Native plants are the key to an easy, inexpensive and environmentally-friendly garden.  Choosing to plant native means you’ve chosen plants that are hardy and well-adapted to the soils and climate in which they grow.  This means you have more time and money to enjoy Minnesota’s short-lived summers!

Here’s why:

Water your garden less – native plants require little more water than normal rainfall and you preserve our precious water resources!  Native plants also help stormwater runoff infiltrate into the soil with their extensive root system recharging ground water and preventing flooding.

Fertilize less- in fact native plants improve your soil fertility!  Native plants flourish in native soils and even pull excess nutrients out of stormwater runoff before it enters our local water bodies.

Weed your garden less – native species resist invasion of alien plant species.

In addition, native plants attract wildlife by providing food and shelter.  In fact you can choose your plants by the type of wildlife you hope to attract for the habitat in your area.  Minnesota hosts a large variety of beautiful and functional native flowers and grasses.  For example you can plant a colorful native prairie butterfly garden with Prairie Milkweed, Black-Eyed Susan, Pasque Flower, Rough Blazing Stars, and Little Bluestem.  Also, a majority of native plants are perennials, which means you save yourself a trip back to the nursery next year!

By: Chandi McCracken

Find more information about how to get started on your own native garden go to www.bluethumb.org

Also, find local raingarden workshops

Water, Earth’s most abundant molecule, is also one of its strangest. Water is the only common substance found naturally in its liquid, solid, and gas phases. And it is one of only a handful of substances that expands when it freezes, which makes the solid form (ice) less dense than liquid water. That’s why ice floats!

Why is this important? Think about it: if ice did not float, our lakes would freeze from the bottom up, making life very hard (pardon the pun) for aquatic plants and animals. And chunks of ice would not float, meaning the spring thaw would take much longer.

Turning Over

Water is actually at its densest at 39o Fahrenheit – just before freezing. In the fall, air temperatures cool layers of surface water, which denser (heavier) and sink to the bottom of the lake. The heavy, sinking water displaces the water beneath it, bringing it to the surface. This mixing phenomenon, known as fall turnover, is important for lake life because it allows all the lake’s water to be saturated with oxygen – which fish and other critters need all winter long.

In spring, the small differences in temperature from surface to bottom allow winds and storms to easily mix the water column. But as the surface waters warm with the sun’s heat, they become buoyant - and the coolest (but not frozen) water stays at the lake’s bottom. Eventually the lake becomes stratified, creating a barrier between oxygen-rich surface waters and deep waters that become depleted of oxygen (think of a bottle of salad dressing containing oil and vinegar). Thankfully, fall comes once again to shake up the lake, and the cycle continues, replenishing oxygen supplies to the deeper layers before the cap of ice freezes over once more.

Published in the March Tonka Times
By: Julie Westerlund

Here’s what you can do:

Pick up after yourself and your pet

Limit salt use for de-icing

Eco-friendlier alternatives to salt are available at hardware stores.  Products that mix salt with calcium magnesium acetate (CMA) or potassium acetate (KA) are better than salt alone.

Published in the February Tonka Times

Here is a reminder of ice safety tips to ensure you have a safe and fun winter!

• Ice is never completely safe. Never go onto the ice alone; a friend may be able to rescue you or go for help.

• Keep your pets on a leash when on the ice. Don’t attempt to rescue pets; if the ice is not strong enough to hold your pet, chances are it’s not strong enough to hold you. Go for help instead.
  
  
• Beware of ice covered with snow, which can insulate ice and keep it from freezing. Snow can also hide cracks, weak ice, and open ice.
  
  
• Ice thickness varies on the same waterbody. Because of currents below the water, water depth, and a host of other factors, ice seldom freezes at a uniform rate. Ice can be a foot thick in one spot and only an inch thick 10 feet away.
  
  
• If your companion falls through the ice, throw something to them – like a rope, tree branch or jumper cables from your car. If this does not work, call for help.
  
  
• If you fall in, try not to panic. Turn toward the direction you came from. Place your hands and arms on the unbroken surface and kick your feet to work yourself forward. If you are able to get back on the ice, remain lying down to distribute your weight and roll away from the hole. Crawl back from where you came.
  
  
• New ice is safer than old ice – as the season progresses, conditions can change rapidly.

Published in the January Tonka Times