GB 118 Pollinators. Wasps. Fungus.
27:16
SPEAKERS
Cindy in Roseville, Debbie Flower, Baldo Villegas, Kim Eierman, Farmer Fred
Farmer Fred 00:00
Garden Basics with Farmer Fred is brought to you by Smart Pots, the original lightweight, long lasting fabric plant container. it's made in the USA. Visit SmartPots.com slash Fred for more information and a special discount, that's SmartPots.com/Fred.
Farmer Fred 00:20
Welcome to the Garden Basics with Farmer Fred podcast. If you're just a beginning gardener or you want good gardening information, you've come to the right spot.
Farmer Fred 00:32
We do a deep dive into your garden questions on this episode of Garden Basics. We attempt to identify a giant wasp in one listener's yard. A mysterious underground white fungus has another listener perplexed; and, we help out people who want to attract beneficial insects and pollinators to their garden. It's all on Episode 118 of the Garden Basics with Farmer Fred podcast, brought to you today by Smart Pots, and we'll do it all in under 30 minutes. Let's go.
Farmer Fred 01:05
We like to answer your garden questions here on the Garden Basics podcast. And don't forget, if you submit your question via audio and we use it during the month of July, you're going to get, courtesy of the great folks at Smart Pots, a free Smart Pots six foot long raised bed fabric planter. Two ways to contact us with your questions via audio: speakpipe.com slash gardenbasics, or the telephone number, 916-292-8964, 916-292-8964. And again, if we use your audio question during the month of July, you get a free Smart Pot, just like Cindy and her mystery Hornet.
Cindy in Roseville 01:48
Hi Fred. This is Cindy from Roseville (CA). I have a quick question for you. I discovered some very large wasps in some dirt between my property and the next door neighbor a very small strip of dry soil. I was weeding and suddenly these wasps pop up but they were big, big fat guys, not yellow jackets. Not anything I could identify, looked more like cicada killers, according to my research. Anyhow, I told the neighbor and I'm sad to say, they were killed. I called the Placer County Integrated Pest Management. They came out and did the same, re-killed them. They made sure the nests were all dead. But now I have no pollinators in my garden. It's I mean, they were boiling with these big fat Hornets and they were pollinating everything. So I'm not sure what to do. Look forward to hearing for hearing your thoughts. Thank you very much. Have a great day.
Farmer Fred 02:55
That was Cindy from Roseville. Very good question. The mystery wasp hat's also a pollinator in her garden. And she thought it was a cicada killer. We're talking with Baldo Villegas, a retired state entomologist and Master Rosarian. Baldo, you know your bugs. And you're saying that this is a close relative of the cicada killer?
Baldo Villegas 03:18
Yes, it's in the same family of wasps, is the second cousin to the cicada killers. It is in the genus Tachytes, which is a predator of the grasshopper. Mm hmm. So it's a beneficial insect. So don't kill them.
Farmer Fred 03:40
Well, I guess it's too late for that in Cindy's case, but she was telling us that it was pollinating a lot of the plants in her garden, which a lot of people don't realize that a lot of these wasps and Hornets also act as pollinators.
Baldo Villegas 03:55
Yes. They're solitary wasps, you'll find them nesting on the ground, and they prey on the grasshoppers or grasshopper nymphs. Then they bring them into their nest in the ground. And then they they shove several grasshopper nymphs in the ground and then they lay an egg and then they fly away (the wasp paralyzes the grasshopper, and when the wasp eggs hatch, the young feed on the grasshoppers). And so they're great as beneficial insects in the in the garden, as well as the pollinators.
Farmer Fred 04:24
And I would imagine they're they are not that harmful to humans.
Baldo Villegas 04:30
No, no, no, they're, they're totally harmless. If you grab them, they might give you a little sting. But their sting doesn't hurt. It's just like being pricked with a little needle but it doesn't last like a like a hornet or wasp or a honeybee or or a umbrella wasp. These things, the venom doesn't last very long.
Farmer Fred 04:59
So again, these critters that are in backyards they may look dangerous, but in reality many of them are garden good guys, including this relative of the cicada killer. Hey, Baldo, thanks for the great information and drive safely.
Baldo Villegas 05:14
Thank you.
Farmer Fred 05:15
But we haven't fully answered Cindy's question. If she has no pollinators, who can she attract to her garden? And how do you attract beneficial insects, especially the pollinators to your backyard? Well, we talked about that on an episode last year here on Garden Basics.
Farmer Fred 05:35
For a Successful Garden, while you need a little bit of help, and fortunately, nature provides that assistance with a wide array of pollinating insects and birds and beneficial insects that go after the garden bad guys. And that allows you to reduce the use of pesticides that you might think you need to use. But to attract those beneficials and pollinators to your yard, you have to lend them a helping hand. And that's the impetus for the new book, The Pollinator Victory Garden. It's by New York based environmental horticulturist Kim Eierman, who's also the founder of Eco Beneficial, and she explains that small changes to our landscape can make huge environmental improvements. And she offers a lot of great tips in the book about getting pollinators to your yard. And we're talking with Kim Eierman back in New York and Kim, you have an interesting biography in that you left Wall Street to pursue environmental horticulture.
Kim Eierman 06:32
Oh boy, Fred, you gave up my dirty little secret, didn't you? I did. I went from one type of green to another. And the better green.
Farmer Fred 06:41
Were your parents bitterly disappointed?
Kim Eierman 06:45
No, no, I think they were relieved. They always knew I was a nature geek.
Farmer Fred 06:50
Good. All right. So you're following your heart?
Kim Eierman 06:52
Yeah, absolutely.
Farmer Fred 06:53
Did you have like a bell or a light go off? Or like I like to say, a "come to Jesus moment" that got you back into the land?
Kim Eierman 07:03
Well, I was always a kid to love nature. I mean, it was just in me, I always wanted to be outdoors, always wanted to go hiking, always wanted to be in the woods. It just was something that was important to me. And, gosh, many years ago, we moved from New York City, where there wasn't a heck of a lot of nature, to Westchester County. Lo and behold, our house is about seven miles away from the New York Botanical Garden. And I started to take classes and I got really, really serious about this. So I combine my love of nature with my love of gardening and horticulture and develop this business, Eco Beneficial, to really teach and hopefully inspire folks to garden a little bit differently to help are very, very challenged environment.
Farmer Fred 07:51
So when you look out your window right now, what's in bloom, what does your garden look like?
Kim Eierman 07:57
Well, being here in the northeast, we have a lot of those lovely spring bloomers that are so charming. For example, we've got our Mertensia virginica, which is Virginia bluebells in bloom right now, which is a lovely spring ephemeral. And it's one of those plants that comes up before the trees leaf out and feeds bees with its nectar and its pollen and then dies back. It's ephemeral (lasting for a very short time), so you can kind of double plant in that area. It's really a lovely one. And we've got we've got some lovely wild geranium, which is not as most people think of geranium, which is a lovely woodland plant edge. The of the woods is usually where you find it. That's a great source for specific bees, mining bees that have evolved with that plant, and about 25% of our native bees in North America are pollen specialists. So planting these plants that they've evolved with, in addition to generalist plants is a really an important thing to do.
Farmer Fred 09:01
You bring that up in your book a lot, the book, The Pollinator Victory Garden, let's talk about some of the tips that you offer up in the book. One of them makes perfect sense: plant for a succession of blooms through the growing season.
Kim Eierman 09:14
And we may think we're doing it, but when we start to take a closer look, we may find that we've got a lot of gaps in bloom time. So I encourage folks to start making a list of what's in bloom throughout the entire growing season. And for us here in the northeast, that's going to be early spring through late fall, parts of California might be almost year round. Look at what's in bloom. Make sure you've got at least three different plants that are in flower whether it's trees, shrubs, vines, perennials, ephemerals, etc. that are in bloom at the same time with different floral characteristics to feed different types of pollinators.
Farmer Fred 09:51
So your plant season then is what. March through early December?
Kim Eierman 09:57
Our season here is pretty much March through, I would say, November-ish. Depends. I mean, the climate change things. I've had things in bloom til almost the end of November, which is pretty extraordinary. Historically speaking.
Farmer Fred 10:10
I was about to brag that we have tomatoes off the vine for Christmas dinner.
Kim Eierman 10:14
There you go. Yes, exactly. All right. You've got to plant more plants, because you're going to cover more months.
Farmer Fred 10:23
Exactly. Yes. And we do, too. Yes. In fact, in our area here in California, and still people get stumped as far as, "What can I plant that is in bloom from November through March?" And there are two plants that fit that bill, and they attract a whole host of pollinators. And they are rosemary and euryops, Euryops pectinatus. And all the forms of roseberry, with their nice blu- violet flowers that keep the native bees happy all winter long.
Kim Eierman 10:51
And yeah, well, we'll give a shout out or two of your wonderful resources in California Cal Scape and Cal Flora, where you can find out what native plants are native to your region. And, you know, make sure you're planting for the critters that live in your area.
Farmer Fred 11:06
Well, that's also another one of your tips: include some native plants to support pollinators and the ecosystem.
Kim Eierman 11:11
Sure, my focus truthfully, Fred, is native plants, very much specifically, you know, all of us are entitled to a few dalliances with, you know, non invasive, non-natives. But I think with our challenge, climate change situation or environment being so degraded that we really can make big differences if we focus on plants that have evolved with the wildlife around us and support our ecosystems.
Farmer Fred 11:41
Yeah, and it's amazing the number of species of insects that thrive on very specific native plants. Right now, in bloom here in California, is the California Dutchman's pipe. And there's a species of butterfly that survives solely off that plant. And that's the pipevine swallowtail butterfly.
Kim Eierman 12:02
So you'll see that coast to coast. So that's likely an aristolochia. A species, which we have here in the east. And a lot of these woody plants that are native, many of them are host plants for butterfly or moth caterpillars. And we can really do ourselves a favor if we want more of those features in our landscape and support them because they're in danger, too. By having host plants, in addition to plants that say, you know, we are buying also for flowers. And then in many cases, we have plants that do both. Both things very well.
Farmer Fred 12:36
Just like we are distracted while driving down the freeway at the huge neon signs that are over our freeways here, it's true in the plant world as well. We need, as you point out, to plant a diverse array of plants with different flower shapes, sizes and colors. And then basically turn them into floral targets, if you will.
Kim Eierman 12:57
Right. So there, there's a principle that I call achieving floral balance in our landscapes. That's kind of a good, good way to think about this. We need to have a diversity of plant species to feed different types of pollinators because not every pollinator goes to the same type of plant. And pollinators can include things for bees, butterflies, moths, flies, bats, beetles, birds, and not every species within those groups is a pollinator, obviously, but, but likely, you know, if you're living in North America, you probably have pollination from almost all those creatures, except for maybe bats. And in Southern California, very southern, in parts of the Southwest, you'll see some bat pollination of Saguaro, cactus and agave. But most of us can attract all these other creatures by planting diversity. But getting back to floral balance, we also have to plant sufficiently. And that means creating floral targets that colonies can find easily. And some research out of the University of California bee lab in Berkeley, a wonderful place; and, "California Birds and Blooms" is an excellent book. I encourage folks to buy my book and buy that book, too, it's a great book. So they've discovered that the target area of one species are about three square feet is ideal for most pollinators to find. So some of us can achieve that. Some of us don't have landscapes that are large enough for that. And if we have a smaller landscape, you know, we can compromise a little bit and we can create repeating targets of smaller groups of plants throughout the landscape. And even in some areas, we might want a very naturalistic landscape like a prairie or a meadow, where we can create that erratic bloom of plants and many pollinators will still find that fairly easily. And the reason for that is creatures like bees, creatures like butterflies, have a behavior called floral constancy and they go on a foraging mission and they're looking for one species of plant. So if you have a meadowscape or prariescape arrangement, they'll find what they need.
Farmer Fred 15:03
Exactly. Speaking of bats, a lot of California's farmers are now incorporating bats into their Pest Control methodologies by creating bat habitat in order to keep them around the farm to go after the insect population.
Kim Eierman 15:18
Bats, like most creatures, invertebrates and vertebrates alike, are in trouble. Worldwide, so any help we can give them is good. There are not too many species of bats that are pollinating bats in North America, but there there are a couple.
Farmer Fred 15:34
One of the most important tips I think you present in the pollinator Victory Garden to win the war on pollinator decline with ecological gardening is and boy I've been harping on this for years and it sure makes a lot of sense reduce or eliminate your lawn.
Kim Eierman 15:49
Yeah, absolutely. I call it the green desert. It is an ecological wasteland for creatures like bees. If you allow European weeds to infringe upon the lawn that's a little bit better but it doesn't replace good solid native plant habitat. So keep the lawn that you really use if you play on it as your kids do your pets Do you entertain on the lawn keep what you really use, lose the rest. Whenever you keep manage it organically. no pesticides. Pesticides, it pollinators are a very poor mix. Even some, some of the preparations that we use commonly use our landscapes, even if they don't kill pollinators, they can be sub lethal and weaken them significantly.
Farmer Fred 16:35
Definitely. And when you tear out that turf grass, put in some native plants and here in California, we always encourage drought tolerant plants, plants that don't require much water in the in the big picture. And it's amazing. You put in native plants, all of a sudden you've got native bees.
Kim Eierman 16:53
Yeah, it's pretty amazing. And of course, California has a greatest diversity of native bees in North America that you have over 1000 species of native bees, just pretty extraordinary wheat here in New York, we have about half that a little bit less than half of that they are very many different shapes, sizes, colors, body strength, tongue length. Some don't even look like bees. So let's let's try to show some plant love for all of them.
Farmer Fred 17:17
We've been talking with Kim Eierman. She's the author of the book "The Pollinator Victory Garden: Win the War on Pollinator Decline with Ecological Gardening." Kim, if people want more information about the book, where can they go?
Kim Eierman 17:29
Well, please visit my website which is EcoBeneficial.com and you can pick up "The Pollinator Victory Garden" at your local independent bookseller, or any online service that you like. And I've got a lot of supplemental information that accompanies the book on my website, and including regional plant information. So please do visit.
Farmer Fred 17:49
All right again, that website EcoBeneficial.com for more information, including those plant lists. Kim Eierman. Thanks for spending a few minutes with us and getting the pollinators back into our yard. Thanks so much, Fred. I appreciate you having me.
Farmer Fred 18:06
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Farmer Fred 19:05
We like to answer your garden questions here on the Garden Basics podcast. Joining me here in the Abutilon Jungle is Debbie Flower, our favorite retired college horticultural professor. You see how much these abutilon have grown back since I pruned them? What? Two or three months ago? Yeah.
Debbie Flower 19:21
And I see flowers.
Farmer Fred 19:23
That's very nice. So the hummingbirds will be back soon. And off in the distance you may see the barrels, that contain corn, popcorn. Yes, I planted popcorn in barrels. That's my experiment for this year to see if I can grow popcorn in barrels in the hottest part of the yard.
Debbie Flower 19:39
Good luck. I think it might work. But good luck.
Farmer Fred 19:42
Yeah, we'll see. Yeah, my concern is that it is in an area of the yard where the wind has a hard time getting through, so I'm not too concerned about it blowing over. Most corn, if you tried to grow in a raised bed, would fall over.
Debbie Flower 19:56
But there's enough wind for pollination because you need wind for pollination for corn.
Farmer Fred 20:00
They're planted in a circle. '
Debbie Flower 20:01
Yes, I can see them moving in the wind now.
Farmer Fred 20:04
Okay. Don't scare me. So anyway, welcome to the Barking Dog Studio here.
Debbie Flower 20:09
Thank you. Happy to be here, Fred.
Farmer Fred 20:11
All right, I think the barking dogs are asleep so we can continue here. We got a question from Tonja here in the Sacramento area. And she found something in her yard that looked like little white eggs. She says, "A few weeks ago, I found these little egg things in one of my raised beds. Do you have any idea what they are? They sort of have a little root at one end, I put them back because I'm not sure what they are. Here's a couple of photos of them." And sure enough, they look like little white eggs that she found below her annual flowers in her garden bed. And the first thing that occurred to me was, "Ooh, those look kind of like nutlets from nutsedge or nutgrass." I wonder if that's what it is. You had another idea?
Debbie Flower 20:57
Yeah, to me, they're a little bit big for that, for the nutlets. And they're pure white, pure white was this, I have to say, a head scratcher. But pure white was one of the things that that had me wondering. Nutlets from nutsedge tend to be sort of tan colored. And I wondered that my first thought was, what else had been planted in that bed? Was this a tuber or a bulb from something else? What she shows in her bed right now is pansies and Johnny jump ups. So she's planting ornamentals in there right now. And maybe she has in the past. And maybe this was leftover from something in the past. So those are structures, that are underground storage structures, that are modified stems, a tuber potato, a white potato is a tuber. It's a part of the stem that is swollen, and holds plant food. That's why we eat it, we like that plant food. And if you cut into a tuber, it'll be solid like the inside of a potato. If it's a bulb, an onion is a true bulb. If it's a bulb, then it has layers, like an onion is layers. And so if you cut into it, you'll see those layers and those are actually modified leaves, leaves that are modified to store food again, that's why we eat onions, they don't become green, they don't grow. They just are there to hold food, the part of an onion that grows comes from the bottom. And that's where the true stem is. And it'll come up right through the center of the onion. If you've ever had one sprout in your pantry, you see that sometimes. And if you cut it open, you can see that stem is green and it has come up. It's actually a leaf, it has come up from the stem, which is just choosing the part of the onion we cut off. It's a little solid core, sort of a cone shaped core at the bottom. And then the roots come out of the bottom. And so her pictures do show some root light structures coming out of the bottom. Both the tuber and the bulb will have that and we can't see the inside. So we don't know if it's got the characteristics of a tuber or a bulb. But my other thought, and I'm leaning more toward this one, is that it's a fungus. It's the fruiting body of a fungus, particularly a puffball fungus. I have had puffball funguses in my yard, I often don't see them until they've already popped up and they're round and hers are round to egg-shaped. They are white when they're young, but then they turn brown when they're older. And if you cut them open, cut them up and when they're white when they're young, they may look like a mushroom on the inside. As they age when you cut them open, you'll see the spores and the spores can be brown or black. Typically those are the ones that I have seen. So, considering it's a raised bed, fungus likes to live in the kind of media we use in raised beds, the very organic media. It gets regular moisture and that will trigger the growth of puffball funguses.
Farmer Fred 24:02
And it looks like from the picture of her garden, part of it may be in the shade. And if it's in shade and it's over-watered, cool, moist soil is perfect home for a puffball.
Debbie Flower 24:14
Right. There are PVC arches over the top and I suspect something has been on them, frost cloth or or some kind of grow cloth or row cover. And that will reduce the sun in that location. And that's if you think about when we see mushrooms in the landscape. It's typically after a rain and in a very organic place and in the shade and that bed has the potential to produce those conditions.
Farmer Fred 24:43
I think to alleviate her concerns, we can say it safely it's not an insect. This isn't an egg of an insect.
Debbie Flower 24:49
No, or a big weed. Although puffballs produce many, many 1000s of spores and that's their reproductive body. They are seeds, so to speak. They aren't very efficient at growing from those spores. And so she's not likely to have an infestation. And it's not going to hurt anything she wants to grow there, in fact, it is helping. The rest of the fungus is called mycelium. And its travels underground and helps break down organic matter and release nutrients to the plants.
Farmer Fred 25:29
Basically, Tonja, you have a job to do. Cut open some of these little white balls and see what's on the inside. If it looks like a potato on the inside,
Debbie Flower 25:38
You have a tuber.
Farmer Fred 25:40
And if it's layered?
Debbie Flower 25:42
Then you have a bulb.
Farmer Fred 25:43
And if it's mushroomy. Yes, yeah, if you get a lot of spores flying around, right? That would be a fungus.
Debbie Flower 25:50
Or it looks just like mushroom. If it's not mature, you suggested she plant one and see what happens. And that will be interesting as well. If she planted in soilless mix, and keeps it cool and moist. She could have a whole pot full of fungus. Yes.
Farmer Fred 26:06
But the keeping your cool and moist. Yes.
Debbie Flower 26:08
Otherwise it will die. Right, exactly.
Farmer Fred 26:11
So, if you've tried that, Tonja, if you try planting it in a container to see what happens, and you sort of set that container off to the side, it may have dried out to the point where that fungus dried out.
Debbie Flower 26:23
Right. And that will kill it.
Farmer Fred 26:24
Yeah. So in that case, I mean, do you really have to worry about this?
Debbie Flower 26:29
No, not at all.
Farmer Fred 26:31
If the plants are healthy, then it's not so cool and moist that plants can't grow. Right. And this is just a natural cycle. Right?
Debbie Flower 26:38
Right. So no, don't worry about it at all.
Farmer Fred 26:41
All right. Be happy. Don't worry. Debbie Flower. I hope we solved the fungus question.
Debbie Flower 26:46
I hope so too.
Farmer Fred 26:52
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