Garden Networks

One of the big buzzwords on the Internet has, and continues to be, all about your network. We have networks of computers and networks of friends and networks of networks and it all gets so darn complicates sometimes I just have to shake my head and go find a beer.

It’s rather like that in the garden I suspect for folks trying to figure out the basics of organic gardening. It’s one thing to support the lack of garden chemicals in theory, it’s another thing to wrap your head around it when it comes to actually doing something about it in your very own garden. Organic gardening and protecting the environment is something everybody else should do because in practice it can all be overwhelming. This short column is about trying to make the basics clear; to explain that there are networks on networks operating out in your garden and you only job is to understand the basics.

The first thing to understand is that everything is related to everything else. Just as all web pages are linked together, so are all parts of the garden. If you delete a link on the net, you can still work around it but with less efficiency. So to in the garden, delete a link between a predator and prey and you can still deal with either but it’s harder. If you delete all the links between websites, it becomes very hard to find or work with either and this too is true in the garden. If you eliminate a predator with chemicals, the prey are going to explode in population; you’ve deleted the control function so the other half of the link is out of whack too with excessive growth.

You say well, that’s all and good with insects but what about weeds? The first thing to understand is that a weed is simply the wrong plant in the wrong place. I have plants in my gardens I call noxious weedy thugs but these were deliberately planted there by previous owners. Dandelions are herbal and edible delights but in the thousands, they can be a blight of a golf-course lawn. The second thing to understand is that there are networks in the soil for weed growth just as there are for insect growth. If you decide not to sow grass seed in the fall to thicken up the lawn, then Mother Nature sees an opening and will plunk some of her dandelion, or other weed seed, into that place. Thin lawn grass networks create spaces for weed networks. Soil conditions, excess levels of nitrogen or other nutrients caused by heavy feeding create great conditions for lush growth. Lush growth is great to eat so insects love this kind of leaf. By excessive feeding, you create a network link between your garden leaves and insects. Backing off the nitrogen allows the plant to regain it’s natural chemical functioning and it makes itself less appealing to insects.

Right, a plant that makes itself less appealing to insects! The fact is that indeed plants do this. A plant that is being eaten by an insect starts to produce leaf toxins that deter that insect from eating too much. Not only that but neighboring plants that are not being eaten also start producing the same level of toxin. The plants are networked in ways we don’t yet understand. And by feeding and creating lush leaves, the signals for plant protection are overwhelmed by the rush of incoming insects. The insects can move faster and eat quicker than the plants can respond. The network between plants gets broken.

Your job as new organic gardeners is to understand that given half a chance, plants and insects will create a natural balance in the garden. Because that’s something you have to understand; just because you’re gardening using organic techniques, doesn’t mean you stand back when the hordes of Japanese beetles start carrying your prized rose across the lawn. You whack ‘em. But you whack ‘em in a way that is specific to the problem, not to all insects in general. You treat the problem surgically rather than by nuking the entire garden. You want to solve the imbalance in your garden, to repair the predator-prey network, not to destroy it further. You do want to create a weed-free lawn but you don’t nuke the lawn, the plants around it and the insects that live on it. You want to restore a network balance to the lawn that creates a thriving grass area.

The single best way to restore balance to your garden network is to practice benign neglect. I know, it sounds strange but the trick of the matter is that if you allow some garden damage to happen, and have patience while it is happening (instead of nuking the area) strangely enough, it will stop of it’s own accord. The predators, who grow more slowly than the prey, will ramp up and control the problem. This is why we don’t want to nuke everything, we want to allow the natural cycle to operate whenever possible except in extreme conditions. However, when the tomato hornworms are stripping away your plants, don’t wait for the wasps to parasitize them, just pick and stomp. When aphids are covering the rose tips, a water jet is called for.

Organic gardening isn’t doing nothing, it’s doing the right thing at the right time to have the minimal impact on the natural network.

This is the challenge you know face. Your job is to become a gardener and not just a garden-decorator. Your task is to create great natural networks in your garden, not destroy them. And it’s a learning curve to be sure. Welcome to the wonderful world of understanding garden networks.

Organic Weed Control

In the grand scheme of things, a weed here or there isn’t going to be the end of your garden; or at least it isn’t in mine. But I know these plants are on the minds of people right now as the main rush on weed control material hits the retail stores. I was in one shop last weekend and listened to a former chemical lawn-owner ask what he could use to kill off the broadleaf weeds in his lawn. The sales clerk rolled her eyes in sympathy and started looking at the label of a product (as if she’d never heard the question before or hadn’t sorted out the answer before). The acting job was superb on her part because she just wasn’t up to listening to one more rant about chemicals and environmentalists. In the interests of clarifying the options you have for your broadleaf weed control in lawns and gardens, here are your options. You may not like them but this is what you have to work with now.

The most obvious choice is to control broadleaf weeds (dandelions etc) using physical means. There are a broad choice of tools on the market for physically going out and pulling these weeds now. There are pullers and choppers galore and you simply have to figure out which one you’re going to try. My suggestion here is to get the one with the least moving parts or the heaviest built. I’ve experimented with several that only lasted a short while because my dandelions were rooted several miles deep and refused to budge. In the battle between space-age plastics and prehistoric weeds, the weeds won. You’ll have much better results with any of these tools if the ground is wet when you’re pulling than if it’s dry.

There are also burning devices that run on propane bottles but in my experience these are fairly expensive to run and do a so-so job of weed control. In some cases, small weeds emerging on patios for example, they do a fine job. On lawns and gardens, they are less effective as you’ll be burning off the nearby plants at the same time. A lawn can look like a giant dog visited. They work by cooking the weed and this pretty much stops the plant from growing.

You can also use some of the organic sprays containing acetic acids and other botanicals. These burn the tops off weeds but do not kill the roots. This means the tops will regenerate and you’ll have to repeat the spraying several times until you can exhaust the store of energy in the root and it finally dies. These work nicely and effectively on small areas. Remember though that these burn good plants as quickly as they burn your weeds and the same dog will have visited.

You can mulch garden beds. Mulching with several inches of organic material stops weeds from germinating and will give you a relatively weed free area. I say relatively because a few weeds will always germinate and new ones are being blown into your bed. Mulch doesn’t eliminate weeds, it reduces them.

The other useful way to reduce weeds in both lawns and gardens is to plant a little thicker. In lawns, this means laying in a kilo of grass seed every 300 square meters or so (it isn’t rocket science - close counts) to thicken up the lawn; I like to do this in the fall. Thicker lawns prevent weeds from germinating. In the garden, it means making sure there is a plant in every square inch of garden space. Remember nature abhors a vacuum; so if you don’t fill it with grass seed or plants, Mother Nature will fill it with her favourite plants. And you likely call them weeds.

I saw a lot of weed fabric heading out the door last weekend. I suspect a ton of folks are going to be really annoyed in a short time with this stuff. The marketing calls for laying this between the plants or planting right through it. Yeah right. Trying running a perennial bed with this material when you have to do some digging. The only place landscape fabric is any good is around shrubs, with mulch on top, to stop some grasses there. Do not cover landscape fabric with soil thinking you’ve trapped the weeds below the fabric. All you’re going to be doing is making life really tough for yourself. I’m currently digging this amazingly stupid idea out of my own garden (from a former owner) and can vouch that it’s not only ineffective, it’s hard to remove. You could lay it down and plant vegetables through it leaving it exposed (weight down the edges) but never use it under mulch for annual plants. You won’t want to remove the mulch every fall and sooner or later the weeds will get through the holes you’re making. Finally, here’s a dirty little secret about this material. The thin, inexpensive stuff won’t stop aggressive grasses and weeds - they go right through it.

A combined approach to weeding is now needed. You get to use all the above techniques on all parts of your garden. A little thickening up of lawns and plantings, a little spot spraying of existing weeds, some preventative work with products such as corn gluten, some hand-weeding and mechanical weed control with mulches. And finally, let me tell you there are enough folks out there doing all this stuff properly and have amazing lawns and gardens as a result. It means you have to change your mind, your attitudes and behaviour about your lawn and garden to do the same.

But it’s really your choice. You can complain bitterly like the fellow last weekend or you can start to understand you can accomplish the same thing with a different set of skills and operations. You can stay in the polluting past or you can move forward. Your call.

Ontario Pesticide Regulations

If you live in the Province of Ontario Canada, then this is for you. If you don’t live up here, then feel free to ignore or envy what we’re trying to do.

I thought I’d try to clarify a bit of confusion about the nature of what kinds of things you can use on your lawn and garden and what the current legislation really means to all of us. The ban on cosmetic pesticides began on April 22, 2009 and it removes all chemicals from legal use for cosmetic purposes. And note when the word “pesticide” is used, it refers to insects as well as weed control - the word refers to any pest be it plant or animal.

The reasoning behind this is the growing medical evidence that uncontrolled use of chemicals is indeed poisoning our environment and adding to our chronic health problems. Now, the landscape industry may disagree with this action and I have no doubt there are a bunch of gardeners who are going to be pretty upset by this but that’s the future of things and you can complain or you can get onboard. Or maybe even both but that’s up to you.

Now what if you have a serious pest infestation in your house? Well, you can hire a registered exterminator and they can use pesticides to control it. You can’t use the same pesticides but a trained and licensed person can deal with this. You can also obtain certain kinds of pesticides for the use on pets so they can be healthy. And if your tree becomes sick because of an insect infestation, a licensed applicator can indeed treat the tree with certain kinds of pesticides that are unavailable to you. So the overall health of pets, homes, children and landscapes is not compromised. But yes, you’re going to have to bring in somebody to certify it’s not a cosmetic problem but rather a health problem before certain classes of chemicals can be used.

Now here’s a bit of news. Some chemicals are classed as “Category Seven” chemicals and these are dual-purpose chemicals with a special license. For example, Roundup (Glyphosate) is used for killing brush and noxious weeds such as poison ivy. It has also been used in the past for wiping out weeds in patio and driveway areas. So a Category 7 chemical can still be purchased as long as the intent is to use it for noxious weeds such as poison ivy but it can ‘t be used on your driveway or for home cosmetic purposes. Let me be clear about this, if you use Roundup or other Category 7 chemicals for cosmetic purposes (home weed control) you will be breaking the law and can be charged. Even if you can buy it - and the manufacturers aren’t changing their packaging - you can’t legally use it the way the packaging suggests, i.e. lawn weed control. This holds true for farmers as well. They may own Roundup for crop use but they can’t spray it on their home lawn. Cosmetic use of Category 7 chemicals isn’t allowed.

This Category 7 rating also applies to chemicals that are used for control of insects in the house. You can purchase an insecticide to control ants or creeping-whatevers in the home under the legislation but you can’t take the same can outside and spray it on your roses. Again, pesticides are intended to control specific problems within homes and this intention doesn’t carry over to outdoor uses. So something like Raid House and Garden Killer is still sold and labeled that way but you can’t legally use it outdoors in the garden.

And no, a huge multi-national corporation isn’t going to change their labeling to conform to a single province’s legal changes. So it’s up to you to understand what’s in the bottle of “stuff” you just purchased and understand that when you are given a special notice on your receipt or individually when you purchase a Category 7 product, it is up to you to follow your laws.

What about those chemicals that aren’t Category 7 and are now banned. You have a small stockpile on your shelves and figure you’re good to go for the next 10 years. Ah, but you’re not. It is illegal to use the products for cosmetic purposes. Period. You have them but you are no longer legally able to use them. The answer is to dispose of them through the toxic waste centre. Do NOT put them in the regular garbage.

I can hear the chemical diehards out there saying (and in fact have said to me already), “The government isn’t going to catch me - they have other things to worry about than one single guy spraying this stuff.” Note that “stuff” wasn’t the word used but we’ll let that go by. And he was right, the government has made it clear that their first response will be education but that they do have the right to fine and take legal action. And you’re right, the odds on being able to actually police an act like this with 5 million homeowners is pretty slim. But mark my words, if you use it, somebody is going to notice. It’s like watering on the wrong day or driving too fast past playing children. Sooner or later somebody is going to figure it out and you’ll wind up paying the price - either in court or in the more powerful court of public attention of your neighbours.

Questions about the ban can be directed to the Ministry of the Environment’s Public Information
Centre at 1-800-565-4923 or 416-325-4000. The website can be found at
http://www.ene.gov.on.ca/en/land/pesticides/factsheet-pesticides.php and there are downloads of information on this site that tell you what you can use and can’t use.

Dandelions Unchained

Random Thoughts from a Garden

This is one of those post-weekend days when I roll my eyes, have a second cup of coffee and listen to my back ask, “What was I thinking?” when I decided to tackle the front landscaping. It’s a morning when tons of stuff is rolling around in my head so I thought I’d share all those random slightly-sore-backed thoughts with you.

The vegetable garden is now all dug, nicely turned over and waiting for warmer weather. The peas are in as are a few of the really cold weather seeds such as spinach. The grow lights are lighting up the basement and it’s starting to look like a grow-op down there with all the vegetable and flower seedlings. An old Christmas tree, all cut-up, was laid over the pea bed to act as pea supports and give the vines something to crawl up. It’s going to make it a tough area to weed but, on second-thought, given I seldom weed the peas anyway, it should be fine. What was great to see was the result of last year’s soil building exercise in this area. As I’ve written about ad nauseum we have no soil in many parts of the garden so this raised bed was constructed by laying cardboard down over top of the few inches of topsoil. This was intended to stop the weeds and grasses. Then layers of composted manure, bark chips and peat moss were laid down and mixed up to make “soil”. This spring, the cardboard is totally gone. We have no weeds but we do have some pretty good soil in there and now the underlying soil is slowly being mixed into this created topsoil. The digging was easy and I think we’re going to have a great crop this year. The deer should be pleased.

And that’s the other good news. The deer didn’t touch the cedar trees last winter. This may be because I sprayed the heck out of them and the surrounding area with Liquid Fence (a deer barrier product) or it may be because they were shot in the fall. We haven’t seen them yet this spring so I have no idea where they are or what’s happened. The tulips are up and they too have been sprayed with this noxious smelling material. Some of these materials also protect against rabbits and other creatures who believe flowers are not ornaments but rather a fine gourmet lunch. The bad news is that while I planted some 200 new bulbs last fall, I can only find about 4 clumps that appear to be popping up. There are large number of tiny holes where the bulbs used to be and I know there are some very happy voles out there. Mind you, the head gardener isn’t amused and he wishes nothing but the best for our local fox and hunting cats. The fox has been seen hunting in the long grass and is looking in good shape after this winter. Go fox!

The bucket loader and I took on the front garden this past weekend. Whacking, sledg-hammering and bashing away at the cemented-in rocks. Got about half way down the garden area and stopped for another week. There are a rather large clump of second year tulips throwing a nice bunch of buds and I decided getting those flowers was more important than digging the garden out. So I’ll wait till they start to show colour and then cut them for the house. Then the rest of the garden wall will be removed and the soil moved out. Why move the soil? It’s badly infected (and that’s the only word) with seeds from such monsters as crown vetch. It’s easier to move it and spread it where it can’t be a problem than to try to fix it. There comes a time in every endeavor when you just have to cut and run; this is that time with the front garden. If it were just poor soil, I’d get out the compost and peat moss but this is so bad, even I’ve given up on it.

And that’s another lesson from this past season. Because my garden soils are based on limestone, they’re quite alkaline. The vast quantities of peat moss I’ve been adding have simply done an amazing job of improving soil quality and haven’t really been a problem with acidifying the soil. You might not be able to get away with doing this if you had a slightly acidic soil to begin with but with that limestone, digging two to three inches of peat into the soil has greatly improved soil structure and growth. If you think I’m writing too much about soil this week, it’s because all the problems and remedies for your garden start there. There’s little point in putting expensive plants in poor soil. Heck, there’s little point in putting any kind of plant into a poor soil. If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that you get the soil right and everything else falls into place. Diseases go down, insect problems go down and plant health and performance go up. And while the levels of peat I use because of my limestone base might not work for your garden soil, it will pay off in the long run to find a way to improve the organic matter as much as you possibly can.

Finally, for those who want to rush the season, let me give you two bits of advice. The first is, “Don’t.” Your average annual or vegetable transplant really should wait for that May long weekend. And the second is that if you must, then start now and get some clear plastic laid down on the soil to warm it up. Then remove the plastic just before you want to plant. Warm soil will help your early riskier transplants.

Now, where’s that other cup of coffee?

Guest Cottage Garden Construction

Garden Magic

A modern definition of magic is any technology sufficiently advanced it is not understood by a population. A classic example would be matches to cavemen or cell phones to the middle ages or even planetary creation to modern man. It’s magic. While this leads us down some interesting roads such as technology as magic or religion as magic - I want to look at gardening as magic.

A Generation of Gardeners

We have an entire generation of gardeners raised on a simple premise that any bug is a bad bug. And we can use an easily understood technology to kill that bug. Here’s a spray - mix it up with water - spray it on the garden - the bugs die. Life is good. Here’s some blue powder, mix it with water - spray it on the garden - the plants grow. Gardening is simple technology - you spray, you water and bugs die while the plants grow. Science has triumphed, we understand that technology and there’s no magic here. Some would say this is science working as it should, giving us a new level of competition and supremacy over our natural environment.

The Problem

Except of course that the bugs keep coming back. Other disease problems don’t go away and we can never get over the feeling that something isn’t quite right. That gardening is harder than it looks and that we just need one more magic chemical and we’ll have those perfect roses, that perfect tomato growing next to our weed-free lawn. In the last 50 years, the level of chemical gardening has grown and progressed from one level of chemical to the next. We’ve seen chemicals introduced to great gardening fanfare to be lost a generation later when we discover how noxious the darn thing is and how much damage it is doing to ourselves and our families.

You don’t have to go much further than DDT to understand how great that chemical was at controlling insects but how much damage it wreaked on our birds and wildlife. It wasn’t magic, it was just bad science that only looked at one aspect of the problem. Our chemicals now don’t cause cancer, just hormonal damage that is far subtler and longer reaching. One by one, they are being pulled from the shelves. In fact, in the new legislation all cosmetic gardening chemicals are being removed from the shelves.

A New Level of Garden Magic

Now, you’re about to be introduced to a new level of garden magic. You’re about to lose all those chemicals from the past fifty years and told to “go organic”. And here’s where a lot of folks are going to resist learning; they want their old simple systems, not this new magic they don’t want to or can’t learn. You see, we’re leaving the world of bug- spray-kill for the complex relational world of compost-soil building- plant health - increased biodiversity - reduced infestation. We’re leaving the black and white “kill-it” world for a world of complex relationships and long term remedies and approaches.

This isn’t spray-kill, this is building a new gardening environment so the environment is balanced and takes care of itself. This concept is sufficiently advanced for some gardeners who want to stay with spray-kill-bug that organic gardening can be considered magic in their eyes. And voodoo magic at that; something black, mysterious and not to be considered seriously. You’ll see it in the folks who have squirreled away some powder that kills pests because they don’t want to be without this stuff. You’ll see it in the stockpiles of weed-n-feed and those neighbours who will insist on using it next year. And oh the retailers will hear it when the weeds come along and the kill-it gardening crowd will go nuts trying to find a way to whack the weeds from the end of a sprayer.

A Few Simple Things

In the end, you have to understand a few simple things about organic gardening. The first of course is that it isn’t magic but a slowly revealing understanding of how things really work in the garden. It also has several advantages that need to be understood. When we use chemicals for cosmetic reasons in our gardens we simply don’t know if they are safe or whether the science of 20-years from now will ban them as we’ve banned older chemicals. We know that adding compost and building the natural defenses of the garden won’t harm us. And yes, organic gardening isn’t as easy as the spray-kill systems, you need to learn new skills and learn new ways of looking at the world. We also know it works (once you’ve learned it) to reduce pests, increase yields, increase the nutritional value of food and create marvelous landscapes.

How Old Are You?

One measure of how old you are is whether you will actually learn these things or whether you will resist this learning. Those who are old in spirit will refuse to learn that organic gardening isn’t magic. Those who have decided that their way is the best and only way, who are rigid in their beliefs, will complain and grouse, demonstrate their rigidity and age in those ways. Those who have stockpiled their favourite chemical have already shown us they are not prepared to learn or adapt. To them, organic gardening is magic and they chose not to understand or learn.

A Richer World and The Real Question

I’m not going to tell you that this new organic world is simpler or easier than the old bug-kill world. It is indeed far more complex, more diversified and far richer in health. I’m not going to tell you that bugs will magically disappear and weeds will never grace your lawn again.

I am going to tell you that organic gardening isn’t magic. It is advanced science and demonstrates a deeper understanding of how things really work compared to the old simplistic notion that all bugs are bad bugs. The real question is whether you think it is magic you don’t want to understand or whether you’re prepared to become a garden magician.

Basic No Work Gardening

If plant choice is our first consideration in planning the no-work garden, then where do we go from there? We’re picking the no-work plants that reduce deadheading, have high survival rates, don’t require a ton of pruning and that’s all well and good but how do we get them to really perform well without a lot of work? There are several key components to the no-work garden that we should focus on right off the bat and get them out of the way right now. These are key to both reduced work in the garden as well as increased health of the plants. And while they’re both going to cost you a bit of money upfront, they’ll pay off in the long run.

Mulch

The first is mulch. I don’t care what kind of garden it is, my belief is that it should be mulched with the appropriate material. If you look at any natural area where plants live, there’s nobody out there raking up the leaves or removing the fallen bits of foliage and plant debris. It’s all allowed to sit there as a natural mulch. That’s why forest soils are so rich and alive. They’re fed naturally and have a full eco-system of plant life (we call it the soil foodweb) going on in them. And it all starts with mulching the garden. I don’t care what organic mulch you use on your garden. You want something that degrades naturally, something that will sit and rot to feed the soil microorganisms that are going to make your plants healthy. It really doesn’t matter; pick what your wallet and tastes dictate. I used to use straw on the vegetable gardens and bigger perennial borders and bark chips on the front gardens. My current garden is covered with bark mulch in both the vegetable and perennial gardens. Plastic mulch belongs in plastic gardens and stone mulch belongs in rock gardens and walkways. Neither of the latter belong in a real garden because they do nothing for the soil. Did I mention that three-inches of mulch will reduce your weeding by over 80%?

Healthy Plants

Now having healthy plants is particularly important in the coming years as the availability of garden chemicals is reduced. A healthy plant is one that can fight off bugs and problems; indeed, a healthy plant isn’t attractive to pests. Insects and diseases tend to attack the weakened plants in the garden, the plants that are under stress before they attack the healthy one. Think as insects and diseases as the predators that pick off the weak so that only the strong survive. Your job as a gardener is to create a healthy soil ecosystem so your plants are healthy. Mulch is the first step to do that. You really do want to mimic nature in this to create a healthy soil and healthy plants.

Rethink the Use of Compost

Before you turn the page, let me suggest that you rethink your use of compost. Here’s the bottom line with this material. It’s not the actual compost itself that’s what we want in our gardens. It’s the microorganisms that live in the compost that we want. We want all those beneficial bacteria and fungi that actually feed our plants and make them healthy. You can do this by applying lots of compost or you can learn how to make compost tea. I never met a gardener yet that can produce enough compost for their entire garden (well, maybe one but Dave’s a berserker composter) Compost tea takes a handful of good compost and turns it into enough microorganisms to do 5 acres of ground. So if you can only produce a handful or small bucket of good compost in your home compost system, then you do have enough to make compost tea and provide all the microorganisms your garden needs. Learn to make compost tea.

Organic Matter

The organic matter component for your garden soil health can be added by using mulch, by purchasing peat moss or by using all the leaves you can find and tossing them onto your gardens. Digging them in will shorten the time it takes to make them available to plants, leaving them on the surface is slower but a heck of a lot easier (and just as effective in the long run) When horses were the main mode of transport, there was no lack of manure and old straw or hay for the gardens, but now we have to be creative at getting both the organic matter and the microorganisms into our soils.

E-Coli Bacteria and Compost

If you’re worried about the recent scares about e-coli bacteria, then let me assure you that there is no e-coli in properly made compost. A hot compost destroys all e-coli bacteria. And if you’re starting from your own compost - if you don’t put manure into it, then you won’t have this bacteria to begin with because this bacteria come from manure. Home made compost doesn’t contain e-coli if it’s made without manure so it’s perfectly safe.

To head off the question about purchasing manure to be used in compost tea - the answer is that manure isn’t something modern science recommends you use in compost tea. It is also quite possible that chemicals and pharmaceuticals used in the production of the animals have survived the composting process and these will act to destroy the beneficial bacteria in your compost tea. So buying bagged manure - and making compost tea with it - isn’t a recommended garden practice. It doesn’t matter whether the manure is composted or not; the home scale gardener doesn’t have the testing equipment to evaluate how good or bad the manure is. So don’t use anything having to do with manure in your compost tea.

In terms of this series, we’re committed to having low-maintenance plants in the garden and to growing them in a healthy way so insects and pests don’t bother them. These two key ingredients are your first step next spring. Photo Credit

Leaves as Fall Fertilizer

It’s a bright sunny morning as I write this column, the wind has been whipping leaves off the trees and there’s whitecaps on the water. My tomato support cages were blown over this past weekend and it looks like the vegetable garden has finally gone down for the season. The leaves are nicely covering the ground and pretty wet after all the rain we’ve had so they’re not blowing too far at the moment. My plan this week is to run the lawn mower over them to blow the bits onto the new shade gardens. And that of course got me thinking about how to use leaves in the garden.

We already know that the single best use of leaves is to return them to the garden soil around the trees. Doing this will keep your trees healthy and happy. Given that grass under trees never grows very well anyway, making sure the leaves are chopped up and left under there is the single easiest way of keeping a tree healthy. It always amazes me that folks take away the leaves in the fall, never feed the tree in the spring and wonder why the trees get sick or don’t grow very quickly. The deal here is that allowing tree tree leaves to stay around the base of the tree is the single best thing you can do for your trees.

I know. You’re afraid of smothering out the grass. Well, if you have anything other than maple or poplar trees, this isn’t a major concern. Do run the lawn mower over top of these leaves to chop them up and the grass (such as it is in the shade) will be just as happy with the extra organic matter as the trees are. If you have large leaved trees, the leaves will indeed mat down and prevent grass from emerging. So chopping them up is step one and blowing the extra leaves onto the gardens is step two. The perennials and vegetable transplants will benefit from the extra organic matter and your lawn won’t suffer from being matted under leaves. I note that matting leaves is one way that maples deal with the competition; they simply smother it.

The second thing I’m coming to understand is that there are some chemical effects of leaves that act to delay the germination of some seeds. This is true of many plants, from evergreens to deciduous plants. The hormones in the leaves or needles work in the ground to delay the germination of competitive plants. It is only when the leaves are several years old that they begin to lose their ability to stop seeds from germinating (the hormones wear out). So a layer of leaves under and around trees also acts to stop weed seeds from germinating. This little know fact is why you want to be careful about adding a lot of fresh leaves to vegetable gardens when you’re starting a lot of your plants from seed. Started plants or transplants are not bothered by these chemicals but seed germination is slowed down or stopped. Personally, I love getting rid of weeds in my perennial beds so a layer of chopped-up leaves is exactly what the doctor ordered.

If you have a great many maple trees and you want to have a lawn around them, then yes, you’re going to have to rake up these leaves because the excessive layers of maple leaves will really slow down grass. But these leaves should then be composted and the compost spread under the trees if you want the trees to thrive and continue growing. In the larger scheme of things, a tree is either healthy and growing or dying. There’s no middle ground. Handling leaves properly and ensuring the composted leaves get returned to the trees is the first step in long term tree growth.

I also note that with the changes coming to the herbicide and chemicals available to Ontario homeowners next spring, the first line of defense in your garden is going to be compost and leaf mould. If you have large amounts of this material now, then you’re already ahead of the curve in getting ready to make the transition to organic gardening. You see the core component of a great garden, a weed-free lawn and garden health without chemicals, is compost. And starting by chopping up and collecting leaves this fall is an excellent first step.

A better first step if you don’t have tree leaves is to plant trees now. There are some great deals going on and you can plant deciduous trees right up to freezeup. Not only will this give you a source of garden leaves in the future, it will increase the value of your property now. Numerous studies show that trees increase property values and that each tree adds several thousand dollars to the value of a home. Not only that but several studies point out that property owners who have trees on their properties tend to get along better with their neighbors and tree lined neighborhoods are seen as better places to live. And to make the entire property value thing even greater, it is now understood that trees even work to prolong the life of nearby roads and sidewalks. The shade from trees cools down the roads and sidewalks lessening the impact of tires and wear. The hotter the asphalt or concrete, the more likely it is to wear and produce dust from traffic so trees actually protect infrastructure instead of being a problem for it.

Bottom line. You really want to get out there, save your leaves and plant even more trees. Your garden will thank you and so, it turns out, will your friends and neighbours.

How to Build a Compost Bin

Here’s how to build a compost bin using a few free skids from behind a big-box building store, some coat hangers from the closet and 10 minutes of time. Pretty easy and pretty effective compost making.

One thing that folks sometimes don’t consider is which direction the bin is going to be viewed from. You’ll often find that the skids are damaged when you get them and you have a choice - you can repair the damage (a great idea) or you can put the damaged or older-looking skids on the sides that won’t be seen easily. Point them away from your main view-point and you’ll have a nicer looking bin.

Plastic Recycling

Kudo’s to Landscape Ontario for their work on the beginning steps to put a Canadian national plastic recycling plan into place.

The hort industry generates a whole bunch of plastic. From the pots and baskets you take home to acres and acres of plastic that cover the greenhouses to trays and plastic propagation units that you never even see. Waste removal of this plastic is a major cost to production nurseries even if they try to recycle their own pots.

So - from a cost standpoint alone, this is a major effort.

From an environmental standpoint, this is really necessary and full marks and a salute with a dip of the shovel to L.O. for their work in this area.

p.s. L.O. was the site for the annual plant trials I attended a few weeks ago.

Issues in Green Garden Design

I confess I had never really given a full green garden much of a thought until this past few weeks and hadn’t really taken much more than lip-service to the entire idea. After all, I gardened organically so what more did you want?

As it turns out, there’s a few other issues out there that seem to be going my way but I do have to report that the problems are also rearing their head.

First the problem area.

One major concern was handling the driveway and front fields. Short of hand shoveling an 800 foot driveway, this was going to take horsepower. Either mine or Noel’s (in his big plow). The front field (about 6 acres) is also a problem given I really want to control weeds and volunteer weed trees but I’m not about to take a week to scythe down this space by hand. And while I can reduce the snow damage with snow fencing, and I’ve lopped off quite a few of the volunteer trees by hand, there’s no way I can do this without mechanical assistance. So I bit the bullet and bought a tractor. Not your little tractor but a small diesel (much more energy efficient than gasoline) that will power a rotary mower capable of handling small trees and tall weeds. With a front end loader, it also has the capacity to do snow right up to the house or even the entire driveway if necessary. Again, the loader and diesel mean that I have a power system that is as efficient as possible but that will handle the work load of having a large estate garden.

Secret Garden

I’ve spent a few hours whacking back several hundred sumac trees and a ton of Virginia creeper that were attacking the lilacs along the front of the property. Now, you know that these are going to resprout either this fall (likely) or next spring (definitely). I’m going to let them resprout this fall unhindered because with the changing of season and lowered light levels, they’re not going to be able to store much energy into those roots from the new leaves. I’m hoping I can weaken them a bit before next spring.

At that time, all new shoots are going to be hit by herbicide strength vinegar on a repeated basis. I’m going to keep those leaves and shoots burned off until the plants die. I’ll grub out the smaller ones but the objective is to wipe out these plants in the lilac dell, shoreline and secret garden areas. The initial pathway to the secret garden has been cut and trimmed out (no, I’m not telling you where it is - it’s a secret garden) and it too will be “vinegared” next year to knock back the weeds and shoots that may decide to take advantage of the extra sunlight. Cutting spreading shrubs back and then stopping them from forming new shoots is a time-honored way of killing them.

The interesting thing about this is that I had forgotten the pleasure of working like this. Yes, it’s hot and sweaty and I left some DNA on the shrubs and broken bits of wood amidst the lilacs but after I had finished, I did indeed feel a great bit of satisfaction. It was a good feeling to stretch out the muscles and find they still worked after all too long becoming a desk-bound writer instead of a working nurseryman. You can call it hormonal with my brain sending out all those exercise goodies to make me feel good or you can simply call it satisfaction with a job well done.

Whatever you call it, I am a pretty happy camper now that I can see the garden progressing along this environmentally green garden design road.

Green Garden Design

This is the start on a series about green garden design so hunker down and stay with me as I outline where my garden design is going.

Last week, I asked about tillers. This week, I’m not going to go down that road. Things change in my gardening world and this week, I’ve been sensitized (once again) to the entire issue of global warming and the environment. I mean, it just ain’t going away is it?

The Princess and I spent last winter on Dauphin Island, one of the barrier Gulf Coast islands off Alabama and witnessed first hand the devastation that tornadoes and hurricanes create. Here we go again - only this one is called Gustav and I’ll be darned surprised if there’s much left of Dauphin Island after this season. Katrina took 4 feet of sand off the island, split the island in two, put 400 homes into the Mississippi channel and left much of the inhabited western end barely above sea level. We’ll see what another big storm (of whatever magnitude) does to the remaining sand and homes.

But that little bit of personal experience (we were there for some tropical storms and tornadoes) simply reinforces my own decision that whatever I’m going to do in my own garden, it has to be a green garden design. My contribution to global warming had better slow right down. Here’s what I’m doing and by example, what you can do as well.

Landscaping Area

Let me set the stage. There are 5 main areas I have to deal with in garden design. The one acre of house area and landscaping is the primary one. The trial gardens are the second. The orchard and 7 acres of land surrounding the house landscaping is the third and the laneway and access area is the fourth area of concern. The shoreline and waterfront is the fifth. There are some overlaps in these areas but I can break them down into these design problems.

So what’s the problem?

The issue is reasonably simple. I want to further reduce my footprint on the environment while maintaining a garden and my business of garden writing. I understand that it’s not just my one bit of gasoline to mow the lawns that’s a problem but rather that one bit of fuel magnified by 100 million gardeners doing the same thing. Every time we use a gallon of fuel to mow a bit of grass, we create demand on the system that translates to pollution right from the oil wells, right along the distillery supply chain, to the transport trucks who deliver it to the little bit of spillage at the service stations right to my driveway where I manage to put a bit or two onto the ground in the process of filling. All those bits and pollution risks add up over 100 million gardeners here in North America when it comes to lawn mowers, hedge trimmers, leaf blowers, tillers and other petroleum powered machinery. Even if we don’t spill anything, how much gasoline do we use every week just in cutting our lawns?

Electrical Tools

And what about electric tools? Well, the supply chain still runs to the electrical generation stations and here in Ontario, we’ re going to see “smart metering” where these tools will draw power during peak periods and you’re going to see the true cost of running these tools isn’t cheap nor does it have a particularly small power footprint.

Interesting Choices in Green Garden Design

This creates some interesting choices for me in designing this new garden and begins to put the problems of green garden design into play - right from the main conceptual design right through to small problems such as garden edgings and maintenance. I’ve broken the problem areas into two main ones. The first is the home landscaping - immediately around the house for approximately one-half to one acre of land. The second is the other 7 acres and semi-commercial areas of the property that will be explored in more detail in subsequent posts. But what this does is give me the opportunity to explore the problems we all face in our home gardens as well as allow me to explore a somewhat larger perspective on larger areas.

Decisions

So the lines have been drawn and the first decision was that I was going to stay “organic”. After all, I’ve been doing this for many years now so why change. That’s a given.

The second decision was more painful but I’ve decided to forego investing in power equipment and using it as a main line of garden maintenance for the home landscape. Now this decision creates ripple effects right through the entire design process - and I’ll be writing more about this in the near future. But generally, my garden size is now whatever I can manage without the use of power machinery. What I can’t manage will have to be designed for zero or extremely low garden input. Or the garden will have to be redesigned or made smaller. This is also a perfect way for me to show you how to do the same thing in your own garden.

Larger Issues

The 7-acre property, trial beds, landscape and maintenance creates larger issues for machinery. For example, our driveway is approximately 800 feet long and snow drifting across the fields pretty much means I can’t be hand-digging this distance. So some form of machinery is going to be necessary.

Similarly, the fields (former occupants mowed the entire area) are not going to be mown but we do have to control noxious weeds according to municipal standards so we need at least a yearly knockdown at seed production time. These areas will be covered in future posts but manual labor is not an option for some of these areas so we have to figure out ways of reducing the input while meeting the needs of those areas.

Summary

It is indeed an interesting problem as I start working on design issue and figuring out the best ways to create the garden of my dreams while decreasing my footprint on this planet. I hope you’ll participate in this adventure and maybe, just maybe take some steps of your own when it comes to green garden design.

As a final note, I do not have all the answers to these design issues yet, I’ve barely even begun the process. It is a process and the first one of course is to identify the questions and problems to be solved in each area. But at least I have a start - I’ve made the decision to go that route. This should be an interesting garden adventure.

Is this a good thing?

So here’s a problem for you.

I know you’re against genetic modified foods.

But it’s going to be possible in the very near future to genetically modify a potato (and they’re working on it) to make a plant that is resistant to blight.

They take genes from a bunch of potatoes and mix ‘em up in one plant to produce a plant that doesn’t die when exposed to blight (I note that may be oversimplifying the process just a tad)

So is this a good thing or a bad thing? And where do we draw the line?

Spreading Compost Tea

Here’s a video on spreading compost tea. I outline the need for filters and show you the 4 main systems a home gardener has for spreading compost tea around in the garden.

How to Make Compost Tea

Here’s a video on how to make compost tea - not something you’d want to invite the Queen to …

But you could invite her to the garden afterwards.

Note that this video is part of a series of videos I’m producing for my seminar series and it’s only the first one in the series (more on the way). Also that some of the links mentioned in the video are not active on the seminar site yet.

Contaminated Composted Manure

Thanks to GardenRant for the lead on contaminated manure in the U.K. This story actually got me thinking because my daughter - raising lettuce and tomatoes in containers in Toronto - claimed this past weekend that she and her partner got sick when they ate their lettuce. Now this was containers with potting soil and she used some purchased composted manure and claimed she washed the lettuce really well.

Here’s the EPA link to the datasheet.

The concern seems that it survives the gut action of ruminants and stays active in the manure pile. Studies submitted to the EPA show that “Under aerobic conditions, degradation of aminopyralid in five different soils resulted in the production of CO2 and non-extractable residues. Half-lives ranged from 31.5 to 533.2 days in 5 soils. For risk assessment purposes, EPA used a half-life of 103.5
days. ” So it can stay active and kill crops in soil for up to a year and a half. And it seems it stays alive after passing through the guts of cows.

Now, the toxicity on humans would seem that the major problem (according to the this factsheet) is dermal irritation although you may read it a little more carefully than I did and find something else of concern. So this isn’t likely what created the problem for my daughter.

She did say she washed the lettuce very thoroughly so that she’s hoping there wasn’t e-coli on it and this was at the height of the tomato concern so we thought it wasn’t necessarily the lettuce. She wiped it off the face of the earth anyway and now it’s composting somewhere.

The bottom line as always though is that you will be further ahead to use your own compost. And if you don’t produce enough, use compost tea. And if you don’t produce compost because you live in an apartment of town house, then get a worm bin. And if you don’t do compost or worm-compost to use as a compost tea starter - then you really can’t call yourself an organic gardener, cause you just don’t get it.

photo credit: foxypar4

Compost Tumbler Review Update

This isn’t going well.

A few weeks ago, I posted a video of me putting the simple compost tumbler together. It was an adventure and you got to see the process (shortened drastically) along with some tips to make your process easier.

I have to report that there are some problems with this kind of system.

1) The composter is half full of material from the kitchen and garden trimmings. It is so heavy that Mayo can’t spin it. This isn’t a problem if you have a strong person around but I have to tell you that this baby is heavy and doesn’t want to move too much. (Maybe we have heavy vegetables?)

2) There is a screen in the bottom to allow excess moisture to leak out so your compost stays at the right moisture level. It works much like your sink drain I’m afraid. You know the one that plugs up when too much wet vegetable matter is compressed on the bottom of the sink and you have to take the guck out by hand to let the water drain?

Right - well, I have a bunch of sopping wet compost on top of this drain and I’m darned if I’ll insert half my body to clean out a screen that’s sure to clog up again with a few seconds of cleanout.

I know it’s clogged because when I spun it last night, a foul stench water poured out the “top” (which was now the bottom). Opening up the lid (after turning it I note) I was greeted with a full, foul smell that surely isn’t cooking compost by any stretch of the imagination.

Luckily, I had cut some tall grass in the orchard so I loaded up the other half of the composter with half-browned grass that I figure will absorb all this moisture. Locked her up and turned it over so the moisture would leak down and soak up the grass. If I hadn’t thought of the grass at the last minute, I was going to use newspaper to do the same job.

But it surely isn’t making compost at the moment.

We’ll see how it works in the next week or two as the grass becomes part of the equation and we continue to load in the veggie trimmings.

So I’ve either missed totally on getting the right combination of green to brown or the compost tumbler doesn’t work well.

So for the moment, I’m not a big fan of compost tumblers and the garden plans call for old-fashioned compost bins behind the shed.

I might have a compost tumbler to give away this fall to somebody local. Doesn’t come with any guarantees however.

Convert Your Gas Lawn Mower to Solar

No comment from me - here’s a link for a weekend project that will turn your gas lawnmower into one run entirely by the sun.

Bad Gene P450. Bad Gene!

I don’t know what got into Gene P450 in Sweet Corn. It turns out that this gene (or one closely related to it) is susceptible to common corn herbicides. So when you spray your sweet corn with Atrazine, the darn corn plant dies along with the grass. Bad gene behaviour for sure. What is it thinking?

Well, scientists have finally figured it out and have traced this gene in all varieties of sweet corn that die when sprayed. So they’re going to spend a ton of bucks to breed this gene out of corn. No more dying on the job just because you get whacked by something noxious. What do you think you are - just another grass plant? Oh wait….

So - you can sleep soundly tonight folks. Gene P450 has been identified and corn breeders are going to backcross that little troublemaker right out of existence.

Whew. That was a close one. We might have had to grow those varieties using organic methods.

Compost Tumbler Review

One of the trials we have going this summer is this compost tumbler (we got ours from for review purposes from http://www.organic-compost-tumbler.com/)

Start to finish in the construction process, about 45 minutes. I deliberately didn’t study the instructions and still managed to get it all together. Mind you, I had to refer to the sheet more than once during the process as you’ll see.

Two tips - let the poly (it’s really heavy duty stuff by the way) sit out in the hot sun for at least an hour before you put this sucker together. Otherwise, it will be hard and not at all easy to work with. Don’t even bother trying to do this on an overcast, cold day in the spring - you’ll wind up hating yourself and this compost tumbler

The second is to really apply the vaseline or cooking oil to the lip. You’ll see me struggle to turn it, hit it with darn near everything I had close to hand (my tools were still all packed away after our move) and even manage to whack a finger. The tight fit works really well once you have it together and it doesn’t leak on the stand but getting it together means really having to hold your mouth right and using a lot of slippery stuff.

After one month, we’re surprised how much organic matter we have in the drum. Because we eat a lot of fruit and vegetables, theres a lot of trimmings being composted. As soon as the gardens get going, I think we’ll see a great deal more going in. The tulip flowers and stems will be the first garden debris to hit it so it should start seeing some serious loading.

This thing is heavy. And loaded up, it is becoming a bit of a chore to turn it around. There’s a lot of weight there so put it where you want it. You aren’t moving it once it’s full.

Here’s the video.

Are You a Scupie?

Are you a SCUPIE (Socially Conscious Upwardly-mobile Person)?

Seems there’s a few of them running loose at the moment and click here to see the site (complete with manifesto).

You gotta love it.

But are you a Scupie? And is this the way to go?

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