
Newsletter: Late Fall, 2021
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| issue No. 5 | October 25, 2021 | bluestemnatives.com |
Blue Stem Natives
Norwell, Massachusetts 02061
Hello, friends!
We hope you are staying warm and still enjoying your gardens. What a beautiful time of year in New England. In this newsletter you will find some tips for your garden in the fall, the official start of our seeds sales, updates on our fundraising for the greenhouse, and links to some of our favorite online presentations.
Cheers! Britt, Jasmin, and Kristen

01
seeds!
Our native seeds are officially up on the website for sale! We can only ship within Massachusetts. Seeds arrive in a curbside-recyclable bubble mailer. No plastic.
Our long term goal will be to carry nearly all local ecotype seeds but as we work towards that, we make a note on each species webpage where the seeds came from. We have 32 species available this year including: Common milkweed, swamp milkweed, blue vervain, New York ironweed, tall anemone, bayberry, black-eyed Susan, little bluestem, purple lovegrass, and so many more.
We will be growing our seed selection in the following years.
02
TOP TEN FALL GARDEN CHORES
We have been trained to believe that the cooler temperatures mean a heavy dose of garden clean-up, but this doesn’t have to be the case! We talk all the time about leaving the leaves and dried perennials for the wildlife, but that doesn’t mean your landscape has to rival the Munster’s! Here is our Top 10 list of garden chores that will keep your neighbors and local wildlife happy.
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We say save your back and leave the leaves, but there are plenty of reasons why you might not want to have a carpet of leaves covering your entire yard. Gently rake any leaves out of the main traffic area into your garden beds, or into a pile in the back corner of your yard. Mowing and using a leaf blower can destroy the cocoons of many over-wintering moths and butterflies, so try to avoid them if you can.
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Use garden-friendly cleaners when giving your patio furniture a wash before packing away. Biodegradable solutions are key but be sure they are also rated as safe for the environment and use them as sparingly as possible. A properly diluted bleach solution is often the safest bet, as it degrades to a saltwater solution after a few hours in the sun and can be disposed of in your drain.
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Use the water in your rain barrels to give your garden beds a good soaking before the frosts, and drain them completely. Again, a diluted bleach solution can be used to sanitize the insides once they are empty. If you don’t have indoor space to store them, turn them upside-down and leave any drains open. Hoses should be drained and either stored inside or you can coil them up inside the barrel. If you can’t turn the barrels over, leave those drains open and be sure to securely cover the tops to prevent water and wildlife from entering over the winter.
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Hopefully you have been collecting seeds from your native plants as they become ready, but if not, now is the time! Harvest any seed heads that have dried on the plants, being sure to leave plenty for the birds! It isn’t advisable to cut back dormant plants in the Fall, but rather, leave them as they are! (we call that Winter Interest in the biz). If you must cut them back, be sure to leave at least 12-18 inches of the dried stems in place, and drop the spent seeds heads down onto the ground. These tops will decompose over the winter, improving the soil, providing bedding material for small creatures, and food sources for birds and small mammals alike.
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Another typical Fall chore is to prune back dead branches from trees, to reduce damage from snow load. Now, if you have large dead branches that could cause injury or damage to your house should it come down, by all means, remove it. However, if you are trimming smaller branches primarily for the looks of things, please reconsider. Many creatures use dead and dying wood as a habitat, including our beloved bees, birds, and an array of important beings. Trim what you must, and make a brush pile out back. You will be providing habitat and safe spaces for the wildlife.
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Use natural deterrents when you are closing up spaces for the winter. Use cedar blocks inside the grill and small spaces when you close them up, which will deter mice from making cozy home. Peppermint oil is said to also be a deterrent, you could soak small wood pieces or charcoal from your firepit in pure peppermint or cedar oil, leaving by any potential openings in your shed or garage. Speaking of openings, plug up any small openings dime-sized or larger with plain steel wool, which will prevent mice from chewing through. Avoid any pesticides or rodenticides, which not only poison the rodents, but also cause horrible damage to predators like owls, foxes, and bobcats.
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Prepare for holiday decorating bysustainably harvesting dried flowers, native berry plants like winterberry, holly, and conifers. Use these natives in your outdoor décor so that you might enjoy them as well as feeding the wildlife. Fun crafts like pinecone bird feeders can be useful and decorative, and you won’t have more cleanup to do after!
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Adjust your outdoor lighting schedule. Many bird species are migrating south now and bright nighttime lights have been proven to confuse them and disrupt proper migration patterns. Switch your outdoor lights to motion sensors, and only use landscaping lights when you are actively using your yard. Consider reducing the brightness and duration of holiday lights as well. Keep any necessary lights reflected down to the ground, and reduce the brightness to the lowest setting possible.
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There are plenty of natural seed options for birds, but if you do put out feeders, be sure to practice good hygiene and clean them weekly. A water source is very important, so if you are able to keep a bird bath from freezing, be sure to replace it with clean, fresh water on a regular basis. If you have trouble with bears in your area, put the bird feeders away until they are hibernating, and then you can place them out again.
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Last but certainly not least, learn to see the beauty in Nature’s cycle. Drying plants may seem ugly and out of place at first, but try to retrain your mind to seeing the good that leaving those plants will do for the wildlife in your yard. Embrace the idea of “winter interest” and get ready to see plenty of visiting birds and wildlife that you may never have seen before, visiting the natural habitat you have created for them.
We hope these tips have inspired you to step away from the rake and enjoy your wonderfully wild landscape.
03
GREENHOUSE PLANS AND CROWDFUNDING HELP
We have raised, with your help, 27% of the funds needed to build a greenhouse, but we don't have much time left to raise the rest. The greenhouse image below is from a greenhouse catalog, and what we are aiming to build to keep a native plant nursery on the South Shore. To try to make this happen we have added more rewards. See if any of the rewards work for you!
Plants, seeds, artwork, early shopping, consultations, wreath making parties, and more. We have also changed the wreath making and seed saving events to be more attainable. Please check them out.
The amount we need to raise for a greenhouse is $27,900. That is for the greenhouse and the heating mechanisms. You can see a very thorough break down on the Indiegogo campaign (link below). Beyond that we will be purchasing on our own: large growing tables, lights, electric upgrades, pots, trays, backup generator, checkout shed, rent, more insurance, seeds, tags, computers, printers, utilities, carts, and so much more. So we appreciate everyone who has so kindly donated to this massive project!
We started from the literal ground up and made the best of our available space. We made it work! However, we quickly realized that in order to to meet demand, we need to move to the next level of production, and for that we need to have a heated greenhouse on the property. The demand for native plants in this area is both huge and has been largely unfulfilled. Our customer base has grown exponentially, and we have had multiple requests to grow our plant offerings in the next year. We have the opportunity to lease more land in the same location and we want to greatly expand the quantity of species and number of plants we offer. To do this we need to build a heated greenhouse and that's where you come in!
03
GREAT ONLINE PRESENTATIONS
WINTER SEED SOWING,
Louden Wildlife Conservancy, BJ Lecrone, Audubon at Home Ambassador
part 1: Preparing the containers
part 2: Overview of techniques
part 3: More details and examples
IMPROVING POLLINATOR HABITAT AT HOME, Dan Wilder (Jaffe), Director of Applied Ecology - Norcross Wildlife Sanctuary. Video by NOFA MASS.
EDIBLE PLANTS OF SOUTHEASTERN MASSACHUSETTS, Russ Cohen, wild edibles enthusiast and author of "Wild Plants I Have Known... and Eaten". Video by Wildlands Trust.
THE BOMBUS AMONG US - BUMBLEE BEE BASICS, Heather Holm, biologist, pollinator conservationist, and award-winning author. Video by Wild Ones.
THE LIBERATED LANDSCAPE, LETTING NATURE DO THE WORK,
Larry Weaner, leading figure in North American landscape design. Video by Ecological Landscape Alliance.
06
pot, label, and tray return
Calling all “DEEPOTS”! If you purchased plants in these Deepots from us this year, we would love to reuse them. These were our favorite pots, by far, and we would love to “reduce and reuse”, keeping down plastic usage and saving a little money.
There is a drop off bin for our pots in front of the nursery on the right side of the entrance. Drop off any time. We also reuse our plastic plant labels and trays. We cannot use pots from other garden centers, sorry.
Thanks, friends!
