mileage may vary.

About a week before your planned potato planting date, set your potatoes somewhere where they will be exposed to some warmth and lots of light – between 60 and 70 degrees is good. This will induce them to begin sprouting. A day or two before planting, use a sharp, clean knife to cut your seed potatoes into “seeds”. Each seed should be approximately 1-1/2” to 2” inches square and must contain AT LEAST 2 eyes or buds. Smaller potatoes may be planted whole. In the next day or so, your seed will form a callous over the cut areas, which will help to prevent it from rotting once planted.

Traditionally, potatoes are grown in rows in the ground. Potato seeds are planted every 15 inches with the rows spaced 2-1/2 to 3 feet apart. For our purposes, however, we are going to look at a couple of different methods of growing potatoes. Some people argue that these methods don’t produce the yields of the growing-in-the-ground methods.

Even if space is not an issue, you can grow a respectable crop of spuds and do a little recycling at the same time. Potatoes thrive in the warm environment of a soil filled tire!

Here’s the equation: Four Tires + Two Pounds Of Seed Potatoes + Good Soil = 20 – 30 Pounds Of Winter Potatoes!

Pick a spot where you can stack your tires which is out of the way and preferably out of sight. Loosen the surface of the soil just enough to allow for drainage and set your largest tire in place. Fill the inside of the tire casing loosely with good soil and then set 3 – 4 potato seeds into the soil. Use sticks to prop open the casing rings of the tires. Add enough soil to the tire hold to bring it to the same level as the soil inside the tire.

When the new plants are eight inches tall, add another tire and soil to the stack as in the first level. Repeat the process for your third and – if you wish – fourth tires. As you add tires and soil to the stack, a portion of the plant stalk is covered with soil. By doing this, the existing stalk essentially reverts to a root status and the plant is forced to upward to once again find the sunlight it needs. By raising the soil level in 8 to 10 inch increments, the plant is able to continue growing without suffocating and at the same time you are creating a 24 to 30 inch tap root from which many lateral roots can develop. Each lateral root has the potential to produce potatoes. When you water, be sure that the soil is thoroughly moistened all the way to the base of the pile. The tires act as an insulator and heat “sink” for your potatoes. This added warmth will cause the lateral roots to multiply more rapidly, thereby giving you more potatoes. Harvest by disassembling the tires, one by one, and collecting all the tasty spuds. When your plants start to wither and die back, it’s time to harvest. Let the tubers “mature” for a week or so without watering before harvesting.

This other low labor/no till method is very popular. Choose a flat area of your yard or garden. You don’t have to dig or till, unless you already have an area like this that you want to use. It can be a part of the yard, if you want, and it’s really OK if it already has grass on it. You don’t have to remove the turf, but you may want to mow it, if the turf is tall. You will need your seed potatoes, either certified seed potatoes or other seeds you’ve prepared yourself. Get three or four bales of straw. Grass hay will do if you can’t get straw. Make your rows on the ground about three feet apart. Use a piece of string to make your rows nice and straight. Walk the rows and set a potato seed about every 18 inches to two feet apart. Now take the straw and cover the rows over your potatoes heavily – at least one foot wide and at least 6 inches deep in the center. Water the straw so that it is quite moist but not water logged.

You’ve done your planting! Within a few days, the spuds will take root in the ground in the moist dark under the straw. After a couple of weeks, you’ll notice the leaves of the potato plant poking through the straw. When they do, add a few more inches of straw. As they keep growing, keep adding straw. After a few weeks, you’ll end up with rows of straw about two feet wide and about a foot deep. The plants will eventually grow too big to keep piling straw on them, but by that time it’s OK. You want to keep the lower part of the plant covered completely so the potatoes can grow in the dark. If you have weeds sprouting between the rows, throw more straw on them. Smother them with straw and kindness!

When it’s time to harvest (the plant will start to wither and die back after several weeks, just pull aside the straw. Magically, you’ll find bushels of CLEAN potatoes, right in the straw, not buried deep in the ground.

Using this method, if the ground is very dry or no rain is forecast when you first plant, you need to give the straw a good soaking to get them going. Generally, after that, they will pretty much take care of themselves. Usually, once the straw gets soaked for the first time, it will hold enough water to take care of your potato plants. In other words, you might not need to water them at all, unless it is thoroughly, utterly dry.

If potato bugs turn up in your garden – and you’ll know it if they do – you can spray for them. I recommend the tomato leaf spray, but you can use what you’re comfortable with. However, there is something quite therapeutic about doing away with them personally. Put on your garden gloves and squish them dead. After they’ve defoliated a good portion of your plants, you might find it quite satisfying about putting on your garden gloves and squishing them between your thumb and forefinger, once you get used to the idea. They are slow and easy to catch, but quite, quite ugly.

Potatoes are fun and tasty, so get on out there and plant some. There’s still time this year to get a crop started.

HOLY CANOLI, BAT MAN!

No tilling? No digging?
It must be a lasagna garden!

Lasagna gardening is a no-digging, no-tilling organic gardening method that results in rich soil with very little work on the part of the gardener. No, your garden will not be producing noodles with cheese and sauce. “Lasagna” – in this instance – refers to the method of building the garden, which is adding layers of organic material, which will “cook down” over time resulting in great soil which will help your plants thrive. Lasagna gardening – also called “sheet composting” – is great for the environment because you’re using your yard and kitchen waste and essentially composting it in place to make a new garden – or even improve an old one.

One of the best things about this style of gardening is how easy it is. You don’t have to remove anything – even the weeds. You don’t have to dig. In fact, you don’t have to work the soil at all. The first layer you put down is either corrugated cardboard or three layers of newspaper, laid directly on top of the grass or weeds in the area you’ve selected for your garden. Wet this layer down to keep everything in place and start the decomposition process. The grass and weeds will break down fairly quickly because they will be smothered by this first layer as well as the other materials you’re going to layer on top of them. This layer also provides a dark, moist area to attract earthworms that will loosen up the soil as they tunnel through.

Anything you can compost, you can use in a lasagna garden. Everything you put in breaks down, providing super rich soil in which to plant. All of these are perfect for lasagna gardening: grass clippings, leaves, fruit and veggie trimmings, coffee grounds, egg shells (crushed, of course), banana peels, tea leaves and tea bags, weeds (if they haven’t gone to seed), manure, compost, seaweed (there’s an excuse to take a trip to the coast!), shredded newspaper or junk mail, pine needles, spent blooms, garden trimmings and peat moss.

The method you use to build your lasagna garden is somewhat important. You’ll want to layer your “brown” ingredients (fall leaves, shredded newspaper, pine needles, etc.) about twice as deep as your “green” layers (veggie scraps, garden trimmings, grass clippings, etc.). Really, though, you needn’t be fussy about it; no matter how you do it, as long as you’re layering your “browns” and your “greens”, you’ll get lasagna. What you’re looking for – at the end of the process – is a two-foot tall layered bed. You’ll be amazed at how much – and how quickly – this will shrink down in a short period of time.

The real beauty of lasagna gardening is that you can do it anytime of the year. Obviously, if you’ve got a foot of snow in the yard, building a lasagna garden may present a bit of a challenge. Fall is an optimum time for most people because of the amount of organic materials you can get for free thanks to fallen leaves and yard clean up in preparation for winter. Then you can build and let your lasagna garden “cook” all winter. By the time spring gets around to rolling in, you will be ready to plant with very little effort.

You can still build a lasagna garden in the spring or summer; you will need to add more soil-like amendments to the area, such as peat moss, topsoil, composted manure or dirt, so that you can plant right away. If you make your bed in the spring, layer as many greens and browns as you can, with layers of finished compost or topsoil in between. Finish off the entire bed with three or four inches of finished compost or topsoil and plant. The bed will settle over the season as the layers underneath decompose.

When it’s time to plant, just dig down into the bed as you would any other garden. If you used newspaper as your first layer, the shovel will likely go right through. If you used cardboard, you might have to work a little harder and cut a hole wherever you want to plant something.

To take care of this garden, add mulch to the top of the bed in the form of straw, grass clipping, bark or chopped leaves. Once it’s established, care for your lasagna garden just as you would any other; weed it and water it and grown some killer tomatoes in it!

Benefits of a lasagna garden:
Fewer weeds
Better water retention
Less need for fertilizer
Fabulous soil – crumbly, loose, fluffy and rich

Lasagna gardening is fun and easy, good for the planet and allows you to make new gardens more quickly and easily than the old fashioned methods – with a lot less wear and tear on the body. Now – to find ALL THOSE PLANTS to fill up your new garden space!

Gardening Jobs For June

Thin fruit trees by leaving 1 fruit approximately every 6 to 12 inches along the branches or 1 fruit per cluster. The higher the leaf-to-fruit ratio, the sweeter the fruit. A standard apple tree should have about 40 leaves for each fruit. Dwarf apples, which usually produce a ration of 1 fruit to about 25 leaves, will yield better-quality fruit when thinned.

Stop cutting your asparagus when the yield decreases and the spears diminish in size. Top-dress the bed with compost or well-rotted manure.

Stake tomatoes or build cages around them.

Plant beets and carrots for a late fall crop.

As the days grow warmer, watch your lettuces for plants that begin to bolt and toss it on your compost pile (or into your lasagna garden). Plant another crop of beans in its place.

Thin crowded plantings of lettuce, carrots, beets and herbs. Give them a good watering when the job is complete to help the roots of the remaining plants get over any trauma your thinning may have caused.