Mini-beasts in My Backyard

Background

The main area of my backyard is approximately 12m x 6m. Its big enough for me to have a range of fruit trees, vegetable patches and ornamental plants and grasses. Its also home to a range of mini-beasts. Mini-beasts and bugs are important to have in your garden, not only for their entertainment value, but because the diversity they represent and add to your backyard makes the ecosystem much more stable and resilient. The greater the diversity of bugs the healthier the ecosystem. Bugs perform other important functions such as pollinating some flowers, eating insect pests and recycling organic matter. They perform all of these functions for free. All we need to do is send out some invitations (by way of the vegetation we plant) and see who comes.

Creating habitat

Most of us probably have grassed lawns and perhaps a few bushes and trees in the backyard. Here is a quick list of items you can add to your backyard to create more diverse habitat, niches and microenvironments that will makes homes for mini-beasts.

Mulch

Remove your lawn and put down a thick layer of chipped mulch (100-150mm thick). If you have a lawn with an invasive grass such as kikuyu grass you may need to cover the area with black plastic for several weeks to shield the ground from sun or to solarise the ground using the sun's heat. Then add the mulch and perhaps some newspaper once the black plastic has done its work.

Leave leaves

The Loquat tree in the back yard is an evergreen tree, but it still needs to be pruned yearly and it drops lots of leaves at differnet times of the year. Leave the leaves on the ground. They provide a good cover for minibeasts and they can also capture rain and garden host water drops to serve as mini-beast baths and drinking fountains. Trees drop leaves to create mulch on purpose. For millions of years trees co-evolved with mini-beasts.

Compost heap

I have four compost heaps in my backyard that are running all the time. One is for kitchen scapes and the other three help recycle the straw litter from the rabbit hutches and other trimmings from the garden. I add enough water to the compost so they material they contain is never dry and then let the bugs in the backyard get to work. To monitor the process I insert a 90cm long temperature probe. If the temperature is too low I normally add kitchen scrapsm fresh weeds, other green materials or even urine. Compost heaps attract a range of small animals because the heaps contain waste food material that bugs can eat, small bugs that bigger bugs can eat, and warmth and shelter. Inside the compost heap you will typically find earth worms, slaters and earwigs. Underneath the compost you will often find skinks, including the large Blue Tonged Lizard.

Ground covers

You can experiment with a range of different ground covers, both native and foreign. Ground covers protect mini-beasts from larger predators such as Black Birds. They also offer protect from summer heat and moderate the colder temperatures in winter. Frogs and lizards will often use this cover material. Just make sure you keep it well watered using tank or de-chlorinated tap water.

Pot plants

Pot plants and wine barrels are mostly round or have is they are wicking beds have gaps and holes and places to hide. Round pot plants clustered togher have gaps and spaces for snails and other mini-beasts to hide. Encourage some clustering so that some habitat is provided, but so that you can still inspect for pests.

Wine barrels

I found a colony of small skinks living inside a wine barrel. I lined the wine barrel with some black plastic before adding soil. The small lizards found a space between the barrel wall and the plastic to call home. Every morning they would come to the top edge of the barrel to sun themselves. In return I would water the barrel so that they could get a drink. I left some wire mesh and grass to grow around the edge of the barrel to give them some protection.

Rocks

Roof tiles