• EpheraEnglish
    31•14 days ago

    Man, I really hate the bottom kind of garden, on like a personal level.

    My uncle has one of those gardens, so whenever we visited there and wanted to play with our cousins, there was just fucking nothing to do there. Like, you could play football excellently. And they had frisbees and all kinds of toys.

    But no sticks. No plants to hide behind. No critters to poke at. No dirt to dig into. No trees to try to climb. Not even goddamn rocks to bang together. Everything is just sterile and dead. Like, why even have a garden, if all you can do in it, is to mow the goddamn grass.

  • SternEnglish
    18•14 days ago

    The moai scared all the bugs away :(

  • @[email protected]English
    14•14 days ago

    You don’t need such regimented rows, don’t let ivy grow on your house (that’s asking for brickwork issues(and bugs in the house)), have a trellise a metre away if you want. The wood pile isn’t obvious enough. Compost bin?

    • @[email protected]English
      5•14 days ago

      I get that they are talking about the numbers recorded are shrinking, but they are also talking about them never returning.

      I wonder if part of it is they’ve underestimated how important part of the rewilding process zoology is.

      They should have had vivariums of as many local varieties as reasonable along with every other type of breeding program. I know 10k species etc, but giving a jump start to an area with trees is missing the point that they are one part of the ecology.

      • Treevan 🇦🇺English
        5•14 days ago

        And then to make it even more complex, the more diverse number of soil species that dwarfs the above ground species that are more fragile to hooves, fire, and UV that have been completely lost (not even studied before they were lost).

        Humans could have kept track of a percentage of above ground species for introduction but the technology was barely there to even imagine what was lost in erosion and fire. And that likely underpins everything above ground.

        It sucks but we keep on soldiering on.

  • @[email protected]English
    8•14 days ago

    How do I get only bees like the one on the bottom has only flies?

    I’m willing to allow other insects like butterflies and mantises, but flies and gnats are non-starters.

    • EpheraEnglish
      10•14 days ago

      Many non-honey bees like to burrow in small tunnels. Preparing such tunnels for them can help them set up camp in your garden. You can do so, by e.g. drilling a few holes into a piece of wood and putting it somewhere where it doesn’t get rained on too much.

      Edit: I just saw that the uppermost picture has in fact one of those hanging on the tree to the right.

      These are referred to as insect/bee hotel.

      • @[email protected]English
        4•14 days ago

        I was mostly joking on the assumption that it would be impossible, but now I’m fascinated by the idea that I can actually influence butterflies and bees so they’re more abundant in my area. I was aware of the bee hotels, but didn’t know they were anything more than a weird hobby. Do they exist for preying mantises? We sometimes find them in our yard, but they’re endangered and I’d love to have a way to help them propagate.

        • EpheraEnglish
          5•14 days ago

          Ah, yeah, it certainly is impossible to get only bees. 😅

          I’m not actually a biologist or insect hotel expert myself. You’ll probably get much better advice, if you ask in e.g. [email protected].

          Given their camouflage, though, I imagine, they mostly want bushes to hide/hunt in. Maybe also don’t rake the leaves in autumn right away.
          Well, and you would probably actually want many other insects in your garden, for them as prey.

          • @[email protected]English
            3•14 days ago

            It’s one of those self-perpetuating behaviours. The more you spend time in the garden improving plantlife, the more animals you see especially on the microscopic level, the greater your interest. Good fun.

    • AFK BRB ChocolateEnglish
      3•14 days ago

      Our gnat population went down when we put up a hummingbird feeder and planted stuff that they like. It went up when we started composting though.

      We have a few bushes that the bees really like, and it’s cool to walk by them and hear such loud buzzing.

  • @OttoVonNoobEnglish
    7•14 days ago

    I really wish I could have the top garden but my yard is littered with deer(rural canada). If I don’t mow once a week my family is going to have deer ticks:X

    • @[email protected]English
      4•14 days ago

      Interesting I’m wondering if you creating a juicy yard of the snackiest grass isn’t redrawing in the dear and a more diverse garden would reduce that? No idea.

      Also if you’re not fenced in, it’s the deers yard really and you just get to enjoy it with them 😉