amphibians » Page 4

House Finch Hideaway — Completed

Jan 302011

Trellis habitat House Finch Hideaway will support a thicket of vines.

Garden Log (what I did):

1. Completed installation of the trellis habitat, House Finch Hideaway.

You, the Habitat Gardener (reflections):

Trellis wire on center post. Note the crevices in the post's wood -- great shelter for small criters willing to make the climb.

1. Today’s job was to finish the trellis habitat, House Finch Hideaway. For previous entries re this project, see HFH — Installed Posts and HFH — Trellis Wire Installed. To most people, this job would be a trellis installation to create back-fence privacy, period. But for me, this project is a great opportunity to grow food for our table. Also, the trellis will provide food and shelter for critters. I see a thicket of perennial jasmine vines with knock-me-out fragrant flowers, a sun-basking wall of hanging fruit, subterranean crevices and water for amphibians, a ladder system of wood posts for insects and lizards, perches and nesting shelter for birds, and a rising sun backlighting enormous grape and fig leaves.

Top cross wire loosely in place (before stapled). Note the post's lean away from the back fence.

After laying out and attaching the top wire loop with a Gripple lock, I realized that the wire was not as tight as I wanted it to be. The distance between the two center posts was too long. A 5th post, a true center post, will bridge the gap and prevent the someday vegetation-laden wire from sagging in the middle. All the better to know now that my original plan for four posts was unrealistic. Besides we can milk this mistake. I’ll get the most out of changing the plan by a) charging more for the job, b) installing more beautiful driftwood in the garden, and c) installing a separate animal habitat when digging the hole for the new center post. About a) charging more — Oh well, I forgot this is an unpaid job. About b) more driftwood — YES!!! How better to fix a problem than to pull out the driftwood? Better yet, the center post is a union of two pieces of driftwood. About c) another habitat — Dano’s Great Newt Grotto is born; see my future post (I’m going to bed!).

Base of center post yet to be backfilled with rock, gravel, and soil.

We want Center Post to rise about a foot above the 7-foot-high top cross wire. That one foot height over the wire will be a critter perch. Perhaps a bird, squirrel, or a very stupid insect or lizard (wanting to be so visible) will use the lookout. Our post is 9 and 1/2 foot long, so that does not leave too much wood to be buried below ground. First off, give up on the one foot and settle for a 6″ perch. Then, the post can be buried 2 feet (9.5-7.5) — way not enough for that heavy piece of tree to stay vertically suspended AND support the heaviest load of the trellis. What to do?

Center post base (left) supporting center post pole (right). Note the available critter shelter between the two pieces of wood.

Another piece of driftwood comes to the rescue. The second piece of wood to become Center Post is a glorious redwood root section. Being of redwood root stock, it is extremely dense, insect resistant and strong. That piece is dug into the ground about 5 feet and snugly holds up the center post pole. In fact, the base piece perfectly cradles the post piece, making a perfect lean forward away from the fence. Perhaps that lean away from the fence will keep the someday rotting posts from crashing through the back fence. Fences make good neighbors AND busting up the fence between you and your neighbor makes for trouble. Therefore, the heavy and strong Center Post has a slight lean away from the back fence.

Grape cuttings at left end post. The small "wood chip" pieces of grape vine will make friendly mulch for the soon-to-thrive vines.

Plenty of rocks were used to fill in Center Posts’ hole. The rocks will better pack around the wood posts because they will not compress like soil fill does. Also, the rocks and gravel will help the posts stay dryer in the ground, which will slow down their rotting. Not only will water filter through the gravel better than soil, but also the rocks and gravel will not retain moisture like soil or clay does. Less water retained means dryer posts. I also like the use of the larger rocks because cavities will be created around them during the natural settling process (of the soil, gravel, and rocks). Those cavities will shelter critters.

Compost soil was used to fill in the remaining post bases and grape cuttings were planted at the base of a couple of posts. The Center Post’s habitat, Dano’s Great Newt Grotto, incorporated a healthy transplanted jasmine vine rootball and short vine strands. Those short vine strands will quickly thrive and climb up the waiting stake, to the Center Post, and then off in both directions along the cross wires. Short stake “fences” were made around a couple of the post planting to keep foot traffic from destroying the plants. The planted cuttings were then mulched with old straw to protect the soil from heavy rain.

Vines at base of posts -- caged and mulched. Jasmine is far left, next to tallest stake. Grape is right, inside short stake fence.

So exciting to have a planting in place. Training the vines up the posts and weaving a living wall with flower and fruit vines will be fun. What neighbors? Oh yes, we have neighbors to the back of us, behind the vegetation wall.

Enjoy the regeneration of spring.

…………………………………………………………………… Tony

Trellis Wire Installed AND Kale Forest

1- Residential Habitats -- Critters and Their Homes, 2- Food Forest Gardening No Responses »

Jan 282011

Garden Log (what I did):

1. Strung up top horizontal wire on House Finch Hideaway trellis habitat.

2. Watered front garden, played frog, and surveyed kale bed.

You, the Habitat Gardener (reflections):

Siting cord (yellow) used to level wire position. Note this temporary cord is a little high on the left. Solution: loosen up left endpost, tighten down right endpost.

1. A few hours of glorious sunshine and time to work the garden today. My goal was to string up one of the horizontal wires of the trellis. The horizontal wires will bear the heavy weight of fruit vines and jasmine flower vines. My first assignment was to assess the bulk of wood each post had at the height I want the top trellis wire to be stretched, which is 7 feet off the ground, or about a foot higher than the back fence height. All four posts look bulky enough to take the bolts I intend to use to keep the cross wire from sliding down. I’m using bolts and not simple fence staples because I feel the bolts are more macho, they will not ever pull out like a staple might, AND they were free; thanx again, Tony, for thinking of me when cleaning out your garage.

As explained in my last post regarding House Finch Hideaway (House Finch Hideaway — Installed Posts), the posts have been left loose in their postholes. In other words, the posts can wiggle and waggle (especially if Pa is strumming his ukulele) in their holes while the end post and cross wires are being tightened. Backfill to secure the posts will come in due time.

Using Gripple tool to tighten endpost wire.

End post wires were doubled from the earth anchor eye to the post. Also, each pass of the wire around the post was wrapped twice to distribute tension. The end posts will bear enormous weight/tension from the combined weight of the two inner posts, all the cross wires and all the vines and fruit on those wires. That’s a lot of weight!

I left some slack in the end post wires because the slack can always be taken up, whereas too tight means cutting wire, installing a patch wire, and then reconnecting the Gripple lock.

I guessed the height of the top cross wire on each end post, drilled bolt holes (2 bolts for each end post), and strung a very visble yellow cord to mimic the top wire. Almost level, with the left end just a hair higher. Cool!, level can be reached by pulling down on the right end post — a perfect example why leaving some slack in the end post wires was the patient, wize way to go.

Left Endpost horizontal wire under bolt. Bad.

In comparison to an end post wire, the top cross wire has much less weight to bear — it has to deal only with the weight of the one wire itself and only the vines/fruit on that wire. Therefore, the top cross wire will be a simple loop from one end post to and around the other end post. A Gripple lock gathers and holds the two ends of the loop together.

Top cross wire above supporting bolt. Good.

But not so fast young man! Not so easy for me to string up the top cross wire. The 13 gauge vinyard wire did not want to bend around the endposts. Rather, it wanted to spring away from the post, slipping under the bolts meant to support it. Frustrating to repeatedly lose the wire’s top (above the bolt) position till I had an attitude adjustment. Those are long bolts — back them out till the wire is tightened between the posts and then screw them back in. Wala!, all was not lost. The extra long bolts did catch and hold the wire and the top cross wire was installed.

2. This is an exciting time of the year for me. Frogs have started to show up, in the auditory sense, in our neighborhood. How sweet it will be to have a frog or two or three croaking in our garden. Ribbit, ribbit, ribbit — a beautiful way to drift off to sleep. So I took a tour of our front garden today as if I was a visiting frog. “Yes, I could live here.”

Kale Forest from a frog's viewpoint

The kale bed struck me as quite beautiful from ground level, from the level of a hopping frog stopping by to live a few months in our garden. Those kale stalks and leaves look like a small forest. And that’s Mount Hood rising behind them. Yes, my neighbors are patient with me.

Kale in Rock Ledge Veggie Bed.

Rock Ledge Veggie Bed.

And then, this evening, my daughter and I heard a frog’s ribbit loud and clear from up against the house, not too far away from Rock Ledge Veggie Bed. How cool is that?! Perhaps my watering the front garden attracted it. Either way, I’ll take such instant gratification.

Ribbit.

………………………………………………………………..Tony

Zen Canyon Snake Pit completed AND persimmon harvest

1- Residential Habitats -- Critters and Their Homes No Responses »

Dec 102010

Zen Canyon Snake Pit -- slate stacking completed

Garden Log:

1. Completed slate stacking to bring Zen Canyon Snake Pit’s ceiling flush with surrounding edges, which finished the installation of the habitat.

Zen Canyon Snake Pit covered over with soil, leaves and branches. The topmost slate of the slate-layered chamber will support a branch/twig/stump/log pile. That pile of organic material will be a thriving animal habitat as it breaks down, soon to be thrown onto the compost.

2. Dug out soil around irrigation zone #3’s last riser, in corner of back garden, to expose the tee connection. Threw the soil on top of Zen Canyon Snake Pit.

3. Cleaned magnolia leaves off spa deck and on pathways in back garden — thanks Glory! Leaves were dumped on top of fresh soil just thrown on ZCSP.

4. Began stick debris pile on top of Zen Canyon Snake Pit; sticks were from dying birch and miscellaneous piles around the yard.

5. Tossed old straw “tiles” into the trench that was the base of Rock Pile Planter.

6. Harvested persimmon fruit from neighbor’s tree. Thanx for the persimmons, Sunny!

You the Habitat Gardener:

1. What a great session in the garden today. Always a good day when an animal habitat is completed. All the ideas, the what-if’s, the how would that be’s, the plans and sketches, the gathering of materials, the actual work (imagine that!) to manipulate space and materials are over. Sometimes, finishing a habitat installation is anti-climatic, especially one that has been in my mind for months, maybe years. But today’s completion of Zen Canyon Snake Pit brings our back garden to a new stage.

Now that Zen Canyon is bridged over with slate, we can begin to create an organic debris pile (sticks, tree limbs, etc.) on top of it. Debris Pile Food Court is born! Where there once was a hole in the garden, there will be a through-fare for the wheelbarrow and a large-item compost pile, that is, a debris pile. We will keep the debris pile to one edge of the top of the snake pit and have a path for the wheel barrow over the other edge of it. The filled over “canyon” will become the base, or floor, of the debris pile, a new habitat in of itself.

Habitat stacking in the garden — the debris pile will shelter many microbes, insects, snails, slugs, spiders, and small animals feeding on them. Perhaps some of those critters will seek shelter below the debris pile, in the staking of slate and stone or in the two toilet tanks that make up the cracks and crevices of Zen Canyon Snake pit. And all the while the debris pile breaks down we will be making soil. Eventually most of the organic debris pile will be tossed on the nearby compost pile. We’re making soil!

Organic garden debris, too large for the compost pile, will be piled to create the Debris Pile Food Court above Zen Canyon Snake Pit. Perhaps larger critters will live below ground and feed on the debris pile's smaller critters above.

2. Today began the creation of Debris Pile Food Court (Garden Log #2,3,4) — a pile of sticks , logs, stumps, tree limb sections piled above Zen Canyon Snake Pit. The debris pile will stand alone as an animal habitat, friendly to critters from microbes to insects to birds, amphibians, and reptiles. Maybe even a garden snake! Soil was thrown at the base of the pile to help sustain such biodiversity. Maybe some of those microbes working (breaking down) the wood pile will take shelter or food from the soil floor of the pile. Maybe that soil floor will be where the insects, snails, and slugs lay their eggs to keep the explosion of life going. And, that soil floor, rather than the slate floor is was, will also keep water available to further sustain animal life.

3. The magnolia leaves (Garden Log #3) cleared of our spa deck and off our garden slate pathways was thrown on top of Debris Pile Food Court’s soil base. Not great science, just wanted some place to put the leaves till our compost pile area is ready AND the leaves under the wood pile will add to the bio-diverse habitat of the now-planned soil-leaves-wood pile. Note that I said the leaves were only cleared away from the spa deck and the pathway; all other leaves will be left to break down on our small grass patch and in the beds of the back yard. What a mess! But that mess will provide great nutrition, shelter, and insulation for the soil microbes, larger critters, and plants ALL WINTER LONG. And be assured, by spring, the ground cover beds and grass will not only have recovered, but will be thriving and happy.

4. Used straw tiles (Garden Log #5) to fill up the base trench to the demolished Rock Pile Planter. Pulling off a few inches at a time from the end of the bale made nice thick, wet, heavy, partially-decayed slabs, or tiles, of straw. Perfect for filling in the thin trench. Eventually that straw will break down and leave a nutritious layer for the soil. Sure beats the adobe that was in the trench. And, in the meantime, the area has been leveled off and will have wheelbarrow access to the area.

5. Persimmon Harvest (Garden Log #6) is here. The beautiful fruit is ready to pick off of our neighbor’s tree. Enough fruit is left high in the tree, beyond reach with a 12-foot orchard ladder, to treat the birds of the neighborhood. No fruit goes unused — we will throw any harvested damaged fruit into the Earthworm Bin. Had some fun harvesting persimmons this year by using Nature-provided packaging. We used persimmon leaves between layers of fruit — the leaves provided a soft cushion AND are ripe with beauty. Will be fun to pack away some leaves as we pull out the fruit. Now you know what old phone books are good for; they have thin, absorbent paper that easily makes a flower or leaf press.

Hachiya persimmon fruit and leaves, pulled in from the cold (some frost on fruit).

Competed installing one animal habitat and started another — what a great day!

Tony

Happy Thanksgiving weekend AND Saving a Pond

1- Residential Habitats -- Critters and Their Homes No Responses »

Nov 272010

Salamander Sunny Swimhole remodelled and flushed

Happy Thanksgiving weekend all!

So nice to have a little more focus on what we have to be grateful for.

Garden Log:

1. Emptied the kitchen compost into the Earthworm Bin.

2. Emptied the kitchen wash basin onto Salamander Resort.

3. Removed leaves and sunken oak wedge from Salamander Sunny Swimhole, the pond over Salamander Resort. Flushed pond water.

4. Potted red currant and jostaberry starts that were saved during the demolition of Rock Pile Planter.

5. Photographed what was a caterpillar yesterday and is a pupa today. Just outside our front door, where the sun’s warmth is wind-sheltered, a caterpillar was crawling along the siding yesterday. In just about the same space today — “You haven’t gotten very far Little One, have you?” Well duh! That caterpillar may be there all winter. In fact, it’s not even a caterpillar any more. It’s a chrysalis, attached to the siding with a sticky silk ball.

Butterfly chrysalis on wood siding.

Close-up of butterfly chrysalis. Yesterday it was a plump, cylindrical, light-green, soft-skinned caterpillar. Today it is forming angular, hard ridges (natural I-beams) and a dark, thick crust.

You the Habitat Gardener:

1. The nights are getting chilly, even for cold-blooded invertebrates. I like to use planty of straw in the Earthworm Bin to keep it well insulated and to create a compost-breaking-down situation. All the die-hard microbes will generate heat, that will allow the straw and kitchen food to breakdown (from the microbes, of course), which puts off still more heat. The bottom will fall out of this Pyramid Scheme when we run out of kitchen scraps to add to the compost — “Quick!, gather up those rotten fallen apples and feed them to the worms.”

2. The Salamander Resort, our 6-foot-deep habitat hole/cavern/rock, wood, and soil pile, still has an unplanted surface. Intense soil making for now. The surface has been covered with different layers of organics, including manure soil, oak leaves, wood chips, magnolia leaves, straw. Great place to dump the kitchen washbasin, which is considered blackwater. “Blackwater” is a notch more ecologically volatile than greywater because of either sewage (toilet) or food particles from the kitchen sink. Sewage or food — all the same to a microbe. So for our garden, we purposefully wash our dishes in a half bucket, let it cool, then dump it in non-food areas or on the ground being careful to stay away from any leafage or root crops. Food particles and nitrogen-based “Earth-friendly” soap. [Pill Bug to his family]: “Soup’s on!” When in doubt, spread any greywater/kitchen water around then garden so you won’t drastically inundate any one plant. And don’t forget to save the bottom of the wash basin for one of your favorite plants. “Who will get all this yummy oatmeal flake- and baked eggplant polenta-infused water today? Who’s been good?”

3. My heart broke this week. All the hard work I did to set up a cooler-than-cool pond habitat in Salamander Sunny Swimhole turned out to be a flop. A cold snap, with some nights as low as 26 degrees (well, after all, this is sunny California!) set in and forced a lot of falling leaves. Between the shorter days of low-angled sun, the flood of organics falling out of the air (leaves), and the lower temps, the half-barrel pond ecosystem could not keep up. Murky water filled with fallen leaves AND a touch of “oil slick” on the surface. It was the slick that told me this pond is going anaerobic — it’s being starved of oxygen. All the precious muck that I saved during the the relocation plus the current conditions were just too much for it to keep up, for it to recycle life from the decaying matter being quickly added to it. A note about the shiny, multicolored slick: it’s a sign that there’s too high a concentration of nitrogen in the water, usually from muck on the bottom.

Sure, there’s some lesson to be learned here about our pond that went flop. But the bigger picture lesson I want to convey is how freeing it is to learn from a mistake and to feel the satisfaction of having corrected it. My heart broke not because the pond wasn’t working. My heart broke because I was WRONG. Don’t you just hate that! I was so jazzed to include a neat piece of wood (a freshly cut oak wedge with rotted out holes) when setting up the pond. What design, what art! All my visions of tadpoles and other aquatic critters meandering through the wood’s passages, perhaps escaping a foraging raccoon, gone up in smoke. How couldn’t this be Paradise?

Daily cleaning out of some of the fallen magnolia leaves postponed more effective action. Luckily, I was smart enough to finally give up the ghost and hauled the wood wedge out of the pond. Smelly! Foulness that bespoketh rotteneth (Old English, so old that they may not even know about it). Clearly an inorganic situation, AKA anaerobic, going on in the pond. How cool once the wood wedge was out. More water could be added to make up for the displaced wood. Also, I was able to scoop out leaves and muck more easily. Then I gave the pond a good flushing with fresh water.

Be careful when flushing a pond, especially if you are flushing with city water which might contain health-related additives in it. Those additives, like fluorine and chlorine, will bubble out if you let them sit overnight. But straight from the city-water hose to the pond in an excessive amount might overwhelm some critters and kill them. But back to Tony’s state-of-the-art foul pond. For our pond, it was already foul, so I flushed it, flushed it, and then flushed it some more. Hey, we’re starting over, both me and the pond. The pond will recoup and achieve it’s ecosystem. I will find something to be right about, again, some day.

: Oak wedge and flowerpot habitats in Salamander Sunny Swimhole.

: Set-up of Salamander Sunny Swimhole. Beware, the leaves are coming!

: Salamander Sunny Swimhole without oak wedge and with new water. A new start after the pond went foul.

: Butterfly chrysalis on wood siding.

: Close-up of butterfly chrysalis. Yesterday it was a plump, cylindrical, light-green, soft-skinned caterpillar. Today it is forming angular, hard ridges (natural I-beams) and a dark, thick crust.

Stay posted — I’ll post a pic of the pond’s success as it comes.

Tony

Watered Clay AND Chicken Haven coop

1- Residential Habitats -- Critters and Their Homes No Responses »

Aug 202010

Garden Log:

1) Took a break from digging SSSC today but did water the clay in barrels and bins along the garden path. 2) Finally found the “missing” plans to Chicken Haven coop and pen

To you, the Habitat Gardener:

adobe clay from habitat installation awaiting fill stage

1) About the watering of the clay: A lot of that clay will go back into the hole that will become Salamander Shady Shallows Cellar. Some will get stored away for a future habitat installation. But for now, we want to keep the clay moist so it is usable — the hot sun will turn it into rock if it drys out. Not too much water, though. Too much water will drown the microbes and create an anaerobic (no oxygen) situation on the bottom of the containers. Smelly!, that’s anaerobic; think about decay, sulphur, methane, pew! So a light sprinkle of water will be just enough to offset the sun’s heat for a while. My plan so far (changes daily, and isn’t that fun!) is to install habitat features in the enormous hole waiting for our creativity. Oh, how I love being vague — “habitat features” could be anything, maybe even the kitchen sink. Actually that’s just a lead-in to what we will be using — enamel tiolet tanks. Yes, tiolet tanks saved from the dumpster at a water-reducing project I happened upon. Sounds like a fairy tale, doesn’t it? But better than a fairy tale, these enamel tanks will last FOREVER under ground. A lasting tribute to the amphibian world in the form of stone-like caverns with organic bedding. Dig hole. Fill hole with tiolet tanks packed with wood chips, tree limbs that jut out of the hole, cardboard tubing, straw bale “tiles”, and lots more wood chips. Pour in liquified clay (INGREDIENTS: clay, water. Not an approved source of daily nutrition!). Let it sit, and sit, and sit. Serves 500-1000 amphibians, and trillions of microbes! But why the liquified clay? Thanks for asking.

The vaulted Lower Chamber of Salamander Shady Shallows Cellars

Liquified clay will refill the hole and allow it to self support itself. The hole is large enough that although The Lower Chamber is vaulted, we wouldn’t want to run the risk of having it collapse. A collapse of any magnitude would change the surrounding garden features. This is a small garden (that’s why we are going underground!) and we don’t want the nearby slate path or planting beds to collapse. And what fun to visualize the liquid clay solidifying and creating structure to the hole. The sides, and the vaulted lower chamber, will become one again with the same clay that was dug, scooped, and shaved from the hole. The liquid clay will tightly fill around the wood chip-filled tiolet tanks and the rising tree limbs. Once the toilet tank wood chips and tree limbs decay (yes, will take years), hollows and tunnels, respectively, will be created. The hollows will have soft, moist organic bedding and the tunnels, installed at a climbable slope, will have critter-friendly soft, moist organic footing. A pond on top of the filled-in hole will allow salamanders, toads and frogs to breed in our garden. True, a small pond, but at least it’s wet, it’s water. Water — the g

iver of Life. And from that pond, perhaps an amphibian or two will seek refuge and everlasting happiness below in Salamander Shady Shallows Cellars. I love happy endings.

2) Check out my plans for Chicken Haven below.

Chicken Haven plans -- East view

Chicken Haven plans -- Top view

Chicken Haven plans -- South view

Chicken Haven plans -- West view

Chicken Haven plans -- West view and notes

Chicken Haven plans -- North view

Dream, and record it!

Tony

Winter Veggie Planting

2- Food Forest Gardening No Responses »

Jan 052009

Previously posted on the Spore Lore Forum:

Last week when I was pruning a rose bush and weeding around it, I found a small garter snake curled near the base of the rose bush under some leaves and debris. It was cold and barely moving, but alive. I covered it back up and left it alone. It got me wondering though, should I be leaving the unwanted plants (“weeds”) and leaf material alone right now, and in general not doing much in the garden (except perhaps the raised veggie beds) because there may be reptiles and amphibians hanging out too cold to move??? I don’t want to step on anyone!!! Any thoughts on this, in general, would be greatly appreciated. Thanks –artichoke

Tulip magnolia leaves left to mulch groundcover plants

Artichoke,
Thanx for asking! And I am also answering for the critters in your garden.

Absolutely! A good idea to leave most of the leaves, mulch, and “debris” (one person’s trash is another’s treasure) in the garden. Not only will the extra layer, or blanket, keep the microbes and other animals warmer, but it will also keep feeding them. Those organics will also continue to break down and nutrify the soil for next spring’s blast of Life. Also, the plants themselves, like some bulbs and roots of trees and shrubs, will be better protected by the blanket of soon-to-be compost. Soil run-off will also be less if your precious topsoil is protected from pounding rains by the fallen leaf layer.

The flip side — why to clear out (and note I do not use the term “clean out”) the garden beds:
— If the soil is poor draining and you feel a tree or some plants would apreciate drying out.
— If you won’t sleep well without the beds cleared out. If that’s the case, save your soul (I jest) by minimizing the damage to the ecology. Consider leaving a debris pile in the yard to create habitat. Perhaps next spring you will be able to harvest some good compost from the bottom of it. Till you do, the ecology will enjoy the food and shelter (and Jungle Gym).

Have fun with your garden “stuff”. I’d love to know how it goes.
Tony

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