Board of
Directors
Robert E.
Taylor,
President, New Paltz
David Rossetter,
Vice-President,
Gardiner
Allan G. Bowdery,
Secretary,
New Paltz
James H. Ottaway Jr. Treasurer,
New Paltz
Bradford
Barclay,
New Paltz
Rob
Hare,
Esopus
Seth Hollander,
Gardiner
Carol B. LeFevre,
Gardiner
Angela Sisson, Shawangunk
Raymond D. Smith, Jr., Gardiner
Johanna
Sokolov,
Gardiner
Staff
Christie Ferguson,
Executive Director
Yinmei (May) Lin,
Office Manager & Development
Assistant
Lynn Bowdery,
Land Steward
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Birds, a Beaver Pond, and
Plants Galore!
WVLT first Walk and Talk for 2010!
Explore protected properties on private land
with volunteer leaders!Saturday, April 17, from 10 am to 12 pm on the
Pastyik Easement in the Town of Shawangunk.Visit this 95 acre conservation easement (protected land), ecologically rich with marshes, woods, a beaver pond, and hay fields.
Lynn Bowdery, WVLT Land Steward and Angela Sisson, WVLT Board member will lead the walk. With their extensive knowledge in ecology, bird and plant identification, and conservation, this is an opportunity you do not want to miss!WVLT Walks and Talks are open to adults and families, and are free unless otherwise noted.Please register for this walk and talk through our website.Directions and details about each Walk and Talk will be provided to you after you register.
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Get Going with your Garden!
By Lee Reich
Ah, March! We know thou art
Kind-hearted, spite of ugly looks and threats,
And, out of sight, art nursing April's violets!
Helen Hunt Jackson, "Verses. March"
The Julian year begins in January; not so my gardening
year, which gets underway in March. Early in the month, the garden looks
disheveled, with patches of snow and battered remains of last year's
plants here and there, and trees and
shrubs in need of pruning. The new season very slowly begins as days that grow
longer and warmer convince buds to swell and sprigs of green to cautiously poke
through the ground. The slow beginning is like that of a roller-coaster ride:
all of a sudden, things bump into gear and I am swept onward and upward at an
increasingly rapid pace. By the end of the month, I have cleared away old
plants, straightened posts heaved awry by frost, finished the bulk of the
pruning, and the greenhouse is filled with seedlings. Another season of
gardening is underway!
Readying the ground
outside - Spring soil preparation
separates gardeners into two camps: the diggers and the non-diggers. I belong
to the latter school, so let me first make short work of the former.
What are the rationales for turning over the soil with a
rototiller, spade, or garden fork? Digging does aerate the soil; as important
is the psychological benefit. The hard work stirs the blood as well as the
soil. And a freshly prepared seedbed is like a clean slate, with last year's
mistakes erased.
Two rules for diggers are: not too much, and not too
soon.
"Not too much:" The objective in digging the
soil is not to reduce it to a fine
powder. Soil particles bind together into aggregates, which have a spectrum of
pore sizes for the air and water needed by plant roots. Especially with a power
rototiller, it's too easy to pulverize the peds. Control the urge to run the
tiller up and down the rows until the soil is like dust. Nothing beats tillage
with a shovel, followed by raking, for exercise and for tempering the tendency
to overwork the soil.
"Not too soon:" Wait for the soil to dry out a
little before tilling. Working a wet soil, especially one that is clayey, ruins
its crystalline structure. The soil becomes good for sculpture, but poor for
plant growth. On the other hand, digging a bone-dry soil leaves large, rock
hard clods. Squeeze a handful of soil. If it crumbles apart easily, it is ready
to till; if it wads up, it needs to dry out some more. When the soil has just
the right amount of water, each clod breaks along fault lines and then is
easily further crumbled with gentle coaxing from a garden rake.
Turning the soil is an age-old tradition that dies hard.
Edward Faulkner laid the first serious challenge to this annual ritual in his
book Plowman's Folly of 1944. Ruth
Stout further popularized the concept of no-digging in her book How to Have a Green Thumb Without an Aching
Back (1955), a title that suggested a most obvious reason not to dig the
soil.
The facts speak for themselves: Churning the soil rapidly
burns up valuable organic matter. Churning the soil also destroys channels left
by earthworms and old roots, and upsets capillary connections. These large and
small pores are what move air and water throughout a soil. Admire the lush
growth along roadsides and in paseven
midsummer's heat hardly causes these plants to flag. Digging also brings to the
surface dormant weed seeds, just waiting for a bit of light to infuse them with
life. And finally, those of us who forgo digging need not delay spring
planting until the soil dries.
So what do you do if you do not dig? My garden is in
permanent beds - never dug, of course - which are three-feet-wide with
eighteen-inch-wide paths between them. I keep the beds in the same place every
year and the soil in the beds never needs aeration (digging) because I never
walk in the beds. I keep weeds out of the paths between the beds by dumping
whatever organic materials I have at hand, usually wood chips.
Each spring I blanket the beds with a one-inch dressing
of compost, occasionally supplemented with a sprinkling of soybean meal,
woodash, limestone, or ground rock powders for extra nutrients. The weed-free
compost smothers most small weeds. I dig out large weeds individually, roots
and all, and cut the tops off any small weeds that do grow by skimming the soil
surface with a sharp, hand-held hoe. After a few years, weeds are few enough so
weeding is a pleasant divertissement rather than an incessant chore.
I sometimes miss that neat, smooth expanse of fluffy,
dark soil that remains just after tilling a garden. Then again, by the time I
would be admiring that view, my seeds are already in the undug ground.
(For more details about this technique, which draws on
the latest agricultural research, see my book Weedless Gardening.)
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Salamanders and Frogs Crossing the Road
Some of you might know about the amphibian migrations occurring on rainy
spring nights. For those of you who do not, New York's diverse forests are excellent habitats for a variety of salamanders and frogs. They live underneath the forest debris,
such as decomposing logs and leaf matter. Many of these species travel to
woodland ponds to breed, which is why you can see them on the move when the
early spring rains begin.
When the ground first thaws, temperatures reach over 40 degrees, and there
is a continuous rain, large numbers of frogs and amphibians can be found
migrating across roadways in the evening hours. The problem is that often a
great deal of these amphibians are killed by cars as they make their trek
(which could be as far as a half of a mile!)
You might have seen people out late at night, dressed in bright colors,
carrying flashlights, walking around in the cold rain. Volunteers help the
Hudson River Estuary Program and the Cornell University Department of Natural
Resources by sending in their observations of amphibians migrating in early spring.
These volunteers not only document the location, species, and numbers of
amphibians they see, but they also help the salamanders and frogs cross roadways
safely.
Conditions for the amphibian spring migration were just right the past few
weeks for frogs and salamanders alike. Groups of volunteers were out all over Ulster County
checking on known migration locations, as well as suspected crossings. The
photos show some of the critters that made an appearance, including large
Spotted Salamanders (5 to 8 inches in length) and tiny Spring Peepers (1 to 1 1/2 inches long).
Please visit the NYS DEC website for more information about Amphibian
Migrations and Road Crossings, and how you can help.
Remember, if the
temperature is over 40 degrees, the ground has thawed, there is a fairly steady
rain, and it is nighttime in early spring, amphibians, as well as volunteers,
are out along the roadways. Please do your part by driving a little slower.
Who
knows, you might even get a chance to see an amphibian cross the road!
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Bog Turtle Habitat, support is here!
The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (NYS DEC) announces
the start of the Open Application Period for the Landowner Incentive Program:
Management and Protection of Bog Turtle Habitat.
Private landowners and not-for-profit groups
working on private land will be able to apply for funding for the protection of
at-risk species and their habitats, specifically bog turtles and their habitat.
Eligibility is limited to privately-owned land within portions of following
counties: Columbia, Greene, Ulster, Dutchess, Putnam, Sullivan and
Orange.
A total of approximately $150,000 will be made
available for projects. Eligible landowners will compete for funding, with
individual grants limited to a minimum amount of $5,000 and a maximum of
$50,000. The cost effectiveness of a project will have a direct impact on an
application's score. All grants require a minimum of 25% in matching funds from
non-federal and non-state funding sources.
The deadline for pre-application submission is June
1, 2010.
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