Garden

April 6, 2005

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Lawn Order

Guest post by Sarah B. Hood

When we moved into our narrow city house with its postage-stamp backyard, my partner Jonathan outed himself as a lawnie: a leaning more frequently found among men than women, I’ve found. My dad was never happier than when spraying an arc of water over his little plot of grass; similarly, Jonathan likes to sit on the picnic table with a paperback in one hand and a hose in the other.

Jonathan grew up in a semi-developed suburb, where residential yards blended seamlessly with woodsy areas. For him, a lawn is where kids play hide-and-seek, and where grownups chill in a lawn chair with an iced tea, a radio and a book. He was surprised to learn that the North American lawn is the subject of controversy.

Of course, some see lawns as artificial environments that are inhospitable to many creatures and too often maintained with an arsenal of chemical agents. Nonetheless, Jonathan and I have found, a little bit of grass is nice to walk on, pretty to look at and easy to maintain in a more natural way. Here’s how:

Water infrequently but deeply

Instead of watering on a schedule, wait for the soil to dry out. When the grass seems to curl a little, water a lot (but not at midday, when it’ll just evaporate).
If you have time, water for a while, then wait, then do it again. (This helps water penetrate deeper into the soil.) If it rains a little, water a bit more afterwards.
During heat and drought, grass goes dormant. It needs less water then; just enough to keep it from turning completely yellow.

Mow high

Taller grass has more chance to fight off weeds, so don’t cut it shorter than three inches.
Try not to cut more than a third of the height off at once.
Keep your mower blade sharp, so it will damage the grass less.
Don’t rake up your clippings, unless you’ve cut back a lot. (Yes, it looks neater if you rake, but your lawn will be greener if you give it back that good nitrogen.)
Luckily, grass grows most in spring when you’re eager to be in the garden. It’ll slow down by July.

Feed regularly

Top-dress your lawn by sprinkling it with organic fertilizer, extra topsoil, compost and/or manure. The worms will do the work of getting it into the soil. (But fallen leaves smother grass, so rake them off, especially in early spring.)
Cool-climate grasses need to be fertilized in early spring and fall, when they have growth spurts.
Warm-climate grasses want two spring doses and none in fall.
White clover naturally fixes nitrogen in the soil. If you have a big lawn and you don’t mind some nice hardy ground cover in with the grass, consider seeding it with clover.

Weed by hand if possible

If you have a small space, you can get rid of most weeds by hand. Dandelion forks are cheap, and help you get most of the roots out.
If you have a very big yard, consider just mowing down the weeds instead of removing them. After all, they’re extremely drought-resistant.
The best way to fight weeds and destructive insects is by nurturing healthy grass so it’ll compete on its own.

Aerate

Your grass wants to grow in light, airy soil. (Worms like this too.) In spring, jab a pitchfork into the ground and wiggle it, making as many holes as you like. (For big lawns, there are specialized tools for this that are more efficient.)
Avoid walking on the lawn when the ground is squishy and muddy in early spring.

Bring in reinforcements

You can sprinkle extra grass seed when you fertilize; it’s cheap and easy. Water it often and don’t worry if the birds eat some. It’s exciting to see the new sprouts!
There are many types of grass, with great names like fescue. Some are good for shade, some for heat, and so on; you can buy mixtures. Consult with your local garden store to see what works in your zone.
If you have a bald patch, you can lay down a roll of sod. It’s much more expensive than seed, but it looks good right away. It should be laid on a bed of nicely turned, rich topsoil. Stamp it down well to seat the roots, and water it often until it starts to grow.

And also…

Don’t even try to grow grass right under a tree or in a heavy-traffic area. These situations call for a few well-placed paving stones, a wood-chip path or some shade-tolerant ground cover.
If your lawn looks sad, get your PH tested (that’s the acid/alkaline balance of your soil). The quick-and-dirty method: dandelions thrive in alkaline soil, which you can correct with gardener’s sulphur. Moss loves acid, which can be balanced with pelletized lime. (We’ve never done this, but we thought you’d like to know.)

Don’t make yourself crazy when you mow. Instead of chopping off the ends of your hostas, make a mulch border or dig a trench between the flowerbeds and the grass. Fill in hard-to-mow corners with something forgiving like a clump of ornamental grass.
If you get snow in your area, make sure you and your neighbours aren’t throwing salt on your grass. (Where does sidewalk runoff go?)

Finally, don’t spend more time fussing with the lawn than you do enjoying it. Make your first lawn investment a cheap and comfy lawn chair, a paperback and some iced tea. They’re bound to make your grass look great.

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August 25, 2004

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No, Not My Precious!

A few weeks ago my beautiful blue jade corn was devastated by squirrels or baby raccoons. We’re not sure which because both have been spotted on the deck since then. I’ve been so miserable about the loss I couldn’t bring myself to write about it until today. Not only did they devour all the immature cobs, but they destroyed all the plants too ensuring that there will be no corn harvest this year. I was so excited about harvesting small cobs of blue corn. I didn’t even think to protect them because I have never had that much trouble with squirrels or raccoons on my deck.

Up until now the worst damage has been some chunks taken out of green tomatoes or a bit of digging in pots. I did lose a tiny sundew plant last year as a result of the incessant digging but that was peanuts in comparison to the damage ravaged in one night of mayhem! Not only did they destroy my blue jade corn plants, devour several tomatoes, tear at the roots of my jasmine plant, dig up nasturtiums and leave a mess in their wake, but they also ate my lovely burgundy okra! Thankfully they did not destroy that plant and a new batch of okra are coming to maturity.

Well at the very least I now have a real, honest understanding of the kind of loss one can experience at the hands of urban critters. Live and learn!

My Own Private Permaculture

Guest post by Anne Boyer

I planned my first garden for ten years. I fell asleep fantasizing about what I would do with land when I finally owned some: there would be the blue room, exploding with morning glories and delphiniums, the fruit room surrounded by a thick patch of brambles, the grandmother room full of zinnias, potato plants, four o’clocks and poppies. I read everything I could about flowers and fruit. I read 1950s extension pamphlets, my mother’s 1970s Rodale organic guides, and my Better Homes and Garden New Garden Book from 1961.

Organic gardening seemed like a natural choice. My mother never sprayed; my grandmother never sprayed. But was organic “organic” enough for me, or was it just a comforting label accompanied by a discomforting price tag? Would organic alone turn my small city lot, my very first garden, into a heaven of food and flowers?

The purchase of my little city house coincided with my discovery of permaculture. The word permaculture suggested to me something heady and wild, a step beyond organic. It is a philosophy of observing and working with nature. Permaculture provided me with a big picture; organic methods became a narrow slice of it. When I finally settled into my first garden, permaculture helped me accommodate those ten years of flora fantasies in one small, stressed out city space.

Zoned Out

One of the keys to permaculture landscape planning is the “zone system.” The first winter in my city house, I looked out at my small yard and struggled to divide it into proper permaculture zones. Zone one would comprise the most visited and intensively used areas. Zone two would be a semi-intensively cultivated area. Zone three would be the farm zone, four would be a forest or pond, and five would be altogether wild.

The problem with this zone approach was a problem of proportion. I found myself struggling to find space for more than the first and second zones.

Furthermore, permaculture suggests growing intensely cultivated food right up next to the house, and the soil next to my house, as is common with houses built before 1950, was likely contaminated with lead paint dust. I couldn’t just poison my family for the sake of an ultra-permacultural landscape plan.

At this point I stepped back from my paint-by-zone-numbers approached to permaculture, took a deep yoga breath, and decided to observe what was going on rather than impose my will. A flexible approach proved very practical.

In a city, zones do not just radiate from every individual dwelling like orbits in so many solar systems. While we can create tiny pockets of wildness among the urban cultivation, those of us who aren’t large landowners have to see beyond our individual properties to find the other zones. The farms we support through our membership in CSAs become our zone three. Parks and publicly owned wild spaces become our zones four and five.

Indeed, for a small city lot with contaminated soil close to the house, a slight inversion of the zones is common sense. A bit of wildness up close to the house can rebuild and soothe the soil. A more traditional, cultivated landscaping approach can exist on the borders between neighbor and neighbor as a gesture of community good will.

Easy Now

The loveliness of the soil became a strong motivation to proceed mindfully in my garden work. “Multiple use” has become my mantra for any gardening decision. I have to be a frugal gardener in more ways than one: if a plant is going to come live at my house it should feed me, provide me materials for crafts or other activities, feed wildlife, provide shelter, and look good as well. Perennials and self-sowing annuals beat high-maintenance plants hands down. Domestic animals face the same test. We are planning for the arrival of three pullets (young hens) this spring only because the will feed us, entertain us, eat bad bugs, fertilize our soil, and look nifty. This is not just a cruel, human-centered philosophy, because I, too, am required to have multiple uses in my landscape. I am not just a consumer, but a producer and a recycler.

One of the sweetest aspects of permaculture is its philosophy of easy labor. In a permaculture garden, one composts in place through trenches and sheet mulches, one eats from perennial food sources rather than planting annual crops year after year, one plants in “guilds” of inter-related plants rather than in destructive (and high-maintenance) monocultures, and one is as water wise as possible. I didn’t want to be the one responsible for turning beautiful soil beastly, and by layering and careful planting I knew I could keep the cycle of fertility going and save myself a great deal of labor in the long run.

Being Permaculture

My garden is not Eden. I’ve been here two growing seasons, and one could never tell this place was once just lawn and four trees. Yet one still can’t tell that it is on its way to sustainable. I know that I compost less in a bin and more in place, that I water less and less, that I ate more the second year than I did the first, and will probably do less labor this third year than I did the second.

I once had a tai-chi instructor, a retired librarian named Ruth, inform me that I couldn’t just do tai-chi, I had to be tai-chi. In the same way, I’m trying to be permaculture, to move it from an intellectual realm to an emotional and behavioral one.

For example, my backyard trees (a Chinese elm and a maple) provide too much shade for me to grow much food in the back yard, so I’m moving the food production to the front and finding other uses for the shady backside of the house. I’m reading about forest gardens, thinking about ways to use the tiny slices of light between the leaves. This spring I plan to walk through the woods more, to see what is growing, and perhaps cultivate some woodland herbs and fruits (like may apple) instead of forcing my refined sunny space ideal on the land.

This year I have elderberries and currants in mind, and perennial Maxmillan sunflowers to feed my big flower cravings and the birds. I also want grape vines and hippy roses for teas.

The trick is to work through all my wants (the hippy roses, the currants) without an exhausting input of resources (nursery raised plants, commercial mulches and compost). Permaculture suggests that the faraway zones (3, 4, and5) are resources for the up-close, cultivated ones. I’ve applied my personal permacultural approach to this problem and plan to organize an exchange among my gardening acquaintances this spring.

A city garden is not a separate thing, but part of a larger community of land use. As we work together to replace the monoculture of lawn with the polyculture of multiple use plants, we are turning our private yards into stamps of a shared ecosystem. Permaculture extends beyond what we do as private individuals on private land. It reflects not just a philosophy of gardening but of life and community. It is larger than organic, an enthusiastic acceptance of nature and humanity in all our shared complexity.

Hillary Rosner, a freelance journalist and lifelong New Yorker, recently moved to Boulder, Colorado. Until last year, her only experience with gardening was studying botany in the fifth grade. She has written for many national publications and is currently working on a master’s degree in environmental studies.

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May 8, 2004

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Urban Composting

Guest post by Kelly Gilliam

Make this budget conscious compost bin for your deck or small outdoor space.

One benefit to having your own yard and garden is plenty of room. However, some of us live in tight apartments and are forced to have container gardens. Because of space, the urban dweller may conclude that composting is impossible. However, this doesn’t have to be the case.

In my ongoing quest to take more control of my garden right down to the soil I use, I went on a hunt for information on how to make my own small-time composting bin. My initial inspiration was “urban EDEN” by Adam & James Caplin. Since I live in a small area, I don?t require huge amounts of compost. I decided to make my own bin from a Rubbermaid container; it was dark, portable, easy to find and — most importantly — affordable. The following is an account of how I made my bin.

Please note that this how-to is for an outdoor container. It is small enough to fit on a balcony or around the side of a house if you are in a house suite.

Materials:

Rubbermaid container (1 1/2 feet by 1 1/4 feet.)
“Browns”: Dead leaves, brown grass clippings, wood, sticks, shredded newspaper, dead plants, rice, pine needles
“Greens”: Fresh grass and other plant clippings, fruit and vegetable parts, coffee grounds (with or without filter), tea bags, wool, human hair
Extra newspaper
A good knife

Clean the Rubbermaid container, removing all stickers and labels. Take your knife and cut holes along the edges of the bin’s lid, about 1 centimeter wide. I placed these about 3 centimeters apart. Next, cut a few holes in the middle of the lid. These holes will allow air and moisture to circulate.
Turn your bin over and cut some drainage holes (the water has to go somewhere, right?). I placed two slits in each corner, about a half-centimeter wide and 3 centimeters long. They should be big enough for drainage, but not enough to allow your compost to spill out.
Rip up your extra newspaper and put it in the bottom of the bin. The shreds should be no more than 1 inch thick, and should fill up the container about 5 to 6 inches.

Gather all your “browns.” Place them on top of the newspaper. Your bin should be about one-third to one-half full.
Gather your “greens.” Place these on top of your browns. Your compost bin should be almost full. Make sure to leave a little room at the top though.

Place your bin outside (if it isn’t already there). If you must place it directly on a deck, a second extra lid can be placed underneath as a drip tray.
Water. Make sure it’s damp, but not so wet that everything is floating around. If you live in a rainy climate, you can let nature take its course and wet your compost for you.
Wait.
In about 3-4 weeks, go out and give your compost a good turn. This will allow the microbes that are decomposing everything to spread around. Repeat every 3-4 weeks.
Within 6-8 months, you should have a brown, earthy-smelling mixture. That’s your compost!

To my surprise, worms found their way into my compost. If your bin sits on the ground and not on concrete (like a balcony) or on top of the lid then worms will probably find their way into your bin as well. They’re a nice bonus, but definitely not necessary in composting.

Tips:
Starbucks Coffee will hand out their organic waste if you ask them. A warning though: It comes in huge bags, and unless you have somebody to split the bounty with, there won’t be room in your bin for it.
Make sure never to place meat, bones, animal waste or dairy products into your compost. These will only attract rodents and vermin, especially in an urban setting.
Do not use your compost as a replacement for potting soil. It is too heavy for plants to live solely on and might burn them. Instead, mix about one part compost with three parts regular potting or topsoil. This will be more than enough for your plants to get their nutrients.
Add to the bin constantly to allow for good compost throughout the season.
Never add plants that are diseased, as the disease can spread through your compost and be passed on to any plants you use the compost on.
Do not use compost indoors, as it is not sterilized and could carry pests.

Kelly is an urban-dweller from Vancouver, B.C. gardening out of containers due to her city enclosure. Originally from the prairies, she moved out to Vancouver fresh out of high school and was amazed to find that you can garden three-fourths of the year. She is constantly bringing home more and more plants that she really has no more room for. Her favourites are cacti/succulents, herbs and sub-tropicals. Kelly runs Devileye.net in her spare time.

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May 8, 2004

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Garden of Weedin’

Guest post by Niki Jabbour

Weeding is one of my least favourite activities and in terms of fun I would have to rate it somewhere between getting a root canal and beating my head repeatedly against a wall. That said, there is a certain amount of satisfaction derived from yanking on a dandelion and having the entire root slip easily from the soil.

After a rain I can often be found gleefully ripping weeds from the still damp soil of the perennial gardens. The ease with which the long taproots slip from the moist soil is a heady delight. When I’ve managed to pluck a particularly large weed in its entirety, I exuberantly wave it in the air to show my husband what a prize I’ve captured. He nods patiently knowing that I’m well on my way to complete insanity.

Weeding is a necessary evil in order to promote healthy plant growth and keep a garden looking its best. We all have certain weeds that we struggle with continuously year after year and my nemeses include Queen Anne’s lace and clover, although wild mustard is steadily climbing up the list. Corn Spurry plagues the veggie garden and if left to its own devices soon runs rampant choking out the precious cucumbers and tomatoes.

Since the definition of a weed is “any unwanted plant,” I can easily categorize my very unwanted patch of curly mint as a weed. I did know better than to plant it near the perennials, so I have no idea what I was thinking the day I nestled the harmless springs of mint beneath the vigorous leaves of my beloved delphiniums.

Although this particular garden was a contained raised bed, heavily lined with three layers of landscape fabric, two short years later the mint had spread not only across, but far beyond the containment of the garden assaulting the lawn, the gravel path meandering between the garden beds and into the distant rose garden. I comfort myself with the fact that if nothing else, the mint smells incredible when trod upon by wandering feet.

Not only do weeds make our gardens appear untidy, they also compete with our treasured plants for moisture, light and nutrients. As well, many weed species shelter insects and diseases, therefore eliminating weeds can increase the general health of your garden!

Have you ever noticed that when a weed is pulled from the garden, it seems as if two more grow in its place? Most weeds are not only extremely hardy and competitive, but they also produce profuse amounts of seed that sprout up year after year. As weed seeds may remain dormant in the soil for several seasons before germinating, it is therefore vital to eliminate weeds before they are allowed to produce seeds.

Mulch is a great weed suppressor and is readily available from most garden centers in the form of wood chips, shredded bark, pea gravel or chopped leaves. Applied after weed removal (sorry, not before!), mulch will create a clean, attractive appearance and help repel encroaching weeds from your garden beds. It will also suppress further weed seed germination by blocking light from the soil.

A layer of mulch that is 2″ to 3″ is usually sufficient to suppress weed growth, but if you have particularly persistent weeds a 4″ thick layer may be required. Ensure that the mulch does not come in direct contact with the stems or trunks of the plants as slugs, moles and other small creatures that snack on plants may hide there.

Weeds in your grass can be a nuisance if you long for a putting-green perfect lawn. The key to minimizing weeds is to keep your grass healthy and to practice proper mowing techniques. Proper mowing practices include ensuring that your lawn mower blade is sharpened several times a season to prevent damage to delicate grass blades and putting the blade on its highest setting.

Grass that is kept at least 3″ high will be healthier than a short mowed lawn as taller grass will help shade out the ground, preventing weed seed germination. Taller grass will also hold more moisture, helping to prevent drought damage and encouraging your lawn to produce deep vigorous roots. Finally, be sure to leave the grass clippings on the lawn after each mowing to break down and restore nitrogen to the soil.

The best defense against persistent weeds in the garden or in the lawn is to keep your plants and grass healthy. Healthy plants will be able to outcompete weeds easier than those that have been weakened by drought, damage or disease! Be vigilant in the war against weeds by spending a few minutes each week removing any newly sprouted offenders. This will save you much future time and frustration and most importantly, your garden will thank you for it!

Niki Jabbour is an Ornamental Horticulturist and a writer from Halifax, Nova Scotia. Fertilized by sea breezes, her gardens are comprised of a colourful mixture of perennials, annuals, vegetables, herbs and flowering shrubs, with a few patches of clover and chickweed thrown in for good measure. A member of the Garden Writers Association of America, Niki is also the weekly gardening columnist for the Halifax Daily News and the Chester Clipper.

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