Living rural in the city is great – you can do it, too.

Category: Biophilia (page 2 of 3)

It’s Pollinator Week! Let’s do stuff to help them.

In this post, lower down, we’re gonna build a Mason bee house.

Pollinating flowers is a serious job. In fact, in places where pollinators have been killed off by environmental toxins, people are employed to do it. (That means a government might see it as an advantage to take a service nature does for free, and turn it into something people have to be paid to do.)

For this reason, the third week of June every year we have Pollinator Week. Its aim is promote and support pollinator abundance and diversity, in the interest of serving them better than we have (see environmental toxin above, but also, habitat loss!) – because Lord knows they serve us!

The Pollinator Partnership created this event. They have tons of information about pollinators and what we can do to be as hospitable to them as possible. And it’s not just about bees: “Birds, bats, bees, butterflies, beetles, and other small mammals that pollinate plants are responsible for bringing us one out of every three bites of food.” (Even rats have demonstrated a role in pollination.)

Never mind an existential necessity for us humans; that’s a lot of economic value.

How you can help

What can we balcony or yard-owners and gardeners do to help bees and other insect pollinators? Things being as they are now, even if the spring proceeds as expected (not too cool and damp, not too warm and dry), and the blooms have been on time, if there are fewer flowers to choose from, pollinators won’t be seen around all that much.

So get planting! Plant a garden, even a balcony garden, of plants that flower in succession throughout the season. Include native plants amongst your more showy flowers! It takes a matter of years (don’t let this dissuade you, it’s rather an encouragement) to get the successive blooming underway, but it’s so satisfying when you do. By mid-summer, my anise hyssop is blooming, and between that and the Joe-Pye weed and asclepia, the butterflies are well fed until mid-September.

You can also provide a shallow water source such as a dish filled with sand and pebbles and water. This lets them mud-puddle:

butterflies, Eastern swallowtails
Nature herself also motivated this post: On a recent trip to the Adirondacks, I found a bunch of Eastern Swallowtail butterflies mud-puddling on the beach.

While I was watching these Eastern Swallowtails (27 of them!) mud-puddle at the beach, I saw a Red Admiral butterfly also doing the same, and, nearby, a Mourning Cloak butterfly:

Mourning cloak butterly

Why do butterflies mud-puddle? Well, it’s an easy way to absorb minerals, sodium in particular, from the solution it makes in water-logged soil. For this reason, other insects also congregate around mud puddles. Just watch and see who shows up.

  • Male butterflies tend to mud-puddle more than females. Read more.
  • If pollinators had dating profiles… This is a cute and clever article by the US Fish and Wildlife Service. I learned a few species.
  • How can you tell the difference between a butterfly and a moth? The butterfly’s antennae look like little golf clubs. If they don’t have a terminal bulb, but are more like a whisker (or even have whiskers themselves!), it’s a moth.
  • Want to identify other butterflies you’ve seen? Try this handy key!

Why should you care about bees?

Bees that pollinate: oh, all of them. But those we notice most are honeybees and bumblebees. There are also many solitary types such as leaf-cutter bees and Mason, or orchard, bees. (There are even bee mimics called hoverflies who do the same job.) Honeybees and bumblebees pollinate cultivated crops; native bees pollinate native plants. To learn more, check out the videos on the Pollinator Partnership website, put together by Burt’s Bees, Wild for Bees, and Isabella Rosselini.

Even more fascinating is CBC Ideas radio/podcast "Dancing in the Dark." If you want to learn a lot about bees' variety, language, complexity and sheer sophistication in a short time, listen to this!

It’s very important to give honeybees as much habitat (well, hives) and food (fields of crops!) as we possibly can, because of Colony Collapse Disorder. When I first heard about this mystery illness (mites and viruses are involved)—and I’m a biologist by training—I knew the basic tool we had of doing something was throw numbers at it. Sometimes, an illness or an epidemic can only be overcome by developing a natural population resistance. One requires large populations where many are lost but some survive. Natural resistance is where survivors (survivor queens and surviving males that serve them) go on to create new hives, so that the next generation’s immunity increases and fewer are lost. Natural resistance would improve the survival rates of beehives until scientists came up with good answers.

So it was with a good deal of gratitude that we saw a huge uptake in people’s interest beekeeping, because only if more of us do it, will there be more of them, for evolutionary forces to have the fastest rate of success. There is no human intervention or cure for it yet.

Urban beekeeping is also getting to be more common. In 2011, UQAM allowed hives on its roof  (translation here), and a few years ago, another apiary installed some hives downtown. The Ville is not planning on regulating the practice, so count on seeing more of this, everywhere.

Those of us who can’t keep bees can still help by buying honey from local beekeepers. Look for this kind of honey at the grocery store, farmer’s markets, and word-of-mouth. 

Nonetheless, there’s a reason I’m not keeping bees myself: honey bees are very competitive with native pollinator species. If we’re going to increase the number of kept hives, we also need to make sure that the native bees and other insect pollinators get as much food as possible — specifically native flowering plants, which honey bees are less adept at pollinating. And also: and sources of habitat (e.g. gardens with long grass, bare dirt, trees, and insect hotels). So while other people keep honeybees and grow fruits, flowers, and vegetables that need their pollination, I’m keeping a garden for everything else.

Let’s build a Mason bee house:

A few years ago, I created a Mason bee house out of a log and bit of hardware. I got the idea because of an interesting rant on the Montana Wildlife Gardener blog against honey bees (it’s interesting — here’s a link to all of Montana Gardener’s posts on the topic of bees.) A friend’s comment also spurred me to do it.

Here’s the process, in pictures:

The house typically needs a “roof,” but I skipped over that part.

The Mason bee house was quickly occupied. I’ve also seen paper wasps using it as a source of fibre, gathering material for their hives. They chew up the wood and build paper for nesting cells. They’re again succeeding in occupying the upper corner of my garage door. Wasps have a place in our ecosystem, too – so I’ll leave them alone.

You can even buy bricks made to house bees, and install them in a brick wall!

Want to help bumblebees?

Bumblebees are important pollinators of native and fruiting crops. In fact, for some crops, the flowers need the particular buzz of the bumblebee to shake the pollen loose – they aren’t going to give it up for just any old insect! But there’s one bumblebee that’s landed on the Critically Endangered list, and it could use your help.

For no-mow May, I posted Replace your grass lawn with a meadow, or just let one happen. In it, there’s a section all about the now-endangered Rusty patched bumble bees, and how homeowners and gardeners can create habitat for them.

For example, leaving your yard an attended-to kind of messy will help. Let stands of grass grow tall, and leave nooks and crannies of bare soil. These are places where ground-dwelling bees can live.

Be a bumblebee scout for science:

The Xerces Society has a few programs for supporting bumblebee science and conservation. You can read about the threats they’re facing, but more importantly, you can help by reporting every bumblebee you see to:

https://www.bumblebeewatch.org.

Knowing the lifecycles, ranges, and habitats of the animals and insects you want to protect is critical if you’re going to be effective at preserving their populations. So another thing you can do, if you have suitable habitat or enjoy going for walks in nature, is participate in this study out of York University: https://xerces.org/2019/03/26/quest-for-bumble-bee-nests/

The study’s investigators say we currently don’t know exactly what constitutes high quality bumble bee habitat—especially when it comes to nesting. But they can give you tips on what to look for, and knowing what it looks like afield, you can report back at https://www.savethebumblebees.ca/citizen-science/.

There’s even information on The Missing Link about training your dog to help sniff out bumblebee nests, which will augment their discovery when you take your dog further afield. That’s a novel approach! If you or your dog are the type to take on this kind of challenge, do it do it do it!

Bumblebee
Photo by Julia Thiemann on Unsplash

10 tips for an urban homestead garden in Montreal

“Can an urban homestead work in Montreal?”  This was the query of someone who found my blog once upon a time. “Yes, of course.”

But. (There’s always a qualifier!) You need to have sun, and then you need to have space. If you don’t have sun, you can’t do it (unless you go to step #2, community group part, and then it’s a garden, not a homestead, but that’s OK).

If you have sun and space, then the only thing you need (other than water), is to be ready and willing to put up with the learning curve and the occasional need for help on any of the following things:

1. Start your seedlings indoors in March (some as early as February). That means now! Many require eight weeks before planting.

2. Try not to spend more than $250 on the initial effort. Every new venture — and this is a work of pleasure and a cost-saving measure— should be started with a minimum of capital until it looks promising. If you invest too much and your plans fail, you won’t be happy at the end of the growing season, or if you spent more for your harvest than buying it from a CSA. Sure, you’ll benefit from the experience of gardening, which is therapeutic, but you need to derive value or success from it to make it an ongoing thing.

  • If you worry about failure, join a community garden group, where the power of people and experience will help you derive what you need from it until you’re sure you can succeed. (Just make sure you show up for all your shifts, for your own sake as well as others.)

3. The growing season in Montreal starts with a huge leap of growth – but you need city soil to be well-amended to take advantage of it. Here’s how:

  • Test your soil as soon as you can! Make the necessary pH corrections with lime. Think about the future productivity of the garden; unless your soil already is acidic enough to support an acidophile plant with minimal sulphur, don’t plant blueberries. (If you soil is acidic, then plant all the acidophiles you like, and add more sulphur if needed!). You will need to dig in your soil amendments, not top-dress them.
  • Take a day in April if you can, or early May, to procure (the Ville gives it away by borough in May) and dig in your compost. It’s better to dig the compost in several days before the plants go in, not after, except on top as mulch. Compost can burn seeds and roots of young plants.

4. When the plants go in, install a grow fence (plants go up) or exclusion fence (keep animals and humans out). The fence should still allow wildlife to get around or through at safe points, because otherwise you’ll trap them (neither good nor nice), or they will destroy it. Needless frustration has a negative impact on wildlife— you should focus on defending your vegetables, not your property. Also keep in mind: if the fence is too rickety or fugly, neighbours might complain. Cute counts.

10 tips urban homestead
The pickle barrel rain barrel bought from the Eco-Quartier for less than $50, since replaced with a fancy Home Depot version.

5. Buy a rain barrel (cheap if you get one from an EcoQuartier) and a seeping hose from any garden centre. Obtain permission from landlords and neighbours to get water from their downspout, if necessary. Montreal is prone to having an early heat wave beginning with the Victoria Day / Fête du patriotes weekend.  Just when the growth is getting going, it can cause lettuce to bolt and other plants to stop growing. Keep the ground just moist enough for highly transpiring plants during the growth phase. Rain barrels with seeping hoses are one way. And mulch!! — but just enough to cover the soil. Don’t smother it like a blanket!

6. The late June-to-July and then the August heat waves happen in this climate zone. If you come from a different zone, or you are just learning, read up on strategies in the garden and the varieties of fruits and vegetables to plant. We are in Plant Hardiness Zone 5a. The city is more like 5b and even 5c, depending on the direction your building faces and the amount of sun it gets. This is due to the urban heat island effect from too much paving, not enough green space, and people using air conditioning (especially in their cars). You probably won’t need to shade anything, but water early and often — and also be aware of our Mon-soon-treal moments, where we get a deluge. (Hence, rainbarrel, and put out pots to catch even more!)

7. Put a net over top of the delicate leafy things as they get started, because house sparrows love them. They and, yes, the occasional rat (don’t panic!) predate on seedlings. Very young plants do not often get the opportunity to unfurl their 4th and 6th leaves – they are often gone by the first two. 
Which brings me to say: Squirrels don’t care about your plants, they’re going for the disturbed soil. Wherever they see fresh dug soil, they have to investigate: “There’s a nut in there, I just know it!” So try to plant your seedlings after they’ve gotten “big enough to defend themselves,” and cover up the soil with mulch. Replant them if they get plucked out in search for food. Once the delicate things are hardy, you’ll need the net to stave off the squirrels going for your fruits. Though the next point is critical about that:

8. Put out a water dish for wildlife. Fruits growing on a plant are just a convenient Capri-Sun pack of hydration for a passing critter. They go for your cucumbers, tomatoes, and other fruits just to have a drink of water. Provide them a water bowl, and change it consistently, and they’ll come to know your place as the place to get a drink. Be their oasis, not their Vegi-Capri-Sun convenience store.

9. Hang a house for solitary bees, just in case. Leave a messy corner in your yard for others, especially for ground-dwelling bees. Offer them every form of hospitality, because we’re dependent on them. Assume an insect is beneficial first, and then learn to identify and only be deadly towards those that actually cause harm. Sugar ants, stinkbugs, wasps, hoverflies, and all kinds of bees, ladybugs, spiders, centipedes, or sowbugs—all have a part in our great chain of biodiversity.

10. The season here goes to the end of October. Get a good gardening book that tells you the stages for successive plantings, and keep going with planting new seedlings until mid-to-late August for an autumn harvest. Peas, spinach, and Swiss chard are cool-weather crops you can enjoy until the snow flies. Or even after, if you put them into a cold frame.

Give it a go, and good luck!

Garden certification from Espace pour la vie

Hello, fellow wildlife gardener!

Last year, I certified Big City Little Homestead’s garden as Wildlife-Friendly with the Canadian Wildlife Federation. The certificate I received is the feature image, above, and I have a sticker in my window to promote the program (if you come to my front door and see it). The Certification program link is here.

At the beginning of every September (if not a little earlier, like, now!), the Montreal Botanical Garden “Espace pour la vie” website offers a similar service, so I registered my garden there. Certification is annual, so you need to update your pictures every year, by October 15th. There are four themes for certification:

  • Biodiversity garden
  • Bird  garden
  • Monarch oasis
  • Food garden

You also get a signpost for your garden with stickers for each type of certification, so you can get all four. That way the public can see what kind of garden you have, and raise awareness of the program.

The program’s website has a “Gardenaut Gallery,” a map extension so that you can visit the photos that gardeners have submitted to the program and their location –there are over 300 entries in all of Quebec.

My entry is here: http://espacepourlavie.ca/en/my-garden/big-city-little-homestead. (There’s more than one entry, because the certification is annual.)

Biophilia month: Things to know and observe about wasps

Although the month of July isn’t quite over, today’s post is because when August really sets in, the wasps come out. It’s true you’ve seen them all year, but in August, they can become rather bothersome. I want to prepare you in case their pesteriferousness! starts early, or has started already. 

The reason they start pursuing food at our outdoor tables and patios is rather sympathetic, actually. The fact is, these nuisance wasps are workers – and males – and it’s the end of the season. They’ve served their purpose of gathering food for the larvae, so they’re no longer getting nectar rewards. Starving, they’re looking for anything sweet to eat.

In any case, that’s not the only way in which the female wasps cut off the males. They also “stuff” them into cells to keep them from poaching food (an article from 1997).

Feeding = peaceful

One September, my parents’ neighbour’s tree was dropping apples all over the ground. This was easy fodder for hungry wasps (and rabbits). They were peacefully intent on imbibing the fallen fruit – and, like moose in Sweden, were a little drunk too.

A similar situation happened to me last year. I had a bunch of hornets hanging around drinking sap from a wounded sumac tree. I’d used a nylon cord to keep the tree upright when it was flopping over, and it was cutting into the new bark. Hornets are big, really, really big. It was size alone that made me think these were hornets – they were more than 1″ long, so I was worried about the potential for stings. If a stranger came onto my property and riled them up for any reason, I could imagine the scene it would create.

But honestly, they were there for food. The sooner the tree wound stopped seeping, the sooner they would go away. To hurry that to its conclusion, I hosed the tree down carefully at night, cut off the nylon cord, and cleaned the wound while the hornets were stunned. Over the course of a week, the tree stopped seeping – and the hornet numbers dwindled until they went away.

But what if they’re nesting?

Not all wasps are dangerous to people. They can be beneficial, too. In fact, some extermination websites such as this primer on how to identify common wasps have gotten a lot better about explaining “pest” creatures to the people who believe they’re doing a good thing by ridding their property of biota. By giving accurate information on how the species looks and behaves, it can alleviate unnecessary fear and squeamishness (although they still cater to the biophobic by suggesting that perhaps it’s still a good thing to remove them). I’m pleased to be able to use these sites as a resource when they play nice.

And I was one of those people who thought they’re doing a good thing by removing a paper wasp hive. Early on in my property management experience, I got a doozy of a wasp sting, and I gladly killed the offender, even though that rallied the others and I had to escape inside.

In July of 2012 (part of my blogging journey that lead to here), I hosed down a wasp’s hive at the corner of my garage door with its attendant seven or eight worker wasps. They’d built hives before in the corners of the upper windows. It wasn’t a problem, but usually people don’t let hives stick around. I wanted to be like most people – a good steward of public-facing property. So I started the hose slow, and after a few passes of knocking the nurse wasps off, I turned on the jet and knocked the hive down.

Then I stood back and watched.

The workers spent the rest of the day rescuing and recovering the larvae. With the intense, careful work they were doing, I could only presume they were pulling them out of the husk of the hive. Then they set about creating a new hive in the same place, but with fewer cells. They went right back to tending it and sealing the larvae in. Ants scavenged the rest of the non-viable hive, plus at least one wasp that appeared she didn’t survive the dowsing.

Having observed the consequences of my actions and how they worked to create a new hive, I felt bad about it afterward. After all, it was a cosmetic concern. Over the course of them living here, attaching their small hives to corners of framing, they’d been peaceful – no threatening buzzing around humans. So I decided to leave them be.

BBQ sanity

So the ones that are buzzing around your barbeque? Consider cutting them a break, as they can’t help it – they’re hungry, and at least they escaped a potentially unpleasant death at the hands of unwelcoming relatives.

I recommend putting out a dish of extra-sweet aromatic fruit on a table not too far from what you’re planning to eat. Don’t panic when they buzz you, just blow at them, or lightly wave them away. If wasps can recognize individual faces (and Polistes fuscates can), they’ll probably be able to see the difference between the food that we guard, vs. food that no one interferes with.

Bonus in that you could leave the fruit out for other beneficial insects to enjoy. Like bees and even butterflies, if you’re lucky.

Wasps aren’t interested in stinging you, and you can avoid being stung simply by not being a threat to them, or acting threatened by them. Most stings happen when we’re not being watchful and we stumble into nest or into a single wasp at the wrong time – like the time I grabbed a weeping willow frond, only at a location where a wasp was feeding or resting. Ow. That one hurt.

Since accidents happen, prevent them by being observant – not by killing every wasp that could invade 3-dimensional space near you.

Come fall, they’ll have lived out their natural life cycle and they won’t be bothering anyone. Try not being bothered by them now, while they’re still around.

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