Make a Clean Cut for Mother's Day

When I had maintenance crews doing fine gardening, some of my gardeners had problems with repetitive motion from constantly pruning day after day--the women did, but it didn't seem to affect the men. My chiropractor explained that men and women use their bodies differently--men have greater upper body strength and when doing finer motor activities such as hand pruning, have a tendency to use more muscles like the upper arm and shoulder to power the tool. Women have a tendency to use their hands and wrists, but most women have weaker hands than men, so each cut with the hand pruner concentrates the strain into a more isolated area. This problem increases as women age and I've heard many concerns about older gardening mothers unable to use by-pass shears, like Felco #2 hand shears, because they require too much hand strength. My gardeners switched to the pruners I use, which incorporate a ratcheting effect to mechanically leverage your strength. Manufactured by Florian the ratchet mechanism is available on loppers, pole pruners, and hand pruners. So give mom a break this mother's day or rather a clean cut.

Make Your Own Solitary Bee House

The honey bee (Apis mellifera) , which is suffering from a deadly disorder, is actually an exotic insect which was brought to this country from Europe to pollinate the food crops originating from Eurasia. One third of this country's honey bees disappeared last year, on top of the third of their population lost the year before--a frightening proposition for anyone who eats. But honey bees are not the only pollinators we have: native pollinator's such as moths and solitary bees are present and can be encouraged to expand their population by providing proper habitat, including nesting sites.

Solitary bees don't live in hives the way honey bees do and they don't make honey. They aren't aggressive like honey bees and don't sting unless you torture them. They are much more efficient at pollinating compared to their continental cousins. Two of the types of solitary bees we see in this region are Leaf-cutter Bees(Megachile spp.) and Mason Bees (Osmia spp.). These bees usually nest in hollow stems of plants such as roses and raspberries, rotten wood or other narrow diameter chambers. We found leaf-cutter bee sites in the narrow slots between old wood shake shingles. Leaf-cutter bees cut a small diameter circle--perhaps 3/4" across--out of leaves to roll up and line the nesting tube. The female lays an egg, deposits pollen, then seals the chamber with mud, then laying another egg repeats the process until the chamber is full. Leaf-cutter bees especially like redbuds, lilacs, and roses in my yard. Some people are bothered by the scallop effect they leave on the leaf, but I welcome them to my garden--smiling when I see evidence of another species able to utilize plants that I enjoy.

So I decided to build a bee boudoir. This is how I did it, an amalgam of instructions from several sites including an ag station in Utah and the general design from Robert Engelhardt's piece on Wikibooks.

My daughter and I built a solitary bee house from scrap lumber and a few basic tools in about an hour and a half. I started with three end cuts of 2" x 6" construction grade redwood--one that is 13" long and two at 10". The roof is made of two 1" x 8" x 4" long redwood pieces. You can see the tools, hardware, wood, finish nails, 5/16" drill bit, glue, and sanding bloc in picture below:














I started the 5/16" hole centers 3/4" apart on a drill press then finished their 5" depth with a cordless drill. Cut 60 degree angles on the tops, sand, then glue the pieces together. Glue and nail the roof with the overhang in front.





































I coated mine with vegetable oil and attached a bracket on the back.




I was trying to decide where to hang the nesting block, so it was just left on the deck for a week or so. Sure enough, a bee has already begun to fill it. In the last photo you can see four holes--the top left hole has been plugged with a grainy substance that looks like soil. I'm going to hang the house on a south facing wall where I can pull a chair up and observe the critters coming and going.

Community Supported Agriculture Keeps Food Local

My name is Susan Singley and I am the Assistant CSA coordinator at Grant Family Farms. Lise asked me to write a guest entry about Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) to help Colorado gardeners and eaters turn our minds to summer vegetable season!

Joining a CSA is a terrific way to connect directly with local farmers. If you enjoy the community connections and good food at the Farmers’ Market during the summer, you might want to check out a CSA. Here’s how it works: Based on an annual commitment to one another, community members purchase a “share” of a farm’s seasonal harvest (with our farm, that’s June through early December). The shareholder receives a weekly box of fresh organic vegetables and fruit throughout the growing season, harvested at the peak of ripeness and flavor. CSA farms are typically organic (ours is) and practice sustainable farming practices.

CSA shareholders love knowing that the food is grown just for them! And, CSA members enjoy getting to know one another during pickup times. It’s common to see local-eating organic-loving people exchange knowing glances and recipes over the gorgeous, classic bounty of tomatoes and sweet corn - and over the once strange but now beloved kohlrabi in their box!

To learn more about CSAs, check out Local Harvest

To learn more about Grant Family Farms, check out our website. Yes, we still have shares available, and we deliver to Denver!

Photo courtesy of Grant Family Farms.

Solitary Bees to the Rescue

Happy Earth Day! I had a great time celebrating early with the Denver Botanic Gardens at the Sustainability Fair. Welcome new readers and thanks for taking time to check out Dry Ideas. Please feel free to leave comments as the spirit moves you.

My talk went well, but by far the biggest hit was the Solitary Bee House I built from scrap lumber I had in my yard. Stay tuned for instructions on how to make your own Bee Boudoir just in time for the busy bee season. Solitary bees have no hives and make no honey, but they are champion pollinators, native to our region but also well adapted to imported forage crops like alfalfa and many of our ornamental landscape plants. You'll know when one of the species--the Leafcutter Bee--is around because they cut near perfect 3/4" diameter circles out of the edges of leaves. Some of their favorite landscape plants are lilac, redbud, and roses. They don't harm the plant, they just strike lightning fast leaving their own sort brand--a Zorro style slash (circular in shape).

Visit Dry Ideas at Sustainability Fair

Denver Botanic Gardens hosts a sustainability fair this Sunday April 2o from 9 to 5. I'll be there to talk to people about this blog along with some great landscape contractors like Art of the Land and Eco-savy. At 11:30, I'll be giving a talk on "Five Steps To Sustainable Gardens". There will be speakers on a wide variety of "green" subjects throughout the day, as well as, booths with information ranging from household cleaning products to solar to worm composting in the high desert. There will be garden tours and a probable visit by the Bag Monster. Entry is included with the price of admission, so come on down and greenify while you peruse all the bulbs and early spring plants in bloom.

April Garden Blogger's Bloom Day

I was out of town last weekend and returned to a landscape of swollen buds on all the spring flowering trees. Today, while I was learning about insect scatology, temperatures of over 80 degrees and a warm, constant wind, coaxed the ornamental pears (Pyrus calleryana ‘Chanticleer’) into full bloom. A rapid change in weather is supposed to bring snow tomorrow---ahh, springtime in Colorado!

Last month I completely forgot that this is the season for one of my favorites--hellebores. This genus of plants is native to lime soils in Europe and Asia. Lime increases the pH of soil and we have high pH soils, so I suppose that is why they thrive here. I have several different species--all of which are in "bloom" now. Hellebores are members of the buttercup family which makes sense when you look at the flowers.Lenten Rose (Helleborus orientalis), shown below in the next two photos, starts blooming in March. Honey bees love it--they co-evolved in their native Europe and hellebores bloom at a time when fewer species are blooming.




The next species, Helleborus foetidus, sometimes called Stinking Hellebore (though I have never noticed an odor) or Bear's Claw is a fantastic plant. This plant is a truly xeric plant for me in shade and where it grows in near full sun, does happily with over spray from the lawn sprinkler. It is evergreen, has a wonderful palmate leaf , and a chartreuse panicle of flowers. It's not long lived, but reseeds readily--not obnoxiously--so it will multiply if you leave the seedheads long enough to allow reseeding.

In the Garden

I've been a pruning fool lately. My partner chipped a mountain of branches for me and my payback was to fill the bin for them way above the top, plus create more piles--caught short of being dispatched to the bin--when my daughter performed a necessary intervention. I was in a low sugar stupor when she found me and led me back inside. It happens every spring when I suddenly panic that the garden won't be "ready" in time--in time for what I do not know. It will take me a month or so to get back in the groove, but eventually I will have settled on a comfortable gardening uniform made up of various hats, a stained vest with pockets full of bits of old plastic, dirt, and broken irrigation parts, and old sneakers with grass seed crudely woven into the laces. I'll remember to drink plenty of liquids, take a break for something to eat before I become comatose, and dowse myself with sunscreen. I'll begin to move with more ease as I work through the stiffness that winter invited into my joints and muscles. But chances are my daughter will still find me at the end of the day lost in my thoughts, wandering through the garden stooping to pull at a plant that has chosen to make itself at home just in the exact spot where I do not want it to be. I'm eagerly anticipating weather that is warm enough to sit in the rain and weed. We all do outrageous things to accommodate our passion for gardening. My most extreme act for the love of gardening was to put up flood lights so we could continue gardening long after the sun set. What's your most extreme act in the name gardening?

Thank you to my daughter Ana for her "April Cat" drawing.