The insects everyone is seeing flying between the portables and hanging on the outside portable walls are craneflies. Some of the kids are saying that they are mosquitoes, but they are definitely not. There are other people that call crane flies, “Skeeter eaters”. They think that this insect feeds on mosquitoes. This is not exactly true either.
Craneflies are an insect in the family Tipulidae. The larvae live in damp or soggy ground or stagnant water. The larvae look like tan or gray grubs . Terrestrial crane fly larvae that live in the ground feed on roots of plants. Aquatic crane fly larvae live in water and can eat dead plant material or even other aquatic larvae like mosquito larvae depending on the species. The adult craneflies definitely don’t bite people or other animals. They only live for 10-15 days and if they eat anything at this stage of their life cycle it’s nectar from flowers. As adults the only thing they do is reproduce and lay eggs in soil or water.
Whether our craneflies at the school are aquatic or terrestrial I’m not sure, but there’s a good chance they could be either. The soil between the portables stays damp from the condensation that flows out of our air conditioners. But there is also a sump – a drainage area that collects excess water runoff – behind the 5th grade portables and with the constant wet conditions and aquatic plants that choke the sitting water, it seems like a perfect environment for aquatic craneflies. In fact, it might be a very good thing that we have these insects on our school grounds since that wet, stagnant water is exactly what mosquitoes like to lay eggs in and it’s possible that our cranefly friends are eating their babies!
In any case, there is no reason to be afraid of these long-legged flying insects. They won’t hurt us and they might even be helping to pollinate our flower and vegetable gardens if they stop for a drink of nectar!
And don’t forget that craneflies are food for other animals! I’ve heard red winged blackbirds in the sump area and I’m sure many of the other birds that live on our school grounds and the surrounding neighborhood use these insects as a food source. I’m familiar with craneflies because they are sometimes found in trout streams where the fish love to eat their big juicy larvae! If you’re interested in fishing, check out this web site. It shows how to make an artificial fly that imitates this insect that you can use to catch fish!
This morning I took a walk around the school to check on all of our gardens to see how everything is growing now that the weather is warming up.
The first place I stopped was the 6′ x 6′ garden bed on the side of the building closest to the Spanish portable. This bed was filled with Dixie Mix back in the Fall and planted with yellow cabbage collards, red Russian kale, a giant Fielderkraut cabbage, and a lot of radishes. We pulled out the radishes earlier this year and they didn’t seem to have done very well. This was probably because of the amount of nitrogen in Dixie Mix. Root vegetables do not need a lot of nitrogen. To encourage root development we add potassium and maybe try to reduce the amount of nitrogen in the soil by not fertilizing.
Looking at this bed now, anyone can tell that it is overrun with mushrooms! The cabbage collards and red Russian kale (leafy green vegetables) that should have grown really fast due to the high nitrogen content of the soil have not grown well at all! What happened?
Well, the presence of mushrooms shows that there are too many wood chips in this soil mix. These mushrooms are saprotrophic – that means that the fungus that produces them feeds on dead wood. The process of breaking down wood in soil often uses up nitrogen, so that may be why our leafy greens didn’t grow well this season. The mushrooms are decomposers, so they are helping to break down the wood in the soil which is a good thing. Unfortunately the mushrooms are also NOT edible!
To fix the imbalance in this soil we will do a few things. First we will let these mushrooms do their thing and help to decompose the wood in the soil and then decompose themselves back into the soil. Then we will add another type of fungal spore to the bed – mycorrhizal fungus spores. The fungus that grows from these spores will send out hyphae – thin filaments like roots – into the soil where they will seek out and decompose organic material like dead plant matter and wood and then connect to the roots of our plants so they can transport the nutrients they create from the decaying plant matter directly to the plants in the garden.
Finally I think we are going to change our plans for what we are going to grow in this spot. I was hoping to grow lots of vegetables in this plot, but now while Mrs. Bennett-Brown’s class has planted their lima beans here (and we are going to put up a trellis for them to climb and hope they do OK in this soil), this summer we will most likely make this a bed of sunflowers to keep something with a large root system growing here as the fungus help break down the wood chips.
I have to say that I am disappointed in the Dixie Mix we used. I have used this soil for years and never had a problem with it. I used to call it “rocket fuel for plants”. This batch definitely had a problem. I only hope that the material they composted to make it was not sprayed with any herbicides. More and more store-bought compost and soil mix is being found to be affected by herbicide chemicals as companies use waste wood chips or leaves and grass clippings that have been sprayed with herbicide when they make their compost that is added to bags of soil mix. It is a big problem!
Next I took a walk to see the flowers at the front door and the kale and peas we have growing in the planter boxes in front of the school. The flowers are holding up well – especially the dark pink and white cyclamen flowers and the pink dianthus. The dianthus will be transplanted to one of our flower gardens when we change the flowers out of the pots at the front door and they are perennial so they should come back year after year.
The peas are looking good! The bed on the left side of the front walk and the first one to the right are Beauregard Purple Snow Peas. They are growing now and should start wrapping their tendrils around the wire of our accordion trellises by next week. The box outside the Kindergarten classrooms far to the right of the front walk has an extra tall trellis. That’s because the peas we planted there are Golden Snow Peas and those plants can grow to 5 or 6 feet tall! It’s going to be amazing to see the purple flowers of these pea vines bloom and the either dark purple or bright yellow pods grow. And best of all, those pods are delicious!
On the way over to this last bed I noticed a moth on the wall…
Let’s figure out what kind of moth this is! Here’s a picture of him (or her, I’,m not sure). See if you can find out what kind of moth this is and put your answer in the comments.
We still need to plant our potatoes in this bed and probably some of our brassica plants we started like the Kailaan Chinese Broccoli.
The bed with the secret messages in Mandarin and Spanish is doing well, and the 80 onions we planted between the messages are all up and growing well.
And behind those plants peeking through the straw, the strawberries are coming along nicely. A few of the plants even have flowers already! We will have to paint a bunch of rocks red to put out as decoys for the birds so they don’t eat all of our strawberries when they ripen!
The peach tree is in full bloom so as long as we don’t get another hard freeze, we should have fruit on the tree this summer!
You can see all the flowerpots I left in this garden. These are perennial flower plants that are living here temporarily waiting for spaces to open up in front of the school in the planter boxes and in the new pollinator garden we plan on digging near the Spanish portable. Most are irises, but there is a pineapple sage plant that grew in the brown flowerpot last year. We’re hoping it re-grows from the roots and wasn’t killed by the freeze this winter. Its leaves taste like pineapple and its red, tube-shaped flowers attract hummingbirds.
In the front corner of the bed where the peach tree is planted I started some poppy seeds. These tiny little light green seedlings that look a little like grass will become beautiful plants with orange, pink, red, yellow, or white flowers if we let them grow. It’s important to learn what the seedlings of each plant we grow look like so we don’t remove them from our garden thinking they are weeds!
In the long, narrow bed closest to the school building on this side of the school I have planted seeds for a lot of perennial flowers. The labels in each small square space between these bamboo stakes show what plant was seeded in each spot. We will have to look up pictures of each plant as a seedling to identify which seedlings in these spaces are the flowers we want to keep and which ones are weeds.
Finally in this space we have one last bed that still needs to be dug and set up for growing vegetables still. This bed is going to be a challenge because it has a lot of heavy clay in it and it is full of crabgrass and even a little nut sedge. To clean this bed of the wiry roots of crabgrass and the nodes (or nuts) of the nut sedge, we are going to have to dig all of the soil and run it through a screen so we don’t miss any pieces of these invasive grasses that could sprout and re-grow taking over the bed again!
As I walked around the building heading back to the Spanish portable, I heard a familiar sound – Cedar Waxwings. These beautiful birds are here in SC for the winter where they eat berries and seeds. They are usually high up in trees in large groups, so if you see them in a low shrub, consider yourself lucky.
To see more pictures and videos and learn more about this bird, visit this site:
And it seems like our school garden and school grounds attract a few species of birds. These little red-headed finches have been hanging around the garden for the past two weeks. I’ve seen one pair in the butterfly bush a lot – probably looking for food. It could be they are eating the seeds of the butterfly bush. I just noticed the second pair today after school. I bet they are looking for a place to build a nest!
I couldn’t get a close up shot of these little guys – they’re FAST! But here is a picture from the internet.
Check these two web sites for more information about these little guys!
Yesterday in the lobby of the Science building of Mars Hill University a gardening book caught my eye on a display shelf at one of the vendor’s booths at the Organic Grower’s School’s Spring Conference. The book had a title that caught my eye – The Timber Press Guide to Gardening in the Southeast. Looking below the title, the name of the author then jumped out at me… Ira Wallace, of Southern Exposure Seed Exchange.
The lady whose booth I found the book at walked up and told me that this book was an excellent guide to growing food in our region and then added that the author was just a few feet away sitting at the Southern Exposure Seed Exchange booth!
Ira Wallace is a 74 year old organic farmer and seed saver originally from Florida where she grew up tending her family’s large vegetable garden as a child. Ira has become very well known in the world of organic agriculture and seed saving and is now the director of Southern Exposure Seed Exchange where she helps to manage their organic farm and their inventory of organic, open pollinated seeds many of which are heirlooms that are only grown by a few farming families in the South. Beside helping to run this unique seed company, Ira mentors younger farmers, seed savers, and researchers who are interested in preserving our heritage breeds of vegetables, crossing existing varieties to help create new strains of vegetables that will adapt better to changing climate conditions, and promoting and selling seeds for these varieties of vegetables to help keep the traditional vegetable varieties around.
I immediately walked over to meet her and bought a copy of her book which she autographed for me. We will be using this book reading from it to learn new ways to grow our vegetables from Ira.
Before I said goodbye, I told Ira about our garden club and asked her if she had anything she would like to say to you guys, our garden club members and the next generation of backyard gardeners. Here is what she had to say:
To learn more about Ira Wallace, the Godmother of Southern Seeds, click this link:
On Tuesday Mya noticed these weird pods growing out of the palm trees near the school garden. They were flat on the back side. She asked Señor Frank what they were, and he said they might be a large flower bud because he had seen Mr. Woody cut off a few bunches of small blue-black fruit from the trees earlier this month.
She also asked what kind of palm tree it was, but Señor Frank didn’t know.
Can you find out what kind of palm tree this is by searching online? Post your answers and links to where you found them in the comments.
Gardening is a great activity that gets kids outside where they can observe nature and learn about the natural world.
But gardening teaches so many other skills and values like cooperation and collaboration.
This week our garden club students showed their ability to use our Habit of Success of Responsibility when working with tools in the garden. This allowed us to have one of the most productive Garden Club meetings we’ve had so far by splitting up with one group, planting peas, and the other group using hoes and rakes to weed the path in the pollinator garden – or as Señor Frank like to call it “divide and conquer.”
When students show responsibility like this and cooperate by choosing to focus on one task in the garden and not complaining that they are missing out on another activity, we all win. Señor Frank is very proud of the garden club members and all they got done this week!
The last ladybug project is an online citizen science project where anyone can help scientists at Cornell University to keep track of the different types of ladybugs found in their state.
Ladybugs are important beneficial insects that eat pest insects like aphids. Aphids damage farmer’s vegetable and fruit plants by sucking juices out of the plant’s leaves. This can weaken the plants and help to spread plant diseases.
While ladybugs are good to have in your environment, many people like to buy cups of ladybugs to release into their gardens to help control those aphids and other pests, and this can be a problem. The lady bugs you can buy at garden stores or have shipped to your house when you buy them online usually come from Asia and are not naturally found here in North America. Once the Asian ladybugs are released here in North America, they can reproduce and outcompete native species of ladybugs taking over areas by eating all the food the local ladybugs need to survive.
You can help to figure out if there are still native ladybugs in your yard, garden, or park by taking a picture of any ladybugs you find with your phone and uploading the picture to the Lost Ladybug Project web site. The website sends your picture to scientists at Cornell university in New York State where the scientists will identify the ladybug you took a picture of and add it to a database of ladybugs found in your region. The database keeps track of where native types of ladybugs still exist so that farmers and scientists can do things to help save those populations.
And when they identify your ladybug, they will send you an email letting you know what species of ladybug it was that you found!
There is a lot of information about ladybugs on the Lost Ladybug Project web page too. There’s even a coloring book! It’s a good web site to read so you can learn more about these little red and black garden helpers and learn ways to help them.
Here is a picture of the ladybug we found on Tuesday in the Meadow Glen Elementary school garden. Señor Frank sent this picture in today. We can’t wait to find out what kind it is!
*Remember to ask mom or dad or a teacher to send in your picture. You must be at least 13 years old to submit a picture to the project by yourself.
My best friend, Jason Roland, saw a Tiger Swallowtail butterfly on his farm today. Here’s the picture he posted of it on Facebook and what he had to say about it.
“Spotted the first eastern tiger swallowtail of the year just now on the farm. This beauty is feeding on wild plum nectar in a grove next to one of the market gardens! So gorgeous and so early!
Organic farming is the right way y’all. Beautiful pollinators like this need habitat that is not tainted by poisons. Let’s do more of the right thing for all creatures big and small.”
Funny he saw one today because when I went fishing on the Lower Saluda River earlier today I spotted one licking up salt from the wet sand on the edge of the water!
I was so surprised I forgot to get a picture. Normally the first butterfly I see here in the SC Midlands in late winter is a buckeye. These larger butterflies usually show up later in the season.
But this year it seems everything is early. The frogs in the woods behind my house never seemed to stop chirping this winter.
One of the people who commented on Jason’s post on Facebook even said that they had seen an eastern tiger swallowtail today also!
and besides, the tiger swallowtail that I saw on the river, I saw this little black butterfly. I haven’t been able to identify it yet. Maybe we can try to find out what kind of butterfly this is at our garden club meeting tomorrow.
The Misato Rose radishes we planted last week are coming up already and the Starburst radishes won’t be far behind. These are both varieties of watermelon radish with pink/red interior flesh and a layer of white flesh on the outside.
The small yellow ball is one of our seeds sprouting. The seed leaves are curled up in the round seed coat and pop out and unfold after the root starts growing pumping water into the baby leaves that are tucked inside the seed. This is another Misato Rose watermelon radish seedling. It’s a little farther along in its sprouting. You can see the seed leaves are opening, but they’re still a bit yellow. They haven’t been open long enough to start producing chlorophyll and starting to photosynthesize to feed the baby plant. This is the oldest seedling – the one that sprouted first. We know this because the seed leaves have opened up and are turning green. That green pigment, chlorophyll, is what the plant produces in its leaves to help it produce its own food using the sunlight to combine water and carbon dioxide to produce glucose (sugar). The byproduct from this process is the oxygen we need to breathe which the plant releases this gas through its leaves.
In any case, all of these seed leaves have something in common. They are heart shaped. This marks them as members of the brassica plant family.
so many of the cool weather crops we grow in the late fall, winter, and early spring are in the brassica family. Besides radishes, the brassica family includes cabbage and kale, broccoli, cauliflower, turnips, Brussels sprouts, kohlrabi, mustard, and many Asian greens such as Bok choy, Kailaan, Yu Choy, Mizuna mustard greens, mustard-spinach and many, many more.
Señor Frank just replaced the plants in the flowerpots at the entrance to the school.
The tall plant at the back is a Calla Lily. It should get dark pink flowers. You can see them starting to open if you look closely.
The pink and white flowers are Cyclamen. They are plants that like shade and slightly moist soil. They can’t survive outside in South Carolina, but they can be kept as houseplants and if you give them the right conditions indoors and fertilize them at the right time of year, they will grow back the following year and bloom again.
And believe it or not, the short plants with the dark red flowers and the medium sized plants with the pink flowers are both the same kind of plant. They are called Dianthus. Dianthus are related to carnations and they are a perennial plant here in South Carolina. They like well-drained, sandy soil, they like to grow in full sun, and they like to be dry. That makes them almost perfect for growing here! We will be trying to keep them as dry as possible even though they are planted next to their water-loving friends the Calla Lily and the Cyclamen. If Dianthus get too much water the plants’ roots can rot and the plant will die. If our Dianthus plants live, when we change out our plants in these flowerpots next time we will transplant them to a flower garden behind the school where they can live for years!
