Extension News: May 2011 Archives
Rock-Chopper
by Meg Downey Hardy, UNH Cooperative Extension Master Gardener
When I was little, I was the black sheep of my family because I loved to explore the world outside. I remember in fourth grade we had the traditional study of rocks and minerals. I became enrapt with collecting rocks to chop. Before chopping, I wrapped each rock in a rag so that chips wouldn't fly into my eyes.
Having a hammer gave me power. I thought I could do anything if I had the power to break rocks. Rock-chopping brought me comfort for reasons I never thought to analyze.
I proudly carried around my self-made collection kit containing a hammer, a magnifying glass, a dull knife, rags to wrap the rocks in and an egg carton for organizing. I felt like a real scientist as I used my magnifying glass and consulted my mini field guide so I could label my precious collection
I had a rock-chopping desk on a large flat rock of the stone wall behind our house. Yes, as a nine-year- old, I had an office, or should I say a laboratory. Powerful and smart, I spent many hours alone collecting, chopping, identifying, and labeling.
Rocks were my friends. They spoke to me, but not to my three sisters or my best friend, Joan. They didn't want to scour the neighborhood to find rocks to chop and catalog. Sitting at a rock desk on a stone wall seemed dumb to them. It didn't matter. For a year or so I had to work among my treasured rocks.
I still find myself picking up rocks to bring home. The little girl in me still searches for unique rocks, thinking that maybe I'll uncover hidden treasure on the trails of New Hampshire.
I miss my rocks in the winter. When the snow begins to melt, our New England rock walls begin to emerge from their cover. Gradually, the multitude of rocks along trails and in my garden reappears. For seven or eight months I will have another of nature's wonders to pick up, look at, and either toss or bring home to add to my adult rock collection.
Lucky rocks, with rings of white quartz all the way around them, no break. Skipping rocks, flat and thin; just the right proportion of size, shape and weight to hurl at the water. How many skips? Only one? What a dud. Did I pick wrong or throw wrong? Mr. Wilson, a family friend, taught us how to skip during one of our annual breakfast picnics.
Every year I seem to find a different type of rock beckoning to me, catching my attention, drawing it away from competing rocks. Last year it was black mica shining in the sun, forcing me to stop to stoop down; shocked that the thin slices of mica held together against their host rock despite the many times they were trampled by hikers.
Previously I was drawn to any rock with colored quartz. Pinks, greens, and purples made me wonder, even as an adult, if these rocks were valuable to someone besides me. Maybe the pinks or the greens or the purples were gems hiding in New England for people to find.
I enthusiastically brought them home and bubbled with excitement to my husband about their beauty and their possible worth. He just laughed and told me that I was saving too much stuff from nature and asked when I would stop lugging things home.
I still have those rocks, and I still wonder if I have priceless gems waiting for someone to acknowledge.
As a teacher, science unit or not, I read the children's picture book by Byrd Baylor, Everybody Needs a Rock, to every class I have. My copy of Baylor's 1974 book shows the wear and tear of a beloved object. It has survived the annual purging of books we do as a family so our attic floor doesn't collapse. In fact, it's one of the few children's books I save limited shelf space for in the house.
I like stumbling upon the book, often at the perfect time. The illustrations by Peter Parnall inspire peace, so I go back to the book again and again and I share it with anyone who is open to its 10 rules for finding a rock.
Rule Number Ten is, "Don't ask anybody to help you choose. I've seen a lizard pick one rock out of a desert full of rocks and go sit there alone. I've seen a snail pass up twenty rocks and spend all day getting to the one it wanted. You have to make up your own mind. You'll know."
Do you have a rock? Do you need one?
Material Too Good to Throw Away
by Bill Dawson, UNH Cooperative Extension Master Gardener
Most of us throw away a lot of material that could be recycled and put to a new use around the house and grounds.
For instance, I no longer take newspapers to be recycled at the transfer station. About five years ago, I found a unique shredder at the local office-supply store. It looks a bit like a big harmonica, about 14 inches long and four inches wide. It has a sort of smiley mouth that you can feed paper into and watch as it chews its way through the newsprint. Out the underside come quarter-inch strips.
I have the shredder mounted on a tall box that I designed expressly for it. I place a kitchen trash bag inside the box that just fits the chamber with a little bag left over to drape it over the top of the box before I mount the shredder over the top. Once I have a bag full of quarter-inch strips, I begin the mixing part of my recycling process.
During the warm seasons I go directly to my compost set-up with the paper. I lay down a good layer of the strips mixed with shredded leaves from my yard. In goes a layer of grass clippings from the lawn, maybe some weed tops (I don't add the roots), and whatever green prunings I have that day. From under the sink I retrieve a large coffee can of kitchen scraps and add them to the mix. The coffee can usually contains a mixture of kitchen scraps and, of course, coffee grounds.
To make all this material "cook" properly I usually add a generous amount of horse manure that I get from a neighbor at no cost. The manure has been mixed with sawdust and some grass clippings and allowed to age for a year or so. The final ingredient is water.
I go through this layering process once a week during the growing season.
There's a bit of labor involved. I have to turn the product until it's done, as the cooks say. There are commercial products with crank handles available that would lighten the work.
None of that for me! I do the required labor the traditional way. It keeps me in shape and gets me out outside into the sun.
I've constructed a two-chamber composting system. There is a rather large stump of in the corner of my lot. The loggers cut it off about three feet above the ground. With salvaged lumber, I built two chambers; one on either side of the stump and slightly taller than the stump.
To facilitate the turning process, I installed some drop-down doors on hinges. When it's time, I drop one door and flip the product over the top of the stump and into the other chamber.
Just before the leaves begin to fall in September, I do what I call the sifting process. I have a small trailer that I pull behind my lawn tractor. I built a screening frame that fits snugly against the sides and is hooked to the front of the trailer end. I scoop well-rotted but still-coarse compost material onto the screen with quarter-inch mesh and separate the fine material from the coarser stuff.
Thus separated, the fine material goes into covered trash cans next to the bins. I use it in the spring at planting and potting time, usually mixing it in equal parts with some screened loam. Great stuff for raised beds and for side-dressing flower beds.
In the winter I use a different process. In my unheated garage, I have a couple of regular trash cans situated so I don't hit them with the cars or the snow blower. These receive the shredded paper and the material from the coffee can under the sink. To make sure there isn't too much of a mess or stench on warm days, I line the cans with large trash bags.
Sometime in April, I wheel my garbage cans to the compost bin with my hand truck, drop the door and dump the bag into the bin. Once the bag is in the bin, I slit it open and mix the contents with materials already in the bin.
As it warms up in the spring, the neighbors who subscribe to another lawn-care philosophy have mounds of grass clippings they want removed as soon as possible. Enter Bill with his trailer to accommodate them.
I also use the shredder attachment on my leaf blower to reduce my piles of raked leaves to provide a good balance of materials for my compost operation. I usually sprinkle on a gallon or so of lime and some wood ash if available, add water, and go off to plant some flowers while nature takes its course.
Photo credit: paperfacets, Some rights reserved.
Mud
by Helen Downing, UNH Cooperative Extension Master Gardener
Here's mud in your eye, don't muddy the water, stick-in-the-mud, stuck in the mud, slinging mud, your name will be mud, mud pies...
Mud is the glue that binds winter to spring. When it's gone, spring really begins. Although traditionally we think of mud season as a transition between winter and spring, some people even consider it a season in its own right.
Sometimes, in particularly wet years, the mud never totally dries out. Humans have little tolerance for wet summers: Black flies and mosquitoes looking for donors. Ticks dropping from shrubs and trees. Slugs penetrating our gardens, making dainty foliage lacework. Fungi spotting and splattering leaves and flowers. All of it brings gardeners to their knees.
In pre-modern times, mud was everywhere in spring. Traveling often meant following muddy river banks on foot, or "shank's mare." Since a pair of shoes was an expensive purchase, bare feet did the walking and shoes did the "talking" by making a good impression upon arrival.
Children today still consider mud between their toes and fingers a treat, stomping in it, scooping it in their hands, making it into mud pies and balls, gleefully smearing it on buildings, faces, and clothes.
My grandson Oscar experienced "stuck in the mud" at kindergarten one day. Rather than risk losing his boot, he yelped for help, and a nearby "muddy buddy" gingerly galumphed to his rescue. We have all experienced the feeling of being swallowed by the earth as we walked or cavorted in the mud. Especially when small, this can be an unsettling experience. In Oscar's world, spring is an "untrustworthy" season.
Ducks of the puddle-duck family (such as mallards) love mud. Eons ago, they adapted to their watery homes and learned to forage for tiny invertebrates that live in mud, even eating an occasional frog. Anyone who has ever kept ducks knows their love affair with mud. In ponds and lakes we often see them tipped bottoms-up to avail themselves of the delicacies below.
In America birds such as the barn swallow and cliff swallow use mud and mix it with their own saliva to make their nests adhere to shelf-like structures on buildings or cliffs. They might even find an eave of your barn or house a suitable place to nest.
If this bothers you, hold on: Did you know that there is a fine of up to $15,000 and a possible sentence of up to six months in jail for removing the eggs or destroying the occupied nest of a migratory bird? Alternatively, put up chicken wire around overhangs to prevent swallows from nesting up and under eaves.
Since both of these mud-loving birds also eat mosquitoes and other flying insects, you might weigh the advantages of having these flying insect-catchers as neighbors against the temporary inconvenience they might cause.
Last spring rain was abundant, and a small pond formed in a low-lying area my husband was excavating to bury a culvert for drainage. As the pond formed and my husband waited for drier weather to work outside, the cedar waxwings swooped back and forth drinking from the man-made pond.
That experience impressed upon us the importance of water and its companion, mud. It inspired us to create a rain garden nearby to collect water that drains at the base of a forested slope. Strictly speaking, this is an area built to aid storm-water drain while sustaining shrubs and other moisture-loving plants. It may not hold water until fall but in spring and early summer, it becomes nirvana for the birds who've returned ready to set up housekeeping.
The small four and six-legged creatures of spring find muddy, wet places divine. For a short time only, they lay eggs, their young hatch, and begin life in water. Only later, when the water has evaporated and the tiny young have morphed to an adult stage, are they ready to repeat the same patterns their parents have followed for generations, first upon the land and then later, in these same vernal pools.
There are many types of salamanders, including a large aquatic species called mud puppies. The amphibious salamanders and many insects that lay their eggs in streams and pools will travel from their winter homes beneath the frozen mud, and once they have left their progeny upon water, retire to summer shelters.
Since pools like these evaporate with summer's approach, the obvious advantage is clear: no fish to eat the tiny salamander and insect babies. Even though this is a major advantage, there remain others who might find these eggs delicious.
Frogs, turtles, and even larger insects, some that hatch from the same pools as the salamanders, will find them and partake, teaching us a clear lesson in nature: more is often better. Hopefully, of the prolific number of eggs, enough will survive. Here's to mud in your eye!
Photo credit: timparkinson. Some rights reserved.
Nest Building
By Susan M. Poirier, UNH Cooperative Extension Master Gardener, Carroll County
From the treadmill I can view a corner of the beaver swamp behind the house. The heron nests are hidden from this angle, but I can often see the birds themselves as they work on their aerial structures.
In mid-March the first bird returns and stakes out a nest. Despite the work of winter storms, the nests, which appear to be no more than flimsy stacks of broken, dead branches, are still intact. The early returnees get first pick of the nests. Those which have been used for five or six years now are significantly larger than those newly constructed in the last year or two.
Once the females return (I assume, though I don't know for sure, that the early arrivals are males), the nests get spruced up. A male flies off to a dead tree. Using his strong beak, he breaks off a branch and returns with it to the nest. He sets it down. I've watched while a female eyed the branch and then gave her assent for mating. Afterwards, she took the branch and arranged it carefully into the collection.
The finishing touch seems to be small pine branches. Once again a bird flies off in search of a tall pine. Now I can clearly see the action, as one pine is directly in line with the window. A landing on a branch, a stretch of the neck, then a pull, and a branch is broken off. From the ground, it's easy to see which nests are occupied even if I can't see the female on the eggs. If the nest has sprigs of green showing, I know that nest is in use.
Back and forth the birds fly, for more than an hour each morning. Lots of trips to dead branches mean a new nest is being built. Trips to pine trees mean mating has occurred. By the middle of April, several herons are sitting on nests while others are still standing guard at their nests, waiting and watching. Last spring, the final nests of the season were being built in mid-May.
After my morning exercise on the treadmill, I head downstairs for breakfast. The dining room faces the front of the house, and from there I watch a robin as it starts its nest.
Robin nests are very different from heron nests, and not just in size. The herons appear to use only dead branches (with a dressing of pine). How do they ever get that collection of dead wood to remain stable, staying on the tops of swaying trees even in storms, and hold two to four large youngsters? It's amazing! Dead branches can't be woven together the way supple small live branches can be.
I've stood on winter ice beneath the nests and seen daylight showing through. I just don't understand how they manage to remain intact.
The robin's nest makes far more sense. It's constructed of much finer material, glued together and to the branch with mud. Now think about this: the robin has no bucket or wheelbarrow and no hands, so every bit of mud must be carried in its beak.
Thousands of trips from a mud puddle to the nest, back and forth and back and forth, one dab at a time. Imagine if you were building a brick wall and had to carry each brick singularly and from a distance. The labor involved is immense.
The mud, of course, is only part of the story. The nest is started with strands of material, including dead grass, string, peeling bark; whatever fibers the robin can find, remove, and carry. Once I watched a robin pulling repeatedly at a length of string still attached to a fence post in the raspberry bed. It grabbed the string in its beak, flew up, and then...back to square one. Finally I got some scissors and cut that string.
Today's robin had found a nice strand of something about eight or nine inches long. It flew to a low branch of a fir, looked around quickly, then went up into a hidden part of the tree. All day long that robin will work, and by tomorrow it will have a nice cozy nest. Twice, robins have nested above the bay window in the dining room. We had a wonderful view of the nest-building process. A few trips to the nest, then a quick break to hunt for food, followed by a return to nest-building.
It's easy to see why it is illegal to move an active nest or to collect used birds' nests. The amount of labor involved is extreme and it's all done after the arduous migration back from winter quarters. Do the birds a favor: Watch from a distance, don't disturb, and leave the nests alone.
Something's Bruin
by Carol White, UNH Cooperative Extension Master Gardener
"Something's bruin in New Hampshire." I have the bumper sticker hanging in the guest bedroom under a series of pictures of our native black bears. I should have added the tagline, Meet the neighbors. We have a large family of black bears for neighbors. At least I consider a mom with four yearling cubs to be a large family.
The bears went to bed late last fall and apparently rose early this spring. Usually we have the feeders in before the bears are up and about, but this year we were guilty of providing sunflower snacks to the yearling bears. At least they were healthy snacks.
We were very slow to catch on to what was happening. My husband and I were standing on the deck at dusk, wondering what was upsetting Summer, our German Shepherd, when John commented, "Isn't there something missing?" Indeed, the wire suet feeder was gone. Not chewed, not empty, just gone. I blamed raccoons.
A couple of hours later Summer growled. John flipped on the outside lights to illuminate a young black bear sneaking along the base of the deck, obviously headed for the snack bar. The lights confused him and he scooted up the slight ridge immediately behind the house to hide behind a tree maybe 25 feet away from the deck.
John went out to clap his hands and shoo the bear away. The bear simply "oofed" back at him. Summer was going ballistic, dashing back and forth between me and the now-closed sliding door. She was bellowing, "He's out there with BEARS. With bears! What is wrong with you people? How can I protect him if I'm locked in here? Argggh!"
John re-entered and explained to Summer that the situation was under control, reducing her to grumbling under her breath. Then he fetched our box of M100 firecrackers. We two humans stepped out on the deck, matches and fireworks in hand.
John lit the first M100 and tossed it towards the slope, not too near the bear. Said bear was peering at us from behind a large hemlock, but only the midsection of Bruno was hidden. Not very effective, but neither was the M100. It made a "pop" that was quieter than a cork exiting a bottle of cheap champagne and did nothing to discourage the bear. A second M100 likewise piffled out.
At this point, the dog and the cat were craning their necks, looking out the glass door trying to discover what we were doing. The dog has a low opinion of our ability to protect ourselves. The cat has a low opinion of our abilities period. The bear was undecided.
John, in his capacity as Chief Engineer was annoyed and went inside to revamp the plan. As I stood in the now-quiet night, I realized that we didn't have a bear, but multiple bears. At least one other youngster was now up in a tree to my left and I was quite, quite sure that the crunching brush noises from the other side of the ridge were yet another bear.
Enter the Chief Engineer with Plan B, a portable high-wattage floodlight and a fresh box containing strings of firecrackers. We flipped on the light and tossed several strings of 'crackers toward the not-very-hidden bear and another string off to the left to share the excitement. Exit bears at a high rate of speed, snapping branches as they descended from trees and fled over the ridge. We heard brush crashing down the back of our ridge, through the swale and over the next ridge.
We and the bears have achieved a modus vivendi. I can have my hummingbird feeder, but I must bring it in at night. The one time I forgot, a bear politely unscrewed the bottle of nectar from its base, leaving the two pieces unharmed except for minor scratches. Not wanting to help a good bear go bad, I am now scrupulous about bringing in the feeder.
In the very early mornings when Summer tries to herd me away from the slope going down to the deepest, brushiest woods, I figure she knows her job, and I stay in my own yard. Let sleeping bears lie, I say.
Photo credit:Beth Sadler. Some rights reserved.
