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Turn your backyard into a biodiversity hotspot

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Re: Turn your backyard into a biodiversity hotspot

#191

Post by kaitai »

bmitc wrote: post #3

After getting a house with a decent sized yard and trees, I have been having a lot of fun with planting native plants. While my neighbors are cutting down trees, which is honestly hard to watch, and paying landscapers to plant non-native plants, I'm spending a lot of time researching and planting native plants. It is honestly one of the more fulfilling things to walk outside and see all sorts of bees, butterflies, mo…

The Nature Conservancy had a recent article in its magazine about the change in bloom time for many natives (based on temperature) and the difficulty that can cause for migrating birds and for animals (whose schedules may be based on length of day). For this reason, I am moving away from native-only to a more utilitarian approach. (And don't get me wrong, I have scores of native plants in my very small yard.) I am thinking more about native-nearby plants and plants that may feed wildlife at adjacent times. So maybe it's best to have several types of milkweed that bloom at different times, as someone else noted below.

I'm in the Midwest and I'll also note the adage that many of our natives follow "sleep, creep, leap". Year 1, you'll be like "damn is this stuff even growing, this sucks" and year 2 you'll say "well I guess it came back? maybe?" and year 3 you'll say "it's starting to look nice here!"

I'm also taking a slightly heterodox approach in that I am mixing in non-native edibles with glee (I've got at least 6 kinds of berry bush for instance, some native some not). The weight is still on natives, but I've been influenced by, who, Todd Hemenway?? who pointed out that the ecological impact of shipping berries from far-away lands is much worse than the ecological impact of having berry bush that's well-behaved and not native. Similarly, there are very few non-native plants I try to abolish anymore. Instead to the best of my ability I eat them. It is extraordinary how many plants can be eaten. From Japanese knotweed (cook it like rhubarb in sweets, or stir-fry) to hops to daisies (eat young like arugula) to garlic mustard (great pesto) to hostas (nice asparagus-like flavor when roasted or sautéed young). I'm not introducing these, not at all, but when they appear I don't get xenophobic, I get dinner. Which also sounds kind of creepy. But what I mean is that I'm not digging up my echinacea to use the roots medicinally; I don't have enough plants to do so sustainably yet -- but I sure am serving 6 linear feet worth of hostas at a dinner party.

Re: Turn your backyard into a biodiversity hotspot

#192

Post by hosh »

kaitai wrote: post #191
bmitc wrote: post #3

After getting a house with a decent sized yard and trees, I have been having a lot of fun with planting native plants. While my neighbors are cutting down trees, which is honestly hard to watch, and paying landscapers to plant non-native plants, I'm spending a lot of time researching and planting native plants. It is honestly one of the more fulfilling things to walk outside and see all sorts of bees, butterflies, mo…

The Nature Conservancy had a recent article in its magazine about the change in bloom time for many natives (based on temperature) and the difficulty that can cause for migrating birds and for animals (whose schedules may be based on length of day). For this reason, I am moving away from native-only to a more utilitarian approach. (And don't get me wrong, I have scores of native plants in my very small yard.) I am th…

Yup. It’s more about the connections the inhabitants of an ecosystem has to each other. Something that yields something edible or useful for humans is also a part of this.

Our role as humans is not some ideal, “untouched”, “pristine” Nature, as if human activity and design necessarily spoils Nature. I think a more sensible perspective is that humans are stewards of the land, and there are yields for humans and the non-human inhabitants. It’s that our civilization has been terrible stewards, not that we are incapable of being good stewards. We can care for the land and people, and still get our fair share.

Re: Turn your backyard into a biodiversity hotspot

#194

Post by hackernewds »

culi wrote: post #190
neonnoodle wrote: post #103

During the process of buying our house, one of the disclosures was that the house has a huge inground swimming pool, but some aspect of the plumbing was broken, and nobody knew how much it might cost to repair. So, as-is. Nobody in our house swims, and the costs of repairing and running the pool would be excessive. At first I thought about having it drained and either removed or converted to some kind of outbuilding…

Yeah if you get a sufficiently thriving ecosystem going mosquito control deals with itself. But, especially if you live anywhere near the tropics or subtropics, I'd make sure to keep updated on West Nile Virus and other less common ones like dengue, zika, etc

ponds are also notorious bacteria harvesting stations. pond water is in fact used as a source for lab bacteria testing

Re: Turn your backyard into a biodiversity hotspot

#195

Post by hackernewds »

SCUSKU wrote: post #104
neonnoodle wrote: post #103

During the process of buying our house, one of the disclosures was that the house has a huge inground swimming pool, but some aspect of the plumbing was broken, and nobody knew how much it might cost to repair. So, as-is. Nobody in our house swims, and the costs of repairing and running the pool would be excessive. At first I thought about having it drained and either removed or converted to some kind of outbuilding…

I spent part of my childhood in rural Japan and during the summers would fall asleep to the sound of hundreds of frogs croaking in the rice paddies. It was a great lullaby for me, it sounds like a great thing to have in your backyard!

Tell that to folks in the Big Island of Hawaii that understand "coqui" frogs (given the sound) as pests that have overwhelmed the whole ecosystem. They are REALLY loud and cankerous, especially every night

Re: Turn your backyard into a biodiversity hotspot

#196

Post by hackernewds »

bmitc wrote: post #3

After getting a house with a decent sized yard and trees, I have been having a lot of fun with planting native plants. While my neighbors are cutting down trees, which is honestly hard to watch, and paying landscapers to plant non-native plants, I'm spending a lot of time researching and planting native plants. It is honestly one of the more fulfilling things to walk outside and see all sorts of bees, butterflies, mo…

> I think one should actually take a relatively hardline approach to planting only native plants.

Why?

Re: Turn your backyard into a biodiversity hotspot

#197

Post by rb666 »

hackernewds wrote: post #194
culi wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah if you get a sufficiently thriving ecosystem going mosquito control deals with itself. But, especially if you live anywhere near the tropics or subtropics, I'd make sure to keep updated on West Nile Virus and other less common ones like dengue, zika, etc

ponds are also notorious bacteria harvesting stations. pond water is in fact used as a source for lab bacteria testing

You know, you don't need to drink from or swim in the pond right?

Re: Turn your backyard into a biodiversity hotspot

#198

Post by raffraffraff »

My wife puts a lot of effort into this type of thing. She reads about declining species in Ireland - butterflies, moths, birds in particular - and plants weeds, wildflowers and bushes that they live on. It's almost like magic, or Minecraft, that we suddenly have goldfinches, cinnabar butterflies (and their lovely caterpillars) and lots of amazing moths that we've never seen before. How did they find out about those weeds so quickly? It's like they got auto-generated by the system.

It's addictive.

Re: Turn your backyard into a biodiversity hotspot

#199

Post by caskstrength »

ilyt wrote: post #19
bmitc wrote: post #3

After getting a house with a decent sized yard and trees, I have been having a lot of fun with planting native plants. While my neighbors are cutting down trees, which is honestly hard to watch, and paying landscapers to plant non-native plants, I'm spending a lot of time researching and planting native plants. It is honestly one of the more fulfilling things to walk outside and see all sorts of bees, butterflies, mo…

Yeah, I also don't understand appeal of "just a square of land filled with immaculate lawn and not much else. It's essentially space wasted for nothing.

> Yeah, I also don't understand appeal of "just a square of land filled with immaculate lawn and not much else. It's essentially space wasted for nothing.

The American custom of manicured lawns has always been quite incomprehensible to me. A lot of people in eastern Europe have dachas or live in SFH in suburbs but they tend to have some trees around the house for both comfort (provides shade in summer) and aesthetic reasons.

Re: Turn your backyard into a biodiversity hotspot

#200

Post by caskstrength »

onos wrote: post #64
bmitc wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you not understand about it? Just trying to address any specific questions you might have. Here's some bullet points I've collected in my head. I'm not an expert and am still learning. See the links below. Planting native plants: - reduces watering and fertilization needs, if not removing them, because native plants are built for the area they're planted in - attracts native insects, which further attracts na…

Thanks for your response. I’ll think on your points. FWIW, In my area of the world I hear about non natives being bad but they often seem to grow very well, eg in the wild. So it seems to me that they are often well suited to the local environment. The concern then seems to me to be an implicit preference for what was already here over new comers. To me, seems a bit “anti immigrant” and I just can’t relate. I definit…

> FWIW, In my area of the world I hear about non natives being bad but they often seem to grow very well, eg in the wild. So it seems to me that they are often well suited to the local environment. The concern then seems to me to be an implicit preference for what was already here over new comers. To me, seems a bit “anti immigrant” and I just can’t relate.

This seems like a plot of some South Park episode or Onion news article TBH.

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