Text and photos by Rob Danforth
Nature’s beauty and resilience is all around us if we choose to look. Many people from various walks of life (e.g., Gregor Mendel, Carl Linnaeus, Henry David Thoreau, David Suzuki, …) have studied nature to look for growth patterns, hardiness, textures, and colour in plants and our gardening has benefitted. For example, carrots started out as what we might term as weeds (related to the wild Queen Anne’s Lace) and today we shop with our eyes for orange carrots (a particular cultivar), but they actually come in many different colours and still taste like carrots – like the “purple haze” carrots I grew but had trouble giving them away to clients at the food bank because the colour confused people.
Ruby Chard, Rainbow Chard, Swiss Chard, or “Silver Beet,” (UK) are related to beetroot but with a much milder, less earthy flavour than beet greens. The plants are very resilient and will produce delicious greens and colourful stems from June to November – if you practice cut-and-come-again harvesting (cut only what you need at the time – not more than ⅓ from any one plant – and let the plants grow on). They even look lush and attractive in your garden.
Here is some ruby chard (leaves and stems are edible – recommend steaming alone or with your dim sum/dumplings) which has striking colour, texture, and resilience! Could you sneak some in among your front yard plants – in ground or in pots?
This skunk cabbage flower made me rethink the word “weed.” There are no weeds in nature. There is a natural balance in biodiversity and nature will rap our knuckles with insects and disease if we push it out of balance with chemicals and our penchant for naked soil and monocultures. Some years ago, Ottawa experimented with wild flower meadows rather than green lawns and these had eye appeal and a reduction in the need to mow the greenery. I have not seen a lot of dandelions in a wild flower meadow, but I have seen grassy boulevards and private lawns cloaked in dandelion yellow! While skunk cabbage may not have attractive leaves or fragrance, it does have its beautiful moments – at least to me.
I grew okra in the backyard and in community gardens. The flower is short lived – 1 day – but quite attractive and a cluster of plants can put on a nice display or scattered plants can produce flowers like popping corn for that surprise moment. Like most food plants, Okra is best harvested young (pods of about 3 inches long). It is the “gum” in chicken gumbo, but also good in soups and a stir fry.
Here is another delightful vegetable flower leading to some fine sweet potatoes. I recommend Georgia jet over the Kona or Chinese cultivars but all three are fine. Start with sweet potato “slips” or seedlings which you may have in your pantry – slips grow out of the potato just like the sprouted eyes (“chits”) of a regular potato, but only if your grocery store sweet potato has not been sprayed with “bud nip” to prevent growth – yet another good reason to choose Organics. If your potato produces slips, cut it into chunks (size not important) with a slip in each chunk and plant it with the slip facing up – same for home started potatoes. However, unlike potatoes, you will not be mounding the soil and it is advisable to solarize the soil (plant through holes in plastic sheeting which warms the soil for sweet potato plants). This plastic can be cut and removed in late June. Caution, the roots will travel underground and the sweet potatoes will not be under the plant but will be under where you are standing and at various points of the compass.
While the United Kingdom does have better temperatures than we have, (flowers are blooming as you read this) they do not actually get the heat and the sun which helps tomatoes to ripen. My son-in-law has to grow his tomatoes in a glass house in his backyard. I have visited many greenhouses of all sizes from glass to Plexiglas, to polytunnels, and dollar store cloches – I have used these last two very successfully. I have also seen a video (see online “growingagreenerworld” with Joe Lamp’l) of a double walled polytunnel in the US. This polytunnel in a polytunnel was used to thwart the winter cold and allow produce production to continue well beyond the growing season. A glass or Plexiglas greenhouse, a polytunnel, or a cloche, if properly ventilated for heat control, can be an asset in your garden to extend the growing season at both ends.
An all season, all weather insect hotel can provide shelter for the insects (pollinators and helpful insect predators) we need in our organic gardens. While these hodgepodge jumbles of material do not have great eye appeal – unless you buy brightly painted commercial ones which target specific insects like mason bees – they are more representative of natural settings and are very insect friendly (mosquitos are not interested). If you make one, make it all weather and all season, keep it low to the ground (0 to 1 foot above ground), and if you have nightly visits by your neighbourhood skunk or raccoon (yes, like me, you probably have both), consider a hardware cloth barrier to keep these insect eaters from exploring your hotel and eating your bugs.
One look at this tree, and the name Monkey puzzle probably needs no explanation. This tree and the ginkgo biloba, are leftovers from millions of years ago. In fact, the monkey puzzle tree is the source of the all black “jet” jewelry and the reason for the expression “jet black.” The discovery of ancient petrified monkey puzzle trees found in Whitby, England, led to a jet jewelry industry highly popularized by Queen Victoria – when her Prince Albert died, she dressed all in black ever after, and that included the jet-black jewelry from fossilized trees. This monkey puzzle tree reminds me that plants have their own defense systems to cope with predators. For example, some have thorns, some have offensive fragrances, and some increase acids in their leaves (e.g. oxalic acid) when under attack. Organic biodiversity helps all these to function appropriately without our interference.
A number of provincial (QC & ON) or county gardens (UK) I visited have samples of these small rock gardens. The inspiration here is to garden a variety of small, usually alpine plants with unusual textures and/or flowers. If you have limited space in a cool area – the picture above shows a garden sheltered behind the glass greenhouse – you might consider expanding your gardening skills and working with different plants, containers, soils, and temperatures. However, remember that rocks heat up and hold heat well into the evening. Do not let the heat hurt your plants. I use river stone as mulch on my pots of hot peppers to hold heat, reduce evaporation, and discourage squirrels and crows.
Yes, this is the remains of a snow shovel which has been born again as a stand-up dibber (a tool for making holes into which you can drop garlic bulbils, onion sets, or leeks). In each instance this dibber saves bending and speeds up the whole process. For example, we used to plant 100 leeks and almost as many onions, but fewer garlic bulbils. Mark the business end with a permanent marker: 3 inches for garlic and onions, and 6 inches for Leeks. Wet the soil, count the bulbs/bulbils/leek seedlings so you know the number of holes you must have, punch the holes and twist the dibber to withdraw it, drop in the bulbs/bulbils/leek seedlings, rake soil over the onions and the garlic and tamp it down. See below if you are planting leeks!
After dropping the leek seedlings into the holes, leave the leek holes as they are and walk away! Water (watering can or rain – not hose!!) will water the leeks and slowly fill the holes with soil. Have faith – this has worked for us over many years and we did not have to mound the soil to get a decent length of useable leek.
H⚫a⚫p⚫p⚫y
Ga🌱rd🌱en🌱in🌱g!