New Year's Resolutions

A Northern Cardinal in the yard. One of my favorite backyard birds.

Now that I've returned to the land of snow and cold, I've had a bit of time to think on New Year's Resolutions. I've never been good at these. Most years, I don't even make any, or they're very generic. A few of the ones I came up with this year are pretty generic or easily attainable as well, but I like them all the same.

1. Taking time out of the day to do something calming that helps get my mind off stressful things. Writing, reading, listening to music, or anything that could help me care for myself mentally. With my last semester coming up, I'm sure I'll have my share of freak-out or anxiety-ridden moments and having some way to combat that will be necessary.

2. I hope to write on this blog at least once per week or, during really busy times, at least once every two weeks. There will be parts of the semester where updating will be difficult or I'll have simply too much schoolwork for updating, so I wanted to keep this realistic.

3. Break 150 species on my birding Life List. I'm currently at 84 species so I hope this goal will be somewhat easily surpassable. I don't really care too much about numbers with birding, but I set it mostly because I want to keep myself motivated in this hobby.

4. Graduate from college. This one is sorta a no-brainer to have on the list.

5. Keep myself healthy, whatever that entails. Exercise, eating better, etc. I'd like to have several meals a week that I prepare from scratch and try to cut out more processed foods from my diet. Being a college student, it's often very difficult not to eat processed food simply because a boxed meal is faster and less work to prepare during times where schoolwork and other things make me busy. But I'll have less things going on in the evenings this coming semester so setting aside more time to cook will be great. I'm also taking a cooking class through the university so hopefully that will teach me more techniques to use that will make cooking easier. The university rec center also has fitness classes it offers that I've utilized before and greatly enjoyed. Hopefully some fit into my schedule this year.

6. Keep in touch with people from my hometown more. I'm dismal at doing this and I always feel bad about it once I come home and see everyone once again.

7. Try to integrate more environmentally friendly practices into my daily life. I found an excellent list here.  And this definitely includes growing more of my own food this summer.

And that's that! Hopefully I'll be able to stick to it. And posting this somewhere public will hopefully keep me more accountable. I'd love to hear about any New Year's Resolutions that any of you have. I always find sharing not only makes me follow through with a goal more, but makes me more excited about it as well!

Birdwatching on the top of Mount Marquette.

Plant a Pollinator Garden at Your Vacation Home!

Minnesota "cabin culture" as it has been called, is a normal part of life where I live. It's very common for a family to pack up for a long weekend at the cabin several times per summer, if not every weekend! In an article by CBS Minnesota, it's estimated that there are 122,000 "seasonal/recreational properties" in Minnesota alone. When you think about the Midwest (Wisconsin and Michigan also being popular places for people to own cabins) that's a lot of private property! Our family (primarily Minnesotans) own a cabin in Wisconsin, so this goes across state lines as well.

Sunset at the lake.

This weekend, as I was taking a much needed vacation to our family's cabin with my family and my boyfriend, I got to enjoy the wildlife, dense forests and lake views. Sitting on the deck, enjoying the mild weather we had over the weekend, I was also able to enjoy watching all the bees, butterflies and birds that visit the garden my grandmother has planted in front of the cabin. She has planted a lot of pollinator-friendly flowers and shrubs in a small strip along the front of the cabin that is not only nice to look at, but incredibly easy to maintain. We generally visit our cabin on weekends and for slightly longer vacations throughout the summer and into early fall. Sometimes, however, no one is there for weeks at a time, meaning that the garden is left on it's own. I know many others with cabins like ours have similar vacation patterns. But just because we leave doesn't mean the pollinators do! This got me thinking, what if all these cabins, vacation homes, camps, etc had a pollinator garden planted? That would be close to 122,000 pollinator gardens in Minnesota, plus however many seasonal properties you find in the rest of the Midwest!

The plot that entices our local pollinators.

It's fairly common knowledge that, currently, pollinators are struggling. Not only are pollinators at risk from chemicals now used in pesticides and herbicides, but they're also struggling because of climate change. It's important for us to do everything we can to help increase pollinator populations because, without them, our future will be pretty dire as well. Pollination by bees alone accounts for the survival of 30 percent of the world's food crops and 90 percent of our wild plants. Include pollinators such as butterflies and birds in that equation and the numbers get even higher.

If you have some empty yard space at your cabin or vacation home, here's a few things you can do:

Plant a Pollinator Garden

1. Plant native plants. Not only will these plants be better for your native pollinators, but they'll be easier to take care of. Native plants are better adapted to the climate you live in, so they won't need extra water or fertilizer and most are perennials so you won't have to replant year after year. Many native plants often also serve as larval host plants. 

2. If using non-native plants alongside natives, make sure to check with the grower that you're buying from that it's a low-maintenance plant that tolerates your local climate well.

2. Choose plants that have varying bloom times. That way, you don't have a bed of flowers that only bloom in the spring and then are useless to the pollinators for the rest of the season. It'll also ensure you have blooms every time you visit your cabin, whether it's June or August!

3. Choose plants with varying colors. Different pollinators are attracted to different colored flowers. This table from the North American Pollinator Protection Campaign is a simple way to plan which colors to add into your garden and also includes other characteristics that certain pollinators find appealing.

4. Plant in clumps. Keeping the plants together makes it easier for pollinators to buzz, fly or hop from one flower to the next.

The bee balm is one of the favorites.

AND it comes in many different colors!

Add Some Extra Resources

1. Adding a hummingbird feeder is a great way to attract these beneficial and entertaining birds to your property. Hummingbird feeders are sold at most hardware and home-improvement stores and sugar water is easy to make. Just remember: don't add red food coloring to the sugar water and clean out the feeder between fillings. Easiest way to do this at a cabin is to just clean it and fill it once per visit.

2. Leaving brush on your property in a brush pile is great for pollinators like bees that use places like that as nesting sites. It should be noted that bees that are nesting are not the same as bees building a hive. 

3. Create a bug hotel, to house the many beneficial insects that will frequent your garden.

4. Add some sort of decorative dish that can catch rainwater so pollinators can get a drink. Filling the dish with partially submerged pebbles and stones is also helpful to the smaller pollinators like butterflies and bees.

Pollinator water dish. (Photo: TC Daily Planet)

What to Avoid

1. Pesticides and herbicides. Honestly, why you would need to use these at a cabin or vacation home is beyond me. You're not going to be there most of the year anyway, so having less weeds is not going to have a huge impact on your life. If you need to handle a pest problem with pesticides, research which options would be the least harmful to pollinators and the environment. Many chemicals have been found or are thought to be harmful to pollinators, so just skip them if you can and pull out those couple weeds by hand if they're bothering you.

2. Modern hybrid flowers, especially those with double petals. These often are bred only for the blooms and have no pollen, nectar or fragrance.

3. Covering bare soil with landscape fabric. Many pollinators rely on the soil to dig nests, and others like those native weeds that poke up through your perennials. 

There are TONS of design plans for pollinator gardens out there, so go use that Google machine and start planning yours! 

For more resources about creating pollinator habitats, check out the links below!

Creating a Pollinator-Friendly Habitat at Your Cabin

USDA's Gardening for Pollinators

Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center Native Plant Database (find native plants for your region!)

The MN Zoo's Top Native Plants for Pollinator Gardens (for you Minnesotans)

Pollinator Guides by Ecoregion (download a guide specific to your area!)
US Fish and Wildlife Service Pollinators Page (get educated!)
Pollinator Partnership (TONS of resources)

The Pollinator Conservation Resource Center from the Xerces Society

Random Farm Knowledge: Part 1

Working on the organic farm at my university this summer has quickly taught me a lot of things. Lesson Number One is to ask A LOT of questions. I feel like asking questions is part of my job. I've also started to accumulate a lot of random bits of knowledge. Most of this comes from my amazing supervisor who's been with the farm since it started and did her Horticulture undergrad and Ag Education masters at my university. Other stuff comes from trial and error (aka: Abby makes a mistake and then doesn't make that mistake again). This is the first part of the Random Farm Knowledge series that I'll try to do every so often.

1. White Dutch Clover makes an awesome row cover and cover crop. Why spend time weeding pathways when you can just seed it with clover and let that grow up instead? It also makes awesome pollinator habitat and just looks so darn pretty.

2. Cucumbers, watermelons, squashes, zucchini, etc don't like their roots touched. These plants can often be finicky transplants, and a big reason why is that if you touch their roots too much when transplanting, they get kinda upset.

3. You can eat lambsquarters. I've been pulling this weed out of gardens my whole life, not knowing that the small plants can be eaten in salads. Crazy.

4. Speaking of lambsquarters, quinoa is in the same family as the common weed, so herbicides that kill lambsquarters can also harm quinoa.

5. YOU CAN MAKE JELLY OUT OF DANDELIONS!!  You only use the yellow petals and it makes an amazing jelly. Our supervisor made it and we tried it on gingersnaps, which was awesome.

6. You can grow cold-hardy kiwis. So that's pretty awesome.

That's it for now! But hopefully I'll accumulate some more Random Farm Knowledge soon!

How to Graft Your Own Tomatoes

Some of you may have seen grafted tomatoes cropping up in garden centers over the past couple of seasons. But what really is the difference between a grafted tomatoes and non-grafted tomatoes? Grafted tomatoes have turned up for many of the same reasons that we graft other plants. Tomato grafting first because practice in the 1960s when grafting was mainly done to make the tomato plants more disease resistant. Now, grafting is done for a number of different reasons. Sometimes growers graft tomatoes so that they are more resistant to abiotic stresses (salinity, drought, flooding) or they choose rootstocks that are better suited to their growing conditions (soil, temperatures, etc). This hardier rootstock is then attached to a scion (aka "the top part") of a variety that the growers want. In some cases, grafting can also cause the tomato plant to be higher yielding, extending it's growing season at the beginning and the end.

One common factor among grafted tomatoes that you'll see when you're shopping around your garden center this spring is that, usually, these plants are more expensive than your normal tomato plants. For some, the cost is worth it for the higher yield and higher tolerance to several factors. But if you want to try your hand at grafting and skipping the higher prices at the register, here's a step-by-step tutorial for grafting your own tomato plants.

Suddenly, Tomatoes

I may have gotten in a bit over my head today. After potting up tomatoes for the Student Organic Farm here at my university, there were dozens of extras left over. I maaaay have snagged six seedlings on top of the four seedlings I'm already attempting to germinate at home. And, oh yeah, we grafted some tomatoes earlier in class, so that's two more if both the grafts heal. So that's potentially 12 TOMATO PLANTS worth of fruit that I'll have to find something to do with this summer. Anyone know how to can?
There is a reason, however that I snagged all these seedlings. They're really cool varieties that I just couldn't pass up. The best part? All the plants come from organic seeds.

The new plants that have taken up residence on the kitchen windowsill are:

Sunrise Bumblebee: Props to whoever named this one because there's no way you could forget a tomato name like that.

Fox Cherry: This one you can find through Seeds of Change and is a vine variety.

Lemonade: Sadly, it's very difficult to find a picture of this tomato. Google only gives me recipes for tomato lemonade. It'd be helpful if I could remember what company supplies it, but I saw a seed packet once a month or so ago...


Indigo Rose: I'm really excited to grow a deep purple (or black, since that sounds more impressive) tomato. Another exciting part is anthocyanins, the chemical that causes the dark color, are powerful anti-oxidants.


Sun Sugar: This tomato has been named a favorite for sweetness and is an incredibly vigorous producer. 

Striped Roman: This one not only looks awesome, but is the best sauce tomato the farm grows.

So, as you can tell, I'm pretty excited about growing all of these varieties. On top of these, if those grafted tomatoes hold up, I'll have Marvel Striped tomatoes to add to the list. I also just started some regular Roma tomatoes and some Amana Orange from seeds I already had. It's going to be a big tomato fest this summer and I can't wait to get started!

How To See London in One Week

I figured that I would wrap up my London posts with a final post on how you can make the most out of a trip to London. I only spent around a week (well, more like 9 days) in London but I saw SO much stuff. Once you orient yourself in the city, getting around is easy and quick, making seeing a lot of sights simple. If you look at the list and think "There's no way to do all that in a week", trust me. I did most of it in 4 or 5 days because 4 of my 8 days there were partially taken up by teaching in classrooms. Keep reading to find a few of my sight-seeing recommendations that you can fit into a week-long trip.

Visiting Kew Gardens

After our first day of teaching, our group journeyed a few tube stops further to visit Kew Gardens. This Royal Horticulture Society Garden is AMAZING. We only had time for two of the glass houses, the palm house and the Princess of Wales Conservatory, and only a small fraction of the garden. It's just so big! And the highlight was the private tour we got to take of the science division (no pictures of that, sadly) and their MASSIVE herbarium. 

Free Day 1: Exploring London

Our first full day was a free day that we filled with some of the most popular sights in London. My feet hurt from walking but we saw the changing of the Guard at Buckingham Palace, The National Gallery, Big Ben and Westminster Abbey. I also had my first fish and chips meal of the trip along with hard apple cider. I'm not legally able to drink in the states so that was super fun for me. :)

England Post #1: Wisley Gardens

Hello everyone!
I've been back from my trip to England for a few weeks already, but I took so many pictures that it took me that long to find time to go through all of them. So this is the first of a long series of photo posts where I'll share most of what I saw while over in England. This trip was for a class titled "Successful School Gardens" and there were several days in which we went into schools to teach children about gardening topics and the importance of horticulture. We did, however, have several free days and a few group outings to famous gardens around London.
This first post is all my pictures from our first destination: Wisley Gardens. We literally got off the plane and got on a bus to go to Wisley and it had to be the best cure for jet lag EVER. The day was warm and sunny and felt just that much better since we had come from below freezing weather to mid-60s weather. Or whatever that is in Celsius...
So enjoy the pictures! I'll have much more for you soon!

The Minnesota Schoolyard Gardens Conference

This past Friday I had the amazing opportunity to attend the Minnesota Schoolyard Gardens Conference at the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum. I was even more lucky to have my attendance paid for by my university department. The whole conference was incredibly eye-opening to me because until now I haven't really been terribly sure where I want to go with my degree. Hearing all the speakers and connecting with people in the field that is schoolyard garden education has given me a better focus on what I might be able to do for a career. I've always known that educating people about growing their own food and helping them learn about how to care for the earth was something I wanted to pursue. Now I'm not only affirmed in that, but I have been given more of a direction towards what I might be able to do specifically.

The day started out in the largest hall in the Arboretum where, from 8:30 to 11:30, all of the attendees listened to a few short speeches (two of which were given by the heads of the State Department of Agriculture and the State Department of Education) and the keynote speaker, John Fisher of Life Lab. He not only had some amazing stories about what that organization had accomplished, but also really drove home why we need to reconnect kids to where their food comes from. Kids who grow their own food are much more likely to eat that food. Doesn't matter if it's strawberries or arugula. Kids who garden also have a much better understanding of nutrition which is incredibly important in a country where 17% of youth are obese. Gardens also introduce curiosity into their classes which, in turn, fuel the 4 C's: Creativity, Critical Thinking, Communication and Collaboration. After John Fisher, a young entrepreneur from the Twin Cities, Immanuel Jones spoke about his venture, Eco City. It was incredibly inspiring for me to see someone my age going out and starting a movement to get kids in not the best area of town back to the earth and growing food for themselves and their families.

After the first half of the conference was over, we broke for lunch. This was a great time to sit down and discuss the opening speakers with my classmates and explore the Arboretum visitor center a little more. A few rooms were reserved for organizations and schools that set up tables and presentations so we browsed those and got some awesome free stuff along the way. Some seed catalogs, a gorgeously bound copy of the Minnesota Agriculture in the Classroom School Gardening curriculum, free zuchetta seeds, and some promotional material. I also explored their little glass conservatory where tons of orchids were in bloom. I've included my pictures at the end of the post.

See more below!!

The rest of the afternoon was organized into three sessions where you could choose which talk you wanted to attend. The first presentation I went to was by the garden educator for the Columbia Heights School District. She talked about you can literally teach everything with a garden. Math, English, sciences of course and social studies in a garden in very creative ways. The second session was partially presented by Midwest Food Connection and was part presentation, part brainstorming session about how you can incorporate diversity and culture into a school garden. Both of these presentations were incredibly eye-opening to me because it shows how creative you can get with a school garden and still teach to the graduations standards of your home state.

I also met some really incredible people from all over the state and country. Emily Kitchen from Cornell University connected me to an awesome group of people who've organized themselves into the group Emergent on Facebook. The garden educator from Columbia Heights really gave me a good idea of what I might have to do to with my education to get into a field like this (can you say teaching license and Master Gardener certification?).
If you're interested in learning more about school gardens, look up your local school districts and see if they're doing projects to get gardens into their schools and districts and if they need help doing so. In the meantime, enjoy my pictures from the arboretum.

One of my favorites: The Happy Dancer orchid.

The main lobby of the arboretum visitor center.

Fairy gardens!

A Garden Journal

While reading the gardening books I got from the library this week, I found so many ideas and snippets of useful information, I knew I was never going to remember them all. I found the solution to my problem when one of the books suggested creating a garden journal. Using a barely used sketchbook I found in the piles of notebooks and drawings in my room, I finally had a place to write, keep all the information, ideas and projects I was finding. I also can keep journal entries to track plants I'm growing, record observations on projects and plant growth and plan out future gardening endeavor.

 

Inspiration taken out of Better Homes and Gardens magazines.

I've jotted down lots of clever ideas for starting seeds, plants I had no idea were edible and projects for some point in the future when I have the time and the space for them. I've also gathered up all of my mom's old "Better Home's and Gardens" magazines and ripped out and included gorgeous garden photos for inspiration and smaller plant pictures for decoration in my journal. A few pages are also devoted to recipes that I've found in the gardening books.

 

Some ideas and facts about tomatoes. 

The biggest bonus about keeping a journal is, however, having a place to write down those hard to remember varieties or to-do list so when it slips your mind later, you can go back and find it. This can be really helpful when you're off to the greenhouse or garden center and can't for the life of you remember that tomato cultivar or that variety of hydrangea you wanted to try. I know that I'm terribly forgetful when it comes to things like this, so I think the journal will be able to help me keep my head on straight.

 

Some herbs categorized by different flavors.

I'm having a lot of fun with it and would recommend making one to anyone who hasn't already. I'm definitely not the first person to think of keeping a journal for gardening ideas and garden planning, but I'm certainly a fan after having so much fun making mine. Since I like to draw my plants as well as grow and write about them, I'm using a sketchbook with large, blank pages and lots of room to write, draw and plan. I'd recommend this if you think you'll be sketching your future garden ideas. I love journals and sketchbooks because they can be as different as their writers are different. You can have one as simple as plant names and the dates you planted them, or as complex as conglomerations of pictures, plans, recipes and inspiration for gardens you'd like to have years in the future.