Home and Garden

Bees are high-profile creatures these days, and one (tasty) way to help them to thrive is to become a backyard beekeeper.

At times referred to as the “angels of agriculture,” honey bees pollinate millions of crops per year and an estimated one in three bites of food you eat. Unfortunately, their populations have declined dramatically in recent years due to habitat loss, deforestation, industrial agriculture, parasitic mites, and Colony Collapse Disorder.

If you've ever driven down Alton Street, you are sure to have noticed Judy Kabodian's impressive garden. Many are stopped in their tracks by the site of the blooming expanse that occupies the entirety of her front yard. Even a CATA bus driver has paused her route to pay her compliments to the gardener. I visited Kabodian's home to learn more about the development of the garden, and to see this eye-catching attraction myself.

The summer is an excellent time to bud-graft fruit trees. The process of bud-grafting is similar to regular grafting covered earlier by ELi, but rather than using a whole stem as is done in traditional grafting, only a new bud is grafted onto the rootstock.

Bud-grafting takes very little effort and can be done quickly, which makes it a popular way to put one variety of fruit tree on a hardier rootstock. It also seems to work particularly well for fruit trees.

Garlic, Allium sativum, is a bulbous plant easily grown in East Lansing gardens and common at the farmer stalls at the East Lansing Farmers Market in the spring and early summer. While the whole plant is edible, most people eat the mature bulb, which is formed from 6-10 cloves divided by a papery skin. In the next few weeks, garlic bulbs should be ready for harvest.

The intersection of art and education is on full display in Marble School’s Garden. Created in what was once a sparse stretch of grass framed by Marble Elementary's brick walls, the garden has become a central part of the school itself and of students' interaction with their world.

I spoke with former Marble teacher Marlene Cosgrove, one of the original organizers of the garden who is still in charge of its maintenance, to learn more about this East Lansing attraction.

Image: mature purslane, photo courtesy of Oregon State University

Several years ago, I returned to East Lansing in mid-July from a week-long vacation and found innumerable purslane plants that had grown considerably among our staked tomato plants. I recognized the plant from the edges of sidewalks in town and paths on the MSU campus but had not paid much attention to it.

After the most recent rain, the cottonwoods of East Lansing have begun releasing their cottony seeds. The eastern cottonwood, Populus deltoides, is a huge hardwood tree native to the eastern U.S. and common in damp areas and the banks of rivers and streams of Michigan. A young tree can grow more than six feet a year and a 150-foot-tall, mature tree can develop a vase-shaped crown 75 feet across.

Image: A woodchuck that the author captured using a live trap in his East Lansing garden.

After a winter of hibernation in their large and complicated burrows, whistle pigs are out and devouring gardens in East Lansing.

In the spring of 2013, Glencairn neighborhood resident Beth Prince had to remove some dying pine trees from her yard. The result was a wide open expanse of sun, a hot (no pun intended) commodity in Glencairn. While being known for mature trees that tower over the historical homes, many areas of the neighborhood are subject to omnipresent shade. In fact, instead of lush, manicured lawns, many homes utilize shade gardens and ground cover plants to complement their perennial gardens.

Image: A butternut squash seedling planted in the “no till” mode in the author’s garden; the glass jar, the bottom of which has been cut off, is used to protect the plant from frost and nibblers.

Editor’s note: The full title of this piece is “A Dialogue Concerning Two Chief Tilling Systems, or, To Till or Not to Till—That Is the Question.” (If you don’t get the reference, click here.)

It’s hard to imagine that your yard may be bone-dry in just a few weeks, but during the hot summer months it is likely that you will need to water it.

An easy, economical and green way to capture water now and store it for the future use is via rain barrel. Collecting rainwater for use during dry months is actually an ancient practice, dating back as far as 2,000 years ago.