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In The Garden: Beth Mort of Zinnia Designs Helps People Grow Productive Gardens
In The Garden: Beth Mort of Zinnia Designs Helps People Grow Productive Gardens
Sat., July 29, 2017, noon
Beth Mort, founder of Zinnia Designs, helps clients design productive landscapes. (SUSAN MULVIHILL/SPECIAL TO THE SPOKESMAN-REVIEW)
By Susan Mulvihill inthegarden@live.com
You can contact Beth Mort via email at beth.zinnia@gmail.com or visit her websites at zinniapermaculturedesign.com and www.snapdragonflowerfarm.com.
Beth Mort has been around gardening for as long as she can remember. Not only does she enjoy growing bountiful gardens, but teaching others how to do this as well.
“My mom and dad always kept a good-sized garden,” she recalled. “I caught my love for gardening from them and have never turned back because eating fresh food changes your whole perspective.”
When she headed off to Evergreen State College, she majored in botany.
“I probably would have gone down that track if I’d been able to find a full-time job,” she admitted.
She later earned a master’s degree in Urban and Regional Planning from Eastern Washington University. But the turning point in Mort’s life occurred when two instructors from Bullock’s Permaculture Homestead on Orcas Island gave a daylong workshop on permaculture, which is the development of sustainable agricultural ecosystems. That led her to complete an intensive Permaculture Design Certificate course at the homestead.
In 2015, she founded Zinnia Designs, with the goal of helping people produce a yield on their property.
“I’m more focused on edible landscaping but can also teach them how to set up and grow a dye garden or raise fiber-producing animals,” she said. “I want to show them how to be productive on their land in a way that is sustainable.”
She begins by having clients answer a short questionnaire.
“It’s a great way to get people thinking about the big picture: their vision of what their yard could be, what they perceive as obstacles, and what they want to get out of it,” Mort said.
If they decide to proceed, she does a site assessment to look at every aspect of their yard, including the factors they can control and ones they cannot. This includes itemizing which enhancements the yard will need, such as mulching, soil improvement, where to locate animals, the use of water, and choosing the best places to plant.
Once Mort has gathered the information she needs, she works on a conceptual design plan.
“I create a base map that includes a sector analysis of how sun, wind, water, animals and people move through the space, and zones denoting how the areas of the property are used and accessed,” she said.
Another service she offers is two-hour training sessions on skills such as growing edible crops, flowers, beekeeping, raising chickens or making compost.
“Building their confidence is No. 1,” she said. “Giving them the basic foundation and vernacular so they can start asking the right questions – and find what they’re looking for – is really important.
“Working with people and gardening together is an extension of that,” she said. “I want them to be comfortable working in the soil, getting used to working with plants, and to address problems rather than just reacting to them.”
Mort also grows and sells cut flowers at the Thursday Market in the South Perry district, located at 924 S. Perry St. In addition, she has established a “bouquet CSA” (community-supported agriculture) program through her companion venture, Snapdragon Flower Farm.
She believes strongly in the principles of permaculture and practices what she preaches.
“Permaculture includes us in nature, and nature in us,” she said. “It is a very logical, thoughtful and observant way of living in your space. It is a joy knowing that people want to grow things and interact with their landscapes.”
Susan Mulvihill is co-author of “Northwest Gardener’s Handbook” with Pat Munts. Contact her at Susan@susansinthegarden.com and follow her at facebook.com/susansinthegarden. View this week’s “Everyone Can Grow A Garden” video at youtube.com/c/susansinthegarden.
How to Start a Garden – The Ultimate Guide
How to Start a Garden – The Ultimate Guide
I have gardened for many, many years and have many, many books ranging from communing with nature spirits to controlling pests with their natural enemies.
What are the most important lessons I have learned over the years? How would I advise someone to begin for guaranteed success?
People garden with different objectives in mind.
Some are seeking a serene oasis, a time they can spend alone in nature, even if it is just a tiny plot on their urban lot. Many do not know of the serenity gardening brings until they have one.
Some simply want an ornamental garden, pretty landscaping to admire.
Some people just want tomatoes and basil for spaghetti sauce.
A widowed mother with three young children my primary goal was to grow fresh organic food we could eat during the growing season, enough to store for the winter, herbs to heal our illnesses and injuries and flowers to fill the house.
I didn’t have extra time on my hands to be weeding the garden every evening, which may be a peaceful mantra for some after a day at the office, but was a disastrous waste of time in my book.
Nor was I interested in scouring plant leaves for camouflaged sacs of insect eggs and pulling slimy caterpillars from tomato plants they were devouring at alarming speed.
So I read and experimented, experimented and read. And after many years I came to understand what it takes to start a garden that yields the crops I want with minimal effort.
Table of Contents
- Garden with Nature
- Follow the Sun
- Don’t Try to Keep Out what you Can’t Keep Out
- It’s All in the Soil
- Organizing the Garden
- Buying Seeds, Starters, Bulbs and Seedlings
- Companion Planting
- Supplies
- Glossary
Garden with Nature
The first rule is to garden with nature, not against it. What type of soil do you have? Is it sandy or is it clay or is it a mix? What is the acidic level? How long is your growing season? How hot does it get? How cold does it get? How much rain do you get?
You will want to select plants that thrive in your soil in your climate.
It’s not hard to do. There are thousands of plants out there. It is nothing to be bemoaned if for, example your soil is clay and you cannot easily grow potatoes, which prefer sand. Well, then grow corn, cabbage, squash, echinacea, and black-eyed susans.
Most leafy greens prefer a good rich soil and the clay stays cooler longer than sand so it extends the growing season for this cool-weather crop.
Too, there are many different purposes you can grow plants for apart from beauty and food. I have grown plants for natural dyes and fibers.
I have grown plants for making gifts like sunflower wreaths, table centerpieces or raspberry liqueur filled chocolates.
I have grown plants to make insect repellent, set broken bones, heal sprains and clear congestion.
So when you are considering the plants you can grow in your area, broaden your horizons.
A good place to find out what grows well in your region is your extension office. This is what they do and they are paid tax dollars to do it, so don’t hesitate to stop by or call them.
I had an extension agent spend an afternoon on my farm discussing the site I had in mind for my vineyard. It would have taken two years of college classes and many growing seasons to learn what I learned from her in one afternoon.
Be aware, however, that many of the university agricultural departments in part subsidizing extension offices are themselves subsidized by large agricultural corporations that profit from the sale of fertilizers, pesticides and insecticides.
Here, for example, is the 2017 Midwest Fruit Pest Management Guide which recommends extensive spraying of pesticides on the very fruit you will be eating.
It is worth opening just to the first page to give you an idea of how much the university agriculture departments contribute to the knowledge base of extension offices.
Their advice may be skewed toward priorities antithetical to a sustainable view of the planet. Take what you need and ignore the rest.
Check around. There are probably co-ops of sustainable and organic farmers in your area happy to help as well.
Pick up a farmer’s almanac too.
Back to your soil. We will talk about the beauty of compost fertilizing your soil and breaking up dense clay clumps that deprive roots of needed oxygen and drown them in mud.
Compost can also augment your sandy soil with some substance so that water doesn’t just rapidly drain through the soil leaving your plants thirsty only moments after it’s rained. Although there are many varieties of potatoes: red, gold, white and blue, perhaps you don’t want to be eating potatoes until your ears fall off.
You can add sandy soil to clay soil and clay soil to sandy soil, but the truth is unless you change the soil’s ecosystem, which happens over time when you shovel in compost, the soil will probably ignore your efforts and return to its natural state.
So unlike many guides out there, I am not going to advise you to believe that you can actually do much to permanently change the soil by adding amendments.
I have heavily compacted soil around my side door that seems to have served as a construction debris dump when my cabin was built. Attempts to change the clay by adding some of the sandy soil from other parts of the yard proved futile.
I didn’t want to use my compost, reserving it for the garden. At last I found gypsum, renowned for being nontoxic and for breaking up clay. Although touted as natural and nontoxic, I am a mistrustful soul.
Still, I did not intend to grow a food crop there, so I wasn’t terribly concerned about an unknown negative effect on the soil. I figured the soil would heal itself once I got some healthy growth activity going.
The immediate results looked promising and some plants were able to struggle through, but the results were, as with all of the other soil amendments I have tried short of compost, short-term.
Our focus on composting will be to add nutrients to the soil, which is always good as plants will deplete the soil of nutrients as they grow.
Consider a forest floor. Fragrant with the aroma of decaying leaves, it is replete with nutrients. Rain and wind have worked to bring down twigs, leaves, and nuts from the trees and pummel them all back into the earth along with animal scat. Fungi and bacteria feeding on the plant life further the decomposition.
The forest floor becomes even richer and will yield fiddleheads and morel mushrooms for a divine Spring breakfast. Where the tree canopy is not too dense, berry bushes will take over in the summer.
Nature regenerates itself and that is what we will emulate in the garden.
Follow the Sun
Where are you going to place your site? And how large should it be?
First, what are you hoping for?
If this is an ornamental garden, go with the contours of your land. An excellent book to assist you here is Ann Lovejoy’s Organic Garden Design School, published by Rodale in 2001.
My advice here is going to focus on the small home garden that includes herbs and vegetables for the kitchen. I say small because that is how you should start out.
You can easily expand it once you know how much effort it is going to take and have identified what else you might like to grow in a single season.
Go out to your proposed site and take a look at where the sun is in the morning, in the afternoon and in the evening. Bear in mind that if it is winter, the arc of the sun is going to be a bit different than in the summer.
What you are trying to determine is where any trees might be in relation to the sun that might block your garden for periods of the day. You can use this to your advantage.
I like to plant leafy greens where they only get morning and evening sun and the blazing midday sun is blocked by a copse of tall evergreens. Direct sun makes lettuces bolt, that is, the center core shoots up to reach the sun, to the detriment of the tasty leaves that would otherwise grow.
If you have the luxury of a lot of land, by all means take a shovel and dig up the soil at a few different sites to see what you’ve got. The best soil is a mix of clay and sand, a rich loamy silt that will hold water and nutrients, without forming into hard clumps of mud. The acid level should be a pH between 5.5 and 7.5. It probably is, but a simple soil test kit from the garden center will conform this.
Do not at any cost choose a site humans have contaminated with poisons of any sort. That includes Round-up, termite spray, and debris from a burn pile. If you wouldn’t eat it by the forkful, you don’t want to grow edible plants in it. Plants absorb nutrients from the soil and they will absorb toxins as well.
Consider too, who might be living near your garden. You won’t be able to keep them out, but if you have rabbits living nearby, at least make them have to cross a broad open field if you can. This is something they are reluctant to do as it makes them visible to hawks and other predators.
To save work, you will want the garden near your compost and your kitchen and reachable by a water hose.
Don’t Try to Keep Out what you Can’t Keep Out
You might mistakenly believe the woodland creatures or those in the shrubbery of your suburban neighborhood to be of lower intelligence but trust me, they were actually born highly psychic and are greedily contemplating the abundance from your garden even now as you are indoors innocently planning it.
There are gadgets and gizmos and wives tales of many a fix to deter animals, but save your money and just nod kindly at the neighbor telling his tall tales. The scarecrow with the banging pans, the sensor flood lights, the hose blasting shots of cold water, the fox urine, the Irish Spring soap, the locks of cut hair… these things may cause a deer or groundhog to hesitate once, but the second time they will simply ignore it.
You might try a kinetic sculpture like one of these. You could strategically place bells on it to further terrify the foraging beasts.
Then even if it doesn’t work to deter deer or groundhogs, birds or rabbits, you will still have a cool piece of artwork to console you.
A lot of the advice about deterring animals appears to have a solid premise, but don’t be seduced. I have an entire book on deer proofing my garden by planting only plants that deer don’t eat.
But I have seen them eat them.
The other premise is that deer don’t like to be near plants with a pungent smell because it will mask the smell of any predators they are on high alert for. But I have seen them linger near the mint as they demolish the corn.
And I have seen them leap over posts freshly smeared with fox urine.
With much effort, I erected a slant fence around my vineyard upon the advice of a USDA pamphlet, indicating that tensile wire a foot apart at seven levels spanning a 75 degree plane confused deer. They wouldn’t jump it.
One of my gun-slinging neighbors showed up drunk one evening itching to shoot into the horde hovering patiently on the hill across from my vineyard waiting for me to finish my chores and leave.
In a deep Southern slurring drawl he argued, “But deer don’t know nothin’ ‘bout no optical illusions.”
Turns out he was right. Or if they did know anything about optical illusions, it was how to ignore them.
I do plant dark orange and gold French marigolds around the perimeter of my garden in the belief that the fragrance discourages rabbits. I don’t know if it does or not. This is the first year I have had a lot of rabbits, but the ground hogs beat them to the feast.
French marigolds do deter whiteflies from tomato plants though, and after they are fully established, they control nematodes, so along with their burst of color, they are welcome in my garden.
Your best defense against warm-blooded pests is a good fence and a smart, frisky, hunting dog that keeps vigil around the garden.
Your best offense is a catch and release trap. Or, uh, so I am hoping.
Turns out that the ancient androgynous groundhog who has been content living alone under the smokehouse these past sixteen years up and gave birth to a litter of strapping lusty sons.
Did you know that young groundhogs become teenagers and move out before their first summer is over? And that they each strike out and build a summer home and a winter home and multiple exits and entries to each?
And that throwing hot peppers and rocks down these holes does not discourage them at all? They just toss them right back out.
I can personally corroborate the veracity of much of Michael Pollan’s results in his war on woodchucks described in his garden manifesto, Second Nature: A Gardener’s Education, Garden Press, 2003, available through Amazon.
My farmstead is now littered with piles of rocks surrounding holes leading to long tunnels under each outbuilding and my cabin. It was after I was startled by the scratching awfully close to my dining table that I bought the trap.
I was already a bit put off that the ground hogs did not spare any of the five varieties of squash I had planted.
I had been particularly inspired by the previous summer’s crops of acorn squash and winter squash. They were tasty and lasted well into the winter months. So I got carried away and ordered five varieties.
I don’t mind sharing ten percent of the garden with my woodland neighbors, but I lose my will to share beyond that. Maybe if they helped with some of the work on the farm, I’d feel differently.
But when I heard that unnerving scratching, I mean how does an animal bury beneath a cellar? That ‘s when I started seriously shopping for a catch-and-release trap to be delivered as soon as Amazon could get it to me.
I caught that fat sucker too.
First thing I read when I was reading about how to trap a woodchuck was how much they like watermelon and wouldn’t you know, for the first time ever, I had a watermelon growing? Indeed it was tiny, but it was perfectly formed and showed tremendous promise.
It was growing just outside his door, the entry to the long sandy tunnel running beneath my house. He would have to step over it until he felt like eating it.
This perpetual threat was eating at me and I threw the juiciest produce I could conjure into that trap and set it immediately outside his hole.
I caught him not long after I set out the trap. Nervous that somehow the door would open, I put him in the back of the car and drove him to the abandoned farmstead in the hollow a couple miles down the road.
I drove pretty fast. The sun was setting behind the mountain and my imagination was at its peak.
Next I caught a possum. That scared me a bit as well.
He kept his very sharp teeth bared as he looked at me. His fur was matted with goo and blood and he had a wild look about him that made me uncomfortable.
The trap I bought is supposed to be humane. I’m not sure what happened, but there was some bloody hair pasted to the bottom piece of metal.
I don’t mind possums around, but I drove him out to the abandoned farmstead too, for practice and to rule out possibilities of revenge.
The next day when I woke it seemed like maybe the skunk and one of the groundhogs had got in a standoff during the night. This got me to thinking: what if I caught a skunk? What if I caught a skunk?
I couldn’t leave him in there and I had no idea how I’d get him out. I still don’t.
But it’s winter now and I’ve been traveling, so I am just going to have to ponder this one and redouble my efforts in the Spring if I want to reap the bounty from my garden.
It’s All in the Soil
Healthy soil hosts a web of life from tiny one-celled bacteria, fungi and protozoa to the more complex nematodes and small arthropods to earthworms, insects, and small vertebrates.
These organisms interact beneficially with plants.
By-products from growing roots and plant debris feed soil organisms. Soil organisms help plants by decomposing organic matter, cycling nutrients to make them more available to the plant, enhancing soil structure and porosity and controlling the populations of soil organisms, including crop pests.
Healthy soil means healthy plants.
The way to healthy soil is to add compost and not till the ecosystems, the webs of life, to shreds.
Buddhists, who do not believe in killing sentient creatures, manually crumble soil, so that earthworms are not killed.
Farmers use tractors pulling tillers and most gardeners use rototillers to turn the soil. I use a shovel rather than till.
Compost is just earth that has been made from decayed organic matter. It is called black gold because it is a sure-fire medium for producing healthy plants.
Nothing is more valuable to a gardener and it’s free. It solves the problems of what to do with dinner scraps and yard debris and it helps everything grow abundantly.
I have a pretty big compost pile that should steam but it doesn’t. Because I travel, I do not have animals, whose feces would go along way to heating up the pile, but eventually, I suppose the enormity of the weight helps a good deal, it creates lovely compost.
The compost pile requires turning with a pitchfork, the romance of which appeals to me whereas the actual doing it, does not. I highly recommend a compost tumbler.
This is a good video on how to make compost. The tumbler makes it even simpler.
I try to till and compost in the Fall, so that the soil is open to receive the compost and the compost is open to the winter snow and sun which help integrate it into the soil.
You will have to turn over the soil in Spring. Turning the soil aerates it. You need only shovel down about six or eight inches or till across the garden two or three times to get it to the consistency where it will allow germinating seeds to poke through. You can turn the compost into the soil again in early Spring.
Organizing the Garden
I would recommend a garden no larger than 25 x 30 feet to begin.
Most gardeners plant in neat rows as it is easier to weed.
Habitual walking (and of course driving heavy machinery) across the soil compacts it and makes it pretty much useless for growing anything but plantain, called by Native Americans, “white man’s footsteps.”
On the subject of weeds, you should understand the following.
Soil organisms are not distributed evenly about the soil. Each species exists where it can find the right amount of space, nutrients and moisture. This is generally around organic matter.
Thus, my sandy soil is as sterile as the desert away from plants.
But around roots there is a region called the rhizosphere where bacteria feeds from old plant cells and proteins and sugars released by the roots. Protozoa and nematodes feed on the bacteria. They cycle nutrients and help retain beneficial ones, change the structure of the soil to help the plant better access water and nutrients and suppress disease by feeding on pathogens and excreting metabolites toxic to them.
Gardeners weed to remove the competition for nutrients. However, root systems can interact in a synergistic way, providing nutrients for each other.
Tall weeds can also provide welcome shade to plants sensitive to the relentless rays of a midday blazing sun. So unless the weeds are blocking needed sun or overtaking my plants, that is, the weeds are strong and healthy and my plants weak and stunted, I let them do their thing.
If you are not going to use a rototiller and you don’t care that much about weeds that will grow among the rocks, you are not bound by the rules of symmetry and can plant in circles if you wish. You can make a rock or brick path in your garden to walk on. You can build rock walls or mounds of rock that retain moisture so crickets and small toads can live. They are priceless predators of insects who would otherwise forage your plants.
Lately I have been allowing narrow grass aisles to grow between my plots, but you do have to keep the grass down or it will attract too many grasshoppers. They will quickly devour a number of plants.
If you are more comfortable with straight rows and weeding as much as you can, by all means go for it.
Some say that a man’s footsteps are all a garden needs for fertility. Along the same line, a friend told me of an old man she knew with an abundant garden who took only one cup of water to feed his garden each evening. The point is, follow your passion and it will yield good things.
I like to intersperse flowers, herbs and vegetables and to follow companion planting suggestions.
Planting too much of a single crop creates an ecosystem vulnerable to pests and diseases of that crop and eradicates the natural system of checks and balances of a diverse ecosystem.
Over time, growing a single plant will also deplete the soil of the nutrients that plants needs. Farmers alternate their crops, often planting a cover crop that will add back in the nutrients the former planting has taken.
Certain pests like certain plants.
In your garden too, you should not plant the same crop in the same area. Last year’s pests are waiting.
Buying Seeds, Starters, Bulbs and Seedlings
I can’t say definitively where to buy seeds. I feel like I’ve had good luck and bad luck with every place from which I’ve bought.
And that’s not to say it was a problem with the seeds not germinating. It could be that birds ate the seed. Or that I pulled up the seedlings thinking they were weeds.
It’s an odd thing, and just one of many spellbinding revelations you will discover watching the world up close and personal, but almost identical plants will grow next to the seedlings you’ve planted.
After awhile, you can get cocky and think you know which one is which and before you know it, you’ve got a bitter weed growing rampant where the arugula would be if you hadn’t yanked it.
By the way, don’t be yanking plants. When you are old you might end up with very painful elbows on cold, damp days. Move as a dancer, with thought and balance.
I did grow a notable crop of amaranth, an edible red grain the Hopi also used for body paint from seeds I bought from Seeds of Change.
I also grew some very pretty Peruvian chili peppers a couple years in a row that glimmered like jewels in my garden. They were very hot and kept well dried for many years.
I think they were Peruvian. Maybe they were Bolivian. But they don’t carry them any more so it doesn’t matter.
I have also got some very cool sunflower seeds from them and good broomcorn seeds.
I like Peaceful Valley Seeds because they carry organic seeds.
I have a soft spot in my heart for Johnny’s Selected Seeds, but I think it’s just because they carry a xylene-free weatherproof marker, which is something otherwise impossible to find.
It’s a good idea to have a diagram of your proposed plantings before you start, but sometimes I also mark off the seeds as I plant them by writing their names on a popsicle stick and placing them at the edges of their little plot.
I wouldn’t do that if I didn’t have a xylene-free marker. Xylene gives me a spinning headache that makes me believe it is probably not a substance I want the rain to wash into my garden soil.
I’m not obsessive-compulsive, just circumspect. You will find if you breathe deeply and are open to sensing the world around you while you are gardening, you will become sensitive to the rhythms of the earth. You will feel rain approaching.
The reason the farmer’s almanac advises against planting root crops while the moon is waxing is because the moon is pulling the earth’s water closer to the surface during that phase, and root crops like depth and dryness. Plant them when the mood is waning and them gravitational forces are weaker.
The moment of their planting, as in astrological signs, makes an imprint upon their lives and influences their growth.
Biodynamic farmers also believe that the earth is part of a single organism, a living universe. They, too work with the energy fields of the planet for abundance, mixing plants in their compost known to have synergistic properties and making a fertilizer of compost tea at a particular favorable time in the earth’s rotation.
Back to seeds. I like to look through the catalogs with the cheesy graphics that come in the mail starting around January when it is cold and stark outside.
I have no idea how many times I have ordered and tried to plant a “crimson carpet.” Maybe I never did. I don’t have any.
I hope to this year.
I love the idea of heirloom seeds and get lost for hours on the websites for heirloom seeds thinking I will plant this or that.
Looks like there is a whole cult of people dedicated to preserving species, which is a pretty cool idea and makes me want to accept the few they divvy up to me and responsibly grow them and harvest their seeds.
But I also want to be an astronomer and a physicist and an enologist and a traveler and, well… you get the picture. I’m afraid I would not follow through and disappoint them.
Although I am truly afraid to ask anything about their origin, I can generally trust that the seeds I get in bulk at my farmers’ co-op will grow.
They are very practical farmers. I also trust in whatever seeds they have decided to stock in regular-size packets.
Their prices tend to be less than online stores too.
Chances are good there is a farmers’ co-op near you. Don’t be intimidated. You don’t have to wear overalls to go in there. You can tap their knowledge about a lot of things too.
They will generally only carry sound seed potatoes and onion sets that are going to grow well in your area.
So shop around and buy a good variety of seeds. If seedlings don’t come up in the time it says they will on the back of the package and you haven’t had super crazy out-of-season weather, then just plant something else there.
Epictetus, a Greek Stoic philosopher born in A.D. 55, said, “Neither should a ship rely on one small anchor, nor should life rest on a single hope.”
True now as it was then. Have back-up seeds.
Some plants, like lilies and rhubarb, grow from bulbs. You can get these, as well as seedlings, at the farmers’ co-op or a nursery.
You will want to buy seedlings for crops that require a longer growing season than you have or for crops you want a head-start on. Seedlings can grow in a greenhouse before the ground outside warms up enough to allow anything to sprout.
When you buy your seedlings, you will need to “harden them off,” which means to help them acclimate to the cold world so they don’t just freeze to death.
Plants by their nature need to be planted in the ground and do not like a lot of change. They easily die of transplant shock, so it is important to try to keep as much of the old soil on them as you can and introduce a similar environment if possible, added by a bit of fish emulsion or liquid B-12.
Keep them watered and out of the wind at first. Hardening off involves setting them outside for progressively more hours each day until they have been able to weather a few of the coldest nights you are getting.
Once they have proven strong enough to endure that, you can plant them in the garden.
Ask around and check customer reviews to learn about your local nurseries for buying seedlings.
Once you have been gardening awhile, you will learn to recognize an unhealthy plant and to look for certain types of pests hiding on them, but until then, you’ll just have to go to a reputable place and ask the person near you.
It’s not exactly easy to find organically grown seedlings. You can of course grow your own seedlings indoors. But unless you are around 24/7 or have greenhouse conditions in your home, it is a ridiculous amount of work.
I buy what I can get and hope the soil and sun detoxifies whatever the plant’s previous owner has done.
While we are on the subject of buying plants, if you don’t know I should explain the difference between annuals and perennials now.
Annuals are plants that you have to plant or grow from seed every year. If you leave annuals in the ground and let them grow long enough to produce seeds and those seeds drop to the ground, take hold and sprout the next season, you can let them grow there of course and that’s great.
But don’t count on that happening.
You can also collect the seeds from your annuals and try to use them the next year, but again, until you learn to recognize when seeds are ready to harvest and ideal storage and nurturing conditions, don’t count on this as a money-saver.
Perennials are plants that will weather your winter and just keep on growing. They may go dormant, that is, fall into a deep sleep during the winter months and look quite dead, but they will perk up in the Spring and sprout buds. Don’t dig them up.
This is true of a lot of herbs, like rosemary and marjoram, some flowers like lavender and all of the bulbs that I can think of.
Research what you want to figure out what to do. Bulbs multiply at their roots and can be pulled up and divided in the Spring. Replanted them with more space around them and, ta-da, you’ve got many more.
Companion Planting
When I am considering the year’s plantings, I usually look through an old thumbed-through book called Carrots Love Tomatoes written by Louise Riotte and published by Storey Communications in 1975. It is based upon observations of plants that grow better together, due to the nutrients their root systems exchange and because the pests they naturally attract are pests that control the population of pests of their companion.
Because they are healthy, they are less vulnerable to diseases too. Disease happens when a healthy plant is compromised, generally from insect attack or lack of nutrients.
Plants can be compromised from temperature and humidity or arid extremes. Disease comes looking then. A good companion plant can bolster strength in troubled times, so it’s a no-brainer to follow these principles and a lot of fun.
Anyway, that’s how I recommend beginning your plantings. After a few seasons, you will formulate your own conclusions about invisible interactions happening. You may find that chickweed likes lavender.
Or you may feel a little splash of color would be delightful between the meadows of basil you have planted and the garlic.
This video explores the beneficial effect of interspersing your food crops with flowers.
You will appreciate that you have cast dahlia seeds when you are mesmerized by the swan-like curvatures of the garlic, with their long needle-noses, astounded to find they are having dancing parties behind your back. They freeze in their new graceful positions when you turn to look.
You take photo after photo on the cell phone you should never garden with. And these photos you show your friends, though barely capturing the thin arc of the garlic are replete with colorful dahlias.
Many gardeners subscribe to companion planting principles.
When do you plant? Look in your farmer’s almanac. It will tell you what you can plant in your area when.
Cold weather crops that can be planted early include onions, potatoes, radishes and beets.
You can follow up with planting seeds for hardy greens and then the more delicate greens.
About then, the soil will have warmed up enough for the rest of the seeds to germinate and to accept your transplant of seedlings.
That’s not to say a late killing frost doesn’t come along and undo what you’ve done. Measures can be taken to save plants if you have warning. This might be something you want to research in advance.
Recommendations range from spraying a preparation with valerian to warm the plants to erecting a row cover.
Glossary
Annuals – Plants that die off at the end of a growing season. They must be planted anew every year
Companion Planting – The practice of planting sympathetic crops next to each other to improve crop yield.
Compost – Organic matter which has decayed and turned into rich soil
Perennials – Plants that live through the winter, though they often appear not to.
Seedlings – the first shoots of a plant’s growth. They are often grown in small cells until they are large enough and strong enough to plant in the garden.
Weeds – plants you are not intentionally growing.
Supplies
You need very little, apart from a composter and seeds or plants to garden. A good shovel, possibly a hoe, a trowel and good pruners are essential.
Take good care of your tools and make sure they are always clean. Be sensitive to what you are doing. If you cut off a diseased leaf, clean the shears with soap before you use them on another plant or you are likely to spread the disease. Keep them sharp so that your cuts are clean, not sloppy and tearing, thus weakening the plant.
It is important to be comfortable. I once only wore Japanese farmer pants, which were loose and made of light but durable cotton and had pockets in the knees where you could slide knee-pads, but I can’t find them for sale anymore.
If you find some, buy enough for the rest of your life.
Dirty as you are going to get it, I highly recommend the full coverage of a long-sleeve shirt. Not only does it protect you from the sun, but it will spare you the nasty sting of sweat bees if you dally in the garden a little too late in the morning.
So now that you look awesome and have a cool compost tumbler in your back yard, grab your shovel and trowel, maybe find a straw hat and head out to create a magical garden.
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Garden Battle: Quebec City Woman Told She Can't Grow Veggies in Her Front Yard
Chapier, who lives in the Quebec City borough of Charlesbourg, has been growing vegetables such as lettuce, tomatoes and asparagus on her front lawn for years.
Garden Battle: Quebec City Woman Told She Can't Grow Veggies in Her Front Yard
Véronique Chapier has until Aug. 1 to comply with city's bylaws or will face fines
CBC News Posted: Jul 27, 2017 10:08 AM ET Last Updated: Jul 27, 2017 10:10 AM ET
Véronique Chapier wants to grow vegetables on her front lawn, but her neighbours say her yard is a mess. (Cathy Senay/Radio-Canada)
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Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, they say, and a Quebec City woman believes her front-lawn vegetable garden is a living work of art.
But Véronique Chapier's neighbours don't quite agree with that assessment. And neither does the city, which has informed her that her garden breaks a number of bylaws.
Chapier, who lives in the Quebec City borough of Charlesbourg, has been growing vegetables such as lettuce, tomatoes and asparagus on her front lawn for years.
Her backyard is shady so she can't grow certain plants she wants to back there, she explained.
Chapier said she likes to use her garden as a way to teach children and others about what it takes to grow food. She also considers it to be something of a community initiative.
"I went to get some lettuce that was ready and it wasn't here, and I was happy about that," she said.
Her neighbours, however, think her work of art is just a mess and complained to the city.
Chapier now has days to move her garden to the backyard or side of her house, or face fines.
'Nothing aesthetic about it,' neighbour says
Two weeks ago, a city inspector informed Chapier that her garden breaks a number of rules, namely that:
- The vegetable garden can't be on her front lawn.
- Some plants are too tall and the landscaping is messy.
- Some are planted beyond her property line.
- There are wooden pallets and plastic containers on her lawn that constitute a nuisance.
Her neighbour Louisette Alain has reported the garden to the city once a year for the last three years. Alain says she has been trying to sell her house for two years and prospective buyers are put off by the garden.
She said she has no problem with it when it's maintained, but right now, "it's not a garden. There's nothing aesthetic about it."
Louisette Alain and Claude Aubut are Chapier's neighbours, and complained about her front-lawn vegetable garden to the city. (Radio-Canada)
Chapier's problem is reminiscent of a similar conflict from five years ago, when a Drummondville couple with a front-yard vegetable garden fought and succeeding in changing the city bylaw that prohibits the practice.
Such gardens are not allowed in Quebec City, Longueuil and Laval, but Montreal and Sherbrooke are OK with its residents growing food elsewhere than their backyards.
Chapier has already started moving her plants to the backyard and cleaning up. She has until Aug. 1 to finish the job, or her case could end up in court.
She said she is hoping the city will change the rules.
Marjorie Potvin, a spokesperson for the city, says though vegetable gardens at the front of residences are prohibited, they are tolerated as long as no one complains about them.
She said the city is looking into adopting a policy on urban agriculture, but there is no guarantee this issue will be part of it.
Farmers For Hire Turn Backyards Into Vegetable Patches
Farmers For Hire Turn Backyards Into Vegetable Patches
This undated photo provided by Green City Growers shows Fenway Farms, a large rooftop farm at Fenway Park maintained by Green City Growers in Boston. The farm produces more than 6,000 pounds of fruits and vegetables each season to be used in on-site restaurants and concessions.
(Maureen White / Garden Growers)
Katherine Roth | Associated Press
Jeanne Nolan grew up in an affluent suburb of Chicago. When it came time to apply for colleges, she shocked her family by opting to skip college and become an organic farmer. Then she brought her farming skills back to the suburbs and city, installing and tending vegetable gardens at clients' homes.
The Organic Gardener Ltd., the farmer-for-hire service she and her husband, Verd, started in the Chicago area in 2005, is one of many such services that have cropped up across the country. Some of these farmers have farming backgrounds, while others are landscapers who expanded their expertise, or entrepreneurs from a range of professional backgrounds who just love gardening and the outdoors.
This undated photo provided by Green City Growers shows Director of Horticulture Laura Feddersen teaching garden fundamentals to participants at the employee wellness garden at Hood Park in Charlestown, Mass. Green City Growers runs more than a dozen of these programs throughout the Northeast. (Maureen White / Garden Growers)
"If you want serious exercise, you turn to a professional trainer to help you do it right. This is like hiring a gardening coach. Some people say, 'Come over every other week for a year' so they can learn and do it themselves. And I also have a hundred clients whose gardens I've been tending for years who are not even trying to do it on their own, but simply love having it done," says Jeanne Nolan, author of "From the Ground Up: A Food Grower's Education in Life, Love, and the Movement That's Changing a Nation" (Spiegel and Grau, 2013).
Urban farming services cater to both homes and businesses that want home-grown produce but not the work involved in growing it. Clients include apartment complexes, grocery stories, schools, shopping malls, even ballparks.
"It turns out that having home-grown produce is something a lot of people really want," says Jessie Banhazl, founder and CEO of Green City Growers, in the Boston area. The company's Fenway Farms project involves planting and tending vegetable gardens atop Fenway Park, where produce is served to fans at baseball games, and a portion is donated to charity.
This 2016 photo provided by The Organic Gardener shows a rooftop garden in Chicago/
(The Organic Gardner)
This 2015 photo provided by The Organic Gardener shows a garden around a shed in Lake Forest, Ill. (Heather Blackmore / The Organic Gardner)
Many of her clients are trying to get more engaged in the growing process, she says: "There's something about seeing how food grows, at home, school or even at Fenway, and hopefully this influences dietary choices and has a positive environmental impact."
Dan Allen, CEO of Farmscape, with locations in Los Angeles and the San Francisco area, says farmers for hire have a more intimate relationship with clients than landscapers do. "There's something more personal about growing food," he says.
Hiring a farmer for your backyard isn't necessarily cheap, though (prices vary by region). The farmers admit that if saving money is your goal, it's probably cheaper to just shop organic at the grocery store. But they say the experience of growing your own produce, the learning opportunity for kids — and the bragging rights — make it worthwhile.
Another option: having a farm service visit every couple of weeks to teach growing techniques and offer tips.
"It's surprising how much food you can grow in a very small space. As urban farmers, we grow things vertically and on roofs. We know how to plant crops densely. Even in just a 4-by-4 (-foot) square planter, you can grow a lot of food," Nolan says.
Her company grows " pretty much anything you can imagine," she says. "Our most charismatic are tomatoes, peppers and eggplants. And our season runs from March through mid-December."
To provide enough produce for a family of four, Green City Growers recommends three 3-by-8-foot raised beds.
"Whether it's a median strip or a full backyard, or even containers on a balcony, a vegetable garden can happen almost anywhere," Banhazl says.
Amazon's Expansive Biodomes Get Their First of 40,000 Plants
When Amazon began building its new campus five years ago, it insisted on incorporating nature in the design.
Amazon's Expansive Biodomes Get Their First of 40,000 Plants
1/8Amazon is building three spheres in downtown Seattle.NBBJ
RON GAGLIARDO JUST might have the most unusual job at Amazon. He spends most of his time tending to the thousands of plants destined for the Spheres, the 90-foot bulbous glass dome in the middle of Amazon’s sprawling campus in downtown Seattle.
Last week, Gagliardo watched as workers pulled an Australian tree fern off of an Amazon Prime truck, carried it through a particularly wide door in one of the spheres, and plopped it into the soil. Australian tree ferns are hardy, primordial plants that can reach 50 feet tall and "a favorite among greenhouse staff," says Gagliardo. This particular specimen spent three years growing in Amazon's conservatory at the edge of town. It is the first of the 40,0001or so plants destined for the domes, which open next year.
Maybe it’s all the screen time or mounting evidence that employees excel when surrounded by nature, but tech companies suddenly love plants. Airbnb installed a living wall in the lobby of its San Francisco headquarters. Apple wants a small forest of 8,000 trees at its new campus in Cupertino. Adobe incorporated biophilic design into its offices in San Jose, California. Yet they all pale compared to Amazon and its three conjoined spheres, which are both meeting rooms and conservatories that will house more than 400 species of rare (and non-rare) plants.
When Amazon began building its new campus five years ago, it insisted on incorporating nature in the design. Employees can open windows in Doppler, the 38-story tower downtown. Plazas teeming with trees dot a campus of 30 buildings. Dogs romp in a park designed just for them. And then there are those spheres, designed to bring the outdoors indoors within the confines of an office building. “The question was, how do we do this in a significant way,” says Dale Alberda, a principal architect at NBBJ, the firm behind Amazon’s new campus. “Just bringing plants into the office wasn’t going to cut it.”
The designers explored hundreds of shapes before choosing spheres. “It’s the most efficient way of enclosing volume,” Alberda says. The domes, made of glass panels on a steel frame, create enclosed biospheres that combine work and nature. That created a challenge, though, because plants and humans like different things. Plants thrive in warm, muggy environments. Humans do not. Amazon may love nature, but it still needs productive employees, so it compromised: The domes remain a pleasant 72 degrees with 60 percent humidity during the day, while at night they're a more plant-friendly 55 degrees with 85 percent humidity.
“It’s people first,” says Gagliardo. “Then we figured out what plants we could put around people.” Gagliardo started with plants found in similar climates. Mid-elevation regions like the cloud forests of Ecuador, Costa Rica, and parts of China fit the bill. A crew will carefully crane a 60-foot tree from California into the domes next month. Once gardeners and horticulturalists plant everything, the dome and its 60-foot living wall will house vegetation from more than 50 countries.
Some of those plants, like moss, ferns and calatheas, have no problem with low light. Others, like the African aloe tree, require full sun. The architects shunned the triangular panels you may know from Buckminster Fuller's famed geodesic dome in favor of the five-sided panels of a pentagonal hexecontahedron. That resulted in larger panels, which allows more sunlight into the sphere. Ninety LED fixtures with light sensors provide additional lighting when necessary.
All those plants need a lot of water, a task Gagliardo prefers to do by hand. “The collection is so diverse that putting everything on automatic sprinklers would be really difficult,” he says. Each day his team of horticulturists will wander the domes amid executives taking walking meeting and office drones doing whatever Amazon's office drones do, tending to plants and rooting around in the dirt. "It's a dream job," Gagliardo says. "I never would have thought I'd be here at Amazon doing horticulture."
1UPDATE 11:55 AM ET 05/6/2017: This story has been updated to accurately reflect the number of plants in Amazon's Spheres
IKEA Just Launched An Indoor Hydroponic Garden That Never Stops Growing Food
IKEA Just Launched An Indoor Hydroponic Garden That Never Stops Growing Food
Best news for all you people with green fingers!
From tasty lemon basil to crispy red romaine lettuce - KRYDDA/VÄXER series makes it easy to grow your own indoor garden all year round. You don't need soil, sunlight or even a spot outside! How does it work? Just keep an eye on the water level and that's it.