natural history

These Are a Few of My Favourite Things: Preying Mantids

/ Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment
DSC_0025 sm

NZ mantis laying eggs

There’s no question why I’ve been known as The Bug Lady most of my life. I have a weakness for anything with more than four legs.

Preying mantids are some of my favourites. Not just because they eat pests in the garden, but because they are simply fun to watch.

How often can you watch a cheetah bring down an antelope in real life? Um…never. But it’s easy to watch a mantis snatch a fly—all the drama of the Discovery Channel, right in your back yard.

Sometimes the drama is a little too close for comfort.

When we lived in Panama, a beautiful 10 cm long green mantid with bright pink hind wings often came to our light at night. It would sit on our table and snatch moths attracted to the oil lamp. It was a cheeky insect, and had no compunctions about perching on our faces or arms to get a better vantage point for its nightly hunting. We laughed that it would follow us to bed some night.

We weren’t quite right, but one morning I slipped on my jeans, only to feel something enormous crawling up my thigh. With a yelp of surprise (and visions of scorpions, which were common in our house) I tore the jeans back off and peered down the leg to find our cheeky mantid scrambling out. It looked distinctly ruffled by the experience, but that didn’t stop it from returning to our light.

But from then on, we trapped it in a jar every night before we went to bed.

We are blessed with a healthy population of New Zealand mantids here at Crazy Corner Farm. Like most mantids, they enjoy hanging out on flowering plants, particularly herbs which attract huge numbers of flies and bees. Sometimes, I sit in the middle of the herb garden with my morning coffee, just to watch the mantids. I’m always surprised and impressed by the size of prey they can take down. I’ve even seen them snatch more than one fly at a time—one in each “hand”. Indeed, they will keep snatching prey as long as it keeps coming—even once they are fully sated and can’t possibly eat any more—their predatory instinct is so strong, they can’t stop themselves.

Of course, everyone has heard that female preying mantids eat their mates, and in species in which the female is much larger than the male, I’m sure it happens. But male preying mantids are just as fierce as the females, and they don’t go without a fight. The female New Zealand mantid is only slightly larger than the male, and I have kept males and females together in captivity. Only once did I see a female try to eat her mate. It was an epic struggle, worthy of the best wildlife documentary. It went on for at least fifteen minutes, and in the end, the male got away.

So turn off the TV. Get outside and watch the drama unfold!

Daddy long-legs

/ Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

daddylonglegs1cropsmThe name Daddy long-legs conjures images of swift, leggy creatures, but depending on where you live, the image you see in your mind may not be the creature pictured here. The name can refer to a particularly common house spider, a crane fly, or this delightful animal—a harvestman.

Harvestmen are arachnids, and are often confused with spiders—eight legs, roundish body, move quickly—but they are in a separate order from the spiders, and have important differences.

The most obvious distinction is the body shape. Spider bodies are divided into two sections, but harvestman bodies are just one section.

Most people are familiar with the European harvestman (pictured), but most harvestmen are much more fierce-looking than the European ones. They sport vicious-looking spines, oversized pincers, and bizarre body shapes and colours. Perhaps this is where they get their reputation as “the most poisonous spider on the planet”. The truth is that, unlike spiders, none of the harvestmen have poison glands.

Harvestmen are primarily scavengers—eating dead insects, and the occasional tiny, slow-moving live insect (the European ones are said to like aphids). They have no need for poison except in defence, and here they are well-endowed. Most harvestmen have small pores on their backs that exude a smelly substance that repels most predators.

So the worst a harvestman can do is smell bad.

Of course, every kid who’s ever tried to catch a harvestman knows they have another defence mechanism—legs that break off easily. A harvestman’s legs act as a quick get-away mechanism if it is snatched by a predator—the leg snaps off easily in the predator’s mouth, allowing the harvestman to escape. Harvestmen seem to get along quite well with seven, six, even as few as four legs (look closely and you’ll notice the one I photographed has only seven legs).

These shy, gangly creatures are some of my favourites in the garden and in the forest, where hundreds of species abound, many of which are still undescribed by science.

2016 Blog Challenge

/ Robinne Weiss / 1 Comment

100_2118smNew year, new challenge. This year I’m going to stray from the table and the kitchen, though I’m sure I won’t leave the subject of food entirely.

This year I’m returning to my roots as an interpretive naturalist with my blog challenge—A Year Outdoors.

As I did with the 365 Days of Food challenge, I will interpret my theme broadly and explore a wide range of ideas and perspectives on the outdoors. I’ll range from garden to beach to mountaintop. I’ll look at microcosms and ecosystems, the tiny to the huge. I’ll explore outdoor work and play. Anything out of the confines of four walls and a roof is fair game.

Rain or shine, I’ll be out there. So grab your hat and come join me for another year!

(Not so) Plain Vanilla

/ Robinne Weiss / 1 Comment

100_4048 smI knew I would be picking strawberries later in the day, so this morning when I was baking I made a simple vanilla cake, because it would go well with the berries.

But why do we consider vanilla simple, plain?

Vanilla is an exotic spice, made from the bean of a tropical orchid. Like most orchids, it has evolved a close relationship with it’s pollinator, and is only pollinated by one genus of bees. Outside its native Mexican range, vanilla must be hand pollinated. Though vanilla was introduced to Europe in the 1500s, it was more than 300 years before a viable hand-pollination technique was developed, allowing vanilla to be grown throughout the tropics.

To make vanilla even trickier to cultivate, it cannot germinate without the presence of specific mycorrhizal fungi.

Add to that the fact that it grows in regions prone to hurricanes and cyclones (which regularly wipe out regional production), and it’s not surprising that vanilla is the second most expensive spice after saffron.

So, why do we think of vanilla as ordinary and plain?

Perhaps it comes from the fact that vanillin, the artificial vanilla flavour that is used in 95% of “vanilla” flavoured products is made from lignin, a by-product of the papermaking industry. That makes artificial vanilla much cheaper than real vanilla—cheap enough to use in everything. Unfortunately, vanillin is only one of 171 different aromatic compounds found in the real vanilla bean, which is why artificial vanilla tastes so…well…plain.

This lovely, exotic spice has been rendered plain by its cheap imitation.

I use only real vanilla.

It’s not plain.

But it goes great with strawberries!

Aphids

/ Robinne Weiss / 1 Comment

20151127_125023710It’s aphid season here. Lettuce, strawberries, dill, parsley, and roses are covered in the little green girls.

I used to fret about aphids—they can certainly cause a great deal of damage, particularly to young plants. But I’ve learned to live with them. Here are a few of my aphid strategies:

  1. When I plant out, I check every plant carefully, and squish any aphids—knocking back these early individuals goes a long way to limiting damage.
  2. If a plant is heavily infested, I turn my hose on jet and blast the aphids off. This technique doesn’t get them all, but it does knock the population back to manageable levels.
  3. I allow some plants to get covered. In my garden, my early dill always gets nailed by aphids. I accept this. I don’t kill the aphids, either. The aphids on the dill attract ladybugs, lacewings, and parasitic wasps that eat aphids. Lots of aphids on the dill means lots of predators later in the season.
  4. I plant purple varieties of crops, which are usually less attractive to aphids.
  5. I accept aphids as a source of extra protein and vitamin B in our diets. We eat aphids. They’re good for us.
  6. I have patience. By midsummer, the aphids have all but vanished, decimated by the predators I cultivated in springtime.
  7. I admire aphids’ abilities and beauty—parthenogenic reproduction (that is, the females clone themselves—no need for males), dainty legs and antennae, and a remarkable ability to survive.

Parsley

/ Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

100_4036 smParsley is a ubiquitous herb, easy to overlook, easy to undervalue.

It is said its seeds must go to the devil and back seven times before germinating. I don’t think it takes quite that long, but parsley is slow to germinate.

Once up, though, parsley is tough and long-lasting. The plants I start in August will survive spring frosts to flourish through the heat and drought of summer, and continue flourishing through the cold wet winter, to be finally pulled out in October of the following year, when they begin to bolt, to make room for new plants.

We eat parsley by the handful (none of this Tablespoon stuff), and love it in risi e bisi, soup, potatoes, and gratins.

We grow both the Italian flat-leaf and the curly varieties (because, why not?), and enjoy the flat-leaf parsley fresh in salads (or just standing up in the garden as we pass by). We also enjoy parsley mixed with other fresh herbs to make a non-basil pesto that is lovely on pasta or as a topping for polenta crostini.

Of course, the best reason to grow parsley in much of the world is to attract the beautiful swallowtail butterflies, whose caterpillars specialise on parsley and related plants, incorporating the toxins from the plants into their exoskeletons to serve as defence. Unfortunately, we have no swallowtails in New Zealand, but the flowers of parsley attract bees, flies, and our native butterflies in large numbers.

Trench Warfare

/ Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

IMG_3951 smWe have precious few trees on our property, maybe a dozen in total, all clinging to the fence lines, out of the way.

Except that they’re not out of the way, really. Though they only cast brief shade on the vegetable garden, their roots encroach well into the garden. I know exactly where a tree has stretched its toes out by the swath of dead and dying vegetables, and the parched earth that accompanies them. Last year, I lost most of my zucchinis and an entire row of strawberries to the trees’ depredations.

I can pull some of the roots out when I’m weeding, but many invade deep in the soil.

So we resort to trench warfare to keep them out.

Every three or four years, we hire a trencher from the local equipment hire place (well, okay, my husband hires the trencher—I stay away from loud petrol-powered machines as much as possible), and dig a metre-deep trench all around the garden.

It makes an enormous difference to the vegetables—I can almost hear them breathe a sigh of relief when the tree roots are cut. The roots grow back, eventually, but the trench gives us a few years to garden without competition.

 

Grasp the Nettle

/ Robinne Weiss / 1 Comment

100_3950 smMy garden is blessed and cursed with an abundance of nettles. Blessed because they are the larval food plants for two attractive native butterflies—the red and the yellow admiral. I love watching the butterflies flit around the garden!

Blessed because nettles only thrive in good soil, and mine are the most vibrant and robust nettles anywhere.

Cursed because…well…they’re nettles. Careful as I may be, I can’t avoid being stung on a regular basis.

But like all problems, meeting them head-on is the best tactic. As they say, grasp the nettle. A nettle that brushes gently against your skin as you’re trying to avoid it will almost always sting. But grab a nettle firmly, even with bare hands, and you can usually pull it out without pain.

It really is a good metaphor for life (even if most people have no idea what it means).

And so I dive into the nettles of life like I dive into the ones in the garden—grappling them bare-handed and pulling them out with a quick, confident tug.

At least, that’s the theory, anyway…

Broccoli raab

/ Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

100_3940 smOne of my favourite spring vegetables is broccoli raab. Not so much because it is the best vegetable, but because it produces so early, before any of the other brassicas are ready.

Broccoli raab looks like mini-broccoli, though it is more closely related to turnip than to broccoli. Broccoli raab is eaten “lock, stock and barrel”—leaves, stem and flower buds. As one of the earliest spring vegetables at our house, it gets used in everything from stir fry to pasta to pizza to gratins.

It is more bitter and pungent than broccoli (more like turnip greens), and a little goes a long way in a dish. I plant just a small amount of broccoli raab, and by the time the other brassicas are producing, it has bolted and is ready to pull out. A perfect little filler crop that adds kick to springtime meals!

Artichokes

/ Robinne Weiss / 1 Comment

artichokes2cropsmI don’t think I ever ate an artichoke until I was an adult. They just weren’t a part of the diet in eastern Pennsylvania in the 1970s and 80s.

I probably could have counted on one hand the number of artichokes I’d eaten until I started growing them. And I had no idea how incredible and prolific they could be until I lived in a place where artichokes were perennial.

Now I can hardly imagine springtime without them.

The globe artichoke is a thistle (not to be confused with the very different Jerusalem artichoke, which is a sunflower). It grows as a large rosette of leaves and can reach over 1.5 metres tall. The edible part is the unopened flower bud. If you let the buds mature, they open into giant purple flowers that bumblebees can’t resist.

Artichokes are the same species (different variety) as cardoon which is more commonly planted as an ornamental. Cardoon flowers are smaller, and it is generally the leaf stems that are eaten. I grew cardoon for food briefly, before realising that blanching the leaves (by wrapping the plants in straw and cardboard as they grow) is time-consuming, and the final product—the cooked leaf stems—tastes a lot like artichoke, only more bitter and less rich. (Then, of course, I tried to get them out of the garden—it took four years—they are thistles after all) Now I keep just one in the flower garden as a stunning centrepiece plant.

The first records of artichokes come from ancient Greece, where wild varieties were selected and bred into the large-flowered plants we grow today.

Today Egypt and Italy produce about half the world’s artichokes, but with new cultivars that can tolerate cold winters, they can be grown just about anywhere. Put them in the perennial part of your garden, and even if you don’t like to eat them, you can enjoy their beauty!