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Late March 2022

It’s been too long friends. To be honest, the Russian invasion of Ukraine has taken a toll on my ability to do more than what is necessary. I have found that I simply want to spend time with my loved ones and be fully in their presence.

Nevertheless time moves on and our side of Earth is getting more and more sunlight with each passing day. The warm winds of spring have graced our skin with their presence, bulbs are poking their heads out the of ground, Skunk Cabbage is already fertilized and starting to make seed, snowdrops are just standing there doing what their little vacuous selves do. So we gotta get back in motion over here because, with all your wonderful support, we have an incredible third year taking shape!

For us, the delivery of our first shipment of native, bare root, woody plants marks the beginning of our spring planting season. We have our biggest order to date thanks to our donors on Patreon. Although we won’t be planting in the ground yet for a few weeks, these plants need to find themselves in pots quickly. If you’re in the Ann Arbor area, we will be hosting a potting party on the evening of Friday, April 1st. Send us a message if you’d like to join or sign up to receive our volunteer opportunity emails

garden clean up?

One of the most often asked questions at this time of year is “Can I cut my plants back yet?” The only answer a good American *should* give is “This is America, do what you want!” But we know that you want to dig a little deeper.

As always, there are very few straight-ahead answers in dealing with the ecological. Insects use the cover and habitat of the previous years vegetation for overwintering as adults, pupae, or as eggs. Birds will forage along the stems for those insects and any seeds that might have fallen to the ground. Voles will use the cover of grasses whose leaves have flopped over to cover the soil. Snakes will sit and wait for those voles to walk within striking distance. Those dead plants are still providing for your ecosystem.

So when to clean up then? I like to divide the yard into different areas that will be “cleaned up” in different ways. First, I make sure to select some part of the garden where the previous years vegetation will stand throughout the new growing season. Let’s mimic a natural area that has not any fire come through and do nothing.

Next, in mid to late April I’ll take about half of the remaining garden and remove all of the dead plant material, mimicking a very successful fire. In the other remaining half I will cut the stems down to between 12-18 inches, mimicking a patchier fire. Creating this mosaic of treatments allows for diversity to thrive in your garden, hopefully keeping insect populations abundant and healthy, while limiting the potential for plant pathogens. I like to use the cut stems as mulch in my veggie garden beds, as conditioning for the compost bin, or I will use it as sheet mulch in some new bed I may be planting. You can also you the native grasses as kindling for campfires as well!

Any areas you might have in food production should be kept in immaculate condition. You might add layers of mulch to protect certain perennial edibles like strawberries but for the most part, left over plant material should be removed and composted. Don’t let diseases or pathogenic insects build up in your edible gardens!

from the field

In February and March Adapt hosted our first winter shrub cutting parties at four different residences in Ann Arbor. They were joyful, physically engaging events where children ate too many donuts and adults managed to not drop buckthorn on each other’s heads. We learned to identify many different exotic invasive woody species, we opened up areas to be planted with natives this spring, and best of all, we had the opportunity to get to know each other a little bit better!

If you have an invasive woody plant problem on your property consider having Adapt help you host a shrub cutting party. Send us a message and we can plan for the fall!

Adapt is growing!

We are truly honored to be able to offer our services to more communities with 6 new chapters this year: Benton Harbor, East Lansing, West Bloomfield, and Rochester Hills in Michigan, as well as Warrenville, Illinois and Lancaster, Pennsylvania. The new Adapt Community Leaders are all incredible and compassionate people with an understanding of the need to center culture and community within native plant gardening. We honestly couldn’t be happier to have them joining us.

Landscape architect Shannon Sylte will be joining our team on a volunteer basis to help with groups that may need increased design support but are unable to raise funds to hire a firm. Her generosity will allow us to begin helping other organizations to implement deep ecological integrity into their missions.

Finally, we are getting some in house assistance with our first intern. Esther Chiang is a Masters of Landscape Architecture student at The School of Environment and Sustainability at the University of Michigan. She will be working with us to design and plant gardens, studying our process and creating graphic representation of our gardens and our work flow. Her internship is being funded through the Edna Bailey Sussman Fund Environmental Internship.

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