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Native Wisdom: Seasonal Garden Tips to Support Insects and Preserve Habitat Harmony 11-03-2025
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What does it really mean to garden with nature in mind? Rachann Mayer and Master Gardener Laura O'Callahan discuss how native plants, leaf litter, and seasonal habits like winterizing and fall planting can create thriving habitats for insects and other invertebrates.
From white oak trees that support hundreds of caterpillar species to the surprising benefits of not mulching leaves, they dig into practical tips that support biodiversity right in your backyard. Plus, they highlight her website, "In the Garden with Laura". Tune in for a blend of science, storytelling, and soil-level wisdom.
https://www.facebook.com/Inthegardenwithlaura/
www.raisingconnections.com
RCP Podcasst Winterizing Gardens Total Release Date 11-3-25.mp3
Transcript
And which insects do you want to protect?
All right, we promised that we would talk about ephemerals.
And to me, I'm seeing fairies and elves, but you are not.
An ephemeral actually has a very specific meaning.
And it's a plant that comes out very early in the spring before trees have leafed out.
So they're very important for pollinators, and they're just stunning.
Mayapple is another ephemeral.
Our pet care with a personal touch is not just a motto, it's really what we do.
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Today, as always, we have a fun and interesting guest, Laura O'Callahan, Master Gardener.
Thank you so much for having me, Rashan.
Can you introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about what you do?
I am a Master Gardener, have been since 2014.
I'm also a Circe's Ambassador.
And I teach classes about native plants and about
I have a website, In the Garden with Laura, and I really love gardening and plants.
In the Garden with Laura, what's on your website?
Yes, it is indeed, a potpourri.
Today we're going to talk about putting our gardens to sleep for the winter.
You don't want to kill them all come fall.
And that does sound very grim, but it's very easy to do without thinking, without knowing.
When you say invertebrates, you're really talking about insects.
And I want to care for the insects, but yet there's so many insects I don't like.
and I scratch for the next two weeks because I enjoyed 15 minutes outside.
I don't know if there are mosquitoes or no-see-ums or whatever they are.
hurt our agriculture, they are good for the environment.
And without them, we could not exist.
So I think we've grown up in a world where we think of all insects as horrible.
And I do draw the line at insects in my house.
No insects are allowed in the house if I can find them.
They pollinate our food, they pollinate our
We would not exist without insects, according to E.O.
Wilson, the deceased entomologist.
So the few that are biting my ankles, they are really the small percentage.
And I should not judge all insects by the few ankle biters.
Longer socks, a little bug spray on your ankles, longer pants.
When I go out and I'm riding the horses or I've had the dogs out, I'm looking
for ticks, I'm going to remember that ticks are not bugs.
No, I think ticks would fall in that category of bad bugs.
Okay, but the good bugs way outnumber them.
I'm going to remember this 90%.
Okay, it's a small percentage that are the bad bugs.
So I'm going to give my good bugs a habitat so I can care for them.
What do insects need to have a good habitat?
When you think of winter's night, when you go
go to bed, you would want to cover.
And insects, bees, butterflies, many other insects, need the leaves.
The leaves are like blankets for them.
And they need those on the ground, on the dirt, to protect them from the weather.
Many butterflies are in the leaves, over winter in leaves, as well as many other insects.
Now, if you really hate the look of leaves all over your yard, and some
You can always put them around a tree, like a little ring around your trees.
But it's good to leave areas where there are leaves.
You should not chop up the leaves.
Chopping up the leaves, you kill 70% of the butterflies that are in those leaves.
I saw in my mind the blankets getting
Well, there's got to be a balance here.
If you leave the leaves whole, that gives the yard nutrients.
Leaves will do the same to your yard.
And if you put more leaves around a tree, that provides nutrients for the tree or in your garden.
That would not be good because the tree's a big plant.
Exactly, So you need a space around it, a ring around your tree.
Ephemerals, meaning blooming over and over.
It screws it up in so many ways.
I learned that the hard way with some beautiful apple trees.
And I think I committed apple side by accident.
So we learned that lesson, but how do you keep the leaves there?
You guys are going to put some dirt and some mulch together.
You don't even have to worry about the mulch, because the leaves are the mulch.
Then how do you keep the leaves from blowing off?
Or you can rake them in and put them over the edge, just give a little rake.
So you could do that around an oak tree or any tree.
And you can go out to the drip line, which is where the end of the branches are.
So you can make quite a big garden if you want.
So if the drip line is on the outside, I know we're meandering a little bit.
That area, do I have to water inside?
Because trees use a lot of water.
I always thought I couldn't put a garden under a tree because the tree would use the water.
I mean, you could even put some very shallow rooted shrubs.
like a native azalea under there, so long as it's protected from deer.
But yes, you could put it on the outer side.
You can create a whole garden underneath a tree.
So I can save my insects that will maybe eat the bad dudes.
Save your insects, and they will pollinate your garden.
So how do I invite the right insects to my habitat for the wintertime?
It's like that old baseball film, build it and they will come.
Okay, because I would really like to get rid of those little ankle biters that
Certainly, swallows and other birds will come and eat the mosquitoes.
And there are some insects that are incredibly big on mosquitoes.
We had a tornado come through, and that was about 7, eight years ago now.
And when that happened, our bat population really took a dive.
They lost their homes and they found new ones.
You know, they can eat hundreds, if not thousands of them.
Now we have this beautiful yard where we had trees before, and I have mosquitoes visit like crazy.
One is you have to make sure you don't have any open sources of water for the mosquitoes.
We live near a pond and a creek.
Put in something to make the water move.
This is not my area of expertise.
We have a pond, and it just sits quietly.
We don't do anything with it, but it's far enough away that we don't have problems with mosquitoes.
There's some other insects that'll really go after.
I would get something in your ponds that make them move.
So now that might affect the dragonflies, but mosquitoes like still water.
When we're looking to put our gardens to bed for the winter, I'm still a little surprised.
The first thing we do is nothing.
The first thing we do is nothing.
Actually, it really is a matter of you don't rake up the leaves the way traditionally you have.
But there's so many other things that you can do.
So there really is no rest for the gardener year round, but it's just a whole different style.
But it's just a bunch of different activities.
So I'm going to rake my leaves.
I'm going to maybe do some planting under the trees so that the leaves will stay in.
When you see disease or dead plants,
you always want to remove them because they cause more death and disease.
So that's very simple, very straightforward.
Get rid of dead and diseased plants.
And when it comes to shrubs and trees, there's the 3D rule.
If it's dead, diseased, or dying, you get rid of those.
So you've got to cut one of them.
But other than that, whole area of sort of trimming up your garden, you leave alone.
First I'd planted the goldenrod.
It is the most valuable plant you can grow for butterflies and other insects.
And so this fall, I just started pulling it out because there were too many of them.
It had dominated the garden and it changed the whole look of the garden.
I mean, it grows to 7, 8 feet.
Yeah, I did remove that and I'll remove more of it.
your revision, but otherwise you only do death and disease.
We'll continue this conversation about winter gardens and all of the things when we come back.
Welcome back to Raising Connections.
Today we're talking with Laura O'Callaghan about winter gardens and hibernation through the insects.
So how do I know if something's dying or it's just it's time to start hibernating?
For example, I have lots of hostas and the hostas sort of melt in on themselves.
They come out wrapped up beautifully in the
spring and spread their leaves.
But in the fall, they kind of just melt back in.
And I always go out and clean them up because I think that's going to make not good habitat.
That's going to make a mess and slugs and things.
But are they dead or are they dying or what is that?
cold, when it gets frozen, it dies back and it just sort of turns into mush.
And it will invite disease if you do that, again, slugs.
Right, with hostas, cut them back.
As soon as it starts wilting and looking messy.
So that's something I'm going to go out and cut back.
But my black-eyed Susans, the state flower, they go upright and they have these
almost prickly, fuzzy leaves, and they're munch, prickly fuzzier.
I guess that's a technical term.
But they don't go to mush like the hostas do.
And they will stay all winter long like that.
But kind of dried and dead looking.
But I don't trim those back because they're not dead.
Because the birds can come and eat the seeds.
I learned a fun word years ago, a pokey yoke.
That's just a fun word to say, pokey yoke, right?
If you grow anise hyssop, it'll be covered in bumblebees and bees all summer long.
almost taste licorice, sambuca, and cookies.
It's just a plant that grows about 5 feet or so tall.
And you'll get many of them over time.
You know, it'll just kind of spread.
And some people love the look of them.
I just showed someone my plant and they were like, oh, I love those flowers.
And it's not my cup of tea, but the bees love it so much.
I love talking to the bees when I go out there.
And it's just a fabulous plant for them.
giant hyssop, which is native to the Piedmont region, I believe.
I think the bees aren't as keen on it.
But that plant is a tender perennial, and that's probably because it's not native here.
So you don't want to cut that one way back, like down to 6 inches or so, because it will die.
So I leave it tall, and the tall leaves protect
The same is true of chrysanthemums, I do believe.
That they are a little tender here, so you don't cut them back in the winter.
How do we learn what we're doing so we don't destroy the habitat inadvertently?
The goal, the mark was set at 70% or more of native plants.
You might say, oh, you know, how can I do that with my garden?
Well, one, you do it over time, and two, remember the trees.
like the big powerhouses that come in and give you a lot of bonus points right away.
An oak tree supports over 550 different types of moth and butterfly caterpillars.
So it is the number one tree, the white oak, to support caterpillars.
When I think caterpillars, I think two things.
So I think the woolly bears and their predictions.
And I think of all of the things that I was told as a kid.
I think the goal was to let me leave the caterpillar alone.
Yeah, But then I also see in the spring, those caterpillars, those bagworms.
And I think, what is your purpose here other than to kill my tree?
It seems like the balance sometimes gets out of whack.
I was just thinking about those bagworms.
The woolly bears are a different issue, but they're so cute.
But the bagworms, you know, your tendency is, oh, go get them killed.
And I actually did that 5, 10 years ago.
I had an arborist and, you know, they sprayed them for me.
But they feed a phenomenal number of birds, which if
You look at it, we have lost 3 billion birds in the last 50 years.
Habitat loss is the biggest cause.
A third of bird species are at risk.
230 bird species are declining.
And 90% of the losses come from 12 bird families.
So is that because we're taking their food source away or their environment?
Is it the house and shelter or is it the food?
their housing, their trees, it's development, they don't have habitat.
Oh, that brings back such a memory.
I'm going to open the cereal bag for the worm.
So I'm still a little confused.
I know more than I did, but I don't know how to put it together.
I want to get rid of those ankle-biting insects.
And so I want to bring in the good insects.
I'm not going to go out and buy them because I'm
But the stuff that goes to mush, I'm going to get rid of.
But how do I really, for example, and I know this is not native, the azaleas, uh-oh.
You've come to a special place in my heart.
Uh-oh, you got to take this one.
There are many, many beautiful non-native azaleas, but there are also native azaleas.
And once you fall in love with them, you'll just spurn your old favorites.
Okay, your eyes are glowing as you're telling me this.
I'm having trouble believing it.
The native to Maryland is pink.
It's called the Pinkster to the Piedmont.
It's called the Pinkster azalea.
And it's just a sort of a medium pink.
the swamp azalea, which is the coastal region over by the shore.
I have broken my efforts to go pure native when it comes to azaleas.
They grow from like 5 feet to 10
They lose their leaves in the winter.
Can I say one person who sells them that I know of?
His name is, it's White's Nursery in Germantown.
It's the only place that I know to get native azaleas.
It's like, what do I have here?
Some of them, some of them grow very big.
So you have to protect them as they love the other azaleas too.
I thought that was because of us people.
The prettiest shrub there you can get.
You'd have to call and make an appointment.
He's not open, but he does take appointments.
So I could take these new plants, the azaleas, and put them in the ground now.
It surprised me to plant in the fall.
In my mind, I always thought, this is when you put the bulbs in.
And then trying to remember where you put the
It's nature's graffiti, the bulbs that pop up.
When it's dry, it's hot, nobody's giving them enough love.
So they really like to go in the fall.
Now bulbs always go in the fall.
But shrubs and the trees, they love this time of year.
And you can plant right up until for shrubs and trees,
I just learned this from a nursery.
Because I won't be sweaty and hot when I go out and do this now.
I might actually enjoy gardening.
Now, summer blooming plants have to go in two weeks before the first hard frost.
We were talking about ephemerals.
And to me, I'm seeing fairies and elves, but you are not.
An ephemeral actually has a very specific meaning.
And it's a plant that comes out very early in the spring before trees have leafed out.
They grow in forests, but they get the sunlight because the trees have not leafed out.
And they provide pollinators with the first sources of food.
So they're very important for pollinators, and they're just stunning.
Virginia Bluebells, Spring Beauty.
Those are a few of the femorals.
It is a favorite by many gardeners, but it's not.
I see it when I go into the woods.
Now that's escaped from someone's garden.
Trilliums, yes, and there are many trilliums, and they are just stunning.
Mayapple is another ephemeral.
It shot up with this white flower, and the next day, the flower was gone.
Somebody had come and eaten it.
So it now has a little cage over it, protecting it.
But those are the ones that just come to mind right off the bat.
Crocus is a non-native Asian bulb.
But they would fall in about that same time, but they're.
Now we know what ephemerals are.
And they can just spread all over the forest floor and look stunning.
So the next time I see skunk cabbage, I'm going to call it an ephemeral.
That will make it sound better.
Some plants got really unlucky with the names they were given.
Oh, that's a beautiful one, yes.
I'd just throw them back in again.
But remember that when you plant a plant, get a sense of how big it's going to be.
Or if it was a tree, if it's going to be 20 feet wide,
I have one last question for you.
There are pumpkins and gourds everywhere in the fall for decorating.
Yes, there's no reason not to.
They'll come up in the spring.
We throw them down a hillside every year, and we've had them grow sometimes down there.
I think the deer get them too, but.
So if I like that pumpkin, I can make more pumpkins.
I would just look up how to grow pumpkin seeds from a pumpkin.
Because sometimes there are things you do to prep it.
Make sure you're doing all the things.
Some seeds like to be in the cold over the winter.
So like milkweed, butterfly weed?
We used to make Christmas ornaments out of those.
I always learn something different.
Maybe we can do one on the nasty side of the gardening world.
Invasives and bugs and insects.
I'm not going to clip my echinacea back.
Okay, well, in April, we'll have to talk about those, too.
Laura Callahan, and your website is?
We're going to be looking forward to this.
Next time I see a hosta, I will think of you.