Praying Mantis at our schools

Yesterday I did another program on the Healthy Garden at Maplewood School. Maplewood is one of the two intermediate schools in the South Huntington School District with grades 3 through 5. The entire third grade came to the assembly to learn about gardening and beneficial insects.

The day before that I had done a similar program for a single class where we were able to make pots and plant them (scroll down for more on that). With such a large group, a hands on workshop wasn't feasible. Since I had already brought a praying mantis egg case to Mrs. Labate's class, I thought it would be fun for the students to have a second case outside the school.

Can you see the egg case attached to the branch? I used twist ties to put it on the limb of the Andromeda just near the entrance of the school. It will be interesting to see if the baby praying mantis emerges at the same time inside the building and outside. I hope somebody lets me know if they see the babies start to crawl out.

Mr. Roemer's garden is right at the entrance of Maplewood. I thought it was very fitting that it was filled with Myosotis which has the nickname Forget-me-not. I think Mr. Roemer would be happy to know that there is going to be praying mantis in his garden.

For those of you planning on stopping by here today or tomorrow, the showers in the forecast won't be slowing me down. I'll still be out there in my boots and slicker. The garden needs this rain desperately after being shocked with our heatwave earlier this week. These are perfect conditions to split and divide perennials. If it gets too wet I can always spread mulch.

Bye!
Melanie

The Healthy Garden

A garden can be a magical place filled with all kinds of amazing creatures. Over the past 13 years we have worked hard in our garden here in South Huntington to make it attractive to all the beautiful creatures around us.

Praying Mantis fill the gardens, the young praying mantis is hard to spot but the adults are quite large and are easier to see. Every year we will find one praying mantis in the butterfly bush under our kitchen window. They don't eat the pollen or the leaves on the butterfly bush, they eat the insects that are attracted to this bush.

Butterflies will fly throughout the garden on a sunny day. There are many plants that grow well here on Long Island that will help attract and feed the butterflies. They always can be seen on the Liatris in our garden.

Here's a butterfly on the butterfly bush! The botanical name for this bush is Buddleia davidii.

Bees are also beneficial insects in the garden. Without bees, we wouldn't have flowers, vegetables and all the other wonderful plant life. If you leave the bee alone, it won't sting you.

Ants will also help spread pollen around. Can you see the ants climbing on the Bronze fennel flower?

One thing many people don't realize is that you need to have plants that will feed caterpillars if you want to have butterflies in the garden. That means that some of your plants will be chewed upon but just imagine how beautiful the garden will be with those butterflies flying around.


Not only do you have to have plants for the wildlife in your garden, you need to have water for them and you need to have an organic garden. By that, I mean that you should not use chemical products in your garden if you want to attract insects and wildlife.


Birds are creatures that we love to have in our garden. They eat many insects such as mosquitoes and they fill the air with the most wonderful sounds!

This photo shows a baby bird when it first flew out of it's birdhouse. Do you think it's asking the gnome "are you my mother"?


We are always so excited when we find a turtle in the garden. If we were putting chemicals on our lawn we might have nicer grass but we wouldn't have any of these cool creatures.


Some people don't like the rabbits in their garden because they eat the plants but how can you not love this adorable creature? If you don't use chemicals on your lawn, you will have lots of clover and the bunnies will eat the clover instead of your flowers.

There's all kinds of things to see and do in your garden. We all think of gardening as planting seeds and flowers but you can do more than that. My daughter Emily used to love to go around the garden and photograph the creatures that she found.

One day she found a baby robin that had fallen out of a nest. We read that the mother bird would continue to care for it even though it was on the ground so we moved it to a part of the garden where it had some shelter from plant material.

Emily named the robin Einstein, can you tell why?

We continued to watch Einstein for many days and weeks and he grew up to be a beautiful robin.

This post has been written for Mrs. Diane Labate and the students at Maplewood Elementary school in South Huntington.

Paper Pots

This morning I was lucky to spend a wonderful 45 minutes with some of the first grade students at Oakwood School. We made pots out of newspaper, planted pea and corn seeds, looked at all kinds of soil additives, smelled gardeners gold (shredded leaves) and set up a praying mantis tank.

You would not have known that it was hailing as I drove to the school, in that classroom it was GREEN!

These photos show the steps to making your own pots out of newspaper. I will be doing this program with many more students in our district. What fun!

To make newspaper pots you must first take a single sheet of newspaper and fold it lengthwise.

Next, take an empty container such as a jar, water bottle, soup can or so on and roll the newspaper around the container. Leave a good 1.5 inches overhanging on the bottom.

When you are finished you will have a tube like this.

Next, take the bottom of the tube and fold it in so the paper overlaps and forms the bottom of the pot. Don't worry if it's not pretty, or perfect, it's not supposed to be.


This is what the bottom looks like. You can use a piece of tape to hold it shut but I don't use anything since the tape would not breakdown in the garden.



Next, slide out the container from the inside. Take the top of the pot and fold it over to form a collar that will hold the whole thing together.

This is what the collar will look like when you finish. Don't worry if it tears a little, that happens all the time.


Finally, fill your pots with potting soil and then plant your seeds. (These are last years photos so they show sprouted pots instead of newly planted ones)

Hooray! A perfect alternative to plastic pots. You can plant your whole pot in the garden since the newspaper will breakdown quickly and the seeds will keep on growing.

If you'd like to know what I use to fill the pots, you can jump over to my other gardening blog, Melanie's Old Country Garden (just click on the title here).

Happy potting!