Hackensack Community Garden

09/30/2026

dandelions are so underrated 🌼

09/30/2026

09/30/2026

Solar power is wonderful

09/30/2026

We have a solar powered water pumping system at the garden thanks to the many financial contributions of local businesses, non-profits, foundations, and gardeners who contributed to this project. THANK YOU! RREAL, Earth Is Our Home Environmental Solutions, Hackensack Lions, Crow Wing power, Bruce Carlson, Hackensack lakes area foundation, Itasca Mantrap coop, American national bank Walker, First National Bank Walker, Karen Holle, Bob and Jane Cullen, and Go fund Me contributors.

09/04/2026

September is !

Wild places are home to threatened and endangered wildlife. From forests and grasslands to mountains and rivers, intact wilderness gives wildlife the space they need to feed and migrate, as well as to reproduce and to recover.

For threatened and endangered species, protecting habitat is often inseparable from protecting the species themselves.

This month, we’re celebrating the wild places that sustain biodiversity and the work still needed to keep them protected.

09/04/2026

09/04/2026

Why spiders seem to "take over" every September:

They didn't move in. They were ALWAYS there. They were just TINY.

THE GROWTH: Orb weavers hatch in spring — 1-2 mm. They spend all summer molting and growing. By September: they've reached maximum adult size (up to 1 inch body, 3 inches leg span for Argiope). Suddenly you NOTICE them.

THE WEBS: An adult female builds a web up to 2 feet across. She rebuilds it EVERY NIGHT (eats the old one — recycles the protein). In September she's catching maximum prey to build egg-laying reserves.

THE MALES: The males (much smaller) are wandering — searching for females. This is why you suddenly see spiders crossing your floor, in your bathtub, on your walls in September. They're not "coming inside for winter" (myth). They're MALES looking for mates. They've been outside all summer.

THE END: The female lays 1-4 egg sacs (400-1,400 eggs each), guards them, and dies with the first hard frost. The eggs overwinter. Spiderlings emerge in spring. The cycle restarts.

THE VALUE: One orb weaver catches 250+ insects per week — mosquitoes, flies, gnats, moths, wasps. The giant web across your porch corner is removing 1,000+ insects per month from your immediate airspace.

Leave the web. She'll be gone by November. And she's the reason your porch doesn't have mosquitoes.

09/04/2026

Every spring and fall we make one of our biggest calls to action—turn off unnecessary outdoor lights at night for migrating birds. This fall is no different, and with migrating birds already on the move, it’s time again. Brush up with some tips from Audubon North Carolina on how to protect migrating birds and take the pledge that you’ll turn lights off for migrating birds at the link in comments.

02/18/2026

Mark Shepard's New Forest Farm in Wisconsin.

01/28/2026

To till or not to till?

Check out this tillage radish (part of a cover crop mix) we found on a visit to a Kentucky farm. The soil has a serious compaction layer, and you can see right where it is: it makes the radish grow every which way but down.

➡️ Here's the thing: this field has been cover cropped for over 12 years, but that compaction layer persists.

We've advocated a strategic tillage pass to break up this compaction, part of a strategy of "Deliberate Disturbance."

"Good stewardship is not about minimizing disturbances but about optimizing disturbances to produce the best ecosystem and productivity outcomes" writes John Kempf. Read more: https://advancingecoag.com/article/deliberate-disturbance/

* This cover crop was a winter mix with clover, oil seed radish, black oats, kale and more.