Seedball Making at LIC Springs!

Posted on May 19, 2016 by Erik Baard

HarborLAB at LIC Springs! Seedball making station. This group of seedballers was perhaps the most fierce of the day. 🙂

HarborLAB volunteers had a wonderful time at the LIC Springs street festival, teaching kids and adults how to make seedballs. This means of planting native species helps restore habitat and stabilize shorelines. We focused on seaside goldenrod, which sustains migrating monarch butterflies and other beneficial insects in the autumn and shelters the eggs of black skimmer shorebirds. Our seeds were gathered by HarborLAB volunteers and students from Hunters Point Community Middle School in coordination with the NYC Department of Parks and Recreation and Hunters Point Parks Conservancy.

HarborLAB at LIC Springs! Seedball making station. Some were super serious seedballers. 🙂

We’re very grateful to Long Island City Partnership, our local business improvement district, for organizing this annual event, which is much more than a block party. Our lead volunteers for the day were Dylan Geil, Patricia Menje Erickson, David Borgioli, Scott Wolpow, and Erik Baard, with Thomas Dieter helping us get shipped out from the site. Thanks to David Kistner of sponsor Green Apple Cleaners as well, who did the leg work of picking up and delivering the 50 lbs bag of red clay powder needed for our seedballs.

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We’re also grateful to our Seedball friends (http://http://seedball.us/) for teaching us this ancient propogation technique, which mimics the critical ecosystem process of endozoochaory (spreading seeds by animal droppings). We simply mix natural red clay powder, a pinch of sand, seeds, compost (cocoa husks), and a bit of water until the ingredients reach a cookie dough-like consistency. Then the “dough” is rolled into penny diameter balls. These are air dried for a few days and then bottled. Then HarborLAB distributes the seedballs along shorelines to stabilize them and provide habitat and sustenance for pollinators and birds. In cooperation with conservancies and governmental park agencies, we’ve seeded shorelines from Queens to Coney Island and Staten Island!

HarborLAB at LIC Springs! Seedball making station.

The Mayor of LIC visits HarborLAB at LIC Springs! Seedball making station.

HarborLAB at LIC Springs! Seedball making station.

HarborLAB at LIC Springs! Seedball making station. Some were super serious seedballers. 🙂

Goldenrod to Close a Golden Year

Posted on December 17, 2015 by Erik Baard

Hunters Point Community Middle School students gathering goldenrod seeds with HarborLAB, helping the environment in view of the United Nations. Photo by Erik Baard.

HarborLAB volunteers had a wonderful day gathering seeds in Hunters Point South Park with a Hunters Point Community Middle School science class. We conceived and operate our seed program as a means of restoring and strengthening estuary habitat. We’re advised by local conservation groups and agencies, and in our field work we partner with school groups, corporate volunteer teams, and residents.

We’ve partnered with HPCMS since before it even opened its doors. The school has an ecological focus and serves special needs students, like our seed gathering partners, along with those in the mainstream. The student population is very diverse and most come from lower-income families.

Mary Mathai’s students met us in the park across from the school on a mild and partly sunny December afternoon. The weather has been so warm that many flowers have yet to slip into seed-heavy dormancy. We focused on a thicket of seaside goldenrod (Solidago sempervirens) which fortunately had largely turned over to fuzzy seed. We’ll return to the school to make seed balls with our day’s collection, and plant them along shorelines throughout our estuary as we paddle in 2016.

HarborLAB Founder Erik Baard talks about beach rose to Hunters Point Community Middle School kids. Photo by Patricia Erickson.

On the way to our goldenrod quarry we visited beach rose, pitch pine, and what are commonly called North American asters. Beach rose (Rosa ragusa) isn’t native, and is categorized as invasive along much of the East Coast. But in Hunters Point South it’s decoratively planted. The rose hips provided a great chance to talk about nutrition (especially vitamin C) and seed distribution by endozoochory (dispersal by animal ingestion and defecation). Pitch pine (Pinus rigida) is a tough native tree with twisting branches. It grows in poor soil and forms the core of the famed New Jersey Pine Barrens. This species allowed us to talk about forest regeneration through fire because this tree tenaciously regrows after damage and its cones pop open to released winged seeds after being exposed to high heat. Because of our region’s record high temperatures this autumn, many flowers were North American asters were determined in 1994 to not be true asters at all, but were instead categorized under the genus Symphyotrichum. The new genus is still under a family named for the asters, Asteraceae, along with daisies, sunflowers, and many other important flowers.

Many thanks to volunteers Patricia Erickson, Diana Szatkowski, and Erik Baard. Deep gratitude also to Hunters Point Community Middle School science teacher Mary Mathai and Principal Sarah Goodman, and to NYC Department of Parks and Recreation western Queens park manager Norman Chan for access and to the Natural Resources Group of the department for guidance.

Goldenrod in flower and seed. Hunters Point Community Middle School student outing with HarborLAB. Photo by Erik Baard.

Count goldenrod among the Asteraceae too! Goldenrod has long been recognized as a medicinal plant and recently urban planners have appreciated its ability to stabilize shorelines and dunes. Goldenrod is important to many animals. It feeds butterflies and bees, and hosts host the Goldenrod crab spider (Misumena vatia), which can change color to camouflage itself against its insect prey. Goldenrod also shelters the nests of black skimmers, one of our region’s most fascinatingly adapted shorebirds. The kids quickly grasped how the puffy seed heads acted as parachutes or sails to help carry the plants’ next generation far away. No need to worry about this goldenrod stand being diminished — these are perennials and we left many seeds at the site to boot.

Hunters Point Community Middle School students with the seeds they gathered. Photo by Erik Baard.

Departing HPCMS.

Pitch pine.

Rose hips are sour!

HarborLAB Facilities Manager Patricia Erickson shows students how to gather seeds without scattering them to the wind.

Seeds to Shining Sea!

Posted on January 13, 2015 by Erik Baard

Goldenrod seeds and rose hips bearing seeds. Photo by Erik Baard.

HarborLAB is blessed with 125′ of waterfront facing southeast. That makes for bad sunburns but a vibrantly growing ecosystem! We’re increasing our bounty of flowering and fruiting plants (mostly indigenous), and sharing it with the estuary as a whole through seed gathering and propagation. We choose species that naturally stabilize shorelines and support wildlife.

When the HarborLAB armada salvos the shores of NYC, it’s not with cannon balls. It’s a barrage of seed balls! Good thing, because our canoes and kayaks would sink. 😉 We look forward to perfecting the craft with insights from from this local group: http://www.seedball.us/

We thank our sponsors, allies, and partners in this project: Citizens Committee for NYC; New York State Office of Parks, Recreation, and Historic Preservation; NYC Department of Parks and Recreation (Greenbelt Native Plant Center); Hunters Point Community Middle School; Hunters Point Parks Conservancy; CUNY LaGuardia Community College; Briermere Farms, and more coming soon!

This winter you can join us as we gather seeds and make seed balls. Just join through our events listing page on Facebook or email volunteer@harborlab.org with the subject line, “Seeds.”

We’re especially dedicated to creating Monarch Butterfly habitat by growing milkweed, goldenrod, beach plums, shadbush, and pokeberry. This program is the kind of kid-friendly, affordable contribution a small volunteer group can make to the environment and education, and have a big impact!

A seed ball.

Trip Report: Hour Children on Jamaica Bay

Posted on September 19, 2013 by Erik Baard

After our paddling and nature walking, a final group shot. The kids felt triumphant that they’d learned so much and kayaked! Photo by Erik Baard.

On August 22, HarborLAB took 15 kids from Hour Children, with their counselors, on an outing to the Jamaica Bay portion of the Gateway Wildlife Recreation Area. The Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge is a fantastic resource for conservation education, and the site provides a model for wetlands restoration. The children saw osprey, all manner of shells, a burrowing wasp, rosehips in flower and fruit, goldenrod, tent caterpillars, saltwater marshes, and other sights that they’d never witnessed. HarborLAB volunteers loved the kids’ humor, mutual support, and unflagging curiosity.

We started at the Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge visitor and education center, with an orientation provided by National Park Rangers and a lengthy and fun nature walk. The kids were given clipboards and activity sheets, which they completed with seriousness and enthusiasm. These exercises enriched the later paddling, as the kids watched for the animals and plants they’d learned about earlier (a great chance to also discuss the need for nutrients (vitamin C in rosehips, for example) found in nature — real foods). They more deeply understood they were paddling in a natural system, not an oversized swimming pool. Some requested that we return when the diamondback terrapin turtles are laying eggs and when horseshoe crabs come to shore in early summer.

It was a bit windy, so instead of using all eight boats we trailered to the site, we used only two for the kids, plus on guide boat. The kids and staff shared boats staffed by HarborLAB volunteers in the stern. We stayed along the shorelines in an area that enjoyed wind and current shelter, thanks to the old seaplane ramp at Floyd Bennett Field, and remained in water shallow enough to stand (you can see bottom in photos and from the boats). The kids, however, still found it to be an amazing adventure.

HarborLAB now has a trailer, so we’re able to bring kids on field trips with partners who arrange for their transportation. HarborLAB, in consultation with experts in government and academia and in response to tests, has determined that water in western Queens isn’t suitable for children’s programs — Hallets Cove has a steadily high population of sewage bacteria according to tests by The River Project (part of a NYC Water Trail program), indicating an infrastructure problem; Anable Basin is the site of lingering industrial pollution from its former use as a barge slip for an oil refinery, paint factory, and other notorious toxic spillers that forced huge soil remediation efforts; Steinway Creek is similarly blighted by pollution; and the Newtown Creek is an EPA Superfund site with a pollution problem especially east of the Pulaski Bridge. We prefer Pelham Bay Park, which is swimmable at Orchard Beach, and Jamaica Bay, and parts of the Hudson River, Long Island and New Jersey.

Hour Children helps children who were born in prison or whose mothers are incarcerated or rebuilding their lives after incarceration and the errors that brought them into the prison system.

Ranger Will teaches the kids about osprey nests and hunting methods. Photo by Erik Baard.

An Hour Children staff person discovers the cutest grasslands critter. Photo by Erik Baard.

Ranger Will lines the kids of for osprey nest viewings. We also saw them in flight as we walked the nature path. Photo by Erik Baard.

The kids were given clipboards and assignments for observation, which they undertook with enthusiasm and keen insights. Here they are scanning the canopy. Photo by Erik Baard.

Goldenrod, a staple of migrating monarch butterflies and also for moths. Photo by Erik Baard.

Goldenrod and rosehips in fruit and bloom. and rosehip in fruit and bloom. We discussed how all the nutrients we need, like vitamin C, come from nature. It was a great chance to remind kids about the important of real foods. Photo by Erik Baard.

The synchronistically vibrating tent caterpillars were a hit with the kids. Maybe a nice preview of Halloween too? Photo by Erik Baard.

Burrowing wasp. The kids were fascinated. Photo by Erik Baard.

At the far end of our nature walk. One girl took the binoculars and pointed back to the education and visitor center of the Wildlife Refuge and said, “I”m lookiing at my sandwich!” Hint taken. 🙂 Photo by Erik Baard.

HarborLAB Facilities Manager Patricia Erickson paddles as perimeter keeper and safety escort while Erik Baard and EJ Lee bring the kids paddling in shallow water. Photo by Wesley Miller.

HarborLAB Operations Manager EJ Lee with her seafaring friends. Photo by HarborLAB Board Member Lisa Belfast, After School and Summer Camp Program Manager for Hour Children.