Living Lightly
44. Microcosmos
I am reading the March/April 2008 issue of Orion magazine, when I come across Matt Jenkins’ article about California’s native bees, “The Headbonkers’ Ball.” Native bees are little appreciated, intricately designed, solitary field laborers, and there are 1500 species in our state. The “headbonkers” in the title of Jenkins’ article refers to Anthidium maculosum, a California native bee that is “fiercely territorial” and will bonk an intruder, usually honeybees but sometimes even researchers, right out of its zone. A little pugnacious, to be sure, but “viewed close while gently held between two fingers, headbonkers are striking creatures,” writes Jenkins, “tiny knots of concentrated metabolism. Their eyes reveal themselves to be entrancing pools of green, prismatic fire.” Other native bees can be a metallic green all over (Agapostemon texanus) or have what Jenkins calls “a risqué penchant for group sleepovers in cosmos flowers [the Melissodes genus].”
Jenkins devotes his
article to native bees and to Gordon Frankie, a University of California
entomologist who helps people design urban gardens to enhance native bee
populations. When the article mentions Xylocopa varipuncta, a species of
native bee “whose males look uncannily like thimble-sized teddy bears,” I become
a captive reader because I know this bee well from my backyard. Xylo, the
teddy bear bee, does a funny little zigzaggy oh boy oh boy oh boy Yogi-the-Bear
dance at each bloom, as if he were excited that there is yet another one. He
also makes a lot of noise while he nuzzles, so you can’t miss him. I have
wondered about this bee and another I call a “biker bee” (clad in lots of black
leather) because they make the biggest ruckus and are fun to watch because of
their size, weight and antics.
Recently I watched a native bee with beautiful black markings visit one tiny coral bell after another, stuffing the pollen into the pollen sacs on its back legs. I am lucky to be able to have many native (and some non-native) plants, and these plants are where the bees do their early spring work. What
I have discovered, however, is that the native pollinators also move into the fruit trees and other food plants, so there is never a lack of pollination, and natives and non-natives enhance one another.
The work Frankie and his researchers are doing in the bee gardens of Berkeley is important, not just because native bees are as fascinating as birds to watch up close, but because Colony Collapse Disorder, which decimated imported European honeybee populations, pointed out how vulnerable Central Valley agriculture is to monocultural pollinator populations, that is, bees in boxes transported thousands of miles, in some cases, from one orchard or field to another. Frankie realized that there were more native bees finding refuge in urban gardens than on agricultural lands, and this realization led him to become a promoter of native bee gardens.
California’s native bees are attracted to specific plants, and are “six times more likely to visit the native plants with which they have evolved,” according to researchers. The relationships are so specific that bee watchers can predict which plants will attract which bee. Native bees relish various native sages, California poppies, buckwheats, desert willows, linaria, encelia and coreopsis, to name just a few.
Native bees have a life span
of three to four weeks and are solitary ground-nesters deterred by turf or
mulch, so it is a good idea to leave some bare patches for them. The female bee
hollows out brood cells in the dirt, makes “pollen loaves” or “bee bread” to
tuck into each cavity, deposits her egg, seals the chamber off, and moves on.
The bee bread provides concentrated amounts of vitamins, proteins, fats and
oils, according to Jenkins, and the larvae may feed on the pollen loaf in the
brood chamber for an entire year before warm weather draws them out to continue
the cycle as bees.
The Orion article, lovely in its championing of native bees and native plants, reminded me of all the times I have gotten a jolt of pleasure from something tiny in nature, some roving spirit composed of feathers and hollow bones, fur and a buzz, radiant wings and a sting. On the last Oak Apple Nature walk in early April, La Loma children brought me ladybugs, stink bugs and slug bugs; cottonwood pods, oak catkins, urchin galls; and endless numbers of oak apple galls and decaying acorns to examine for larvae and (non-stinging) wasps. We celebrated aphids, midges, and gnats.
The following Sunday biologists Lynn Hansen and Richard Anderson and I spent a lot of time on our hands and knees breathing in the sweet air of vernal pool flowers--goldfields, lupine, navarettia, dodder, downingia, woolly marbles, popcorn flowers--most of them no bigger than a baby’s thumb. Lynn recalled lying in a pool of periwinkle hued downingia, the entire world drowned out by the hum of hundreds of native bees--calling it a peak experience, right up there with sighting albatrosses in Antarctica. Richard found a round, lipped depression in the clay, and we declared this spot in Grasslands State Park omphalos, the bellybutton of the world.
Human beings love the diminutive. There are those who derive bottomless pleasure from assembling model train sets, dollhouses, or small sailboats they can race across a pond. But none of these toys can match the microcosmic ecstasies of the driving fuse, autonomous will, animating spark we encounter in something very small and very alive, going about its work in the world.
ACTION: Visit Gordon Frankie’s lively and instructive native bee website to learn more about native bees and how to make your urban garden a pollinator paradise (http://nature.berkeley.edu/urbanbeegardens).
Sources: Matt Jenkins, “The Headbonkers Ball” in Orion, March/April 2008.
Spring is bursting out all over
By NANCY BUPP, Franklin School Garden Coordinator
What can be done with an eyesore of an abandoned play area? Greg Havens looked beyond the weed infested patch to envision a garden for Franklin School. Four years ago this 6th grade teacher, with the help of his students, turned math lessons into raised planting beds and science lessons into rows of corn, sunflowers and a pumpkin patch.
Then
along came ever increasing pressures from government and Modesto City Schools
administrators to “raise those test scores” (the federal No Child Left Behind).
Lack of time to devote to practical and experience-rich teaching allowed the
weeds to regain their ground. But the vision of a garden was not dead! With the
guidance of a few interested staff (and a spouse) and the strictly volunteer
work of students taking time from their recesses and lunch breaks, the Franklin
School Garden took on a new life.
Pencil, paper and a few reminders about spelling make for appealing letters requesting donation of tools, fertilizer and plants. Very generous gifts of MoGro compost from Modesto Recycling Center, money for implements from Home Depot, and discounts on and outright gifts of plants from Four Seasons and Hischier nurseries resulted from those letters.
Give kids rakes and within a week three pick-up loads of MoGro compost were spread over a large area of nutrient-poor ground. Given shovels, plus Syl Bupp’s expert modeling, flowerbed and vegetable rows took shape. Measuring sticks, trowels, watering cans and a quickie demonstration on planting filled those rows with veggies and flowers. Claudia Dionne points out weeds, trowels, eager fingers, and hoes quickly uproot and tidy rows of corn and walkways.
The garden becomes the classroom for lessons on life-cycle of plants. It provides material to enrich in-classroom science experiments. Under the watchful eye of Nancy Bupp, flowers are cut and arranged to furnish bouquets for classrooms, cafeteria and the school office. The plants provide an inviting habitat for the area’s birds and insects. Take a minute to unwind and watch the pigeons, mourning doves, sparrow, butterflies and bees working and feeding in the garden.
Want to see delight and enthusiasm? Watch four or five kids pull out spent corn and sunflower stocks; break them apart; stomp ‘um down and load ‘um up onto the custodian’s golf cart towing trailer. Leaves blown in from neighbors’ trees in the fall make using a rake a coveted recess activity. So is jumping in the piles the kids have raked together,
The 2007 sunflowers were harvested in the fall and seeds prepared for sale. Kid-made packets, complete with growing instruction, were offered for $.25 in April. $33.75 on the first day of sales funded additional soaker hoses and perennial flowers.
Walk along South Emerald just south of Maze Blvd. on the way to the school gate to smell the sweet and spicy fragrances of stock, lavender, dianthus and sweet peas. Delight your eyes with the vibrant reds, purples, pinks, green and yellow of the springtime flowers and vegetables.
The Franklin School Garden is filling more than a formerly unused play lot. It’s filling children’s lives with hand-on experiences of growing plants; fleshing out textbook lesson; providing constructive activities; and giving kid-friendly ways to affect their surroundings for their own and others’ good. The neighborhood is also benefiting from the school garden’s beauty, by observing different growing methods and unusual plant varieties as well as seeing their children participating in constructive, productive activities.
The garden is enhancing the natural, neighborhood and education environments of the Franklin community in tangible, beautiful and enriching ways.
All this from volunteering students and a few of their adult friends.
How cool is that?!
Garden Journals
By ANNE SCHELLMAN
Horticulture Associate
UC Davis Cooperative Extension
Growing vegetables is hard work, and should not be attempted by couch potatoes, according to Robert Norris, a retired weed science professor from UC Davis. Norris has been gardening in the Central Valley for over 30 years, and through trial and error, has discovered many valuable insights. I had the opportunity to hear him speak in Stockton this past week.
What impressed me most about Norris’ presentation was that it was based on his garden journal. Every year he recorded planted varieties’ success and failure rates. He even kept track of how many pounds of vegetables harvested from each plant to help him determine the most productive varieties.
During his speech he made this interesting statement: “There is no such thing as a bad tomato year.” Norris noted that when many gardeners report low quantities of tomatoes harvested, tomato farmers never seem to have this problem. Why? “Farmers know which varieties to plant, while home gardeners are planting the wrong kinds of tomato.
When a tomato plant fails to “set”, the blossom drops off instead of developing into a fruit. As a horticulturist, I (the author) tell people this has to do with temperature fluctuations. During cold weather, a gardener can spray blossoms with a fruit setting hormone to prevent blossom drop; however, nothing can be done to prevent a tomato plant from dropping flowers when daytime temperatures exceed 92°F.
Norris has yet to have a bad crop of tomatoes, because he chooses varieties that have the ability to set fruit in hot weather, the most critical factor for ensuring a good harvest. Most heirloom varieties do not have this ability, which is why success with fruit set may be spotty.
Norris has had success with varieties such as Big Beef, Burpee 4th of July and Park’s Whopper. Local nurseries and garden centers also carry tomatoes successful in our area, such as Better Boy, Early Girl and Ace. Norris also mentioned that he only chooses tomato varieties with the acronyms VFNT or at least VFN in the name. This is because tomatoes are susceptible to verticillium and fusarium wilt, nematodes and the tobacco mosaic virus. Varieties with the mentioned acronyms are resistant to these problems.
None of Robert Norris’ work is University researched material, it’s simply information he has learned over his lifetime. He noted that it would be difficult for him to remember past gardening experience without the reference of his garden journal.
It’s easy to get stuck on a certain variety. For example my favorite, the heirloom tomato Brandywine. It tastes like it has been salted and is extremely juicy. Unfortunately, in certain years I have limited success in getting fruit set. So although I haven’t given up on Brandywine, I plant plenty of other varieties to ensure my summer garden is complete.
Lonely garden looking for its soil mate
By MARTHA STALP
Personal Ad: Lonely garden looking for its soil mate.
Wanted: Loving, committed soil mates to reach out and touch me!
Who Am I? a seed never sown; a seedling never planted; a vision of loveliness elusive and unfulfilled. I am a garden waiting to be tended, cared for, loved.
Where Am I? I exist in the strangest locales: Downey High School, Beard and El Vista Elementary Schools and other school settings. I am soft as the softest dew at Downey I am scrabble scruff like a Beard. Yet I reach out to higher El Vistas.
Be of brave heart. Become my volunteer soil mate. Connect with me at 578-5097. Be assured my lonely garden needs your TLC.
