Mason Bees - The Friendly Pollinators

Mason Bees appear like a big house fly with a greenish black shine to them.

(Guest writer: Linda Zielinski) Did you know that Mason Bees (Osmia lignaria) are one of the most common hole-nesting bees? They are wonderful pollinators, especially for apples and pears. Researchers claim they can be up to 90% more efficient at pollinating than honeybees due to the fact that Mason Bees will forage in light rain and at cooler temperatures than honeybees and other pollinators. If you are worried or concerned about getting stung then this hard working little Mason Bee may be just what you and your flowers and vegetable gardens are looking for. Mason Bees are not aggressive since they are a solitary bee and are not defending a queen. They are considered quite docile. 

Linda's nesting boxes are hung under the eves, on the southeast side of a shed so they get sun and are protected from prevailing winds/rains. Insets show other styles of nesting boxes.

Nesting boxes for Mason Bees:  I have quite a few nesting boxes. My nesting boxes are hanging under the eaves of my pump house facing towards the southeast so they can be warmed by the early morning sun and protected from direct rain.  Mason bees are easy to care for. You can make new nesting boxes by using a drill press and a 5/16 bit and blocks of UNTREATED wood. You may also purchase nesting straws. I have found the straws at the WildBirdsUnlimited store in Corvallis. For right now I have placed 2 new nesting boxes and a package of straws for the ladies to use as new homes for their eggs. As these begin to fill up I will continue making new boxes. Last year the girls were so prolific that I had to make several new nest blocks 3 different times.

Chris hangs nesting boxes at the Monroe garden

Mason Bee life cycle: This year, my Mason Bees began emerging in early April. The males hatch out first once our temperatures get above 55 degrees for 3 days in a row. The females seem to understand that it is important to lay female eggs at the back of the holes and lay the male egg at the front of each hole. This assures the survival of this species as it only takes one male to mate with several female Mason Bees. Once the weather begins to warm and the males emerge they then wait around for several days for the females to chew through their cocoon and then chew through the mud wall that divides each egg cell until they reach the end of the nesting hole and crawl out to live their short productive life in our wonderful Willamette Valley. The males then fly around chasing the females in a mating dance.

 

Once the males have mated their job is complete and they die. The females immediately begin gathering pollen and laying eggs. They do not excavate holes but look around their environment for a 4-6 inch-long space that is approximately 5/16 of an inch in diameter. They are often seen crawling up under house shingles. No need to worry though. They do not damage your siding but are merely looking for a safe, dry place to lay their eggs. After she has gathered pollen she will return to the nesting tubes/boxes, fly into the holes and turn circles inside which helps the gathered pollen fall off her body as she wiggles her way to the end of the tube. 

Mason Bee larvae with pollen-ball for larval feeding. Image courtesy of Red58Bill.

There she will lay her tiny egg and put a pollen ball on top of that. She will leave about a 1 inch space and she then make a 1/4 inch mud plug to wall off that egg, hence the name "Mason" Bee. For the next 8-10 weeks these busy ladies continue gathering pollen and nectar. Sometime towards the end of June their life's work is over and they die. During the summer months the eggs develop into larvae. The larvae feeds on the pollen and nectar and develop into pupae. The Mason Bee pupae develop into bees protected inside a cocoon. They hibernate over the winter and emerge sometime towards the end of March or early April to start this marvelous life cycle over again. 

 

HappBee Gardening. Linda Zielinski

 

Linda Zielinski is an avid Mason Bee 'farmer' who lives in Philomath, Oregon. She generously provided the "Sharing Gardens" with a starter house of bees which we hope will multiply so we can spread them around the valley and help other gardeners get them established. Thank you, Linda, for writing this article about the bees for us to post on our site.

Note: This was originally published on this site, April 13, 2012. 

Lettuce: From Seed to Feed - Part 2: Saving Seed

By Llyn Peabody 

If you grow your own lettuce, as the weather warms, it's not uncommon to have some of it "bolt" (try to go to seed). Saving lettuce seed is fairly easy and a good entry-point for those new to the process. Here is a re-publishing of a post we wrote back in 2011 but the information is just as relevant today. Happy seed-saving :-).

Saving your own seed is an important aspect of developing local food self-reliance. Relying on commercial seed farmers may become increasingly unreliable as climate change disrupts weather patterns and seed crops falter. Growing your own seed slowly modifies your plants to be uniquely suited to your micro-climate and growing conditions. Networking with other seed-savers in your area builds a sense of community. LINK: Locally Sustainable Gardening in the Face of Supply-Chain Shortages

 

Lettuce flowers - close-up.

Seed-saving can seem intimidating at first. I know I felt that way. Many vegetables will cross with their neighbors yielding inconsistent results. There are many questions that must be answered before moving forward. For this reason I definitely recommend Suzanne Ashworth's "Seed to Seed". It is a comprehensive manual that covers all aspects of seed-saving. I am also grateful to my husband, Chris, for all he has taught me from his 40+ years of gardening. He's helped me translate the book knowledge into experiential learning. Saving seed appeals to the outlaw in me, I guess. Like treating illness with herbs I grew myself, there is something empowering about developing skills usually left to "the experts". As it turns out, it's not really that difficult at all.

"Red Sails" lettuce - blooming. "Red Sails" lettuce - blooming.

Saving Lettuce Seed: Like most things in gardening, a bit of forethought goes a long way. Ashworth recommends 12' - 25' separation between types of lettuce to prevent cross-pollination (the farther the better). Plan your plantings (and harvesting) to leave sufficient distance between the flowering plants. Though you may have enough time to bring a Fall crop of lettuce to seed, we usually do our seed-saving with the lettuce we plant in the Spring.

 

Note: Be sure there is no wild lettuce that is forming seed near the varieties of domesticated lettuce you are saving seed from as it can cross. The plants that grow from these crossed seeds tend to be more bitter and course. There are several varieties of wild lettuce; this one is named Lactuca Serriola LINK.

Lettuce bolting - Black-Seeded Simpson Lettuce bolting - Black-Seeded Simpson

 Lettuce is an "annual" crop. This means that the plants will produce seed in one season (without over-wintering). As the weather gets hotter and drier you will notice on romaine or "leaf" lettuce a definite lengthening of the plant. ("Leaf" types form a loose rosette of leaves but not a tight "head). When it lengthens, it is starting to "bolt". Lettuce that is bolting gets noticeably more bitter (probably nature's way of protecting the plant in this important phase of its reproduction). On "head" lettuce (such as Iceberg), Ashworth says it can be helpful to slit the head, forming a cross-cut with a sharp knife, making it easier for the flower-stalk to emerge. She says some gardeners strike the head of the lettuce with the palm of their hand thus breaking the leaves away from the stalk. Without some effort to free the flower-stalk, head-rot from heat and humidity may kill the plant before it can go to seed. So far we have saved seed mainly from "leaf" lettuce. This summer we will experiment with our red and green "head" lettuces to see what works best for us and report back.

Lettuce marked for seed with bamboo. Lettuce marked for seed with bamboo.

As we are gardening with a group of people, we have found it essential to clearly mark the plants that we are saving for seed, so they are not harvested by accident. We have made small tipi's with bamboo sticks, tied a red ribbon around the plant or put a small sign on a stake and driven it in nearby. Even a plant that is obviously past an edible stage for harvest is not safe as a well-meaning fellow-gardener may assume the responsible thing to do is weed out your seedy lettuce plant and toss it on the compost pile!

Staked lettuce - the flowers get heavy. Staked lettuce - the flowers get heavy.

As the flower stalk grows it will produce a big head of flowers. You may need to tie it to a stake so it doesn't fall over. Seed production occurs 12 - 24 days after flowering. Ashworth says you can harvest seeds daily by shaking the stalk over a large paper sack. The ripe seeds will fall into the bag. The method we have used is to wait until the majority of seeds are ripe and to cut off the whole flower head and place that in a paper sack. Leave the sack open in a warm, dry place (like the top shelf your tool shed) until the flowers are thoroughly dry. Be sure to label the bag with the name of the lettuce variety. If mice are a problem and you have the space, try hanging the open bag from rafters.

To winnow the seeds, roll the flowers between your fingers and the palms of your hands to free them . Lettuce seed is challenging to separate because the seeds are not much heavier than the chaff. Patiently drop small amounts of the seed/chaff over a tray, from a height of a foot or two while blowing gently. The seed should drop and the fluff blow away. Some people run the seed through screens but we have not tried this method. Commercially available seed-sifting screens are another option. They have different sized holes.

Put ripened lettuce flowers into a paper bag to finish drying. Put ripened lettuce flowers into a paper bag to finish drying.

Lettuce seed will remain viable for 2-3 years if kept in a cool, dark place, in an air-tight container.

The Sharing Gardens is a non-profit and tax-exempt organization. We exist entirely through donations. If you have found benefit from our project or our site, please consider making a donation through PayPal. (Click button below.)

Onions and Lettuce and Peas, "Oh My!"

Reprinted from February 2021: It's early Spring in the Sharing Gardens. Oh sure, we could still get plenty more freezing nights and even some significant snowfall before Spring is fully here but the first crocuses and daffodils are budding, the days are noticeably longer and the air carries hints of the earth's slow warming.  Since we have several greenhouses, February is the time for starting the cool-loving crops like lettuce, cabbage, kale, broccoli, collards, celery, parsley, onions and peas. We have also seeded beets and carrots directly in the ground in greenhouse beds. Here are some previously written posts about how to start some of these crops in your own garden.

 

An early crop of red and green lettuce grown in our greenhouse.

Lettuce and other seedlings, Spring 2012

Our first CSA box-2018.

Please note that, while we do our best to update our posts to reflect our current methods, gardening is a dynamic art-form which we're always developing and these posts may not reflect our current practices. Happy gardening!

Valentines Day: Time for Pea Planting: Since our soil outside the greenhouses doesn't really warm up enough to germinate peas till later in the Spring, we've developed a method for starting the peas in pots, in the greenhouse which we then transplant outside once the soil warms up and the plants can outgrow slugs and snails. Valentine's Day: Time for Pea Planting LINK

John and Llyn transplanting peas grown in pots, in our greenhouse.

Lettuce: Growing from Seed: Lettuce is fairly easy to grow in our climate. You won't believe how sweet and delicious home-grown lettuce is compared to lettuce bought from the store! LINK

Lettuce: Saving Your Own Seed: If you leave a lettuce plant in the ground, very often it will "bolt" and go to seed (especially in the heat of summer). Lettuce-seed is easy to save and one plant can produce enough seed to grow lettuce for a whole neighborhood for years to come! That's "nature's economy" at its best! LINK

Delicious, home-grown lettuce.

Onions: Growing from Seed: Here's a method of growing onions from seed that will also produce copious amounts of onion-greens as well. LINK and LINK

Onions, grown from seed.

Carrots: growing from seed:  This post includes instructions for preparing the ground for carrots to grow and a short video-clip about planting carrots. LINK

Wish List: Spring is a time for cleaning out one's sheds and closets to make room for the new. Here's an updated wish-list of items that we can use in the Sharing Gardens or pass along to other gardeners in the area. Let us know if you can use anything and we'll see if we can help you out. Wish List

The Sharing Gardens is a registered non-profit and tax-exempt organization. We exist primarily through donations. If you have found benefit from our project or our site, please consider making a donation through PayPal. A receipt will automatically be provided for your records. (Click button below.)

Returning to Our Roots

Dear friends of the Sharing Gardens, near and far, 

Well, winter Solstice has come and gone and the days are becoming imperceptibly longer as we inch back towards another growing season. Chris and a handful of other dedicated share-givers (volunteers) have been harvesting, sifting and bagging the worm-compost we 'grow' in our greenhouse paths. We've removed all of last year's plants from the greenhouse beds and gently dug in a combination of the worm-compost, coffee grounds and wood-ash so these they will be ready for 2022 plantings. 

As of January 7th, we've already begun to plant the first cold-tolerant seeds in the greenhouse beds: beets, carrots, green onions and spinach. This will be our third year that we grow food without the use of commercial soil amendments, animal by-products or manures. At a time when supply-chains are challenged and petroleum-based fertilizers and amendments that must be mined and shipped around the planet are becoming more scarce and expensive, we are grateful that we've found ways of generating soil-fertility from waste products and locally sourced materials. 

We've had an amazing windfall happen over the last month which is the main purpose of this post. Llyn's mom, Judy (left) has decided to make an annual gift to our charity which will adequately cover all the project's expenses as well as provide surplus for us to use on infrastructure upgrades and to help others in our community. With this generous donation and the financial security it brings we've decided we will no longer offer the CSA (What is a CSA?) and return to the roots of the project.

Sun-Ship greenhouse - 2021

For the first nine years of the Sharing Gardens all our expenses were covered through grants, gifts, and our own savings. We created the CSA four years ago when our financial resources were beginning to thin out. We saw it as a way we could use the infrastructure we'd already built to cover expenses, but it always felt like it was a compromise from our original intent to "give without thought of receiving" and trust that we would be provided for. 

So, in 2022 we will return to the original form for the Sharing Gardens and simply grow food to share with those who volunteer or contribute in some way. The sizable surplus will be donated to food charities in our area. 

If you live near us and you'd like to get your hands in the dirt, you're welcome to come help in the gardens and take home some of the day's harvest as our way of saying "thanks". (Volunteering at the Sharing Gardens). 

Help in the garden, share in the harvest!

 We wish you good health and inspiration and a sense of fulfilling purpose in the year to come. Thank you for all the ways you help make this world a kinder place for all.

Warmly, Llyn and Chris

Give and You Shall Receive - Sharing Gardens update

Co-founder Chris Burns pulls Jim Kitchen and a load of "prunings" to the burn-pile, demonstrating one of our founding principles, "If it ain't fun, why do it!".

Recently we've been blessed with amazing generosity from folks in our support circle. Jim and Cindy Kitchen donated a 2003 Town and Country mini-van which is an answer to a prayer as our 1968 GMC pick-up truck is really difficult to drive! Now Llyn has become the main driver and has driven more in the last month than the previous 10-years combined. This has been really a blessing to take the pressure off Chris to always be the driver.  Karen Josephson and Peter Stoel donated $2,000 for the third year in a row. Wow, that kind of generosity really lifts our spirits! This will be a huge help in keeping the program running. And Catherine Henry, in perusing our Wish List, found a home for a composting toilet she'd purchased but never got around to installing. Once we install it, this will allow us to host larger gatherings and summer-interns/guests without taxing our small indoor bathroom. Thank you so much!

Cindy Kitchen, thinning carrots. Cindy has an amazing capacity for doing the detail-work of gardening: things like picking beans, thinning root crops and weeding tiny seedlings. She's also great at the "big strokes" and can fill our giant garden-cart with weeds faster than anybody! The only problem is trying to get her to stop at the end of a session! We love our Cindy!

Our 2021 season is over (our 13th!). The only veggies left in the outdoor gardens and greenhouses are the cool-weather tolerant crops including lettuce, broccoli, beets, green onions, kale and chard. Our weather has been mild so far and if it continues to be so, these crops will continue to provide delicious and nutritious food for us and the few 'share-givers' (volunteers) who help us through the winter. 

The three months from August through October can feel overwhelming with the time-sensitive, competing demands of harvesting, watering, saving seeds and preserving food. We are relieved to have arrived at the time of the year when Chris and I can follow our own rhythms in tending to our home and the land. It's amazing to realize that everything will start up again in mid-January (albeit at a much slower pace!) with the first crops getting planted in our greenhouse beds. (These crops will include: onions, spinach, beets and carrots.)

We've tallied up our donations to charities and it's been another great year, 2,971 pounds! We keep precise records of our donations to charities by weighing everything before we send it. We derive our other totals through estimates though so you'll just have to take our word for it (though honestly, these numbers are probably low). Everything else: 4,280 pounds.

That makes our Grand total for 2021 somewhere in the ballpark of: 7,254 pounds!

For details of our harvest totals Click Here.

"Give and you shall receive." Though we view sharing as a reciprocal relationship (not just a one-way process where we give and others take), we recognize that not everyone has the same capacity to give. Some people aren't able to give at all due to poverty and physical challenges. We try to follow the practice: "From each according to their ability and to each according to their need." Through our project, no one has ever been denied access to our surplus just because they had nothing to give us directly. We also ascribe to the notion of "Paying it forward," trusting that generosity can have a rippling, multiplying effect as it moves through a community.

But for those who can give directly to our project, it comes in many forms: monetary donations, the donation of materials and through people's time. All of these gestures of support have helped us keep the program alive. 

In addition to the food we grow and share, the Sharing Gardens has become a hub of other forms of generosity. Because we have clean, delicious, abundant well-water we have folks who come weekly to fill water jugs. We have given away building materials, firewood, compost, garden tools, seeds and 'starts' and other materials we have had in surplus to those in need.

We also give freely of our knowledge through hands-on opportunities in our garden and through our website (which has received over 570,900 views in its lifetime - mostly for our 'How-To' posts).

What follows is a "Gallery of Givers"; a photo album of seasonal highlights and some of the people who have helped to make it happen, followed by a list of the many other donors who have blessed the project this year.

Meet our 'sharegivers': The people pictured below are the folks who come to the gardens throughout the growing season (and in some cases right through the winter). They give of their time and energies and share in the camaraderie of doing something meaningful together. They also receive a share in the harvests. We couldn't do it without them!

A gathering of many of our troupe: (back row) Llyn, Rook, Cindy, Jim, Chris (front row) Adri, Jazmin and Becky

Here's Sandra, the newest member of our crew - sorting lettuce for distribution.

A typical morning in early September. Here we are planting cabbage.

Rook, trimming garlic and preparing it to be "cured" for long-term storage.

Llyn and Kaylyn processing tomatoes and melons on harvest day.

Adri and Jazmin joined us in the summer months. Here they are picking scarlet runner beans.

Later in the summer they graduated from making concoctions with flower-heads, mud and weed-greens to crafting food that was actually quite delicious from real garden-ingredients. The lettuce wraps with tomato, fig and cucumbers were a favorite once the girls left out the raw garlic garnish!

Cindy tastes a sample of Jazmin's creations. Yumm!

That's Donn Dussell (who comes every Monday) and Chris in front of our newest greenhouse - the Phoenix, made mostly from recycled materials which they built together last winter. Donn will also be helping Chris put a new 'skin' on our larger, 20'x50' Ark greenhouse this winter.

Marilyn Dussell has a passion for running our riding mower! Thanks to her and Donn for their third year as CSA subscribers, volunteering in the gardens and all the other ways they show their support for our project.

Other contributors: In the second half of the year (since our last gratitude post published in June, 2021-LINK) and aside from the $2,000 donation from Karen and Peter mentioned above, we have received a total of $210 from Judy Peabody, Drake Wauters and Suzanne Campbell  - a local who has interest in partnering in wild-life habitat restoration projects.

Thanks to our CSA members:  Catherine Henry, Donn and Marilyn Dussell, Karen Josephson and Peter Stoel, Lilia Parker-Meyers, and Dian Wright. Amongst them, we fed at least 16 people as many of them fed not only themselves but friends and family as well.

Here is art work by Llyn's Mom Judy, showing our "Phoenix Farmhouse".

...and here's the farmhouse in the late Spring of 2021.

 Originally built in 1875 (the second oldest house still standing in Monroe), here is what the farmhouse looked like shortly after we began renovations in 2013. (LINK to photo gallery about Phoenix Farmhouse renovations.)

In October, Llyn's Mom and Uncle came for their annual visit and were super helpful. Thanks, Mom and Craig!

Judy, Llyn's Mom, harvesting tomatoes.

Craig, Llyn's uncle, sifting compost

Other donations: In response to our call for a laptop, many people responded. We kept one, donated by Thorin Nielson for Llyn to use for her writing projects and are passing along another one, donated by Donn and Marilyn Dussell to one of our steadfast volunteers, Rook.

Thorin, Eliza and Rook picking blackberries.

Catherine Henry, donor of the E-Loo composting toilet mentioned above has also donated several high-quality hoses, rain-bird sprinklers on stands, and other watering nozzles. 

Leaves and Grass and Compost, oh my!  This is the second year that the Sharing Gardens has grown all our food "veganically" and used zero amounts of commercial fertilizers, animal by-products or livestock manures. All our fertility comes from: leaves, grass-clippings, wood-ash and coffee grounds (see: Making Your Own "Veganic" Potting Soil in Your Greenhouse Paths - Using Worms). We are grateful to Jo and David Crosby (no, not the rock star!) who bring us many trailer-loads of leaves from their land each year. Also, our neighbors John and Donna Dillard and Irene and George Daugherty who have also delivered multiple loads of leaves. We also appreciate the city of Monroe (the small town where we live) for posting information about our leaf/grass drop-off site in our front yard for townspeople to bring us their yard waste. (For more info: Click Here - see pg. 4 of Nov. 2021 newsletter or Here for the SG post). 

 

 

Gratitude too to our dear friend John Kinsey who, in his quiet way has been supporting the gardens almost from the start. He lives a few blocks away, and retired in 2015 and, to keep himself from "going crazy with boredom," has been making us compost in his worm bins ever since. In the last two years he's easily brought us over 3-4 cubic yards of compost! He also goes to a local cafe  and picks up 15-25 gallons of coffee-grounds per week which contributes greatly to our garden's fertility. Thank you John!

Chris and John loading wood-chips in a wheel-barrow for distribution.

Here's a pic of about 3/4 of the firewood that was donated this year. Thanks to the Crosby's and the Ballards for donations of unsplit 'rounds' and to the Dussells for help with the splitting and use of their splitter. We are cozy and warm this winter, thanks to you!

Gratitude to our pollinators and wild pest-controllers: the birds, insects and other wild critters that call the Sharing Gardens "home". Here's the latest post about "Rewilding at the Sharing Gardens and good news about the West Coast Monarch species".

Jazmin, with a tree frog she caught in the gardens. At the beginning of the season she was afraid to pick them up and by the end, she and Adri were catching up to ten in a day and making little oasis/habitats for them before letting them go at the end of the morning.

and remember, as a wise Vulcan once said...