Second Nature: Eco-friendly Gardening By Bonnybale Enviromental Education Center
spray pesticides and herbicides to deal with your pests, unfortunately you are also killing the beneficial insects. Here are a few ways to deal with some of those pests in an eco-friendly way and can introduce your children to the workings of your garden ecosystem. A healthy ecosystem will depend on healthy plants. Healthy plants need soil, air and water. s you enjoy your Garden compost is full of many garden in all its glory and bounty this month, forms of life and when it is added to your garden soil it works invisiwe’d like to share ble magic. Healthy plants are more with you an eco-friendly gardenresilient and better able to resist ing technique. Let’s create and pests and disease. celebrate an ecosystem in your Plant lots of different plants and garden! mix them together. It becomes This approach will provide you a game of hide-and-seek for the with opportunities for observapests as they have to search for tions of the beauty and mystery their desired plant. Camouflage of nature. For a happy garden your plants among others, hiding you want a healthy ecosystem. them with other colors and smells. An ecosystem is a community of Lavender, marigold and geranium living organisms (plants, insects, are both beautiful and pungent, amphibians) interacting with each and planted as a border they can other, as well as with the nonliving hide the scent of other plants aspects (soil, water, air) of their within. environment. If you have a vegetable garden, Energy and nutrients flow plant extra plants so some can be through the ecosystem from the sacrificed and you still get the crop sun through producers (plants) to you hoped for. The caterpillars of consumers (herbivores and carni- the swallowtail butterfly love to vores) to decomposers (bacteria, eat dill, so plant extra dill to share fungi and invertebrates). If you’re with them and enjoy watching the growing plants, you’re going to caterpillars grow – maybe you’ll have consumers, some which you get to watch a butterfly emerge will welcome: butterflies, bees, lafrom a chrysalis. dybugs; and some which you may Encourage natural predators. As consider pests: aphids, caterpillars, soon as one creature is in many slugs. numbers it becomes a food source Most plants depend on insect for something else, which also pollinators for their reproduction increases in number. Sometimes and to grow the food we eat. If you a balance may be reached or they
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can continue cycling up and down. Provide water, food and shelter for your beneficial creatures. Planting many different types of plants also provides food for many different insects. With more insects, you’ll have more amphibians and birds and other predators of insects. If you let the aphids have free reign of some plants they may feed a healthy population of ladybugs to keep the rest of the garden free of aphids. Offer water to all sizes of animals and insects by finding places in your garden for a bird bath, water fountain, small fish pond and plants that hold water in their leaves and joints such as lupine and hosta. Small is beautiful in gardens, as diversity is less attractive to pests. Offer shelter for a variety of creatures with different habitats… hedges, thick shrubby corners, areas of tall grass and wildflowers, piles of rocks in sunny places, and piles of rotting wood. You’ll find many creatures make themselves right at home in your garden if you’re not too tidy. Make a home for a toad who will eat hundreds of spiders, snails, slugs and insects a day. With a ceramic plant pot, either bury it half in the ground on its side to make a toad cave, or put it upside
down on a circle of rocks leaving an entry way to get in the pot. With a plastic plant pot, cut an entry door, bury it in the ground upside down a little and put a rock on top to hold it down. Place your toad house in a shady place under a shrub or plant with low-hanging leaves. Toads also need a water source, so bury a small shallow dish and fill it up with water regularly. Toads are active at night, so check the house for occupancy during the day. Remember when you hold a toad, and other amphibians, that they have very sensitive skin that they breathe through. Make sure your hands are either wet or muddy, or use a leaf as a barrier between you and them. That way any lotion, soap, bug spray or sunscreen on your hands won’t hurt them. While you’re out in your garden… Watch a bird take a bath and share its moment of joy and delight. Can you find the butterfly eggs? Can you find a crab spider on a flower eating a hoverfly? Can you sit and wait long enough to watch a toad eat a bug? Listen to the song of the gray tree frog! Can you find where it is camouflaged? When wildlife takes up residence in your garden it is nature’s way of telling you all is well!
Join us this month at BEEC for our annual celebration and other family programs! Our celebration this year is on Aug. 15, at 5:30 p.m.: “It’s a SMALL World - A Tribute to Insects,” will feature a caterpillar picnic and caterpillar safari with the Caterpillar Lab, followed by an ice cream social and outdoor showing of the film “Microcosmos.” For more information, visit www.beec.org or call 802-257-5785.
parentexpress • August 2015
