Observation

If Permaculture is all about relationships, then one of the key principles of Permaculture is Observation.  Without observation, it just isn’t possible to pick up on all of the relationships that are occurring all around you and the potential relationships that you can build to improve your garden and even your life.  Observation is so important that I’m going to focus solely on observation for this article even though there are 11 more principles coming your way.

Observation is as simple as just looking at something, but simplicity can take a little bit of stamina and willpower!  To really observe, you need to slow down, take your time and look without trying to see anything in particular.  If you are doing it right, it should be relaxing or maybe even a little boring at first.  The goal is to let go of the search for something useful, important or specific.  Instead, quiet your mind, settle in and just observe something.  It could be anything that you’ve been curious or concerned about.  This initial step in observation should take time (at least five minutes, more is better).  If you are doing it right, you’ll pass through boredom into relaxation and then on into delight as you start to see things that you hadn’t noticed before.  I promise if you spend enough time observing something in nature, you will begin to see new and unexpected things.  Nature is full of surprises.

Once you’ve passed through boredom into delight, get curious.  Start wondering about relationships within and between whatever it is that you are observing.  Ask yourself how major outdoor forces like sunlight, water/rain, slope, wind/stillness, plants, creatures (from insects to humans and everything in between), death and decomposition, and new life are involved in what you are observing.  Use your imagination to create an image in your mind of how things are connected or might be connected and do more observation to see if what you have imagined is actually true.  When you get the hang of it, it can feel a bit like reading a good book.

Observation is great to do on a regular basis just as a way to relax and recharge, but of course you can also use it to figure things out, like why a shrub looks sickly or how to make better use of rainwater in your yard.  If you make a habit of falling into observation mode, you will notice even more as you start seeing things under different circumstances because of changes in the time of day, weather, season, etc.  What you learn may or may not seem useful in the moment, but it is likely to be useful at some point as you strive to understand relationships in your yard.  

Observation is so key to understanding and practicing Permaculture that I encourage you to set aside some time every day to practice it, even if it’s only for five minutes from your window.  Remember to use all of the senses that you have available to you as well.  We tend to focus on sight as humans, but smell, touch, sound, taste and even how something makes you feel are also important and can tell us things that our focus on sight might have made us miss.  Enjoy!  I’ll be back next month with more thoughts on Permaculture.  

• MaryBeth

Commercial bee hotels: best practices to keep our native solitary bees healthy and safe

While well-intentioned, cheap “bee hotels” sold at major retailers can actually end up harming local bee populations, especially if they are not made with the proper materials and installed in the correct environments. 

Consider the two pictures of bee hotels shown above and below.  The hotel above has properly sized reeds that are loose (not glued), and because it is not filled to the brim there is more natural airflow around the reeds. The reeds are also sunken a few inches into the entrance of the hotel, which makes it harder for birds and squirrels to eat the hibernating larvae.

The hotel shown below is filled...to the brim, with reeds glued into the structure. Not only will the glue restrict airflow and encourage diseases, but it also makes it much harder to tell whether or not the reeds inside are actually the correct length. The reeds are also virtually flush with the entrance of the hotel, making any bee nests inside a much easier target for hungry creatures looking for a snack. With a honey bee on the tag and an obvious concern for aesthetics over functionality, the store-bought bee hotel is clearly not the ideal choice.

When creating or purchasing a bee hotel, consider the following to do the most good for our local bee populations:

1. Nesting tubes that are 5–6 inches long, and between three-thirty-seconds of an inch to three-eighths of an inch in diameter. 

2. Location! Bee hotels should be installed in locations that receive full sun in the morning, within 100–200 yards of a pollen source, and within 50 yards of a source of mud (what some bees use to construct their nests).

3. Regular maintenance! Replace nesting tubes every year after the bees emerge, otherwise the tubes can harbor parasites and diseases. Cleaning the tubes is not a good plan as it is incredibly difficult to remove pathogens.  Instead, use natural reeds or cardboard tubes that can be easily replaced and composted each year.

Oh no! I bought a cheap bee hotel! Help?

Breathe. You are not going to massacre the local bee population, and it is great that you wanted to make space for our solitary bee friends. Leave your current bee hotel up and let its guests finish their stay until next spring. Once the bees have finished emerging in the summer, you can simply toss the bee house! You can follow more detailed instructions near the bottom of this article to ensure all current bees make it out without new nests being made.

I really want to make more space for native bees, but making a proper bee hotel seems like too much work. What should I do?

The answer is so beautiful and so simple: embrace a nontraditional, “messier” winter garden aesthetic. Instead of overdoing fall and winter cleanup of dead perennials, leave about a foot and a half to two feet of your dried stems for the bees to naturally burrow into. If you really cannot stand the dried stems peeking out from your garden in the winter, make a pile of cut and dried stems somewhere in your yard where they can be naturally found by solitary bees and decompose later. Leaving logs or dead trees in forested areas will also allow boring beetles to bore deep tunnels that bees can later nest inside. Finally, make sure you have some unmulched patches in your garden so ground-nesting bees have a spot to overwinter in as well. If you are still unsure on what to do, try doing some research, paying special attention to the words of entomologists! Our insect specialists certainly know best.

• Kel

Book Review - Iwígara by Enrique Salmón

Professor Enrique Salmón teaches American Indian Studies in the Department of Ethnic Studies at California State University, East Bay. Salmón is a member of the Rarámuri (Tarahumara) tribe and is a leading expert in ethnobotany, ethnobiology,  agroecology, ancestral ecological knowledge, and the connections between climate change and Indigenous traditional foodways and land management practices. The title of his book, Iwígara, is the Rarámuri word for “the belief that all life-forms are interconnected and share the same breath,” the concept of which has allowed for a plethora of knowledge of the natural world to be passed down each generation for millenia by indigenous cultures. In his book, Salmón builds on this concept by highlighting 80 plants treasured by indigenous peoples from North America. He not only touches on how the plants are used as food and medicine, but also details how to identify and harvest them, their habitats, their important health benefits, and their roles in traditional stories and myths. This book is a wonderful addition to any native plant lover who seeks to connect more with their surroundings and understand more about the cultural history of native plants.

You can order Iwígara at your favorite local bookstore or anywhere else books are sold. 🍃

• Kel

Fun facts

Sunflowers (Helianthus annuus) naturally extract certain pollutants from the soil, like arsenic, lead, zinc, and copper, through a process called phytoextraction. Since sunflowers are so adaptable and fast growing, scientists have hoped sunflowers could be a relatively easy and cost-effective method for remediating metal-contaminated soils. Evidence suggests that sunflowers are well adapted to the high-stress conditions of soils laden with heavy metals, and that phytoextraction does remove some heavy metals from the soil, but some studies have been disappointed that sunflowers do not seem to be effective in targeting especially concerning pollutants like lead. While plant scientists continue to study the humble sunflower’s phytoextraction powers, they have been effective in remediating heavy metal accumulation in mine tailings (by-products of processing mined ore). 🌻

• Kel

September To-Do’s

• Click here for Planting Calendar for Annual Vegetables, Fruits, and Herbs by city. This link provides dates both based on estimated last frost and the lunar calendar.

• Do NOT fertilize shrubs in August, September, October, or November. 

• Do NOT prune shrubs in September or October.

• Make last-minute bulb orders to see if they are still available.

•  It’s time to shop early to find the nicest shrubs. When planting containerized plants, free/cut the  plant’s root ball.

• Put out new chrysanthemum plants towards the end of this month.

• Plant pansies once the weather cools a bit to add color to your yard in the autumn, winter, and spring months.

• Ground covers will become well established if planted now.

• Transplant any evergreen trees or shrubs that need moving towards the end of this month.

• Directly sow the seeds for lettuce, greens, onions, peas, and broccoli once the weather cools.

• Remove “weed” or unnecessary trees from your landscape.

• Keep a close eye on all fall vegetable plants. Insects and diseases are more severe in the autumn.

• Divide peonies.

• Deadhead spent blossoms, but not all of them! Leave some of the seedheads for the birds.

•  Prepare houseplants to re-enter your home and check them carefully for insect pests!

• Add special accents to your garden: sculptures, colorful trellises, antique decorative metalwork.

Plant focus - Pokeweed

Most people consider the humble pokeweed (Phytolacca americana) to be a noxious weed, but the plant not only has adorable flowers and dark berries, it also has an incredibly high value for local wildlife. The small, white flowers have a long blooming season from July to September and attract many native bees and other pollinators to your garden. The berries are eaten by songbirds (like robins, cedar-waxwings, and warblers), small mammals, raccoons, opossums, foxes, and black bears. While all parts of the plant are technically poisonous to humans, its tender shoots that emerge in spring have been consumed by Native Americans and other poor and marginalized peoples throughout Appalachia and the South for generations—Poke sallet. Traditionally, Native American groups also used pokeweed for pigments and dyes as well as for treating ailments: the Algonquin tribes used the deep red color produced by the berries to make paint and dye textiles, and the roots of pokeweed were steeped in water for soaking one’s aching joints. Consider leaving some pokeweed in your garden, or allowing it to grow in wilder areas of your property.

-Kel

“Without labor, nothing prospers”  – Sophocles

Happy Gardening!