Earth Day April 22, 2009

Celebrate Earth Day – But remember… everyday is a good day to do something for our Earth, so if you can’t do everything you want on Earth Day, that’s ok.. here’s a list of things to do, on Earth Day or any other day.

1. Lowe’s Home Improvement offers a 10% off coupon good on purchases up to $5000.

This would be a good coupon to use for plants for your yard. This year, we purchases two fruit trees (a super sweet peach and a super sweet plum). I still want to get a pear, but will likely add that next year. We also got a couple of raspberry bushes. No need to get too many of those, as they send up shoots all over the place (yes, they can be invasive!).

I also purchases gravel, lumber and stepping stones for my greenhouse (well, the gravel came from the sand & gravel company). I’ll make use of another coupon for stones for our patio.

Last year, we added walls to our back porch, turning it into a very useable indoor space. This summer, we bought sliding glass doors – one for each side of the new “diningroom”… this will bring in lots of light! Not to mention a nice indoor place to keep our houseplants through the cold months. We’ve made good use of Lowe’s this year!

2. Buy in Bulk. When purchasing mulch, gravel or other yard necessities, call your local Sand & Gravel company. If you have access to a truck, you will save a TON of money by picking up the materials yourself.

I picked up 1.5 tons of pea gravel for my greenhouse. It cost me $26 to pick it up myself. If I’d had them deliver 2 tons, it would have cost $115 – that’s a huge difference. But even having it delivered it would have been cheaper than buying by the bag.

I saw a neighbor with 4 skids full of bags of mulch (no kidding!)… Even at $3 a bag, she spent a small fortune. Way more than if she’d ordered in bulk and had it delivered.

We created a new driveway using chips and dust.. it’s a packing type of stone.. We started out needed about 18 tons.. so the initial cost was not too cheap (but much cheaper than blacktop or cement). Every couple of years, we order about 4-5 tons (delivered) and spend a few hours spreading it to the thin spots (and then a couple hours soaking in the hot tub! But it creates a nice new drive. Couldn’t have done it so cheaply had we not purchased in bulk.

Also, keep in mind when you buy mulch, a yard (bulk) of mulch is much different than a cubic foot. A conversation with an older woman years ago always sticks with me. I told her we used 3 yards of mulch for our yard. She said, well, we used 32 yards! I thought to myself 32 yards of mulch would have covered her whole yard! Not just her flower beds. She had to have bought bags and not noticed it was measured in cubic feet (usually something like 3 cubic feet in a bag). I wonder every spring if she ever realized the difference.

A yard of mulch would be equal to 27 cubic feet (3 x 3 x 3 = 27). 32 yards of mulch would be over 860 cubic feet. That’s a lot of mulch for a standard size yard.

3. Add insects to your yard. I’ve posted before about our fun with Praying Mantis egg cases – try it! The Praying Mantis are great for your yard. Very good “friends” to have around. They munch on lots of pesky bugs – like mosquitoes (I hate mosquitoes! and they just *love* me). Get some lady beetles (aka lady bugs). They usually come in a mesh bag and you just sprinkle them around your yard.

Get a Butterfly Pavilion and hatch a group of butterflies from caterpillars. Or purchase a Spiderweb Frame for the garden – while many might be icked out by spiders, they are, like Praying Mantis, eaters of the other nuisance pests.

4. Plant native to your area plants… whether it’s trees, shrubs or wild flowers… the native animals and birds will enjoy it.

5. Plant your own veggies. It might be hard to live off our home grown vegetables in this day and age, but every bit you grow is less you need to purchase. Not to mention, eating your own hard work is satisfying. Kids can easily help in the garden by planting, hoeing, watering and harvesting. Then, teach them to eat raw, or how to toss a salad or how to cook their home grown veggies. It’s healthy eating at it’s best!

6. Start a compost pile with old leaves and yard waste – like grass clippings and soft plant material.. don’t use the sticks and branches.. you don’t need those. Create an enclosure with a few wooden skids (think recycling) and zip-tie them together and stake it into the ground so it’s sturdy. Just three skids making an upside U shape would be a good start. If you have a large yard, try five but using two in the back, one other either end and one on one side in the front so you have one opening to move your stuff in and out.

It’s best not to put your compost pile near trees (so the roots don’t send a shoot up into that great compost material) but you also want some shade as the compost tends to get hot..

7. Create Animal Friendly Habitats by providing plenty of living supplies or areas – like for nesting birds, in the spring, fill your suet feeder with bits of yarn, raveled rope or burlap, pieces of hair or soft materials, even paint brush bristles. Make sure to clean out the nest boxes from their last use. And keep water in the bird baths. Birds need the water during the summer months more than they need us to feed them (feeding them through the winter is most helpful!). Birds like to play in the water mist too, so creating a water dripper or installing a water mist makes watching the birds fun.

You can even get Backyard Habitat Certified – a great project for homeschooling kids too.

8. Create a pond which is wildlife friendly. Ponds can be made from pre-formed liners, or you dig your own design and lay pond liner – this is what I would like to do… to create a “zero-entry” area so small birds can play in a shallow area. Ponds grow plants, sustain goldfish and/or koi and also provide a habitat for frogs which you might not otherwise have in your backyard. It’s fun to see frogs, tadpoles and fry all swimming around the bigger fish. My dad has a wonderful garden we even enjoy visiting in the cold Ohio winter – he covers it with a small greenhouse during the cold month and it usually stays warm and humid. But the water doesn’t freeze and some plants even stay happily growing, oblivious to the harsh reality outside the thin walls.

9. Clean your Hummingbird Feeders It’s that time of year that the hummers (at least here in Ohio) will start seeing hummingbirds visiting as they migrate to our Northern area. So make sure to have fresh nectar available for them… they’ll need it. Here’s my simple Homemade Hummingbird Nectar Recipe – two ingredients you always have on hand.. so simple!

Summers Coming – Hummingbird Time
Celebrate Earth Day Every Day
Toad Abode and Bath
Recycling Nature Landscaping
Bird Bath Water Dripper – Home made

If I can’t tell Spring is in the air by the weather ~ this week happens to be a typical spring day in Ohio.. rainy, chilly (April Showers bring May flowers) ~ I can certainly tell by the stats to my pages on Momma Muse.

Every spring, towards the end of March through September, I have a couple of pages which never fail to bring lots of visitors.

One of my top pages throughout these months is Homemade Hummingbird Nectar Recipe. There is also the recipes for feeding and attracting Orioles and Butterflies.

Make sure to see the baby hummingbird in a nest – it’s amazing how tiny they are!

Fun Spring Activity to do with the kids (or just yourself).

Last year, we purchased a few praying mantis egg cases. We’ve done this in the past, but this year instead of putting them right out into the yard, we decided to hatch them in an aquarium. Very simple to do, you’ll need an aquarium or other enclosure (maybe a mesh one, similar to a butterfly house). Our aquarium has a screen lid. We put a few branches inside and attached the egg cases to the branches, either just sliding them onto one or bracing it gently.

We kept watch over it until it finally had several hundred (yes, hundreds!) of tiny mantis babies… at which time we set the aquarium in the grass on it’s side, and took the lid mostly off. Enough so the young praying mantis could easily escape, but not so much a bird would be interested too quickly in jumping in for a snack.

Periodically through the summer we’d see a mantis here or there… but towards the end of summer we did see a couple of nicely sized ones.

Praying Mantis are good for your garden and flowers. They like to eat the icky buggies who like chomping on your pretty flowers. They also eat mosquitoes… and goodness knows we’ve had our fair share of them around here. Last year wasn’t so bad… wonder if I should get some more egg cases…

Places to get Praying Mantis Egg Cases:
Insect Lore – here, you can get just one case, along with many other types of insects. Great place to get stuff for homeschooling, or just to supplement those young, sponge-like minds!

We just received caterpillars from them for our Butterfly house. They are growing so big! I also want to get one of the Spiderweb frames for the garden.

Planet Natural is where I ordered Praying Mantis egg cases from last year.

Note to add: Gardening Zone has great prices on Mantis Egg Cases ~ But be sure to check shipping costs before you submit your order.

Early this year, I purchased a few praying mantis egg cases (3, I think). We put them in an aquarium with a screen lid and let them “hatch”. Each egg casing has between 50 and 200 praying mantis babies. They don’t tear out of the case, but instead, they come through it. The egg casing isn’t like a butterfly cocoon. The female mantis creates an egg-filled foam (or froth) which then hardens. The babies climb through this, as it’s not hollow.

Once we had several babies in our aquarium, we set it in the yard and opened it, so they could get out on their own. The babies are ravenous and will begin to eat each other if there isn’t enough food for them. The cases, because you can’t always tell if the babies have come out or not, we put them in the bushes, in a safe spot (so birds won’t eat ‘em up)… this way, if all the babies haven’t come out, they have a place to do it safely.

So, the other day we were finishing up putting the temporary walls around our back porch (yay! More room for the winter, I’m loving it!) and Bob sees this 6 inch praying mantis. The mantis didn’t want to get on my hand, but I coaxed him up onto a branch and then he got onto my hand. My camera wouldn’t get a really good detailed close-up, try as I might.. but I did get a few pics that weren’t too bad.

Praying mantis are so cool. This one would watch us, her little black pupils would follow our movements. She’d cock her head as we moved the camera around, or ourselves. After about 10 minutes of playing with us, she flew off to a bush.

Praying mantis are good for your yard.. they like to eat insects that are pests. I specifically got them for the mosquitoes around our yard. See more of the mantis pictures.

Originally uploaded by madaise.

I was washing dishes and saw this little praying mantis on one of the hummingbird feeders. Try as I might, I could not get a good clear image of the mantid.

At one point, Cas thought he was sleeping – but I told her I thought it was watching us… just about then, it turned it’s head from facing one of us, to the other. As if he was listening to us talk.

I didn’t think much of it visiting the hummingbird feeder, other than it may help keep the little buggies and bees from getting into the nectar. Then I happened across this post about a mantis making a meal out of a hummingbird – ouch! I think this one is too small, at roughly 2.5-3″ long… so I hope I don’t witness any hummingbird murders.

We can’t really figure how he got to the feeder – it would be a stretch, I’m sure he could make… And I figure it probably “fluttered” there, but just to be helpful, I hung a plant nearby in hopes it would find shelter there. I do have another mantid (brown in color) homing in a spider plant.. I’ve watched it grow from about an inch, to now close to 2 inches or slightly more.

Then, a visit to a friends blog and I see this great photo of a walking stick. The last time I saw a walking stick I think I was about 16… it’s been ages! ;) Take a visit to The Impaitient Gardener to see the walking stick… but don’t leave too quickly.. there are plenty of beautiful pictures to see… take a walk through her garden. :)