But’s there more to creating a wildlife habitat garden than just these four components. How you maintain your garden is also critically important. Creating a wildlife-friendly space that attracts birds, butterflies and other wildlife and then spraying toxic pesticides everywhere or letting your cat catch and kill the wildlife defeats the purpose.

Here are six sustainable ways you can maintain your natural for wildlife beyond just providing the components of habitat.

Plant Native Plants

Native plants are also the plants that native wildlife have formed symbiotic relationships with over thousands of years, and therefore the most sustainable way of offering habitat.

Exotic plants that evolved in other parts of the world or native plants that have been cultivated by humans into forms that don’t exist in nature do not support wildlife as well as native plants, and sometimes even escape into the wild and become invasive exotics that destroy natural habitat.

Cultivate Healthy Soil

Conserve Water

In suburban and urban areas, much of the water that hits the landscape washes away down the storm drains, often carrying pollutants and soil with it. Reducing your lawn in favor of densely planted garden beds helps minimize runoff, and you can plant a rain garden specifically designed to collect and absorb rainwater to keep if from pouring into storm drains.

Encourage Pest Predators and Parasites

Minimize or Eliminate Chemicals

Control Pets

Certify NowOnce your garden is sustainable and wildlife-friendly, certify it with the National Wildlife Federation!

While many farmers blame their stress on the weather, the truth is that for many, their stress is born of their own doing. Conventional practice of heavy and repeated tillage and removal of all residue have degraded soils of their structure and soil organic matter, the two most important factors for creating soil resilient to weather. To some extent, one cannot blame them.

Yes, crop insurance has alleviated some of the risk and worry with weather, but taking a prevent plant payment is far inferior to successfully planting a crop. After all, establishing a crop while maintaining your sanity provides the foundation for the excitement experienced this time of year.

 Join the National Wildlife Federation and learn more about how cover crops help the environment whether its by mitigating climate change or improving water quality.

• One cup of soil may hold more microorganisms than there are people in the world. In fact, even a teaspoon of healthy soil may contain more than one billion microorganisms. At NWF we celebrate biodiversity; did you ever think about how much life there is beneath your feet?
• It takes about 500 years to develop every inch of soil. It is amazing how complex the physical, chemical, and biological processes are that work together to make soil. It takes far less time to lose soil through erosion, which is why it is so important that we conserve it, by growing cover crops, for example.
• Playing in the soil is good for kids. Studies have shown that getting a little dirty can be good for a child’s mental and physical health. However, it is important to be aware of the history of your soil; when it has been polluted by human activities, it can hold toxic chemicals. It’s a good idea to get the soil in your garden and backyard tested once in a while, especially in urban and suburban areas.
• Soil is made of stardust. Does that blow your mind a little bit? It’s true! Soil particles are mostly made of rock of the Earth’s crust that has weathered over thousands of years. But where did the rock come from? Volcanic processes, mostly, but even before that….the heavy elements, like iron and nickel, that make up the Earth’s crust formed in a supernova, at the explosive death of ancient stars.

“Essentially, all life depends upon the soil … There can be no life without soil and no soil without life; they have evolved together.” — Charles E. Kellogg, USDA Yearbook of Agriculture, 1938
“A cloak of loose, soft material, held to the earth’s hard surface by gravity, is all that lies between life and lifelessness.” — Wallace H. Fuller, Soils of the Desert Southwest, 1975

And this one:

“We spend our lives hurrying away from the real, as though it were deadly to us. “It must be somewhere up there on the horizon,” we think. And all the time it is in the soil, right beneath our feet.” – William Bryant Logan, Dirt: The Ecstatic Skin of the Earth, 2007

Real indeed, Mr. Logan.

Want to learn more about soils?

Read about NWF’s work to improve soil health through cover crops.
Check out NWF’s report, “The Dirt on Dirt.”

Being relatively new to no till and cover crops, I have the advantage of not holding onto prior assumptions.

To get to the bottom of this I began taking soil temperature readings starting in April. Using a protocol established by Dave Robison and Dan Perkins (Jasper County, IN SWCD, Youtube 2014 cover crops videos) every week I took soil temperature readings at random locations at 4 inch depth in my no till field with a winter-killed cover (radish), my neighbor’s fall tilled field across the fence row, and my lawn to provide a baseline. Here is a table with the results through early July.

Now, just how do we explain the myth and the reality?

It turns out, the soil surface is only half of the equation (or less). Until now, we have ignored what goes on in the soil; the science we cannot easily observe. In simple terms, scientists are now beginning to account for many other factors such as drainage, structure, and biology. Thanks to no till and cover crop roots, I am slowly breaking through the plow pan located about 16 inches below the surface. That plow pan, intensely present in my neighbor’s soil, prevents excess moisture from draining away. Thus, if one chooses to not address plow pan, one must rely on tillage as a means of aerating the soil. However, repeated tillage breaks down soil structure, further decaying the soil’s ability to move excess water. The end result is not only a tillage treadmill, but that no tilled soils shed excess water much easier, and dry soils warm up much faster and easier than wet soils. Soil biology may also be a factor. With no till and covers, the micro-organisms that normally do not survive tillage and long periods lacking plant roots have a chance to grow. That growing population and the process of digesting and converting minerals and nutrients may actually warm the soil. Note again from the data the fact that the no till and lawn (technically also no till) both typically had higher soil temperatures than the tilled field.

Unfortunately for conservation, water quality, wildlife, and the climate, myths like these have inhibited and delayed adoption of no till and cover crops. But it isn’t just wildlife or water quality that suffers. Misconceptions and assumptions have led farmers to continue soil abuse, costing them time and money now while degrading the long term health and productivity of their soil.

[1] JR Teasdate and CL Mohler, “Light Transmittance, Soil Temperature, and Soil Moisture under Residue of Hairy Vetch and Rye,” Agronomy Journal 85 N. 3 (1993): 673-680, suggest a reduction in daily soil temperature amplitude under cover crops. Craig Drury et al, “Red Clover and Tillage Influence on Soil Temperature, Water Content, and Corn Emergence,” Agronomy Journal 91 N. 1 (1999): 101-108 suggest no till with and without a red clover cover crop increased soil moisture by 2-5% and reduced soil temperatures by 1 to 2 C during early crop emergence in southwestern Ontario.

“Few conservation programs can boast the success rate of conservation compliance,” said Moseley, who served as Deputy Secretary of the U.S. Department of Agriculture from 2001 to 2005. “This program has helped farmers save 295 million tons of soil per year and kept an estimated 1.5 million to 3.3 million acres of vulnerable wetlands from being drained. The results of this compact between farmers and taxpayers have been astounding.”

Unfortunately, we are now at risk of losing the conservation gains we have made through this important program. Currently, farmers who receive crop insurance subsidies from the government do not have to participate in conservation compliance. However, over the last 15 years, Congress has increased the subsidy amounts on crop insurance, making it the largest subsidy to farmers.  And, as Congress updates federal farm policy in the next Farm Bill, it is increasingly likely that some commodity programs – which do require conservation compliance – will be phased out in favor of a strengthened crop insurance program. Therefore, it is essential that conservation compliance also be updated to apply to the crop insurance premium assistance.

As Moseley explains:

As Congress reauthorizes the farm bill, it is important that the conservation gains made over the last 25 years be retained. Unless included in the ongoing farm bill discussions, there is a possibility that, for the first time in a quarter century, conservation compliance provisions will no longer be attached to the largest federal payment program supporting producers.

Take Action: Call your member of Congress and tell them that you support linking conservation compliance to crop insurance in the next farm bill.