Guest:
Connie Schmotzer retired in 2020 from her job as Consumer Horticulture Educator for Penn State Extension in York County, PA where she worked for 22 years. In the last 15 years of her work with Extension her focus was on native plants and pollinators, including a three-year pollinator trial at Penn State’s Southeast Agricultural Research and Extension Center, where Master Gardeners and staff monitored 84 species and cultivars of native plants for their attractiveness to pollinators. She continues to provide leadership for the trial garden as well as coordinating the Penn State Pollinator Friendly Garden Certification program.
Episode Transcript:
LINDSEY WHISSEL FENTON: It can be difficult to find time for service, but it's an important degree of our wellness. So, what if I told you there was an active service you could do from your own backyard that has the potential to change the world? I'm Lindsey Whissel Fenton with 12 Degrees on WPSU. You've probably already heard that pollinators are in trouble. But what you might not know is just how much power we have to help to learn how. I'm talking with Connie Schmotzer, coordinator for the pollinator certification program at Penn State. Connie, what's happening with the bees and our other buzzy little friends?
CONNIE SCHMOTZER: They are in very big trouble, and it's really a multi-pronged problem. There is a problem with habitat because we are changing our landscapes. You know, we're building. We're getting rid of a lot of natural areas. We're using pesticides. Invasive plants are coming from our yards and escaping into our natural areas and making them kind of uninhabitable for pollinators. So, there's a lot going on out there for these poor guys, and they are responsible for pollinating our food. If we can't pollinate our food, we don't have a food supply. So, in order for us to survive, we definitely need to be taking a look at this situation and seeing how we can help out.
LINDSEY WHISSEL FENTON: I feel like when I hear about danger to pollinators, it's often with an emphasis on honeybees.
CONNIE SCHMOTZER: Honeybees are very important in large scale agriculture, where your smaller agricultural plots and our orchards and our home gardens. It's the native bees that we focus on. Everybody's probably familiar with bumble bees, but there are so many others. There are digger bees, mining bees, mason bees, leafcutter bees, and that flies. They are doing a tremendous amount of pollinating, as are wasps and beetles. So many, many insects that work to make this happen.
LINDSEY WHISSEL FENTON: Can you give us a quick overview of the Pollinator Habitat Certification program?
CONNIE SCHMOTZER: Yeah, we developed that back in 2011, and our goal was to spread the word that pollinators were important and that we can help them. And then also to provide some guidelines for folks, because many gardeners aren't aware of how to go about gardening for pollinators. So, for nesting sites, for instance, we may ask, could you have a little pile of rocks that a bumblebee could go into and make a nest in the ground? We ask them to leave their gardens up over the winter, not clean up in the fall because there are many pollinators. There are nesting in pithy or even hollow stems, and if you cut those down in September, you've actually thrown away a lot of your pollinators. Dead wood is always good. You know, do you have a dead limb or even placing some logs kind of artistically in your garden? We also ask, please be careful with your mulch, because pollinators that nest in the ground can't get through a couple inches of mulch. Our main focus is on nutrition, and the certification is built on native plants. Because our native pollinators have co-evolved with the plants in their area. We want to educate folks that these pollinators and insects are our friends, and we want to create an awareness about things that pollinators need and things that might be harmful to them.
LINDSEY WHISSEL FENTON: That was Connie Schmotzer, coordinator for Penn State's Pollinator Habitat Certification. This interview is part of 12 Degrees, a program and podcast from PSU in collaboration with the Penn State Nese College of Nursing. Learn more at wellness-psu-dot-edu. I'm Lindsey Whissel Fenton, WPSU.
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This is a clip from a longer conversation. To listen to the full episode, visit:
