Pollinator Link

Grannies Ginger Nut Biscuits, Citizen Science and bees – 2015 National Tree Day Mt Gravatt SHS

Posted on 18/08/2015 by Mt Gravatt Environment Group

By: Laurie Deacon

Laurie briefing National Tree Day team

6am: I am up baking Grannies Ginger Nut Biscuits. It’s exciting. It’s going to be a big day.

Hard at work spreading mulch

9am: I join Mt Gravatt State High School teacher Andrew Walsh, long time champion of environmental sustainability, and my co-coordinator for the 2015 National Tree Day event. Briefing Mt Gravatt High School students ready to start planting and mulching. Students had a chance to come down from the class rooms, throughout the day and their breaks, & participate in learning & planting.

11am: Joe Kelly Member, for Greenslopes and Cr Krista Adams, Councillor for Wishart planted a Red Cedar Toona ciliata and a Tulipwood Harpullia pendula in honour of the past history of the Mount Gravatt Conservation Reserve which up till July 1893 was designated as a railway timber reserve.

Inspiring to see people so excited about native animals.

Citizen Science Activities on the day:

Celebrity Worm: even though many exciting people came to the event the real star was the earth worm. These grade 12 Geography students wanted photos with the amazing earth worm they had never really meet before!!
250 Butterfly/Bird/Bee attracting plants were planted: All students from grade 10 to 12 planted, built retaining walls mulched and watered.
Science & Sociology & Threatened Species Summit: Our event shows we are doing good at Mt Gravatt SHS working to reverse the trend of losing native birds (even Kookaburras) in our local areas!
Installing signs for Butterfly, Bird Bee Corridor (Pollinator Link): We progressed getting permanent signs for the Pollinator Link installed in the green corridor. They have been made up and painted. Now the lettering will be painted on by the students.
Citizen Science: We had tables of science information, bee displays set up and ran a few lessons on tree planting, butterfly’s that depend on the trees and a Butterflies Quiz eg. Fact or Fiction: “Butterflies taste with their feet. Taste receptors on a butterfly’s feet help it find its host plant and locate food. A female butterfly lands on different plants, drumming the leaves with her feet to make the plant release its juices.”
Food: Home baked goodies and pizza made be an ex-student of the High School!

Special thanks to:
Mr Richard Usher, Principal Mt Gravatt SHS
Ms Sam Jeffs, Business Manager Mt Gravatt SHS
Sienna Harris, Griffith Mates
Ryan Jones, Newcastle University
Sheamus O’Connor, Mt Gravatt Environment Group – Pollinator Link Garden Co-Project Manager & Ecology Adviser
Len Kann, Mt Gravatt Environment Group – Native Bee Adviser/Educator

Posted in Bees, Mt Gravatt Conservation Reserve, Mt Gravatt Environment Group, Pollinator Link, Wildlife Corridor | Tagged Andrew Walsh, Cr Krista Adams, Griffith Mates, Joe Kelly, Len Kann, Mt Gravatt State High School SHS, Ryan Jones, Sheamus O'Connor, Sienna Harris | Leave a comment

Hard work, laughter and fun building Pollinator Link

Posted on 12/08/2015 by Mt Gravatt Environment Group

Mt Gravatt SHS Pollinator Link team

By: Laurie Deacon

Thanks for your care and inspiration in local area folks, especially to Griffith Mates leaders Sienna, Amir, Imeshika and Kimmim … and our really local man Sheamus!!

Indeed a great day was had at our local Mt Gravatt State High School on Sunday with Mount Gravatt Environment Group members, local community members and the Griffith Mates team!

56 hours of landscaping and re-vegetation was done in total.
Creating bush habitat in school yard
37 volunteers came for two hours of hard work, laughter and fun!
- 28 Griffith Mates students; and
- rest from local Mount Gravatt community.
50 plants planted.
Our mulch pile got smaller and our plants happier.
Pollinator Links bring community together
More children came to join in the fun and the work.
And a local father inspired by us, is planning a Pollinator Link garden for his local school – Mount Gravatt East Primary! Another link for wildlife and community.

We care for and cherish our local high school and the Mount Gravatt forests around us, that sustain us 🙂

Yours in Healthy Habitat & Community for all Time.

Posted in Mt Gravatt Environment Group, Pollinator Link, Wildlife Corridor | Tagged birds butterflies bees, Bush habitat, Griffith Mates, Mt Gravatt State High School SHS, Sheamus O'Connor | 2 Comments

Living (Pollinator Links) in The Shires

Posted on 30/06/2015 by Mt Gravatt Environment Group

By: Michael Fox

The Pollinator Link vision is spreading to the western suburbs with publication of my article about native Blue Banded Bees.

Living in The Shires is a quality production with interesting stories/trivia about the local history like the iconic Graceville Uniting Church – designed and constructed by Walter Taylor as well as the bridge, and the story behind the name for Ananas Espresso.

Living in The Shires is a generous gift to the community from Harcourts Graceville.

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Pollinator Link at Biodiversity Seminar Series

Posted on 28/06/2015 by Mt Gravatt Environment Group

High Line New York – inspiration for Brisbane

By: Michael Fox

I joined two other speakers at the Brisbane Biodiversity Seminar Series to share our vision of urban wildlife corridors – Pollinator Links.

Download PDF copy of presentation

Linking Mt Gravatt with Bulimba Creek

My presentation shared the need for and complexity of creating wildlife corridors through the urban matrix.

Matrix of roads, houses and fences creates barriers to movement of wildlife:

Reduced diversity of birds in backyards – less Fairy Wrens and more Crows, rat and cats
Less butterflies and bees in backyards
Increased species loss in isolated patches of bushland – predation, fire, etc
Mt Gravatt SHS – December 2012 to March 2015

Inspiration from overseas, Maleny and Alice Springs. If a wildlife corridor can be built two stories above the streets and among the skyscrapers of New York we must be able to do something in Brisbane.

I also explored how the Pollinator Link garden at Mt Gravatt State High School is linking people, school, business and community with habitat.

The Brisbane Biodiversity Seminar Series delivers a range of interesting events like Gliders in urban space and Camphor Laurel – a useful weed?

My fellow presenters for the June Seminar were:

Catherine Madden, Land for Wildlife, Conservation Community Partnerships Program, Brisbane City Council enjoys working with private land holders to help achieve their conservation outcomes.

Catherine shared program updates and achievements of how Council has built partnerships with private landholders to create more Land for Wildlife!

Mik Petter, Bulimba Creek Catchment Coordinating Committee

In 2005 the Bulimba Creek Catchment Coordinating Committee, of which Mik was the founding chair, won the prestigious Australian National River Prize, the first urban group to do so.

Since that time B4C has gone from strength to strength forming community partnerships with all levels of government and industry to help facilitate the rehabilitation of Bulimba Creek Catchment, winning many accolades along the way.

Today they are a thriving community organisation, with their own Sustainability Centre and a bush restoration contracting arm. Mik is going to tell us about that journey.

Posted in Bushcare, Mt Gravatt Conservation Reserve, Pollinator Link, Wildlife Corridor | Tagged Brisbane Biodiversity Seminar Series, High Line New York, Mt Gravatt State High School SHS | 1 Comment

Tomatoes need the Blue Banded Bee Buzz

Posted on 25/06/2015 by Mt Gravatt Environment Group

By Sandra Tuszynska

A Blue Banded Bee on its way to pollinate a tomato flower. Image retrieved from http://www.aussiebee.com.au/beesinyourarea.html

Australia has over 1500 identified native bee species. Only about 16 of these are social bees, living in extended family systems. The rest are solitary or semi-social bees and they are essential pollinators of native plants as well as food crops.

In Australia, hydroponic tomatoes are grown in greenhouses, reducing pesticide and water use, while producing better quality and tastier tomatoes, worth $90 million per year. However, tomato pollen is contained within capsules that need to be vibrated in order to release the pollen. The greenhouse tomato industry thus uses electrically vibrating wands to release tomato pollen, costing $16 000 per hectare per year.

A Blue Banded Bees approaching an overnight roosting site. Image by Fish Fidler/Flickr. Retrieved from http://www.australiangeographic.com.au/

Unlike Honey bees, which are ineffective in tomato pollination, European bumblebees vibrate their strong muscles to dislodge pollen, by shaking or buzzing flowers during pollination. For this reason, the agricultural industry wants to introduce European bumblebees to Australia. However, there is strong opposition to the introduction of European bumblebees, as this raises environmental and quarantine concerns. In Tasmania bumblebees compete for limited resources with at least two species of native bees, displacing them from their habitat.

A blue banded bee in flight, extending her long multi-part tongue towards a Buddleia flower at Redland City, Queensland. Image retrieved from http://www.aussiebee.com.au/blue-banded-bee-siegel-jul2013.html

A blue banded bee in flight, extending its long multi-part tongue towards a Buddleia flower at Redland City, Queensland. Image retrieved from http://www.aussiebee.com.au/blue-banded-bee-siegel-jul2013.html

Fortunately the Australian Blue Banded Bees are also buzz pollinators and these blue beauties have been shown to outperform the current buzzing technology used in tomato pollination. Adelaide University Research has shown that a single buzz from a Blue Banded Bee produces 11% heavier tomatoes, compared with those vibrated by a single buzz from an electric vibration wand. Bee buzzed tomatoes also contain significantly more seeds. Tomato flowers subjected to unlimited buzzes by a Blue Banded Bee were shown to produce 24% heavier tomatoes, than those buzzed by the electric wand. Blue Banded Bee pollinated tomato plants on average produced 20-24% greater yield, than conventionally used electric wand pollination.

Blue Banded Bee love purple flowers. Image retrieved from http://theplanthunter.com.au/uncategorized/bee-hotel/

Blue Banded Bees love purple flowers. Image by Jane Wilson retrieved from http://theplanthunter.com.au/uncategorized/bee-hotel/

It is beneficial to supply a variety of flowers that attract Blue Banded Bees, if you want the best yield from your tomatoes and other produce. They especially love blue and purple flowers. You can grow the following plants near your tomatoes, capsicums, eggplants and kiwi fruit:

Abelia

Basil (perrential and/or sweet)

Blue-bell creeper

Duranta

Grevillea (Spider-flower)

Flax lily

Hibbertia

Lavender

Lemon Balm

Mona Lavender

Mountain devil or Honey flower

Myrtle

Passion Fruit

Rosemary

Salvia

Scarlet sage

Senna

Verbena

References

Australian Native Blue Baned Bees http://bluebandedbees.com/flowers.htm

Dollin, A. (2006). Blue banded bee pollination trials at Adelaide Uni. Aussie Bee Online, 10, 1-2.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Blue Banded bees, Buzz pollination, flowers, pollination, tomato | 5 Comments

Feasting on juicy Large Fruited (native) Raspberries

Posted on 17/06/2015 by Mt Gravatt Environment Group

Bush food feast – Large Fruited Raspberry

By: Laurie Deacon

The Pollinator Link garden is also a bushfood garden allowing us to harvest a feast of Large Fruited Raspberry Rubus probus. The native raspberry plants came from the B4C Nursery. Great fruit larger than what you will buy at Woolworths but for a home garden plant in a large pot to keep from suckering.

Butcher Bird bushfood – worms, yum

More community building and succession planning. Admiring the work of Mr Walsh’s Year 10 students who are budding engineers and hydrologist!!! Planting twenty new butterfly attracting creepers and grasses on bottom bank to hold the soil from being washed into school drains and then rivers. Check out the pink tapes.

Butcher Bird bushfood – worms, yum

Digging out and cleaning the drains of rich worm laden sediments and putting them back on the slopes for our plants!!

Well some worms and ants became Butcher Bird bushfood while we tucked into home made honey, apple and almond syrup cake and steaming ginger teas.

Children in the street are now remembering names of plants and birds and bringing their own binoculars to learn about their local birds!!

Posted in Pollinator Link | Tagged bushfood, butcher bird, Large Fruited Raspberry Rubus probus | Leave a comment

Worm News – Mother’s Day – clearing drains and saving worms

Posted on 01/06/2015 by Mt Gravatt Environment Group

Beautiful day. Let’s get to it!

By: Laurie Deacon

We had sixteen workers on Mother’s Day! Pretty good for Mother Earth being Mothered!

The team ranged in age from 70 years old to 7 years old! And did they work! 43 hours done in one Sunday arvo (2-5.30pm) … a week’s work done by volunteers!!

Worm News: We are getting down and dirty with the worms.

Len our Plumber mate in Mount Gravatt Environment Group lead the merry band of folks in the “drainage clear out”.

Clearing the drains

We dug out drains and gutters and rebuilt retaining walls after the heavy down pour on Friday 1^st May flooded the SEQ.

We cleared three storm water drains of 20 wheelbarrows worth of top soil washed off the Pollinator Link garden site and the school ovals. This soil was on it ways to the Ekibin then Norman Creek.

Is that a worm?

The solid was rich full of worms … so the students called up and down the storm water pipes yelling “This is the Worms News. Calling all worms, we are going to save you.”

We weeded banks and planted Living Mulch plants while the strong local lads and Griffith University students enjoyed carrying massive logs and swinging sledge hammers to build walls.

Finished with homemade honey and apply syrup cake, choc chip biscuits and steaming cups of tea … and happy tired folks and dogs.

You earned a break team

Posted in Pollinator Link | Tagged Griffith Mates, Living Mulch, Mt Gravatt SHS, worms | Leave a comment

The Water-Less Way of Growing a Garden

Posted on 25/04/2015 by Mt Gravatt Environment Group

By Sandra Tuszynska

Wicking Bed. Retrieved from http://tamuhowdyfarm.weebly.com/blog

Most of us find it too time consuming to have a garden. We are used to seeing gardening as something laborious, and which takes time to water and weed. So imagine a garden design where these tasks are reduced to a minimum, where the garden remains watered for potentially a months or longer at a time, and the watering takes no more than a minute, or potentially no time at all. Imagine a garden which you don’t have to weed.? If this is your idea of gardening, then water-less or wicking bed gardening is for you. However, it is not going to sprout out magically, you still need to put some effort into creating it, but that will be potentially the only large effort you will put in, the initial set up of the garden.

Wicking Worm- Bed. Retrieved from http://www.sgaonline.org.au/worm-wicking-one-year-on/

The Principles of a Wicking-Bed Garden

The idea of a wicking bed is to create a water holding reservoir at the bottom of the bed for water to travel up, or wick up by the soil. Most soils on average have the capacity to wick water up to a height of about 30 cm, but this varies with soil used.

Image retrieved from https://thesoilhuggersjourney.wordpress.com/2015/03/18/planting-in-spring-surviving-through-summer-wicking-bed-summer-follow-up-did-we-survive/

Water is essentially delivered into the water reservoir via a pipe, while the bed is drained through an overflow pipe just above the reservoir. The beauty of the design, is that it minimises water loss completely, the only water that is lost is through plant transpiration, as the soil is heavily mulched. This also helps to reduce weed growth to potentially zero.

Watering from bottom up. Image retrieved from http://peterdilley.tumblr.com/page/3

Peter’s Permaculture Scrap-Book, From Bottom Up – DIY Guide to Wicking Beds is a great resource, explaining the principles of capillary action of water as well as the different designs of wicking beds and how to create them.

Creating a Wicking Bed

There are now countless designs of wicking beds that people have experimented with over the years. The main requirement is to create a durable reservoir containment, and people use anything from polythene, plastic tubs, to concrete. This reservoir can be as deep or shallow as you like it to be. However, the deeper it is, obviously the longer the supply of water in it, and therefore the less frequent need for watering the bed.

Image retrieved from http://www.backyardaquaponics.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=23402

This wicking bed design is from SOP’s IBC Wicking Beds site, which has step by step images and descriptions of how how to create it.

Final outcome, image retrieved from http://www.backyardaquaponics.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=23402

I have created small wicking beds in Styrofoam broccoli boxes, an in-ground bed and an above-ground bed within a wooden frame. Polythene is prone to leaking and this is a major issue which can be avoided by creating a solid containment using concrete. This however is time consuming and could be expensive, depending on the size of the bed you want to create. I am lazy, I don’t want to spend too many hours on projects at the moment so small wicking gardens in containers, barrels or drums are the way to go for me.

Image retrieved from https://www.flickr.com/photos/cicada/5454681453/

Being relatively small, these can be used on balconies and in small gardens or back yards.

Image retrieved from http://lockyervalley.org/category/wicking-beds-pots/

My friend John, on the other hand puts in a lot of effort in to designing and creating wicking beds. His favourite model is a horseshoe–shaped, walk-in, above-ground bed made of concrete and recycled iron sheets. In the very centre is a 200 litre drum with a mulberry tree to provide summer shade. He completely automated the water delivery into the reservoir, by connecting it to a toilet cistern valve and directly onto a water tank. The idea is to keep the water level in the reservoir constant, when plants take up water, and water levels drop, the valve automatically opens and replenishes it.

John’s horseshoe-shaped wicking garden bed.

Course River Sand is the Best

From all the research I have seen, the best water reservoir material seems to be course river sand. People use soil too, the only problem might be that it is likely for the water to become stagnant and putrid, because of the biological matter in soil.

In all I love the wicking bed design and it’s practicality, even if it initially requires some time and effort to set up, it is truly the most logical garden design in terms of water usage and time saving. This is especially important in drought prone areas.

A Few Good Sites for Ideas, Designs and Deeper Research

All about wicking beds:

http://www.waterright.com.au/wicking_bed_technology.pdf

Wicking bed with embedded worm farm experiment:

http://www.sgaonline.org.au/sustainable-wicking-worm-bed/

http://www.sgaonline.org.au/worm-wicking-one-year-on/

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged water-less garden beds, water-less gardens, wicking beds, wicking garden beds | Leave a comment

Pollinator Link thriving with Griffith Mates help

Posted on 13/04/2015 by Mt Gravatt Environment Group

Pollinator Link team

By: Michael Fox

What can a community achieve?

Engage some friends and neighbours, involve Griffith Mates students, source donations of mulch and logs from Dale at Climb n Grind, plants for restoration from SOWN, then allow time for nature to work her magic.