HGCNY Officers
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| President:
Janet Allen
Vice-President:
Carol Biesemeyer
Treasurer:
Randi Starmer
Secretary:
Soule Leiter
Membership:
Linda Rossiter
Program Chair:
Carol Biesemeyer
Newsletter Editor:
Janet Allen
Additional Planning Committee Members:
Beth Mitchell
Dave Mitchell
John Allen
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| Our Habitat Garden |  |
Visit Our Habitat Garden website for information on providing habitat, earth-friendly gardening practices, plants, and various creatures here in Central New York. TIP: Click on each sliding menu item as you navigate through the menus to pin them down instead of sliding away.
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| HGCNY on Facebook |
As as more of us participate on our Facebook page, this will become a useful resource for asking (and answering!) local HGCNYers' questions about habitat gardening. |
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Join HGCNY!
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Becoming an official member of HGCNY is easy: just join Wild Ones! Basic household membership is $37/year, but there are other options, too. (See membership application or website.)
Wild Ones
P.O. Box 1274
Appleton, Wisconsin 54912-1274
Make checks payable to Wild Ones.
Or telephone toll-free 877-394-9453.
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Our Edible Garden
|  | Visit OurEdibleGarden.org to see an example of a Central New York edible garden, the perfect companion to your habitat garden.
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 Not to be missed!
We're pleased to have Professor Robin Kimmerer as our speaker for our January meeting.
Dr. Kimmerer spoke to our group about mosses a few years ago, and her presentation is one of our most memorable ones. Her new book is Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants.
From the book description on Amazon.com:
"An inspired weaving of indigenous knowledge, plant science, and personal narrative from a distinguished professor of science and a Native American whose previous book, Gathering Moss, was awarded the John Burroughs Medal for outstanding nature writing."
WHEN: Sunday January 26 at 2:00 pm
WHERE: Liverpool Library (Directions)
We meet the last Sunday of the month, and our meetings are free and open to the public. Come and bring a friend!
Correction from our November program on the emerald ash borer
Our speaker Jessi Lyons, a natural resource educator from Cornell Cooperative Extension, notes that Onondaga Lake Park has 4,500 ash trees that will require management, not 45,000. There may be as many as 10,000 - 20,000 total according to one estimate, but most of those won't require management.
And a TIP about using the Our Habitat Garden website: Simply click on each menu item as you navigate through the multilevel menus. This pins them down so they don't slip away.
Janet Allen
President, HGCNY
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Moving for monarchs
As with our recent (the last few years) understanding of the monarchs' plight from a scientific perspective, we now also have inspiration from the arts.
Segment 1 of Moving for Monarchs: The Awakening is now available (treat yourself to this 3 minute video here on Vimeo) and Segment 2, funded by a Kickstarter campaign, is on the way. (See the Kickstarter description here.)
Even better news, Wild Ones' Wild for Monarchs campaign will be featured in this second segment! Read more on the Wild Ones website.
Can the monarch be saved? Indeed the monarch is in dire straits, especially because of habitat loss in the Midwest. Fueled by the market for corn-based ethanol, over the five years from 2006 to 2011, 5% to 30% of the grasslands were converted to corn and soybean fields, a rate a study found was 'comparable to deforestation rates in Brazil, Malaysia and Indonesia.'
But Chip Taylor of Monarch Watch believes monarchs can still be saved. Read more about the current situation in the NY Times article Setting the Table for a Regal Butterfly Comeback, with Milkweed.
We're set to again offer local ecotype milkweed plugs to grow, but you can also help by supporting monarch conservation organizations such as Monarch Watch or our own Wild Ones monarch campaign.
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Yes, it's cold BUT...
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Hemlock woolly adelgid
(Photo: Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station Archive)
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One interesting effect of the frigid temps may be that it could kill some non-native invasive insect pests.
Some of these pests would not have survived the cold winters of the past, but have begun to survive our increasingly warm winters of the past few decades.
Entomologists note that this isn't likely to be a permanent solution since a single cold snap won't eradicate the entire population, but it may give our trees a respite from pests such as the hemlock woolly adelgid and the southern pine beetle.
Unfortunately, emerald ash borers do not succumb until temperatures dip to -30 degrees. This may help the coldest areas of the country, such as in Minnesota, but not CNY.
Read more from the NY Times article: Celebrating Deep Freeze, Insect Experts See a Chance to Kill Off Invasive Species
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Slowing down ticks
 | | Japanese barberry invading the woods |
Another potential benefit of the cold streak for New York (see previous article above) is that it may suppress the tick population.
Although one cold winter won't eliminate ticks, we can take action on another way to reduce ticks: eliminate Japanese barberry, which some people call "a Lyme tick nursery." As landscape designer Jesse Peters says, "Japanese Barberry, an invasive non-native species, spreads rapidly and widely in the woods surrounding the properties they've been landscaped into, and many studies indicate that reproduction of the ticks that carry Lyme disease is facilitated by several physical conditions the shrubs produce."Some of these conditions are: 1) The ticks can hide in barberry thickets, safe from deer, who don't like those thorny plants, 2) Barberry stays more humid than native shrubbery, which allows ticks to reproduce in exponential numbers, 3) Ticks can pile onto the white footed mouse, which also likes the barberry's humid climate, and mice often travel to human-occupied spaces. The solution? Like so many of our ecological problems that affect not only the environment, but people too, the solution is to replace Japanese barberries with native plants! There are many beautiful native alternatives to Japanese barberry. Some of these native alternatives are: Northern bayberry (Myrica pensylvanica aka Morella pensylvanica), Virginia sweetspire ( Itea virginica), highbush blueberry ( Vaccinium corymbosum), chokeberry ( Aronia arbutifolia), and winterberry ( Ilex verticillata). Read more on Jessecology (including links to research) |
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