E SSENTIALS
Sunday, May 11, 2014
Your Guide to the Good Life.
HELP RESTORE BEE POPULATIONS
Bee-friendly garden can help struggling species BY DEAN FOSDICK THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
B
ees are pulling a disappearing act. Honeybees are vanishing from their hives. Bumblebee numbers have crashed so radically that some species are believed extinct. Even native solitary bees are in decline. Food supplies dependent upon pollinators are threatened. But gardeners can help. There is no single explanation for what is causing the pollinator losses, said Matt O’Neal, an associate
professor of entomology at Iowa State University. “There are multiple sources of stress,” he said. “There are your basic pests, also pathogens like viruses, pesticide exposure and land use practices reducing the kinds of forages bees can feed on. It looks like a combination of all those.” As insect pollinators, bees broaden our diets beyond meats and windpollinated grains. An estimated onethird of all foods and beverages are made possible by pollination, mainly by honeybees, the U.S. Department
of Agriculture says. Pollinators also are essential for flowering plants and entire plant communities. “Common species are disappearing at a dramatic rate. I’m terrified in the extreme,” said Mace Vaughan, pollinator program director with The Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation in Portland, Ore. “I worry in particular about pollinator species with limited ranges and that have unique habitat requirements that are being threatened. A lot of species are dropping out of the landscape.”
You don’t have to become a beekeeper to restore or boost bee populations. Plant flowers and create green spaces, especially in urban areas. Leave patches of bare soil, rocks and brush piles for use by ground-dwelling native bees. Add caterpillar host plants. “I can’t recommend particular plants for all areas of the country, but I can recommend the concept,” O’Neal said. “Provide pollen and nectar throughout the (growing) season. Plant the right habitat. Every state has land grant agencies and agents. Look to them for help.” Install bee hotels around the yard by drilling holes in wood blocks and creating reed or bamboo bundles. They provide instant habitat and can be built on the cheap. “Another thing you can do is plant woody plants (elderberries, raspberries, sumac) with branches that have soft insides,” Vaughan said. “Grow these shrubs up and then cut them back to expose the stems. Carpenter and mason bees will nest in them.” Eliminate or change the way you apply pesticides. Don’t use them on plants that are blooming. Apply them at night when bees are less active. Spray from ground level to reduce drift, and create buffer zones next to agricultural areas. Rethink the use of herbicides, which reduce pollinator food sources by removing flowers from the landscape. Add signage to advertise the presence of pollinators. Bees often range several miles from their hives or nests. Place pollinator habitat signs around pastures, community gardens, city parks, bike trails or suburban yards to promote conservation. What it comes down to is providing at least two important things, Vaughan said: “Plant wildflowers that provide a high succession of bloom. Have home gardens free of chemicals. Get into natural gardening.”
Mason bee tunnels for nesting are made using bamboo bundles like this commercial variety hanging in a magnolia tree. To create an inviting habitat for leaf cutter and mason bees, add nesting sites to your yard to maximize the production of native bees.
Unusual use of cotton swabs makes a funny story
A springtime take on the classic crabcake
BY SARA MOULTON THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
A
Your Garden Roger Mercer
I
just came across a hilarious note from Philip Reilley of Chelmsford, Mass., from 1997. I don’t know when I’ve laughed so hard – for the second time. Reilley, like many of you who read this column, had become a devoted daylily breeder. He even moved from Massachusetts to Florida years ago, mostly because the climate for breeding daylilies is better in Florida. Here’s Reilley’s missive: DEAR ROGER: This happens to be a true story. I know that you have never met my wife. She has a subtle – for an Italian – sense of humor. Indeed, having married me in the first place suggests a massive sense of humor. As you know, I’ve been advocating the use of cotton swabs for storing refrigerated pollen. In fact, I started that about 15 years ago. I insert the pointy end of the swab into a block of plastic foam. The cotton end, along with a small “flag,” or label, has the name of the pollen donor. Obviously, the names are legible. During the peak of the season, I must have about a hundred little swabs stuck in three or four slabs of plastic foam, sitting in the garage
refrigerator, (as opposed to our “kitchen” fridge). One day, my wife brought home a fellow employee for lunch, and to see “the marvelous colors of modern daylilies.” This poor woman had heard that I was a real daylily addict, and was probably a weirdo. The tour went well, and I was my usual Irish charming self, explaining ploidy, bloom characteristics, and all that good stuff. She and my wife had lunch on the deck, while I continued my garden chores. I began talking and muttering to myself about falling behind in my work while talking to my daylilies, as usual. My wife noticed a look of concern on her friend’s face, and got caught up in the whole thing. She asked her friend to get two bottles of iced tea from the fridge, not realizing that the only fridge in sight was the one in the garage. Her friend opened the door and stood staring at all those cotton swabs for a good 15 seconds, when my wife spotted her.
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Wifey, the nut, ran over and exclaimed, “Oh, that’s my husbands earwax collection. See? He took this one from someone named ‘Janet Gayle.’” Well, that ended the lunch. The friend grabbed her pocketbook, and said nervously, “I’ll wait in the car!” She jumped in, rolled up the windows and locked both doors. Poor dear has been invited back, but I’ve never seen her again. — Philip Reilley Send your questions and suggestions to roger@ mercergarden.com or write to Roger Mercer, Mercers Garden, 6215 Maude St., Fayetteville, NC Please include your telephone number.
s the weather gets warmer, I cook lighter. And crabcakes are relatively light. So I thought I’d employ a couple of seasonal stars – peas and radishes – to put a spring spin on them. I blithely went shopping for fresh crabmeat at my local market, but found to my horror that it’s almost unaffordably pricey – and that pasteurized refrigerated crabmeat isn’t much cheaper. In search of an ingredient with which to stretch the crab (I thought of it as Crab Helper), I settled on boiled shrimp, which are readily available, but not astronomically expensive. Happily, the crab and the shrimp played very nicely together. As this also is the season for fresh peas, I added some of them to the mix. I used to discount the nutritional value of peas until I finally scrutinized the data and discovered that the little fellers are packed with protein, fiber and micronutrients.
We bind up the cakes with eggs, mayonnaise and panko breadcrumbs, then season them with tarragon, which always teams up nicely with both shellfish and peas. If you’re not a fan of tarragon, which is unpleasantly reminiscent of licorice to some folks, substitute some dill, chives or parsley. The cakes are topped off with a peppery cream flavored by both horseradish and red radishes. Kissing cousins from the same family – brassicaceae – the radishes add a little kick to the otherwise bland shellfish. The sour cream is a moist and tangy complement to the panko crust.
SPRING CRAB AND SHRIMP CAKES WITH DOUBLE RADISH SAUCE Start to finish: 30 minutes Serves: 4 ½ pound peeled and deveined cooked shrimp 1 large egg, plus 1 egg yolk 1 cup cooked English peas or thawed frozen peas ½ cup finely chopped scallions 12 3 cups panko breadcrumbs, divided ¼ cup light mayonnaise 1 to 2 tablespoons chopped fresh tarragon, or to taste Kosher salt and ground black pepper ½ pound lump crabmeat, picked over for any shells 2 tablespoons vegetable oil, divided ¼ cup plus 2 tablespoons light sour cream 1 cup coarsely shredded red radishes 1 tablespoon bottled horseradish (do not drain)
Heat the oven to 300 F. In a food processor, pulse the shrimp until very finely chopped, but not reduced to a paste. Transfer the chopped shrimp to a medium bowl and add the egg and egg yolk, peas, scallions, 2 3 cup of the panko, the mayonnaise, tarragon, ½ teaspoon of salt and ¼ teaspoon of pepper. Stir well, then gently fold in the crabmeat. Divide the mixture into 8 portions, shaping each into a patty. Coat the patties with the remaining panko. In a large, nonstick skillet over mediumhigh, heat 1 tablespoon of the oil. Reduce the heat to medium, then add 4 of the patties and cook until golden, about 4 minutes per side. Transfer the patties to a rimmed baking sheet and place them in the oven to keep warm. Repeat with the remaining patties, using the remaining 1 tablespoon of oil in the skillet. Meanwhile, in a small bowl whisk together the sour cream, radishes and horseradish. Season with salt and pepper. To serve, arrange 2 patties per plate and top with the radish sauce.
BY JULI LEONARD THE NEWS & OBSERVER
ACCIDENTAL DESIGNER INSPIRED BY LEATHER
K
rissy Anderson became a designer accidentally. When she couldn’t find the kind of simple bag she wanted to carry, she decided to make her own hand-stitched in 2010 from an oil tanned leather that would scratch up with use and develop a beautiful patina over time. “I ended up hand-stitching by default,” said Anderson, laughing over her first try at sewing leather on her home sewing machine. “I learned pretty quickly that it wouldn’t work, so I bought a really good book on hand-stitching and started practicing on some leather Anderson’s leather bags feature scraps.” minimal use of hardware and other bells and whistles. Anderson came up with a very minimalist design: just two side seams, a simple pocket and a handle that folded over and was stitched in half. That first bag took her about 3 hours to hand cut and stitch, but she has now gotten the laborious process down to about 2 hours. “I started thinking I was on to something,” said Anderson, who has slowly grown Mill & Bird – named after her two daughters, Millie and Kat “Bird” – from an Etsy shop and a website started in 2011 to a brand carried in boutiques such as Durham’s Vert & Vogue. To keep up with demand, Anderson recently employed a local manufacturer to help construct two of the bag styles. Her current collection retails in the $380-$480 range. The success of Mill & Bird has been a bit of a surprise for the former health administrator, who works on the bags from a spare room in her Durham home. “I was never, ever one of those people who ever thought they would go to design school or do anything like that,” she said. “But I have found that I really like to think of bags that I would like to carry, and I have had a nice response to the bags I have made. So the whole process has ended up being really fun for me.” It is the leather that inspires the self-taught Anderson’s designs. She likes for her bags to develop a patina over time that shows the scars and marks from the animal that it once was. “Depending on what leather or what color I really fall in love with, I think of a bag around that.”
Designer Krissy Anderson has created a leather handbag line called Mill & Bird. MCT photos
Anderson hand-stitches a bag at her home in Durham.
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Tips, serious and not, for keeping squirrels away BY SARAH WOLFE THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
They’re vermin to some. Cunning adversaries to others. Squirrels have long been a source of fascination and frustration for gardeners and bird enthusiasts engaged in a near-constant battle to keep them away from the nuts and seeds put out for birds. Bill Adler Jr. has heard all the strategies. The 57-year-old humor writer has been collecting tips to keep squirrels from avian meals for three decades, and recently updated his 1988 book, “Outwitting Squirrels: 101 Cunning Stratagems to Reduce Dramatically the Egregious Misappropriation of Seed From Your Birdfeeder by Squirrels.” “I enjoy outwitting them, I do,” Adler says. “But these days, I win the battles and not the war.” Here are some tips (some serious, some not) from Adler and others to bring a little harmony to your backyard:
THE TECHNICAL
These days, there are motion-activated outdoor cameras if you want to monitor your feeder, and even motion-activated sprinklers to douse offending squirrels. “Squirrel-proof” birdfeeders abound. The best, according to Adler and other experts, are those that sit on a 5-foot pole and are covered with a plastic dome or “baffle” that’s hard for squirrels to cling to. If you want to get even more high-tech, there are weightactivated feeders that actually cover up the feeding ports when a squirrel latches on. “Squirrels are foiled, but not harmed in any way,” Schaust says. Bird enthusiast Barbara Bergin of Austin, Texas, has a slippery solution: petroleum jelly. She covers the pole her feeder hangs from and says it works like a charm.
THE NATURAL
Resigned to the fact that squirrels are going to call his Washington, D.C., yard home, Adler puts out some unsalted mixed nuts along his steps. “If you feed them, they will tend to leave the birdfeeder alone,” he says. Squirrels also love corn, so if you don’t want them invading your feeder, keep your birdseed corn-free. You also can try filling your feeder with safflower seeds, which many birds still eat but squirrels typically don’t.
“As a bonus, it’s also fun to watch the squirrels slip off the hanger,” the 60-year-old orthopedic surgeon quipped.
THE CRAZY
Adler’s book includes feeder ratings, ways to attract certain birds and 101 “cunning stratagems” to keep squirrels at bay. Some are practical. Most are hilariously ludicrous. Some of the more entertaining: Dig a moat around your feeder. Fill it with piranha. Trap squirrels and send them to Antarctica. Buy a squirrel costume. Parade around your yard wearing it. Squirrels can’t figure out what in the world is going on and it drives them away. Buy some lasers and set up a hologram show in your yard. Make holograms of cats and hunters. Cry. Maybe the squirrel will feel sorry for you and go away.
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