Potterings

Native Butterfly Planting Update
The plugs from Possibility Place were watered diligently during the first few weeks after planting and I'm happy to say that nearly all have produced robust blooms. As it's late in the season, it appears I'll have to finish planting it int he spring with more of the same and perhaps a few more penstemons (Penstemon digitalis), whose substantial foliage provides a handsome deep green three season backdrop in the parkway beds (which the burdock did its best to thwart this year).

Containing Overgrowth 
The 4' - 6'  "Wall of Flowers" (thank you, Phil Spector) along the sidewalk serves as a living privacy fence, since in my neighborhood there is a 4' height limit on front yard fences. The difficulty, however, is that they tend to flop across the sidewalk. In lieu of installing an actual fence, I'm continuing my inexpensive and rustic vegetable garden motif by using 5' bamboo stakes and jute twine. For the towering prairie flowers flopping across my front walk, I'm considering rebar as a semi-permanent staking material. The rebar can be dropped into 18" pipe sections pounded into the ground with a mallet. Rebar can be bent using a conduit bender, as I understand it, and I'm investigating the possibility of using rebar to make arbors, as well.

Inexpensive Trellising
The Essential Urban Farmer introduced me to the concept of using welded wire concrete reinforcement as trellising. Each panel is 42" x 84", fitting perfectly between the 5' bamboo stakes around the veg garden (each stake sunken in about 1'). They're not rust-proof so they won't last forever but the rust renders them virtually invisible from the street - all you can see is vegetation and classic bamboo (and weeds, but more about that later). Each panel costs under $8 at Home Depot, making them an excellent option for the thrifty gardener.

Burdock: Friend or Foe?
Burdock (Arctium lappa, A. minus - love that name) grows exceedingly well in this area, particularly in disturbed soils, and I find myself asking as I remove it for the fifth time this year from my parkway beds, "Is this plant valuable enough to grow elsewhere in the yard? Or will it just aggressively crowd out more desirable plants?" The 7' burdock plant that volunteered along my driveway remained untouched this summer, only to bomb me on multiple occasions with the same incorrigible burrs that inspired the invention of Velcro (true story). What is burdock good for, anyway? It's often used as a "chop and drop" green mulch by permaculture enthusiasts but on a lot as small as mine, chop and drop isn't very practical. Burdock root is often used in Asian and European cuisines and is considered to be a highly nutritive, tonifying addition to the diet. It particularly benefits the liver, kidneys and, resultantly, the blood.

http://youtu.be/C_7izL3l3Jk

In my 1 second search for burdock and Velcro, I stumbled upon the Biomimicry Institute:

"The Biomimicry Institute promotes learning from and then emulating natural forms, processes, and ecosystems to create more sustainable and healthier human technologies and designs."

Thank you, Internet.

Gardening with a 70s Childhood Icon

I think this is wonderful. Here's to a new week in the garden!

Yardhaving, Yardthink

In the last day and a half,  I've installed 25 bags' worth of topsoil into the newly expanded vegetable beds. I was pleased to discover that the bags only weigh about 22 pounds instead of the 40 pounds I thought they weighed (extra pleased because I have more to install).

As I was schlepping yesterday in the vegetable garden, I thought about the lawn/hedge/annual paradigm and how to communicate about gardening with those who are stuck in conventional yardthink. I believe the crux of conventional yard design and care is the idea that the yard is a "thing." It is a thing that must be maintained, just like a car or a house. It is a fixed object whose botanical and man-made ornaments, like potpourri dishes or wall art, are dusted, refreshed and occasionally rearranged or replaced.

Contrast this with relating with the yard as a dynamic, living natural resource. We can choose to interact with it more consciously, taking the time to observe and to learn about the phenomena that take place in it. We can use this information to create microenvironments that serve us in new and profound ways and simultaneously support environmental health. The benefits of this conscious interaction are improved air, water and soil quality, food for people and wildlife, a reduced need for artificial inputs (fertilizers, herbicides, pesticides, irrigation, fossil fuels, human labor) and their associated costs, the health benefits of improved diet, fresh air, sunshine and the peace of mind that accompanies spending time in nature. We can fashion nurturing spaces that address so many vital needs. It's so simple.

Nature isn't "out there" - it's right here, a few steps past the front door. Why is nature "good" somewhere else and "bad" in the yard? When more of us take the bold step of taking out the turfgrass and creating spaces for food and living in our yards (especially the front yard, the most wasted real estate), others may begin to get ideas. We may never have a conversation that goes beyond answering "What kind of flowers are those?" but irrefutably, when we embrace a new paradigm in our yards, the idea becomes contagious.

Highlights from 3 1/2 Years at Pelagia Gardens

Recently, I went back through the blog to review all that I've done with the property since moving here in August of 2008.

What I found really heartened me as, in truth, a lot has been accomplished. Here's an overview:

The House as I Purchased it and as it Appeared 13 Months Later.

The First of Many Pea Gravel Deliveries.

Messy path installation in the NE corner of the yard.

Fruits and Blooms from Spring of 2010

Early Phase of Sheet Mulching the SE Lawn

24 Months After Home Purchase (Too much! Things have since been scaled back.)

More Cup Plant Photos (Just Because)

2011 was pretty much a wash in the garden - I was burned out and it took me a full season to recuperate. This year, I find that my plans are specific but not consuming. I've finally drawn up plant lists for most of the front yard with the exception of the quince berm, where I plan to install medicinals.

At this point, I've liberated myself from worrying overmuch about what the neighbors think (I do care but it doesn't gnaw at me in the way that it once did). In a few years, when the plants have matured and I've put some finishing touches in, I hope to be able to use the front yard as a demonstration garden for low water gardening, edible landscaping and native plant use (although any diehard native plant person will readily recognize that I really know very little about Illinois native plants - I'm a transplant from Washington State, cut me some slack, people!). A couple of years ago, I got ahead of myself and dreamed up an environmental education center - but all things in good time!

A video of our ducks in 2009, taken  by my daughter:



The discovery of a cistern from the 1880s in the back yard (you can catch a glimpse of the original back yard layout here - everything is now obscured by overgrowth):



And, finally, a glimpse of my Dutch bantam hens + 1 Araucana hen, who sadly were eaten by raccoons last year:



Thanks for walking down memory lane with me. Wild times!

The Importance of Signage

About twenty years ago in my Seattle neighborhood, a neighbor posted handwritten signs on the parkway that read something like this:

"SOMEONE RECENTLY VANDALIZED THIS GARDEN by mowing it. This was a wild garden that our children planted and enjoyed."

Poignant! I'm sure this has happened to many of us who love wild plants and wild gardens - a tidy neighbor couldn't abide by the "mess" on the parkway and rolled the mower over it in a well meaning attempt to beautify the neighborhood. My neighbors put their sign up after the fact but there is something to be said for using signage as an ambassador and advocate for ecological gardening from the very beginning, even before the sheet mulch goes down. 

Firstly, in our culture, official looking signs effectively legitimize our activities. Even if something looks peculiar, if there's a sign nearby labeling what it is and explaining it and/or directing behavior, people tend to go along with whatever it is without much question. 

Secondly, if the sign explains what the thing is in a way that makes the activity seem desirable, a few other enterprising souls may follow suit. People can't believe you took out your lawn? "Low Water Gardening."  Your yard is packed with wildflowers? "Bird and Butterfly Habitat." Weird looking prairie plants? "(Your State) Native Prairie Plants." (This appeals to local pride.) And yes, by all means, having brochures available is a good thing. If someone wants to complain to the city about your yard (depending, of course, on where you live), if it appears that you are doing this on purpose and have a sound reason for it, the city is probably less apt to cite you than it is the people who haven't mowed their lawns in two or three months.

Wild Ones, Monarch Watch's Waystation program and the National Wildlife Federation's Backyard Wildlife Habitat (not a big fan of this last organization, but it's a nice program) all have official-looking metal signs that you can affix to a post in your yard. There's also the Pesticide Free Zone sign. I'm sure there are others, too - and you can always create a sign naming your urban garden/farm and/or describing the gardening style you're embracing. 

Some of us have the gift of gab and don't mind explaining to passers-by what it is we're doing. For others (including me), having signs and brochures provides "legitimacy", educates, advocates and also provides privacy protection. 

Butterfly Habitat

Last fall, hired hands were brought in and the last of the turf grass came off of the parkway, the sickly parkway tree was removed and contoured beds were put in, protecting the plant areas from roll-over next to the driveway and overspray and grass seed from the neighbor's parkway area at the other end. I signed up for the Monarch Waystation program over at Monarch Watch some time ago and gained an idea of which types of plants to install. Last weekend, I went to Possibility Place to pick up some of the goods (native plants). I had some genera in mind but, in the end, it was the house botanist who picked some plants for me from among their greenhouse selection. I brought home 20 plugs to start with, consisting of:

Monarda fistulosa/Wild Bergamot
Agastache foeniculum/Anise Hyssop
Liatris aspera/Rough Blazing Star
Coreopsis lanceolata/Sand Coreopsis
Rudbeckia hirta/Black-Eyed Susan
Echinacea pallida/Pale Coneflower
Allium cernuum/Nodding Onion
Asclepias incarnata/Swamp Milkweed
Bouteloua curtipendula/Side Oats Grama

I have another berm in the front yard that I'll plant with more Asclepias (larval Monarch food) and taller, showier prairie plants, including more Asclepias species and perhaps Eryngium yuccifolium/Rattlesnake Master.

In the mean time, lacking homemade compost, I'm on the hunt for a source for bagged organic mulch. In this neck of the woods, it's asking for the moon - suggestions are welcome.

Picking Up Where I Left Off

I read Novella Carpenter's blog today after over a year of eschewing all things urban homesteading and felt a little bit better. You see, city officials scan her blog to find things to charge her with. I've never attained that level of prominence at City Hall and hope to avoid doing so.

I must say, though, reading her blog was encouraging and I've just purchased her book on urban farming. Her neighbors thought she was crazy. My neighbors think I'm crazy. She took on more than she could handle at times. I have taken on more than I can handle. I won't lie - the yard is frightening.

Tonight, I wandered around the back yard trying to see the possibilities clearly again. Yes, there's a huge 1880s cistern under a large section of the yard and no, I won't be able to pay to restore it any time soon. Rather than holding off on a privacy fence and a new back porch, I'm going to charge forward with turning the back yard into a usable, enjoyable space that in the most casual way possible feeds me and the animals.

On a sad note, last fall the chickens were collectively slaughtered by an unknown creature or creatures (I suspect raccoons). Poignantly, I found the remains of one of them last week as I cleared away the remainder of last season's weeds. My girls were safer as free rangers than in the not-very-secure coop, it turned out, but I am determined to provide a better housing option for future chickens.

 More later. Over and out.

"Should" Homesteading

The inner ideologue demands a high level of performance on the urban homestead. When homesteading, gardening, shopping and cooking turn into a list of "shoulds", a lot of the joy goes out of daily living and with that, the extinguishing of inspiration. As my beds turn to weeds and the thick masses of wildflowers overtake the sidewalk, as the currants ripen and shrivel on the bushes, I turn my thoughts to the why of it all. If I am honest, I acknowledge that the joy has been in creating a place for biodiversity and vitality from an ordinary city lot. I'm a "big picture" person and once the vision has been achieved, I am not someone who falls naturally into the rhythms of maintenance. I live alone and my beds have gone to hell.

The major lessons of the past three years on the homestead are easy to point to: Go slowly. Finish one major project before undertaking another - down to the most minute details. Follow joy rather than ambition or perfectionism. Balance dreams, visions and ideals with what is practical.

Right now, going on the garden, it looks like a crazy person lives here. I know I'm not crazy - but I took on a great deal more than I can realistically handle. Now, it's time to revise, revise, revise and to find solutions to the problems I inadvertently created in bringing radical change to the landscape.

May your garden be manageable, sincere and a source of delight. May your summer be filled with good fruits from your good labors and may your homestead be a thing of simplicity, beauty and joy.

The ADD Gardener

Scrolling down to the photo of my coffee table spread with seeds and books and whatnot in anticipation of a spring gardening spree, I couldn't help but be reminded just now of the "all or nothing" approach I tend to take toward the garden (and really, most of life). Hyperfocus is definitely a personal trait but so is distractability. Those seeds from spring? Relegated to a box on my dining room floor. Those books? I think they're on the bookshelf. Catalogs? No idea. Many of the seeds were absentmindedly placed into a Ziplock bag with - OOPS! - onion starts. Today, I found them - moist and moldy. So much for my selection of greens.

Once the current river rock and parkway projects, weeding and planting of the summer garden are done, I will probably do practically zilch outdoors until fall other than installing Monarch plants and watering the vegetables. Is this so wrong?

Oh - and if you like Lemon Balm (Melissa officinalis, I think), I have it all over my garden. It makes lovely tea and goes nicely chopped with cucumber in plain yogurt. Please come get some but be smart - plant it in containers!

Early Summer Updates

FRAYED AROUND THE EDGES
The parkway has been on the project list for longer than I'd care to remember. The last half ton of the garden soil I had delivered a couple of months ago (or longer) was distributed on the parkway yesterday morning just in time for the delivery truck to deposit two tons of large river rock.

I sheet mulched half of the parkway with cardboard some time ago and didn't finish the edges. I would like to recommend that you NOT replicate my Attention Deficit Disorder induced order of operations but rather install edging first. The rain washed much of the soil into the street and ugly brown cardboard is exposed along the curb along 17' feet or so of the parkway. Of course, I just sheet mulched the other side to match, right before I made a trip to the hardware store to pick up edging. The current disgraceful state of affairs will be remedied this week.

I chose two types of edging and it remains to be seen how well they will work for the two applications I need. First, I need a taller edging to keep soil and river rocks from dropping into the street from the slightly sloped parkway. Next, I need something that the neighbor can run his mower over at the property line and, for aesthetics, along the sidewalk (maybe). For this, I chose "Zip Edge". (Is there really a property line on the parkway? Probably not. Hmm.) My competence in manual labor being what it is, I've brought in a consultant to coach me in digging out the edges properly.

THE TREE'S THE THING
The lone parkway tree in front of my house is something in the Rose family with little orange berries. It would be a fine tree, I'm sure, under other circumstances but the top is bare of leaves, the trunk looks like the product of woodpeckers recreating the shootout at the O.K. Corral for several successive seasons and the bark is diseased. A friend tells me that the city's wait time for removing forlorn street trees is measured in years so I am considering putting the poor creature out of its misery myself. The question is whether to "go through channels" and get permission from the city first (if they say "No", there go my plans for Monarchy - see below) or simply to remove it and document its diseased state with extensive photographs in the event the city decides it would like to take me to task. It's scarcely 20'  tall and there are no power lines nearby so it would be a simple excision.

LONG LIVE THE MONARCHY
What to do with almost 200 square feet of sheet mulched parkway? Why, create a Monarch Butterfly habitat, of course. With full sun exposure (except for a small area beneath the Doomed Tree), this is a perfect spot to beautify the street with Monarchs' favorites: milkweeds (Asclepias spp.), Echinacea spp., Liatris spp. and other perennial nectar plants. For safety reasons, it's desirable to limit plant height to under 48" - so no Ironweed or other fun prairie plants of the taller persuasion. I've certified the site through Monarch Watch's Waystation Program already. Certification is only $16.00 and one can purchase lovely and educational metal signs for $17.00 each (see photo). Where better to place these than on a parkway?

I plan to obtain plants from Possibility Place as budget allows over the summer. Alternatively, seed kits are available through Monarch Watch and there are many other milkweed seed sources available online. Many Asclepias species have seeds that need to be cold stratified; it's recommended that these be planted in November for emergence the following spring.

TONNAGE
For visibility at the driveway end of the parkway and to kill off the last of the turf grass along the length of the driveway, two tons of large river rock are going in. Yes, I'm shoveling them in myself. I'm beginning to think that I may be a masochist. Thankfully, this is the last of the major shoveling until the vegetable garden is extended another 14' or so (pea gravel paths, more garden soil). The garden will be extended either this fall or early next year. In total, my guess is that I've installed close to 20 tons of soil, gravel and rock since the autumn of 2008, when I moved here.

BETTER LATE THAN NEVER
 How it happened, I really don't know but I still have no vegetables planted in the new vegetable beds. This will be remedied this week with the planting of squash, beans, cucumbers (including lemon cukes) and a variety of greens - may they live to see fruitful maturity.

SCOURGE OF THE CRAB GRASS
I wish that I were as chic and stylish as Genghis Khan et al. but I do my scourging while seated on a little metal step stool while wearing kidskin gloves. (Wait, I bet Genghis wore goatskin gloves! Ooh! We DO have something in common!) Crab grass has installed itself in nearly every inch of previously bare soil, which equates with a high volume of weeding. I'm glad I have help this week from both my garden wise and accomplished mother and my lovely daughter, who is, as it turns out, a first class weeder.

Weeding is exponentially more fun with company.

How Not to Talk About Your Landscape and Apparently, Brown is the New Green

Those of us who routinely watch the neighbors' eyes glaze over when we talk about our gardens have been duly admonished. Observe: Talking About Your Landscaping, courtesy of our mentors and friends at Wild Ones.

The same newsletter features a snippet about how green has been coopted by corporate money-grabbers and that brown, for the earth, should be the color de rigeur for the environmentalist. (I'm sad to report that since my relocation mto the Midwest, both brown and green now remind me of lawn grass.) Instead of brown, I propose "wearing" every color found in the native landscape in our gardens and putting a rapid halt to the mindless consumption of eco-branded products. Instead of buying recycled plastic carry-all bags at the health food store, wouldn't it make more sense to purchase the 25 cent canvas tote bags readily available at the thrift store and stop consuming so much plastic in the first place? It seems, however, that the majority of us have been implanted with the Consumer Chip. Maybe it's time for a reinterpretation of Logan's Run in which corporate greenwashers put environmentalists in the Carousel and send agents to infiltrate outlaw permacultural communities. Or maybe I should leave screenwriting to the professionals. Next!

Michael York hereby swears to buy greenwashed products on sight.

From Zero to Sixty: Part One

The Gardener's coffee table circa 1:00 a.m.

The last frost date has breezed past (or sogged past, as the case may be) and after months of ignoring matters of the garden, suddenly I feel as though I'm trying to keep pace with the pollinators (you may be able to relate). Thankfully, I have some time over the next couple of weeks to address the following:

1. Planting Eight Gloire des Sablons Currant Bushes (DONE)
2. Covering Amelanchier roots with more soil (DONE)
3. Fencing in Vegetable Garden (DONE)
4. Reconfiguring/shaping Front Yard Apple Tree Berm (DONE)
5. Planting 50 Fragaria virginiana plants (an everbearing strawberry well thought of as a landscaping plant) on the pink currant and amelanchier berms
6. Sowing Seeds for the Apple Tree Guild
7. Ordering Lonicera (Honeysuckle) Bushes & Lingonberries (Maybe?)
8. Sheet Mulching the Parkway (100% Lawn Free! Yeah, Baby!)
9. Sowing Half of Parkway in 36"-48" Perennial Wildflowers
10. Constructing an Herb Spiral on the Other Half of the Parkway
11. Seeding the Vegetable Beds (Yes, Late)
12. Planting Sanguinaria canadensis (Bloodroot) on the Shaded Native Currant Berm
13. Pruning Unhealthy Black Currant Bushes
14. Cleaning Up & Reseeding Parkway Path with Native Penstemons 
15. Leveling & Anchoring Arbor & Planting with Native Clematis

I think that's enough for now!  Pictures will be forthcoming.

Dream Books: Catalogs from Baker Creek, Raintree Nursery &
Edible Landscaping; Lee Reich's Landscaping with Fruit, Toby
Hemenway's Gaia's Garden, theologian Vigen Guroian's
Inheriting Paradise and Comprehensive Basic Gardening
from the Springfield, Illinois chapter of Food Not Lawns.
Not Pictured: Field and Forest Catalog
(a must for the gardening mycophile).

I'm Not Dead, I'm Dormant

I may be dormant but my garden isn't! The buds on the woody plants and trees are declaring the advent of spring in a most promising way. Are there vegetable starts unfurling on my south-facing windowsills? No. Seriously, I'm dormant. The Gloire Des Sablons pink currants from Raintree Nursery will be shipping soon, however, to add more structure to the bed along the sidewalk and provide some summer berry foraging.

Over the winter, I began experimenting with a raw foods diet with an emphasis on lots of green juices (kale, collards, mustard greens, etc.). I came to realize that the volume of greens I was consuming was not sustainable if I had any intention of growing most of my own produce at some point.

In the near future, I may post at length about special diets and eating locally in Zone 5. Until then, maybe you have something more exciting happening in your windowsills. I would love to read about it.

Now Bring Us Some Figgy Pudding

Figs are definitely a treat for North Americans and their foliage is beautiful. How great it would be to pick them in the garden rather than shipping them from overseas - but there's no way they'd grow in Zone 5A, right? Wrong!

Big thanks to Anna at Walden Effect for posting about her baby fig trees. The varieties I'd seen were all listed as being hardy to only Zone 6 but apparently there are options for those of us in slightly colder climates. Figs can be potted and brought indoors or overwintered in a frame filled with mulch to keep the trees from dying back to the ground. The fig trees I'd seen in Seattle were 10' - 15' tall but apparently the more cold tolerant varieties tend to be shorter and shrubbier.

I have Celeste, English Brown Turkey and Hardy Chicago on my shopping list for next year, all available at Edible Landscaping, whose plants have done very well for me thus far. Their columnar apples bore heavily during the second year in the garden here and had wonderful flavor.

Figs! Now there's something to look forward to.

Mothra

My mother discovered a visitor this week in the front yard. Why, yes! It's Mothra. I haven't identified our friend yet but his or her wings were approximately 3 1/2" across in the resting position and she/he spent an entire day camped on the same leaf. This photo doesn't do justice to the eerie green hues of Mothra's wings.