How to make land barren?

[cedillamuerta]

Gardening is my newest and currently most active passion, but my first love and my future career have always been entomology. The taxa I tend to study most during the warm season are the velvet ants and their close relatives. The preferred habitat for these insects is dry clay and sandy regions where their hosts burrow and build their nests. So I was wondering. How would I go about creating and maintaining that type of environment? The soil in my backyard is full of clay, but it's dark and looks nothing like where I've seen these insects. I find it naturally and in places where they're doing construction, but I'd like to be able to observe and study these creatures in my backyard. How would I convert a region into dry exposed clay and keep it that way (free of vegetation) without chemicals for as long as I live there? Also, the types of insects living there would include mining, mason, leafcutting and orchard bees, along with parasitic wasps; so what types of flowers do our native Hymenoptera enjoy in particular? Thanks everyone.

[applestar]

Without being an expert on such matters, but a simple gardener who likes to maintain a chemical-free, natural backyard wildlife habitat garden, my first thought was first of all, what size area were you thinking?

Would the insects use such a clay/sandy area as long as it is available/accessible? I have watched them when they have moved into areas of my garden, but have never tried to keep the area that way for specific purpose of having them move in or stay.

A most basic method seems to be to strip an area of vegetation by pulling/digging them out, mixing apropriate %sand with the native clay, and keeping the area diligently weeded by hand (sharp hoe designed to skim just under surface of soil such as Japanese hand hoe or long handled stirrup hoe -- I found that the one from Ace hardware was not sharpened, but the expensive one from Johnny's was razor sharp-- would not dig up the wasp holes and leave them intact and not disturb them as long as you don't accidentally weed while they are in the process of entering or exiting the holes -- trust me I know ).

To keep the area drier than surrounding areas, you could initially build a raised bed/box. Maybe you could even make one side out of tempered glass or plexiglas covered with removable light blocking material (wood panel, etc). You may or may not need to compact the area with hand or power compactor.

When I dug down a small (apprx. 8-10' x 6-8') area in a (failed) attempt to built an earth/clay-bottomed pond, some kind of ground wasps moved into the bare "banks" of the "pond" area during the drought. I watched them dig holes and haul their prey into the holes. When the rains came and filled the depression, I was concerned that their nests got flooded.

I have potters wasps that come to my garden and make their little round clay nests on window screens, patio furniture, etc.

When I cut off the bottom several inches from IKEA Ivar shelving units and accidentally forgot about the cut-off waste pieces on the patio, mason bees moved into the little shelf support holes to my surprise and delight.

When I tried to make that clay bottom pond, I kept subsoil clay from digging holes for planting trees and other garden projects in large nursery pots to line the bottom of the pond. When the clay was moist from rain or watering the area, wasps used to come make mud balls and fly off with them.

Other types of wasps scrape wood from my patio furniture and bamboo stakes used around the garden.

During the summer, cicada killers occasionally make their kills in my garden.

I have volunteer (weed) maple tree saplings that grow around the garden, and they end up with circular holes where leaf cutting insects have made off with the leaves. Same thing used to happen to my roses when I had them.

Larger wasps patrol my vegetable garden for caterpillars. They crawl all over cabbage family vegs and other likely plants. Aphid mummy makers leave dried up aphids and braconids and trichogrammas leave hapless pest caterpillars covered with their pupa . I collect and raise Monarch butterfly eggs and caterpillars indoors to protect them.

Some flowers that attract wide species of bees and wasps include mint, sedum, and summer sweet. Grass when left to bloom attracts syrphid flies and tiny beneficial wasps, as do dill and parsley flowers. If you really want, I'll take some time to try to list others.

[cynthia_h]

...The taxa I tend to study most during the warm season are the velvet ants and their close relatives. The preferred habitat for these insects is dry clay and sandy regions where their hosts burrow and build their nests. So I was wondering. How would I go about creating and maintaining that type of environment?

I think your best bet is to not try and do this in southern Mississippi, which I believe is a humid climate, being close to the Gulf and the Big Muddy both. Although you may be able to offer these creatures a clay and/or sandy soil, I don't know how you can offer them a dry climate (if I read your sentence correctly).

Myself, having been savaged by fire ants in Tampa at the age of 9, I'm not much fond of the entire family of Formicidae. I'm lethally (anaphylactically) allergic to bees, even though I adore watching them, so all in all the order of Hymenoptera is trouble for me.

As a responsible and organic gardener, I plant and maintain plants to feed bees and other pollinators. But I drive off ants both from my house and from my garden--since in the garden they farm aphids on my veggies, my roses, and whatever else they can manage--and I have absolutely no use for many other insects, e.g., mosquitoes (very allergic, plus they're vectors for several tropical diseases), fleas and ticks (cats, then dogs), house flies, fungus gnats, et al. And that's not counting the specific attackers of my veggie plants....

But I digress (as often happens).

It's that dry climate that these creatures seem to prefer which I doubt you can provide for them where you currently live. Perhaps a local college or university sponsors field trips to known natural habitats?

Cynthia H.
Sunset Zone 17, USDA Zone 9

[rainbowgardener]

Re plants to attract native hymenoptera.

Bees are what I think of first. Bumblebees are an important pollinator and visit most of the flowers in my yard, but they love clover, so just leaving some clover in your lawn to bloom will make them very happy. The leaf cutter bees mainly like legumes, so growing peas and beans including ornamentals like hyacinth bean, scarlet runner bean, will attract them. Also redbud trees, which are actually legumes.


In general, if you want to attract native insects, you need to be growing native plants, since they evolved together and are adapted to each other. www.wildflower.org/plants is a searchable native plant database. You can use it to find plants (forbs, shrubs, trees, grasses, etc) that are native to your state and adapted to conditions you specify (sun exposure, moisture).

[cedillamuerta]

I'm really just thought experimenting right now and looking for ideas. Our future residency situation is very unpredictable right now. Only once we have a permanent home (and preferably some land along with it) will I try doing this.

@ applestar: Ideally, I'd like to have a maybe 20'-40' wide area for this and equal length. They'll stay there as long as the area is usable for them. I plan on raising many successive generations of velvet ants there. They often parasitize the same nests they were born in.

@ cynthia_h: Most people are actually surprised when they learn how many of these wasps are right at home here in S MS. The biodiversity of these taxa is much greater out west (and I hope to do a lot of traveling there someday.) but I've found them living here as well. I'll probably end up hilling the area to keep it from flooding during torrents, but the moist air here doesn't do much to the soil. Once it's dry, it stays dry.

@ rainbowgardener: Wherever we end up living, I'm probably going to replace the lawn with native clover species, so I'll hopefully end up attracting tons of bees.

I'll do some experimenting to see if I can replicate the clay type I've found in the habitats I've observed. I may post some pictures to clarify some things and show y'all what I'm planning on doing. Thank you all for your ideas and feedback.