Connections

In Permaculture, location and efficiency are key to making good connections.  A simple example would be locating the traditional kitchen garden.  Ideally it would be between where you park your car and the door that you use to enter your house so that checking on it every time you leave or enter the house can easily become part of your routine.  A location close to your entry also makes it easier to go out and collect what you need while you are cooking.  From there you can add other connections that have more to do with efficiency.  You can use your kitchen scraps to start a compost pile close to the garden.  Taking out the compost is another built-in time to check on how the garden is doing.  In turn, the scraps break down to make humus that keeps the garden healthy and returns some nutrients to the soil.  As a bonus, you get a little exercise every time you make the trip. Now your kitchen, your soil health, your schedule, and some of your daily exercise are neatly connected. We could add other elements to this web of connections, but I’m going to leave it here because I’m guessing that most of you aren’t really interested in growing your own food.  If I lost you at kitchen garden, hang on.  There are other more broad connections I’d like to talk about here.

As human beings, we depend on really important connections that we tend to forget about as we make our way through modern daily life.  We all need air to breath, water to drink, food to eat and protection from the elements.  We are connected to our planet through the need for those basics. Ultimately the planet provides for all of them and none of us would last long without them.  As a culture (which is different from the many individuals and groups who do care passionately about our connection to the planet), we take our basic connection to the planet for granted and have mostly stopped paying attention to how it all works.  As a result, the myriad of natural systems that help to maintain the air, water, soil, and plant life (which, along with algae, is the only way to convert sunlight to food) are suffering.  They are suffering in a way that is somewhat similar to how a kitchen garden might suffer if you kept showing up to harvest, but never did any weeding, watering, feeding or planting!

Most of us feel very detached from these life supporting planetary systems, but don’t worry, there are some simple things that you can do right in your own yard that can help our air, water, soil and sunlight to food conversion system (plants) flourish and also allow you to feel more connected. Below is a list of some of the big ones you could try. 

• Mow your whole yard only once a year, right after the first frost. Mow regularly only around the edges of your yard and along well traveled routes and areas (house to shed, around the fire pit, children’s play set, etc.) during the rest of the year. 

• • If you are worried about whether this is legal, check in about local ordinances regarding mowing.  Many cities and towns have updated them to allow for less frequent mowing because it is so much healthier for our planetary life support systems.  Some may still have mowing requirements on the books that are no longer enforced.  

  • If you have an HOA, a tiny yard, or city/town that won’t budge on lawn mowing, plant native species instead of traditional plants at every opportunity and install pollinator friendly garden beds.

• Stop fertilizing, liming, seeding with grass seed and using herbicides and/or pesticides.  Instead spread a native wildflower seed mix annually in fall and plant native bushes and/or trees when larger plants need replacing.  Mellow Marsh Farms, Prairie Moon, and Roundstone Seeds are all great places to shop for seed mixes.  They all have staff that will help you come up with a personalized mix if you don’t like any of their pre-made mixes.

• Install a rain garden to capture runoff from your roof, driveway and other impermeable surfaces.  Rain gardens help prevent flooding, keep water on your property longer and naturally filter water down into local aquifers.  They are so helpful with flood and erosion reduction that there are grants available in many counties for rain garden installation.

• Learn which plants are invasive species and prioritize removing them.

• Learn how to make your yard into a certified wildlife habitat and/or a certified bird habitat.  It’s easier than you might think. 

• Leave your leaves in the fall, or at least some of them.  There are a lot of good reasons to let them lie where they fall or at least keep them in your own yard.  See the article below!

• Develop a new aesthetic.  Nature loves a mess.  When you give nature more control over your yard, it can feel very messy.  Instead of fretting over how messy it looks, go out and observe what’s happening as often as you can.  Start appreciating the subtle changes over the course of the year and all of the different insects, birds, plants and other creatures that will show up when the mowing stops.  If you go out and watch what is happening, it feels less like a mess and more like you are watching a slow recovery and reawakening.  There is an order to what looks like a mess to our untrained eye.

• Before you do (or don’t do!) any of these things, talk to your neighbors. Share with them what you are thinking of doing and why.  Be respectful of their concerns and go slowly if necessary.  If your neighbors, or you, are concerned about things getting too messy, you can always just set aside a small section of your yard for experimentation at first and invite them to join in the observation and learning.  

If you do one or more of these things, even on a tiny scale, you will be forging connections and helping our planet to flourish a little more.  The nice thing is that helping out the natural systems that support us all can be almost effortless because nature makes connections every chance it gets.  All we have to do is get out of the way.  In fact, letting nature have more control over your yard is really the best way to get that low/no maintenance yard that so many people long for.  It’s sort of magical how doing less can actually help you to make connections with your neighbors, plants and local wildlife.  Even better, while you are making those connections you are also supporting the very systems that your physical well being depends on!

– Mary Beth

Leave your leaves: pollinators need winter cover!

One of the most low effort, impactful things you can do for your garden and local ecosystem is to simply leave the leaves that fall from your trees exactly where they fall. I know it can be a difficult pill to swallow as many of us have had it hammered into us that leaves in our garden are messy, but leaf litter is crucial to the survival of moths, butterflies, snails, spiders, and many other invertebrates that pollinate our gardens and keep unwanted garden pests away.

While some butterflies like monarchs migrate to avoid cold winters, most butterflies and moths overwinter using leaf litter as cover. Red-banded hairstreaks, for example, depend on leaf litter for their survival—these butterflies lay their eggs on fallen oak leaves, which become the first food of emerging caterpillars. Luna moths and swallowtail butterflies, common garden favorites, disguise their cocoons and chrysalises  as dried leaves in order to blend in with the real ones, and often wrap them in dried leaves. These crunchy sleeping bags keep them camouflaged from predators and keep them warm from the cold winter, but this also means they are easily swept away when we rake our leaves into burn piles or  bags to be sent to landfills. While many gardeners opt to shred their leaves in compost piles as a seemingly more environmentally friendly practice than bagging, this process destroys eggs, caterpillars, and chrysalises along with the leaves.

If you love to watch the fireflies light up your evenings in the summer, you might want to leave your leaf litter. Firefly larvae live in leaf litter for 1 to 3 years before becoming adult fireflies! While the adults tend to steal the show, firefly larvae are voracious predators of garden pests as they love to feast on the snails and slugs that can cause significant damage to our gardens in the spring, but without moist leaf litter fireflies cannot make it to adulthood. Many bees also rely on leaf litter for protection: at the end of the summer, a mated queen bumble bee only burrows an inch or two into the earth to hibernate, making her vulnerable to the elements. Leaving a thick layer of leaves ensures that she will be protected from the winter to emerge in the spring and make a new nest. All the other arthropods that live in the leaves, like spiders, snails, worms, beetles, and mites, support our local vertebrate populations as well. Chipmunks, turtles, birds, and amphibians rely on insects for food—songbirds like chickadees, for example, require 6,000–9,000 caterpillars in order to raise a brood of nestlings!

It can be tremendously difficult to change our aesthetic preferences and how we make our space feel welcoming and tidy, so there are options to protect your local wildlife while not having to leave all of the leaves. The first thing to consider is that fallen leaves are simply free mulch, as they suppress weeds, help the soil retain moisture, and break down to cycle more nutrients into the soil just as shredded wood mulch does (and your existing plants will have no difficulty popping through the leaf litter come spring). What better way to complement the aesthetics of a native pollinator garden than a bed of autumn colored fallen leaves? If you really cannot stand the look of the leaves, consider gently raking the leaves to a pile somewhere out of sight. This way our animal neighbors still have a home nearby and can revisit your flowers the following spring. If you do not want to permanently leave your leaves, consider waiting until late spring to give the insects time to emerge. 

– Kel

Book Review

Indigenous seer and gifted plant whisperer Juliet Diaz draws from ancestral practices passed down by generations of teachers to awaken your intimate connection with nature, your ancestors, your guides, and to your true self through the powerful magic of plants. In Plant Witchery: Discover the Sacred Language, Wisdom, and Magic of 200 Plants, you will find:

• Essential, magical, and medicinal properties of 200 herbs, flowers, trees, and fruits.

• Rituals for abundance, cleansing, and connecting with spirits.

• Spells to ward against evil, find answers, and protect against self-sabotage.

• Potions to open your third eye, bring luck, and promote creativity.

• Communication techniques for speaking and listening to plants.

• The optimal moon phases and seasons to work with different plants.

You can order Plant Witchery at your favorite local bookstore or order it from anywhere else books are sold. 🍃

• Kel

Seed Saving 101

   While it is easy and often cheap enough to buy seeds each year for your vegetable and flower gardens, saving your garden’s seeds each year saves money, preserves agricultural and culinary culture and traditions, helps plants adapt to local and changing climates, and  increases biodiversity. 

The first step to saving your seeds is knowing whether the parent plant is hybrid, self-pollinated,  or open-pollinated: hybrids are created by crossing varieties of plants that generally will not produce offspring with the same traits as the parent, seeds from open-pollinated plants will generally produce seeds identical to the parent plant, and self-pollinated plants also produce seeds identical to the parent plant. Self-pollinated plants like beans and peas (Fabaceae or Leguminosae) and  tomatoes (Solanaceae) are great places to start for seed-saving beginners. Open-pollinated or heirloom seeds are generally easy to save as well—just make sure if saving the seeds of pumpkins, squash, cucumbers, melons, or gourds you prevent cross-pollination to ensure the following years’ plants do not produce something completely unexpected or inedible.

When selecting which plants to save seeds from, pick whichever you like the most and look the most healthy. Selecting seeds from a  large, delicious, and pest resistant plant is more likely to pass off those desirable traits onto the next generation of plants. While recording information about the species and variety  of plant you are saving seeds from is obviously important, recording the plants key traits, dates it was planted and harvested, and the location it was grown can be incredibly helpful for the longevity of your seed collection and provide crucial information to anyone you might want to share your seeds with.

How do you save your seeds and store them? For dry seeds, such as those produced by flowers or in bean pods, you can leave your seeds on the plant until they mature. Once the seeds are mature, spread them out in a ventilated and dry space and remove any remaining plant matter. For seeds  from fleshy, wet fruits like tomatoes however, you should wait until the fruit is very ripe or overripe. Once the fruit is ready, scoop out the seeds and mix them in a jar or bucket with warm water, letting the mixture ferment for a few days and mixing it daily. The fermentation process is important: it kills viruses and separates the viable seeds that settle on the bottom from the non viable seeds that float to the top. Afterwards, lay them out to dry in a well ventilated and dry area. Store your seeds in a container in the freezer for a couple of days to kill any remaining pests, and then store your labeled seeds in a cool, dry place in a jar or envelope. You can use these techniques to save any and all seeds in your garden, native or nonnative, perennial or annual, just make sure to do your research to best know how to process and care for your new seed collection. Remember to share your seeds with friends and family!

• Kel

Fun facts

     Espalier refers to both the horticultural and artistic process of controlling plant growth along a vertical surface like a wall or fence and the plant itself that is grown this way. Espalier was commonly used in the European Middle Ages to grow fruit inside monastery gardens, but the process is documented in the ancient Mediterranean as far back as ancient Egypt (tombs dating around 1400 BCE were found containing paintings of espaliered fig trees) and in ancient Roman gardens at Pompeii. While they can be used decoratively as living sculptures, espalier trees can be a practical method of growing fruit trees in smaller spaces. Intensive pruning is required to inhibit vertical growth in favor of the tree putting energy into shorter, lateral spurs that bear fruit, making apple, pear, and fig trees some of the best candidates for espalier. Espalier trees are absolutely not a low maintenance choice for the garden, but consistent attention leads to fruit trees with strong branches that bear fruit for longer periods, fewer pest problems due to better air circulation, and easily harvestable fruits—some espaliered apple trees continue to produce fruit after 150 years!

• Kel

October’s To-Do List

• Click here for Planting Calendar for Annual Vegetables, Fruits, and Herbs by city. This link provides dates both based on estimated last frost and the lunar calendar.

• Do NOT fertilize shrubs in August, September, October, or November. 

• Do NOT prune shrubs in September or October.

• Make last-minute bulb orders to see if they are still available.

•  It’s time to shop early to find the nicest shrubs. When planting containerized plants, free/cut the plant’s root ball.

• Put out new chrysanthemum plants towards the end of this month.

• Plant pansies once the weather cools a bit to add color to your yard in the autumn, winter, and spring months.

• Ground covers will become well established if planted now.

• Transplant any evergreen trees or shrubs that need moving towards the end of this month.

• Directly sow the seeds for lettuce, greens, onions, peas, and broccoli once the weather cools.

• Remove weeds  or unnecessary trees from your landscape.

• Keep a close eye on all fall vegetable plants. Insects and diseases are more severe in the autumn.

• Divide peonies.

• Deadhead spent blossoms, but not all of them! Leave some of the seed-heads for the birds.

•  Prepare houseplants to re-enter your home and check them carefully for insect pests!

• Add special accents to your garden: sculptures, colorful trellises, antique decorative metalwork.

Plant focus - Grouncherry

The genus Physalis, the tomatillo or groundcherry genus, contains over 70 species of plants, over 50 of which are native to North America—the most common in North America being the clammy groundcherry (Physalis heterophylla). Groundcherries, also known as bladder cherries  and husk cherries, produce small fruits in a cute little husk  that typically ripen to a golden orange color. While unripe fruits are poisonous, the effects of which range in severity, the ripened fruits are high in several vitamins and minerals and contain anti-inflammatory and antioxidant properties—just wait until they have fallen to the ground or ripened in a bowl! Groundcherries are suitable to a wide range of soil types and can thrive in pots, and their color and  tiny lantern husks make them a perfect addition to any garden.

-Kel

"October is the month of painted leaves.
Their rich glow now flashes round the world.
As fruits and leaves and the day itself
acquire a bright tint just before they fall,
so the year near its setting.
October is its sunset sky;
November the later twilight."

- Henry David Thoreau

Happy Gardening!