Bitty Garden Tour

Oh, who am I kidding? This post is likely to have 527 photos.

A sad sight greeted my eyes last week (do pardon the tardiness—I also had surgery last week and recovery is taking a bit longer than anticipated): the first hard frost of the season, covering the grass and nearly-denuded trees and, of course, my veggie garden. Ben and I headed out to grab the last (green) tomatoes from the vine to ripen in the garage or be turned into some sort of preserve.

While most of the plants are indeed done for the season, my darling nasturtium actually doesn’t look bad and the youngest borage plants—borage being my other garden flower love—look as fresh as can be, and the same can be said for, of all things, the dill! The Brussels sprouts are fine, too, of course, and will probably taste all the better for the frost.

Baby “Hillbilly”

But for all intents and purposes, 2017’s growing season is over. This weekend I’ll put it to bed, though leaving up the still-blooming plants for as long as I can. Since it’s done for 2017 (my hopes of a winter garden setup having bitten the dust for the coming winter), why not a little tour?

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Monday Escape: Pollinator Week Wrap-Up (with design plans!)

The first “official” customer of my pollinator garden!

Pollinator Week officially ended yesterday, but I wanted to mention a few more things you could add to your garden, patio, or even balcony to attract these helpful little insects. I’ve something for our Canadian friends, and a list of garden design plans you can use to inspire or plan your own pollinator garden as well!

• A water source: Insects need water too! A shallow bowl set flush with the soil is perfect. Put a few stones into the bowl—by the way, water catching saucers from old terra cotta pots work perfectly for this—for your ‘visitors’ to sit upon as they take a drink. For butterflies, the NABA suggests a puddling station of damp ground covered with sand; a birdbath with shallow water and a few stones inside will work nicely as well.
• Sunning spots: Unlike humans, bugs don’t need sunblock (lucky critters), and in fact need the warmth of the sun’s rays. A flat stone or two set into spots that receive at least six hours of sunlight a day are ideal, and will draw many butterflies.
• Plant sunflowers! Bees especially love sunflowers, and come autumn, these perennial (well, actually, they’re annuals, but…) favourites will be swarmed with birds eagerly taking their fill of the flowers’ famed seeds. Feeling lucky? Plant some clover—which is great for your lawn, by the way, because it pulls nitrogen into the soil.
• Mud pies: Most of America’s native bees—which again, are quite docile and laid-back, and thus unlikely to sting—make nests using mud. A little mud spot will be quite useful to them, as well as butterflies, who will drink water from the mud (some of the things butterflies are happy eating turned my stomach, but…hey, we all have our jobs, right?).
  
• Nesting spots (2-page PDF from Xerces.org): There are countless online tutorials for such things. I like this one, which uses an old tin can and rolled-up paper; there’s another made from an old stump, though I’d put a removable paper tube of some sort into the holes. Be sure to replace the paper tubes after the bees have hatched; old tubes can attract and harbor mites that will kill the mason bee pupae, and I know you don’t want that to happen! Bare, sunny spots of soil—no grass, no plants, no mulch—are attractive to other species of bee. Bat houses are becoming more commonplace, too—one of my favourite local shops here in the Columbus area, Outside Envy, has some very attractive, understated ones made by a local artist (and the owner of Outside Envy, who is very nice, will ship just about anywhere!).
• Shelter: Many bees will take cover in brush piles and even overwinter there (no wonder they’re furry). Obviously this sort of thing has the potential to  be unattractive, but tucked into a back corner of your pollinator garden, behind a shrub, it won’t be as noticeable. You can also grow vines such as passionflower over the area during the summer to camouflage it. We just tore out some ugly, overgrown shrubs this weekend, and I made a small brush pile in the back of the pollinator garden for just this purpose.