"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.

Aronia, a Native Nutriceutical

Aronia is a genus in the Rose family native to the Eastern United States and Canada whose astringent berries have been cultivated in Europe to produce juice, tea, wine and syrup. Aronia is closely related to and sometimes included in the genus Photinia.

Aronia's unique nutritional and antioxidant profile has led to research in its use against colon cancer, liver damage, diabetes and oxidative stress, including stress resulting directly from chemical exposure. Additionally, Aronia is pest and disease resistant and easy to cultivate, making it a genus of interest to those researching the creation of new markets for minor crops in the United States.  

Aronia's common name, chokeberry, is sometimes confused with chokecherry (Prunus virginiana), whose high cyanide content has proven fatal to livestock. Aronia species have no such toxicity issues. Further adding to the confusion is the existence of a Prunus virginiana cultivar called "Melanocarpa", which is also the name of an Aronia species. For this reason, it is preferable to refer to Aronia by its botanical name.

There are two Aronia species: melanocarpa, or black chokeberry, and arbutifolia, or red chokeberry. Both are available as native specimen plants from Possibility Place; more palatable European cultivars are available for shipment from Raintree Nursery and other domestic vendors. This discussion may be helpful to you in deciding if this is the right fruit for your needs and or goals.

Ribes Reading

Those of us interested in cultivating Ribes (currants, gooseberries and hybrid jostaberries) at home have plenty of literature to draw from. While modern research articles and textbooks are indispensable to the small fruit grower, historic guides* (like this free one from Google Books) continue to offer relevant insights into the cultivation and history of small fruit varieties.

 For further information, there are also The International Ribes Association (TIRA) and, if you really want to geek out, the USDA Agricultural Research Service's Ribes page.

The following images are from a report to the New York State Assembly in 1859:








* I will never tire of public domain downloads from Google Books!

Autumn Garden Revisions

The quinces are almost ripe and ready to sample.

As the quinces round and ripen, the dregs of this year's currants hang withered on their infructescences and the violet and chicory greens sport the sheen of autumn rain, I find myself at a loss as to how to go about the first real autumn garden cleanup. This is why I've invited my mother, a seasoned native landscape designer and gardener, to help me tidy and revise the wild-looking beds and plan for next year.

 This week, we'll be snapping and sawing the massive cup plant stalks, cleaning up and transplanting some of the other perennial native wildflowers, removing overgrown weeds and ordering bushes for fall and spring planting.

We'll be planting two types of berry-bearing bushes: a compact Juneberry (Amelanchier alnifolia) native to South Dakota as an alternative to the massive Illinois variety and a bush-form honeysuckle (Lonicera kamchatica) that bears elongated blueberry-like fruits that are said to be rich in antioxidants. These are coming as potted specimens from one of my favorite nurseries, Edible Landscaping.

Seedheads from last spring's Foxglove Penstemon blooms.

For spring, I'm placing orders from Raintree Nursery for bare root heirloom pink currants (Ribes vulgare "Gloire des Sablons") and lingonberries (Vaccinium vitis-ideae varieties yet to be determined).

Nineteenth century literature describes "Gloire des Sablons" as having a vigorous upright growth habit and being a moderate bearer of beautiful pink fruit with mediocre flavor. The fact that this variety is still in cultivation may be attributable to both its disease resistance and its unique looking fruit, which is said to freeze well and to be useful for jams and pies and as a dessert garnish. Since one of my interests is marketing specialty currants and currant products in the future, I'm willing to take a risk on their flavor (which can always be amended with other ingredients).

Two Types of People

Call Wes Craven - The Flowers Are Back!

 I find that there are two types of people who walk down the street. The first type, upon encountering a mass of flowers that slightly impedes their passage along the sidewalk, are delighted. They walk on the side of the street with the mass of flowers because it is beautiful and full of life and they are happy to interact with that life. The other type consists of those who prefer to cross the street rather than brush past flowers. Maybe they have allergies or they don't like unruly masses of flowers that in any way impede their linear progress or perhaps they have a flower phobia.This is sad.

Every block has its own version of the "crazy garden lady". Some of us crazy garden ladies have our projects tucked away in the back yard. Some of us have them displayed in the front yard. Still others of us have completely filled our lots with gardening projects. I fall into the third category.

The Horror! (Yes, I Need to Mow)

Last evening, as I sat on my front stoop enjoying a breeze, a gray-haired man and a very young boy were walking down my side of the street. The man saw me (I'm very unremarkable looking, I promise) and the sidewalk with the mass of flowers and he crossed the street with his young charge. Later, as I was pulling out of my driveway to go somewhere, the same man and boy returned on the opposite side of the street. I looked at him with the intention of smiling but I found that he was scowling at me. My smiling impulse vanished. In fact, I was bothered. I don't like to think that there are people who don't enjoy wildflowers and who, in fact, find my garden aesthetically offensive. These people do exist, however. Some of them are my neighbors.

My neighbors may not know where all of these projects are going or how they might develop, though I certainly do, so occasionally I put out a laminated printed sign with a friendly font, tacked to a wooden post. It might say something like "Please Excuse the Mess! We're Seeding the Beds!" or "Low Water Garden Installation in Progress".

Since I've already garnered the crazy garden lady label and there's no going back, I'm considering going full bore and installing an outdoor bulletin board in my front yard with conservation gardening hints, information about Illinois native plants and wildlife and free youth activity booklets from the Illinois Department of Natural Resources.

Late last night, I went outside and cut back some of the flowers so that they didn't hang over the sidewalk in any way. I felt bad for the very young boy who wasn't allowed to enjoy flowers.

What House? What Walk? What Car?

I know I'm Johnny One Note this summer but very honestly I've never seen anything like these in my life and I'm enthralled with every new stage of their development. The goldfinches happily sing atop their leaves while eating from their seedheads, monarch butterflies flutter gaily all around them and the bees and other insects enjoy the continuing display of tasty flowers. What am I referring to? Why, yes, it's the cup plants. Again. And yes, seedlings are still coming up all over the yard. If you'd like some of these prodigious bird and pollinator friendly Illinois native prairie plants in your yard, please feel free to come dig up some seedlings.

A Simple Hammock

Early morning storms saturated the thick straw paths in the back yard and left much of the back yard seating too soggy to use. It occurred to me that a hammock would be just the thing between the two old apple trees across from the bunny hutch. Hammocks, if you haven't already observed, are outrageously overpriced and often not very well made. How does a budget minded person make a hammock? Quite easily, as it turns out.

Cup Plant Overflow

The cup plants we brought back from the native plant rescue at Naperville North High School last year are producing prolifically - there are cup plant seedlings coming up in every sidewalk crack and a multitude of other unlikely places. If you're in the Joliet area and would like some seedlings, you're welcome to come and get some.

(All of those little leaves at the bottom right are cup plants seedlings.)