Gardeners can support the natural food chain

-
Clark Shilling speaking at Muskogee Garden Club 9:30 am Oct 16
Kiwanis Senior Center 119 Spaulding DR
Information Susan Asquith 918-682-3688 Free and open to the public
-------------------------------------------------------------
Among gardeners andnature-lovers, there has been a gradual migration from a just-plant-something philosophy to a plant-something-useful philosophy over the past ten years or more. It’s not that raising roses and lilies is frowned upon, it’s more that we are being urged to add a few herbs or vegetables, shrubs that make berries or put in more environmentally friendly native plant varieties.

There is a free online course available at www.ecosystemgardening.com. The author Carole Sevilla-Brown defined the Five Pillars of Ecosystem Gardening: Sustainable Gardening, Water Conservation, Plant More Native Plants, Build Soil Health, and Remove Invasive Plants.

Making the change is easy to do if it is done in small steps. For example, when a tree, shrub or vine dies or becomes too large for its location, it could be replaced with something more friendly to the environment such as a variety that requires no insect spray or less irrigation than the one that was there before.

The next stage of moving toward a sustainable garden is to put in plants for wildlife. Those steps include: Planting food for wildlife, making water available, planting shelter plants and making a safe space for wildlife to raise their young.

Clark and Connie Shilling of Owasso have built a wildlife-friendly garden at their home and will be speaking at Muskogee Garden Club on Oct 16 at 9:30 am. The club meets at the Kiwanis Senior Center, 119 Spaulding Drive.

Shilling and his wife have flowers in the front yard, a lawn for recreation and a fenced off wildlife area where they started planting wildlife food ten years ago.

Clark said his talk will be about the imperative of including native plants in our gardens and about what we as gardeners can do to help support native wildlife. 

Among the fruits that produce quickly for wildlife food, Shilling says that plums are a good choice. 

In particular, sand plums grow into thickets that make fruit in just a few years. And, they are self-fertile so gardeners can just buy any plants available.

Native Sand plums, Prunus angustifolia, known as Chickasaw plum, Cherokee plum and Sandhill plum, are available from Mail Order Natives, www.mailordernatives.com or 850-973-0585. They can also be grown from seed or from cuttings taken in the wild but it will take a couple of years longer to have mature plants. OSU Fact Sheet HLA6258 explains everything you need to know about Oklahoma native plums at http://hort.li/1zxx.

Sand plums need at least 6-hours of sun. At maturity they can reach 15 feet tall and wide. They have scaly, black bark with red branches. The flowers arrive between Feb and May, followed by the red plums that look like large cherries.

The Shillings also grow Muscadine grapes that they use for making beverages as well as sharing with wildlife.  He recommends Ison’s Nursery and Vineyards (www.isons.com (800) 733-0324). The Ison’s Black Muscadine is self-fertile and one plant is enough for eating, even when the birds take some.

Other fruit that can be valuable to wildlife includes Elderberries  and blackberries.

Flowers can also play a part in sustainable gardening. Wine Cup, Callirhoe involucrate is fairly easy to grow in full sun. They form a deep taproot so they are very drought tolerant. The flowers are magenta-red.

Native to TX, OK and KS, Wine Cup, or Purple Poppy Mallow, is a trailing perennial with magenta, cup-shaped flowers. Seeds are available from Easy Wildflowers www.easywildflowers.com and container-grown plants are available from MO Wildflowers (www.mowildflowers.net).

Come to garden club on Oct. 16 to get advice for growing a wildlife-friendly garden. The presentation will include information on native plants that add color and beauty to a garden but also serve as key links in a natural food chain.

Comments

Carole Sevilla Brown said…
Molly, Thanks so much for the shout-out for Ecosystem Gardening! Gardeners can make such a difference by creating welcoming habitat for wildlife in their gardens with native plants.
October 9, 2014 at 9:14 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Moldy Tulip Bulbs

-
Image
Moldy tulip bulbs are a big disappointment when you are hoping to fill a bed or some pots. It is not that unusual for their skins to have a bit of penicillin mold but these are beyond that tad bit stage. Mold penetrating tulip bulb  Mold on emerging tulip bulb growth  So, what to do? The plant references say to throw them out and buy new ones but I already spent $22 for 50 of these white tulip beauties. First, they got a soak in 1% bleach solution in the kitchen sink in the hope that the bleach would stop the mold from continuing to grow without killing the life force in the bulb itself. After a good slosh around, I wiped them off to see how much damage was beneath the blue and black.  This tulip bulb is soft to the touch and there is little chance it will thrive in the soil. This basal root on these have been ruined by mold. The final step I took to try to salvage part of them  was to spray them thoroughly with fungicide.  They are all planted in the
Read more

Propagate Begonia Stem Cuttings in water - Cane-like Angel Wing Begonia

-
Image
Propagating by stem cuttings is just about the easiest way to make more begonias for next summer's garden. During the fall, I regularly trim off 3-node long cuttings and put them into the growing pots where they take root. Now that cold weather has arrived, I root the stem cuttings in a vase of water. It's a great way to produce more pots of Begonias for next summer's garden. Water the plant well the day before. Take a cutting about 4-inches long, with 3 nodes, from a healthy stem. Use a perfectly clean container. Rinse the container with a drop of bleach if you are uncertain about its spotlessness. Remove all but the top leaf or two. There should be no leaves in the water. The cutting should  have a healthy leaf node at the bottom. Don't leave a stub below the node. Place the cutting into the water, and place the container out of the sun. In a couple of weeks, you will see new roots beginning to form. Check the water periodically to make sure it is still f
Read more

Create Nesting Areas for Birds and Wildlife

-
Image
From the website, Choose Natives , this lovely and instructive article helped remind me to continue to increase the amount of habitat and nesting that we provide in our garden. Many, though not all, are native or considered to be native in Oklahoma. So, I did a little research on each recommended plant and provided a link to more information. You'll see the plant name in italics - those are my links for your edification. Here's the post Derek Stoner, Project Coordinator for the Delaware Nature Society, helped restore the 860-acre Middle Run Natural Area by “intensive habitat management”, including planting 12,000 trees and shrubs.  His lecture, ‘ Native Plants for Nesting Birds: Connecting Flora and Fauna’,  given to a group of enthusiasts at the Millersville Native Plant Conference   in Pennsylvania, focused on his observations. Here are Derek’s landscaping recommendations for attracting birds: Plant shrubs in clusters (“habitat circles”) that will create the dense
Read more