Chapter 15: More Easy Ways to Promote Outrageous Diversity!

There are all sorts of fun and easy things we can do on our property to promote even more abundance and diversity of life! What’s good for bats and beetles is also good for trees, soil, water availability, and carbon sequestration. Aside from improving the health of Earth, promoting more life means more twittering birds during the day and more glowing fireflies at night. Yes, please!

A quick note about the ideas that follow. I’m only featuring a handful of my favorites that also happen to be easy (with one exception at the end of this chapter that is difficult, but important). There are many other impactful things we can do that are not included here, such as reducing pollution in waterways, building rain gardens, and creating wildlife corridors.

Retain All Organic Matter

We can do more than retain grass clippings, leaves, and kitchen waste. We can retain all organic matter from our property. If it’s organic, it rots and supports more diversity in the process. This includes all branches and logs.

We can use branches, stalks, and stems to form a brush pile behind or near the pallets that hold our compost. A brush pile provides food and shelter for birds, all sorts of insects, chipmunks, salamanders, turtles, and other life. It also supports possums, hawks, and raccoons that feed on the creatures that live in the brush pile. Worried what neighbors or clients think? Put up an educational sign. Or hide the pile out of sight.

Logs and chunks of wood create another thriving ecosystem for frogs, lizards, and fungi. In particular, logs are excellent for supporting beetles. Beetles help facilitate the breakdown of organic matter by eating pollen, leaves, fruit, dung, and rotting wood. They also prey on pests, pollinate plants by patrolling across flowers, and help control weeds by eating their seeds. We can stack logs and chunks of wood behind or near the compost pile. We can also use sections of logs to create beautiful borders around or between spaces. We can either lay them on their long sides or stack them vertically on their short ends depending on how much wood we have available. This accomplishes an aesthetic objective while also providing extra habitat for more ecology. Win-win!

This can be done on any property, whether at a home or commercial site. Our goal should be to prevent any organic matter from leaving the property. This boosts the abundance and diversity of life, sequesters more carbon, and reduces the CO₂ emissions associated with having those materials moved to the landfill or yard waste center.

Create Understory Layers

An understory layer is one or multiple layers of plants underneath larger plants. For example, planting flowers and a dogwood under an existing white oak creates two new understory layers. I often see trees in the landscape with nothing growing underneath. This is the perfect place to plant smaller trees, shrubs, and flowers. These new plant layers benefit insects (and all the life that rely on insects for food) because many insects need an understory layer to complete their life cycles. For example, many caterpillars feed on the canopy of a large tree and then drop to attach themselves to smaller plants below where they transform into butterflies and moths. If these layers do not exist, these caterpillars will die.

Leave the Dead Stems

Traditional landscape paradigms recommend cutting dead flower stalks, removing seed heads, and generally cleaning dead material from the landscape every year. But these dead plants are so important for housing insects and their young through the dormant season. All the life we see during the growing season still exists within the landscape during the dormant season, but it is quietly hidden away in its dead cracks and crevices—the very material that traditional landscaping practices would have us cut and remove.

We can either leave them in place permanently (they will eventually rot), or remove them when the growing season begins, which gives the insect a chance to emerge. If these options are not possible, then stage the plant material in a pile somewhere on the property since some of the insects and their young will survive.

Here is additional information for those who want to learn more:

More information about how to help fireflies

Install Houses and Hotels

We can buy or build all sorts of specialized houses to help bats, birds, owls, and various pollinators. I especially love hotels for native bees. They come in all shapes and varieties. They usually include wood, bricks, tubes, straw, pinecones, and other nooks and crannies for native bees and other pollinators to call home. They are not suitable replacements for natural, high-quality habitat, but they certainly help.

Xerces Society offers several free plans and specifications online. We can find countless other resources on YouTube and the internet in general. Here is a link to a great resource on this topic:

How to build a bee hotel

Turn Off Exterior Lights at Night

Light pollution is devastating insects, birds, bats, amphibians, and all sorts of other life. It can affect reproduction, nourishment, sleeping, predation, and more. Here are some examples from the world of insects:

• Many moths and other nighttime insects are drawn to lights, thinking they are the moon. They swirl around the light all night, flying to exhaustion. Up to one-third of these insects will be dead by morning, either from exhaustion or being picked off by predators.
• Lights interfere with insects that rely on bioluminescence to attract mates, such as fireflies.
• Insects often confuse light reflections on streets and sidewalks with bodies of water, causing them to lay eggs on hardscapes instead of in streams.
• Insects are attracted to headlights—for example, 100 billion insects die on German highways each year due to headlights.

There are many other types of life that are affected, including birds, bats, frogs, and turtles. Lights alter the path of migrating birds, confuse sea turtles laying eggs, and deprive daytime-loving species of sleep. As we increasingly light up the night sky–and nearly 20% of the planet’s land surface is now affected by light pollution–we throw more natural ecosystems into chaos.

There are easy ways we can help. We can get rid of any outdoor lighting that is not necessary for safety or accessibility. For any remaining lights, we can make sure they are on timers, or better yet, motion activated. We can trade traditional bulbs for red bulbs, which are less damaging. We can petition our city to transition to motion-activated streetlights and to require all businesses and buildings to turn off lights at night.

If we could accomplish this goal, we could also gaze up at space each night and stare in awe at a galaxy full of stars. To those of you who already have access to these views, I’m jealous. I am not able to see more than a handful of stars here in Raleigh due to light pollution.

Stop Using Harmful Chemicals

In some cases, the best actions are inactions. This is certainly the case with most every chemical that is traditionally used as part of lawn and tree care maintenance plans. Here are some of the common ones we usually see in these programs: herbicides, pesticides, fungicides, and miticides. (NOTE: “-cide” literally means “denoting an act of killing”—think homicide and suicide). They pollute water, kill soil, and devastate populations of birds and insects.

Insect populations are declining at the skyrocket rate of 2% per year, due in large part to pesticide use. As insects decline, so too do the species that rely on them—like birds. Here in North America, most birds rely on live insects to feed their young. Research shows that over the past 50 years the population of birds in the United States and Canada has decreased by roughly 2.9 billion, which is a 29% decrease. Scientists theorize this is tied to having fewer insects in the world. It is also tied to cats, which we will discuss next.

These “-cides” also harm us humans. Mosquito sprays are nerve agents (more on this later in this chapter). Exposure to neonicotinoids, which are common in many pesticides, has been linked to heart and brain disorders. Acephate–another common chemical in the landscape–damages the nervous system. Fungicides can be carcinogenic. The list goes on and on.

To be fair, there may be specific times and places that we need help from some of these chemicals. For example, herbicides can help with ecological restoration and sometimes toxic chemicals should be used to address a specific pest for which there is no other solution (this is common with invasive pests such as the emerald ash borer). But none of these should be used as part of ongoing landscape maintenance.

If we need help reducing weeds or pests, there are alternatives available that cause less harm, no harm, and in some cases are even beneficial to life.

• Cold-pressed pure neem oil: Neem oil is extracted from seeds from the neem tree. It has been used for hundreds of years to help control various pests. It can help boost plant health by stimulating an immune response that helps ward off fungal pathogens and by feeding bacteria and fungi within the plant’s roots and canopy.
• Horticultural oil: Horticultural oils are either petroleum- or vegetable-based oils. They help control insects and mites by smothering them. Horticultural oils are not as beneficial as neem. But they evaporate rapidly and leave no toxic residue, which makes them a great alternative to many other pesticides.
• Bacillus thuringiensis: This is a species of bacteria that lives in the soil and only harms certain insects, particularly those that feed on leaves. This can help with situations where a leaf-eating insect is defoliating a tree to the point where it is threatening the survival of the tree.
• Compost tea: In the last chapter we learned how compost can boost a thriving soil ecosystem. It can also be used as a foliar spray that helps build a healthy community of fungi and bacteria in the canopy, which boosts the plant’s health and ability to defend itself from pest attacks.
• Beneficial insects: We can buy beneficial insects and release them onto our property to eat pests. Two especially beneficial insects that eat a wide range of pests are ladybugs and green lacewings. We can also procure parasitic wasps to help control various scale insects in large canopy trees. There are more examples. But before we buy a beneficial insect, we must make sure it is native or near native to where we plan on releasing it. We do not want to release an invasive insect.
• Herbicide alternatives: There are a number of herbicides made from edible oils and food grade ingredients. They kill weeds by preventing photosynthesis and cause no harm to the soil ecosystem. The downside is that they are generally expensive and less effective than traditional herbicides.
• Meadows, pocket forests, and thickets: These are the ultimate in terms of pest control. They attract a wide variety of insects, butterflies, bees, pollinators, and birds. These insects and birds feed on the pests that attack our trees and shrubs. Ditto for gardens, orchards, and crops in general. Not only that, but we can use these ecosystems to outcompete weeds, thus replacing the need for an herbicide. We will go into great detail on these topics in Section 4 of this book.

There are other examples of products that cause less harm, no harm, or are beneficial to life. I recommend books and articles from Xerces Society. Here is a helpful list of organic pesticides:

A list of organic pesticides

I also recommend products that have been certified by the Organic Materials Review Institute (OMRI). These are generally safer than most. Here is a link to a list of OMRI-certified products:

A list of OMRI certified products

Keep All Cats Inside

As we learned earlier, bird populations in North America have declined by 29% in the past 50 years. Outdoor cats have played a role in this decline. There are tens of millions of free-range cats in the United States that kill millions of birds each year.

We can help by keeping our kitties inside. Always. When we see cats outside, check to see if they have a tag. If not, call animal control. If yes, call the owner and ask them to please pick up the cat. If they refuse, call animal control.

Some folks recommend using bells and bright collars to deter cats from killing birds. These are helpful, but do not solve the issue. Others recommend the TNR (trap, neuter, release) approach. Unfortunately, this approach is riddled with issues and does not work without significant resource and time investment in combination with other programs, like adoption. In most municipalities, an effective TNR program would be unfeasible.

Stop Using Mosquito Spray Services

Traditional mosquito control is devastating to all life, including humans. Most of these sprays contain pyrethrin or pyrethroids (the synthetic version of pyrethrin). Both are nerve agents that disrupt our nervous system and brain function. Ditto for all life affected by the spray. Some mosquito spray companies advertise their products as being all-natural. Indeed, pyrethrin is all-natural. But so is asbestos. Being “all natural” does not necessarily make a product safe.

As if all this was not enough, mosquito sprays are downright ineffective. Think about it—the mosquitoes can still fly in from neighboring properties. We would have to spray all the neighboring properties, and perhaps the entire city, to keep them out of our property. Even then, this assumes the spray actually kills all of the mosquitoes on site. It will kill many, but some will survive. Those that survive have fewer predators to eat them, since many of these predators were killed or harmed by the spray. With fewer predators, the mosquito population rebounds more quickly.

Because mosquitoes reproduce so quickly, they can develop resistance to chemicals. As we speak this is happening—mosquitoes are becoming resistant to many of the usual chemical approaches, such as pyrethrin.

What are our alternative options for controlling mosquitoes? We can do the following:

• Create habitat so predators like bats and lizards take up residence in our landscape. They love eating mosquitoes.
• Mosquitoes breed in water and puddles. We should reduce standing water by ensuring none collects in buckets, gutters, downspouts, pots, hollows, etc.
• For standing water we can’t dump or drain, buy BTI mosquito dunks. These contain a substrain of the Bacillus thuringiensis bacteria we learned about earlier that eat baby mosquitoes.
• Remove English ivy because it holds water and creates the perfect breeding ground for Asian tiger mosquitoes. It is also invasive in the United States.
• Garlic spray can serve as an alternative to traditional mosquito sprays. It is approximately as effective as traditional sprays (i.e., not very effective), but without the damaging consequences.
• Use fans. Mosquitoes are bad at flying. Strong fans blowing across a patio or porch will rid it of these blood sucking fiends.
• My preferred approach: we can apply nontoxic balms and sprays on our bodies or wear long sleeves, tuck our pants into our socks, and wear a head net. By protecting ourselves at the point of contact, we can generate the most effective defense against mosquitoes.

Here is additional help on this topic for those who want more:

More help with mosquito control

Because we are now deep in this topic, let me touch on one other ineffective approach: bug zappers. These devices use ultraviolet (UV) light to draw in mosquitoes where they then contact an electrical grid that kills them. Unfortunately mosquitoes are not attracted to UV light. They are attracted to CO₂ that we and other life exhale. The insects that do get zapped include beneficial solitary wasps as well as moths, whose caterpillars support our bird populations. Skip the bug zappers.

Before I leave this topic, I want to note that all life has value, even mosquitoes. At a minimum, they provide a huge amount of food for other insects, birds, and bats.

Remove Invasive Plants

Removing invasive plants is challenging. I almost excluded it from this chapter because it requires being able to identify invasive plants, understand their growth and reproductive strategies, tailor a removal plan based on those findings, and then execute that plan. This is not easy, but it is so important. We know that invasive plants cause great harm.

My best and easiest recommendation for this task? Hire a qualified professional to remove invasive plants.

For those who have the time and desire to learn how to do this work, here is a basic overview for how we can proceed:

• Learn to identify invasive plants: We can start by searching “invasive plants (insert location)” online to find many resources. Typical culprits here in North Carolina are Bradford pear, English ivy, ligustrum, mimosa, Tree of Heaven, and a number of others.
• Learn about the plant: To control a plant, we need to understand its life cycle and how it likes to grow, spread, and reproduce. This is going to influence our strategy. For example, if a plant spreads by seed, then our goal should be to prevent it from ever seeding.
• Evaluate resources: What resources do we have available for this project? What is our funding or labor availability? What is the setting? What tools will we need and what do we have?
• Establish goals and parameters: Is our goal to get rid of all non-native plants? Or only invasive plants? By when do we want to have this work completed? What products and tools are we willing to use and not willing to use? The list of options is long.
• Craft and execute our strategy: With sufficient knowledge we can now create a plan and implement it.

There are many reputable organizations offering in-depth information and resources regarding this topic. Here is one that I find helpful:

Help with removing invasive plants