Notebook
The Ontario Horticultural Association has a bee in its bonnet By Carol Dunk, President of OHA
Laying down wet newspaper to kill off weeds, grass.
habitat loss. The Ontario Horticultural Association
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(OHA) is taking up the challenge of bees and habitat loss by encouraging the garden- ers of Ontario to create Pollinator Patches. Pollinator Patches are small colonies of na- tive plants in unused public spaces and in private gardens to provide pollen, nectar and nesting places for native bees and other pollinators. A Pollinator Patch is so easy to create!
A spot as small as six metres by three me- tres (10 by 20 feet) is big enough to attract pollinators but small enough that two or three people can handle it easily. In gen- eral, choose a level or slightly sloped, well- drained site with full sun throughout the day and good air circulation. A water source nearby is an asset but not a necessity. Your site should be people-friendly, too. Because you may have to carry water or tools, your site should be easily accessible. If it is adjacent to a road or highway, make sure there is room to pull a vehicle completely off the road. Safety first. Here’s how we created a Pollinator Patch
in Barrie, Ont. During the winter, we approached our city
with a proposal to plant a pollinator patch on unused public land within the city. We found our city to be most amenable to the proposal and happy to suggest a site for us. Early in May, we marked a spot about 6m
by 3m (10 by 20 feet). The future patch was cleared for planting by weed-whacking it twice. The initial weed-whacking was com- pleted about two weeks before our planting date to clear and establish the area. The day before the soil came, the area was weed- whacked again and this time taken down almost to bare ground. Next came the layer of wet newspapers. Plan ahead for this step – you’ll need lots of
www.localgardener.net
ative bees have been pushed, until their backs are against the wall, by pesticide use, diseases and especially
Adding construction soil to provide tough love.
newspapers to cover the patch with about an inch of newspaper and a means of wetting all that newspaper. There was no water on the site so we used three large containers – recycle boxes – filled with water in which to submerge the newspapers. This was really the dirtiest part of the job! The soil we used was construction soil.
At a building site in town we asked for some of the soil that would be taken out of the basement area of a new building. The build- er kindly donated soil and a truck to deliver the soil to our site. We could just as easily have used unamended soil, but the price was right for the construction soil! To cover the patch about six to eight inches deep we used nearly five cubic yards. That doesn’t sound like much until you start to move it! We enlisted the help of two friends and a young man who happened upon the scene to help. Our construction soil was pretty rough:
mostly clay, some sand and many stones. This was definitely not soil that you’d use in your garden, but we were planting natives, and construction soil suited them fine. Na- tives like their habitat lean and mean.
The welcome mat for pollinators! We chose to use plants rather than seeds
to hurry the process and to ensure that we did get the plant species and coverage we wanted. Our plants came from an Ontario native nursery and were grown from seed collected from as close to our site as pos- sible. The plants were carefully chosen to produce a continuous source of pollen from spring to fall. In all we used 70 plants and have only lost three in two years. This year will be our third year of spot weeding and watering when necessary. By the end of this year the plants will be well- established and the patch will be on its own. With one patch under our belts, we are planning to add another patch onto the end of the current one next year. You can read about our experiences and see pictures of the progress in the blog of the Pollinator Patch at
http://roadsides.caroldunk.com. Creating a Pollinator Patch was easy. Our
patch won’t change the world, but hundreds of patches across the province will make a big difference to the number and the health of our native pollinators. Start your Pollina- tor Patch this spring. `
Resistance training (and gardening) stave off dementia
and the credit has been given to the in- crease of blood flow through the brain. But now researchers are saying that exercise, es- pecially strength building exercise, may be even more beneficial than at first thought. The study by researchers at the Centre
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for Hip Health and Mobility at Vancouver Coastal Health and the University of British Columbia involved 86 senior women with mild cognitive impairment over a period of six months. Both aerobic and resistance training were looked at, but only resistance training showed significant improvements
t has long been noted that being physi- cally active can help stave off dementia
to a whole list of cognitive abilities. The type of training recommended is very
similar to what gardeners do as a matter of course: lifting, squatting, doing lunges are all recommended. This is being attributed to “growth factors” which improve the brain. It’s not a bad idea to follow a resis-
tance training exercise all year round, even for gardeners just to keep in shape for the joys of spring and summer. You can watch a video showing the simple ex- ercises you can do at home or at the gym by going to
http://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=vG6sJm2d4oc. `
Spring 2012 • 5
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