Rosebay Rhodendrons Added

All this rock was removed for one rhododendron

Ever wonder why nothing is planted in the open hillside to the right of the main planting bed at Eklund? There's a reason for that! The hillside is where the house once stood. It had a walk-out basement and lower walls of fieldstone. After the fire, the city filled in the hole for safety reasons. The fill consisted of highly-compacted subsoil with loads of rocks, random chunks of concrete, asphalt, and metal. After a few decades, not even tree roots had tried growing it in. 

All three new Rosebays ready for a rainy week.
These will hopefully get quite large.

To get things going and break up the monotony of the barren hillside, three Rosebay Rhododendrons were planted. Rosebays are native to Connecticut, but are uncommon. You see more of them in the woods as you head southwest a bit. This species can grow to be a giant, so if they thrive, that should really break up the hill. Perhaps some mountain laurel can be added in the future. 

Each prepared hole was about six feet in diameter. After removing all the rocks, concrete, and bricks, several loads of rotting woodchips were mixed in. Some of the rocks were used to construct a terrace. It was a lot of work! Each shrub took 4-5 hours to plant. The last shrub was plant as the sky opened up for a week or so of predicted rain. 

Foamflower

Meanwhile, the purple coneflower was replaced with transplanted volunteers from the Long Hill Community Garden and seemed to be doing great. Not sure what happened to the formerly thriving coneflowers, but it was mostly like a combination of a zealous woodchuck and aggressive weeds. 

Purple Coneflower transplanted
a few days earlier

Columbine

Wild Strawberries

Wild strawberries were planted many years ago and at first seemed to mostly die off. But over the years they popped up all over the place and even returned to spots where they had previously died off. Can't explain it! 




 

New Plantings

Purchases from Benedict's Agway

The 2020 pandemic is bringing in lots of people into the garden, many of whom have never been to the garden before. Unfortunately, last year was a bad year for the garden because deer got in and cause much damage, and then we had a very wet summer that allowed the weeds to flourish and outcompete some of the plantings that had sustained deer damage. Our Rudbeckia and coreopsis were pretty much eliminated, for example. 

The main bed in early spring this year was a disaster, with big blank spots everywhere. On a cold, rainy spring day, the morning was spent digging up volunteers of penstemmon, Jacob's ladder, garden phlox and others and moving them into groupings.  Bee balm and hardy ageratum were transplanted from the community gardens to fill in some of the holes. There were still a lot of empty spaces, so new plantings were needed.

Checking out at Benedicts

New plantings for this year are: 
From Home Depot: 
Tickseed 'Jethro Tull' Coreopis hybrid
Blanket Flower Gaillardia
Phlox Subulata Spring Dark Pink
Phlox Subulata Emerald Pink

From Benedict's Agway: 
Dotted Horsement Monarda punctata 'Beebop'
Culver's Root Veronicastrum virginicum
Black-eyed Susan "Little Goldstar" Rudbeckia fulgida
Threadleaf Tickseed Coreopsis verticillata
Goat's Beard Aruncus dioicus

Transplanted from the Long Hill Community Garden:
(these plants originated at Eklund and were brought to the community garden, where they thrive and spread)
Bee Balm
Hardy Ageratum

Transplanted from a trail reroute of the Paugussett near Independence Drive
(these plants were growing where a new trail was being constructed and would have died)
Christmas Fern

2015 Fall Cleanup

We had the fastest fall cleanup ever today, with a crew from the Community Gardens: Gil Pastore, Sal & Lynn DeGennaro, Anthony Montellese, and Teresa Gallagher.  Sal and Gil brought their heavy duty backpack leaf blowers, and Teresa had the brush cutter from the Trails Committee. 

10:00 AM.  What a mess.

11:00 AM. Flower stalks gone, working on the leaves

12:30 PM. DONE!

And here's a few random photos from the work party:  

Oak Leaf Hydrangea

Baby Woodfrog

The acorns this year are unreal!

Eklund Garden in Glass

It's all glass. Click photo to enlarge.

Check out this amazing glass depiction of Eklund Garden, crafted by The Glass Source.  It's made of translucent colored glass that allows light to glow through from the back side, and there's a lot of texture, so the photo doesn't do it justice.  The appearance changes with the lighting. The artwork was a Christmas present from my husband.  I love how the tree trunks rise up in the back - the garden surrounded by woods. The glass is about a foot wide, so it's a pretty good size. 

The gift was a result of Shelton's first Downtown Handmade Market, which was held every Saturday between Thanksgiving and Christmas 2014 in the old brick Conti building next to the Farmer's Market. All sorts of local vendors were in there selling gifts and the halls were decked for the holidays. 

Downtown Handmade Market

The Glass Source has their studio there, and they were selling some interesting glass items, including some glass garden portraits. My husband struck up a conversation with the owner, Micheal Skrtic, and arranged to have some custom artwork done for Eklund Garden. Never would have happened without the Downtown Handmade Market. I hope they do it again next year. 

The $5 Deer Fly Trap

Here's the deer fly trap I made for about $5.  I found a large blue ball at Walmart for $2.99 (the ball is maybe 2 foot diameter), constructed a twine harness, which I painted blue to retain the effect of the solid color that deer flies are attracted to, and suspended it between two small trees so that when the wind blows, the trees sway and the ball with them (that supplies movement, which attracts flies).  Finally, I coated the top with sticky Tanglefoot.  I already had supplies of the blue paint, twine, and Tanglefoot, so the trap didn't cost much. 

It works! After only three days, there are 30 deer flies trapped by the ball, and not one deer fly swarmed me while at the garden for the first time in weeks. Success!  

The trap was also catching black flies. Yes!!! As far as I could tell, no beneficial insects were getting trapped (like butterflies).   So this trap seems to be effective.  I also checked a couple of small mosquito traps I made with plastic soda bottles, brown sugar, and yeast, but these do not seem very effective so far, possibly because too much liquid was in the bottom. When the yeast started creating bubbles, it just foamed up and blocked the opening.

Mission Impossible: Kill the Flies and Mosquitoes

There are WAY too many deer flies and mosquitoes at Eklund Garden. This is a very common complaint of visitors, especially the non-hiking ones. The Nells Rock area swarms with them because of all the swamps. The vernal pool below Eklund Garden teems with salamander larvae precisely because the baby salamanders have so many mosquito larvae to eat. This being a garden for native species -- not just native plant species, but native animals species as well -- it would be wrong to spray toxic pesticides to kill off the nuisance species.

So the challenge is to try to reduce the number of swarming deer flies and mosquitos without eradicating them from the vernal pool and without poisoning the environment or hurting other insects like bees or butterflies. What we are looking for are some kind of traps that are inexpensive and do not require electricity.

CHALLENGE #1  DEER FLIES.  In July, simply pulling a car in the parking lot results in a dozen deer flies swarming the car before you even get out. Bug sprays like DEET do not help. So the deer flies will be the priority.  In doing some web research, it appears that deer flies are attracted to:

• Carbon dioxide
• Movement
• Solid colors, especially blue or black
• Heat

This would explain their attraction to my blue car as I pull in the parking lot. It's a solid color, warm, exudes carbon dioxide, and is moving. There are various commercial traps that make use of these attractants, usually costing several hundred dollars each. The Horse Pal is an example: http://www.bitingflies.com/.  The flies are attracted to the solid object, land on it's "back", then fly upwards into a trap. This looks like something that would get stolen. For homemade traps, a large solid blue or black object that moves in the wind and is covered with sticky Tanglefoot is another option. 

There are also some lower cost options, such as a bait bag trap, which uses a smelly bait to attract flies. Although designed more for biting houseflies, reviewers say they also trap deer flies. The trap is under $20. 

CHALLENGE #2 MOSQUITOES.  I don't think there is any way to really get rid of all the mosquitoes, but if the numbers could be reduced to more tolerable levels, that would be a significant improvement. Mosquitoes are also attracted to CO2,  Here's one low-cost type of trap made from a soda bottle and using a mixture of sugar water and yeast in the bottom to create CO2 as an attractant: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pNjyLRQutXs. Maybe we could have a line of these between the garden and the pond. 

Another tactic is to entice females to lay their eggs in a container of water and then kill the larvae. That can be tricky, because if you don't kill the larvae promptly, the traps just become breeding tanks. 

Full Bloom!

This is the best year so far for the main bed at Eklund Garden.  A reduction in the winter vole damage and plenty of rain through June really helped things along.  The garden is teaming with butterflies, bees, and hummingbirds. Enjoy!

Garden phlox, bee balm, and rudbeckia

Swallowtail on purple coneflower (Echinacea) 

Butterfly on bee balm

Garden phlox

  

  

Rudbeckia - brown eyed Susan

Gailardia  or Blanket Flower

Purple coneflower