Cooperative Living March/April 2020 - 28

MeadowAdventure | Story and photos by Sari Carp, Contributing Writer
Pollinator meadows
Planting for
Pollinators
W
Handsomely striped
monarch caterpillars can
eat only milkweed.
provide habitat for
other threatened
wildlife, like the
wood turtle.
hat do you eat? Unless you subsist
entirely on mushrooms, everything
you consume either needs to be
pollinated or eats something that needs to
be pollinated.
Unfortunately, pollinators - most notably,
bees and butterflies - are suffering tremendous
pressure resulting from habitat loss. They have
neither enough food nor enough shelter.
Pollinator stress moves up the food chain as
farmers resort to hiring beehives to pollinate
orchards, while gardeners wonder where all the butterflies of their
childhood have gone.
So what's the fix? Pollinators eat nectar, so planting flowers is a
start. Not all flowers prove equally beneficial, though. Pollinators
are mostly native insects, indigenous to our region. Native insects
prefer native plants; in most cases, they insist upon them.
If pollinators can't find the food they need, they starve. This
is particularly true of pre-butterflies, also known as caterpillars.
Adult butterflies happily scarf down showy non-natives while
the caterpillars simply can't. Think of them as human kids, far
fussier eaters than their parents.
One case in point is the pollinator melodrama occurring around
popular but invasive butterfly bushes (buddleia). Adults swarm
the flowers, laying eggs on the plant. The eggs are then doomed
to disaster. Larvae hatch, can't eat the butterfly bush and quietly
starve.
SOLVING THE CRISIS
The best solution to the pollinator crisis is planting native
perennials. Choose a mixture yielding blooms from early spring
through late fall, in a variety of colors. This both pleases the
eye and supports the widest spectrum of pollinator species,
whose peak season and preferred flower colors vary considerably.
Choose a few species-specific host plants, like milkweed,
the only genus of plant monarch caterpillars can consume,
interspersed with more broadly attractive ones, like bee balm,
coreopsis, black-eyed Susan and aster.
Even a few native perennials added to your garden are a plus
but consider going big with this. How about replacing a wide
swath of lawn or an unused meadow with pollinator habitat?
Measured by acres under cultivation, turfgrass or lawn is America's
biggest " crop, " far outweighing corn, a distant second.
I decided to convert 5 acres of lawn and pasture to pollinator
habitat. The process wasn't easy, but I'd do it again in a heartbeat.
I financed the habitat installation through a grant from the Natural
Resources Conservation Service. State and federal agencies offer
numerous grants to farmers and homeowners interested in
eco-friendly practices, making expensive seed and installation
26 | Cooperative Living | March-April 2020
affordable. You'll usually get expert
guidance through tricky procedures, too.
Creating a wildflower meadow sounds
simple, a matter of throwing out some seed.
Not so fast. This might work, if done at
the right time of year, on bare ground with
no existing seed bank.
Where grass or invasive weeds are already
in place, you have to kill what's already
there before putting down new seed. It's
a multi-step process, and in a large area,
generally means spraying with herbicide. We've been hearing a
lot lately about the very real dangers of herbicides, but what isn't
often publicized is that the most problematic ingredient is often
the surfactant or " sticker. "
Avoid pre-mixed herbicides from big box stores. Mix your own
using an aquatic-safe surfactant, or plain dish soap, and don't
spray more than the minimum you need to kill existing
vegetation.
GETTING RESULTS
I sprayed my habitat site twice, timing the applications in April
to kill the turfgrass and in early June to get warm-season weeds.
With less impeccable timing, I chose summer 2018, one of the
wettest on record. My proposed habitat was under water much
of that summer, so we ended up seeding it late, in mid-June.
Native habitat seed is best applied with a specialized drill,
different from a traditional agricultural seeder. The native drill
barely scratches the surface of the ground, and I have to admit
I wondered if birds or runoff would get the seeds before they
had a chance to germinate. In a couple of weeks, though, I had
my answer: The seeds began to germinate.
By midsummer, I had sprouts that were recognizable as
coneflowers, milkweed, native grasses and dozens of other plants.
By late summer, I had my first flowers, though most native
perennials can't be expected to bloom until their second season.
The meadow adventure isn't for the faint of heart or overly
tidy perfectionists. Expect a transitional year, during which you'll
have a couple of months of dead plants and weeks of bare dirt.
It's worth it, though.
By the second year, you'll have a vibrant
meadow, and by the third, a multi-colored
paradise alive with birds, butterflies and
bees.
In the hours I used to spend mowing,
I sit back and watch the wildlife, enjoying
the well-pollinated fruits of my garden. 
Find the latest pics and posts at facebook.com/cooperativeliving.
co-opliving.com
PHOTO COURTESY OF BRENT BARRITEAU
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Cooperative Living March/April 2020

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