Honestly the best thing for wildlife is to learn to appreciate the beauty of last years dead stems and leaves in their own right. But if you MUST clean up your garden, wait until cherries pears and apples are done blooming and temperatures are not in danger of dipping below 50 degrees. Cut old stems to 12", leave leaves or rake them into beds where they can mulch naturally!

Show us your native plants!

You know the drill - submit or tag us on posts with your native plants :)

ok, twist my arm:)

Banksia fraseri (Dryandra fraseri)

This is one of the many Banksia species that were formerly put in the genus Dryandra (thus the 2 names given). Many of these species are native to Western Australia, as is the case with this one. As is usual for the Protea Family, the many small flowers are packed together in a flower head that is very showy. Especially prominent are the elongated styles with their yellow club-tips. The fine texture of the bluish leaves contrasts beautifully with the red and yellow of the flower head.

-Brian

Some of you may have heard about Monarch butterflies being added to the Threatened species list in the US and be planning to immediately rush out in spring and buy all the milkweed you can manage to do your part and help the species.

And that's fantastic!! Starting a pollinator garden and/or encouraging people and businesses around you to do the same is an excellent way to help not just Monarchs but many other threatened and at-risk pollinator species!

However.

Please please PLEASE do not obtain Tropical Milkweed for this purpose!

Tropical milkweed (Asclepias curassavica)--also commonly known as bloodflower, Mexican butterflyweed, and scarlet milkweed--will likely be the first species of milkweed you find for sale at most nurseries. It'll be fairly cheap, too, and it grows and propagates so easily you'll just want to grab it! But do not do that!

Tropical milkweed can cause a host of issues that can ultimately harm the butterflies you're trying to help, such as--

However--do not be discouraged!! There are over 100 species of milkweed native to the United States, and plenty of resources on which are native to your state specifically! From there, you can find the nurseries dedicated to selling native milkweeds, or buy/trade for/collect seeds to grow them yourself!!

The world of native milkweeds is vast and enchanting, and I'm sure you'll soon find a favorite species native to your area that suits your growing space! There's tons of amazing options--whether you choose the beautiful pink vanilla-smelling swamp milkweed, the sophisticated redring milkweed, the elusive purple milkweed, the alluring green antelopehorn milkweed, or the charming heartleaf milkweed, or even something I didn't list!

And there's tons of resources and lots of people willing to help you on your native milkweed journey! Like me! Feel free to shoot me an ask if you have any questions!

Just. PLEASE. Leave the tropical milkweed alone. Stay away.

TLDR: Start a pollinator garden to help the monarchs! Just don't plant tropical milkweed. There's hundreds of other milkweeds to grow instead!

Spring is on its way, so it's time to bring this up again before we all go out buying plants.

If you live in the US, do not buy this plant!

This is tropical milkweed! It's beautiful, but not native to the US, and causes spread of disease and failure to migrate in monarch butterflies.

HOWEVER. Note that if you live in central to southern Mexico, Central America, or South America, this plant is native and okay to plant! I've seen native monarchs and close relatives using these plants in Mexico and Bolivia (where I took this photo).

Look up the native milkweeds in your area to find which are best to plant! OP mentions a few resources and species. Some popular species out east in the US include swamp or rose milkweed (Asclepias incarnata), butterfly weed (Asclepias tuberosa), and whorled milkweed (Asclepias verticillata), as well as the most famous, though maybe not the prettiest, common milkweed (Asclepias syriaca). Showy milkweed, Asclepias speciosa, is native to much of the west. If you're in the southewest, Asclepias subulata, the desert milkweed, is probably a better option.

When you see an adolescent saguaro 👍

cyanide doesn't smell like almonds, it smells like bitter almonds, which

1) most people have never smelled before

2) get a significant portion of their smell from containing cyanide

Take an apricot. Remove the pit. Cut the pit in half, Smell the inside of the pit. You now know what cyanide smells like.

I removed the paywall from this article (it's shared as a "gift'). This method looks promising for starting seeds without a ton of plastic waste, although in my opinion, it would be easier and cheaper to skip the branded gear and just make the soil blocks by hand. Anything is better than those awful plastic net starters like Jiffy sells, though. Just thought I'd share, since we're in seed starting season now.

Thank you for this. I heartily agree that making blocks by hand would be a cheaper and a better option.

Also I must add that any seed germinating mix that contains coconut coir (CocoLoco is mentioned in the article and sounds suspicious) will stunt and poison your seedlings - learned this the hard way with a failed crop of tomato seedlings.

I have tried various commercial mixes and gotten the best results with pure peat topped with vermiculite. We’re talking triple the growth rate in half the time as compared with commercial mixtures.

That's a good call-out: the salt and potassium content in coco coir can be very problematic for seed starting and it seems like the brand CocoLoco is washed, but not buffered. Using that alone could kill seedlings.

But peat should not be used if at all possible. Using peat causes incredible environmental damage. There are other Tumblr bloggers who have written about the problems with peat at length:

It may be banned soon in some places:

Anyone who says peat is sustainable is lying to you:

There are articles elsewhere about alternatives:

Don't feel bad if this is new information to you. There's so much to balance with gardening sustainably, what with water use, correct soil, avoiding invasive species, avoiding plastic, etc. It's a lot. If you're going to eliminate one thing, though, make it peat.

oh my god whattttt

Have you ever spotted a fairy lantern? Members of the genus Thismia, these plants don’t use chlorophyll to photosynthesize. Instead, they feed on fungi in the soil. Growing just a few centimeters tall, their unusual-looking, vibrant flowers bloom briefly to attract pollinating insects—like fungus gnats. There are more than a hundred known species of this elusive plant around the planet, ranging from parts of Asia to Australia to the Americas.

Photo: Matheus Moroti, CC BY-NC 4.0, iNaturalist (Thismia mantiqueirensis pictured)

the parrot waxcaps (Gliophorus psittacinus) that fruit annually a few houses down from us are finally showing themselves for this season !! 🦜✨