{"id":4657,"date":"2015-11-30T20:03:59","date_gmt":"2015-11-30T20:03:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/happychildcsa.com\/?p=4657"},"modified":"2016-04-06T11:59:27","modified_gmt":"2016-04-06T11:59:27","slug":"farm-focus-planting-pollenator-habitat-at-frog-hollow","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/happychildcsa.com\/froghollowCSA\/farm-focus-planting-pollenator-habitat-at-frog-hollow\/","title":{"rendered":"Farm Focus: Planting Pollenator Habitat at Frog Hollow"},"content":{"rendered":"As many of you might know, we take supporting beneficial\u00a0insects very seriously at Frog Hollow. We\u2019ve been working with UC\u00a0Berkeley Scientist Gordon Frankie for several years now to bolster native\u00a0bee populations at Frog Hollow. But this work has until now been an\u00a0organically driven process of adding a few new acres here and there as\u00a0time and resources permit. In recent weeks, the operation has gotten a\u00a0serious boost.\n\nWe\u2019ve been awarded funding from the National Resources\u00a0Conservation Service to ramp up our beneficial habitat acreage. We\u2019re\u00a0adding an additional 21 acres, more than doubling our existing 13. With\u00a0funding, we\u2019re able to turn what has been a haphazard effort into a\u00a0cohesive project. Dr. Franke will be selecting all the varieties we plant.\u00a0With each variety he\u2019ll select for not only their potential to attract the\u00a0desired pollinator species but their other benefits to our Frog Hollow \u00a0ecosystem such as adding nutrients to the soil or helping limit soil erosion.\n\nWe\u2019ve begun the project by preparing the soil. To break it up and\u00a0re-incorporate nutrients, we disked the soil. This uses a giant tractor-like\u00a0machine with several small metal disks which are dragged through the\u00a0top 3-6 inches of soil. Once the soil's disked and we have the varieties\u00a0selected, we\u2019ll broadcast the seeds and wait for the rains to germinate\u00a0them. Hopefully, by March they will be fully matured at roughly 1-2 feet\u00a0tall. They\u2019ll offer a home and nutrition for pollinators including native bees,\u00a0honey bees, moths, and butterflies. By late spring we\u2019ll mow them into\u00a0the ground, adding their nutrients to the soil and begin the process once\u00a0again. If this model proves to be successful in attracting the pollinators\u00a0we need and is manageable, as far as the costs go, Farmer Al plans to\u00a0continue the expansion. He dreams of having virtually all of our 175 acres\u00a0planted with beneficial insect habitat.\n\nWe\u2019ll let you know how it goes!","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As many of you might know, we take supporting beneficial\u00a0insects very seriously at Frog Hollow. We\u2019ve been working with UC\u00a0Berkeley Scientist Gordon Frankie for several years now to bolster native\u00a0bee populations at Frog Hollow. But this work has until now been an\u00a0organically driven process of adding a few new acres here and there as\u00a0time and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[12],"tags":[687,688,689,384],"class_list":["post-4657","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-farm-focus","tag-benefical-insects","tag-nrcs","tag-pollenators","tag-frog-hollow"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5HwAU-1d7","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/happychildcsa.com\/froghollowCSA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4657","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/happychildcsa.com\/froghollowCSA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/happychildcsa.com\/froghollowCSA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/happychildcsa.com\/froghollowCSA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/happychildcsa.com\/froghollowCSA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4657"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/happychildcsa.com\/froghollowCSA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4657\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4854,"href":"https:\/\/happychildcsa.com\/froghollowCSA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4657\/revisions\/4854"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/happychildcsa.com\/froghollowCSA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4657"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/happychildcsa.com\/froghollowCSA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4657"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/happychildcsa.com\/froghollowCSA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4657"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}