He shuffles through December rain that is waiting to be snow,
waiting to be darkness. The river winds and bubbles,
today its power more a rumble than a roar.
He stands before the remnants of the lock that lifted
the canal boats high across the river’s coils.

If he were not alone, someone might hear him whisper
“The river is a path, the canal is a path, and then
the water’s voices, too.” All paths that lead
to last night’s dream, with his question to
a cloud above his bed: How am I to love all things
laid before me at this age of counting losses, in such a world as this?
Lovers, friends and creatures—all consigned to memories.
Hopefulness has always been his answer,  
but now the favored scripture passes from his lips
like a habit worn out from its use.
           Lord I believe…

They built this canal to tame the waters,
but no water is ever tamed for good.
The canals fell to the rails, that fell to roads,
that swelled to highways. Each chance buried in another’s hope.
In any case he is standing here alone, once the hope of two,
waiting at the mossy lock as if it were a sepulcher.

Long ago, in a time of sorrow, a country pastor
told him “Think of the present imperfect.
Be emptying your hopes of everything but hope.
Figure it out. You will be okay.”

He remembers two years ago exactly,
Driving back down Riverview, dazzled
by sunlight slanting through a stand of cedars
Like a fold of angels. But that was then.
Now the rain has found its temperature.
In the darkness graupel dances on his hood
and in his lights, sparking in the darkness.
He is drifting to the boy in the back seat
of a Mercury, staring at the Christmas lights,
his breath a halo on the glass, the soft voices of assurance.
The snow becoming fire, becoming stars.
He is thinking he will be okay.

A note to my distant friends: Lock 29 on the old Ohio & Erie Canal was actually an aqueduct that raised the canal boats above the bending stretch of the Cuyahoga River at the village of Peninsula, Ohio. Remnants of the old lock remain, and I have visited many times. For some reason, Lock 29 called to me as a site for this year’s poem. You might think it an odd place to seek hopefulness, but I have found all such places to appear odd choices, at least at first.

Jonathan Hull, Scroll and Spade, on foliar spraying

“Performed correctly, foliar spraying can become the tipping point for improved soil health and plant productivity.”

John Wright, Red Beet Row, on feeding the soil

“Natural fertilizers are as accessible as the weeds in your yard. Combined with early cover-cropping your garden yields will improve significantly.”

Event:

8^th Annual Permaculture Potluck (bring food and meet your fellow N.E. Ohio permies.)

When:

Sunday April 2, 5 to 8 P.M.

Where:

First Unitarian Church of Cleveland, 21600 Shaker Blvd., Shaker Heights, Oh.

Childcare provided, free-will offering to cover childcare, speaker and custodial costs.

Co-sponsors: First Unitarian Ministry for Earth and Green Triangle.First Call for the Permaculture Potluck

Addendum: by Elsa Johnson

•  Whether you already know all about permaculture, or you are curious about permaculture (so much of permaculture is applicable in all or parts to almost any kind of gardening/agriculture), or maybe you just like smorgasbords of mostly vegetarian food? — this is the place to be that particular Sunday afternoon. You can schmooze, sample interesting foods, and then hang back to listen to the two speakers.

  Jonathan Hull, a former student of renowned soil biologist Elaine Ingham (your clue to know — yes…he definitely knows what he is talking about), will be familiar to Gardenopolis Cleveland readers from a series of articles posted in GC in March, a year ago, about foliar spraying: The Winds of Change. Foliar spraying (or more accurately, misting) is a technique Jonathan uses to apply nutrients directly to the above-ground structures of plants, preferably in the morning when their stomata are most open. This, he says, allows for the efficient uptake of nutrients with minimal expenditure of the plant’s energy, and stimulates the plant’s below the soil relationships, especially those with the mycorrhizal fungi that exist in symbiosis with the plant’s roots. This symbiosis is an important part of the plant’s natural pattern for health, and the less one disturbs it the better. The result? Healthier plants. More resilient soil. Fewer pests and diseases. Bigger yields. 

  The other speaker is John Wright, who is innovating directly with the soil via a fresh approach to the old technique of cover crops. John is both a permaculturist and an OSU trained horticulturist. He and his wife Stephanie Blessing run the educational farm Red Beet Row in Ashtabula. John has been experimenting with timing and unusual cover crop combinations to build a full soil nutritional palette. John offers fresh insights on matching companion plants with traditional annual vegetables, like tomatoes.   

  The Potluck will be held April 2^nd from 5 to 8 PM at the First Unitarian Church of Cleveland, 21600 Shaker Boulevard, which is just east of Warrensville Center Road. The church is a large New England style steepled church, and is very hard to miss. Parking is in the rear by the Permaculture Garden.

  What to bring: Food – always a good idea to label ingredients in food brought to share. Children are welcome. There will be a free will offering to cover the cost of speakers, childcare, and custodial support.   

      

by Elsa Johnson

What is soil  (dirt!)  (earth!) – you know, that stuff plants (most of them) grow in — and how important is it, anyway?  

I’ll answer the second question first. Very important. At its simplest, soil is the stuff that feeds the green plants that create the atmosphere of our blue-green planet.  Soil is a creation, a product, the end result of a process.

We humans have a ‘thing’ for order and neatness. It is one of the ways we distinguish between the tended (hence, civilized; hence, reassuring) and the untamed (hence, wild; hence, threatening). It is the drive that compels us to pull up every unwanted plant, to prefer bare soil to – god forbid — a ‘mess’, to throw every bit of organic debris into a recycling bag for the city to come and fetch and take away.

Plants pull nutrients from the soil – and plants also create nutrients through their growth process. This is what we see above the soil – the growing plant and the soil around it. When the organic plant dies and decays in place, those nutrients go back to the soil, both above and below ground. With the help of insects and worms that take from the plant what they need for their own survival as they break down the plant’s fiber, this natural process builds a loose layer of topsoil. Soil is creation. We can help or hinder that. We all know that. But in the garden we have a hard time resisting our human need for order, for that look-of-civilization –and so, far too often, we take away all that good organic stuff that, if left, would enrich and rebuild our soils (for free) without doing any harm.  

In the forest the process works slightly differently. Tree leaves are fibrous and tough (if they weren’t we would be eating them). They don’t break down as easily or as quickly as soft-fiber garden debris. They decompose slowly, over a long time, resulting in a deeply layered forest floor of leaves in varying stages of decay, resulting in a deep, loose, dark duff under a natural leaf mulch that holds moisture and insulates the forest floor.

And this is just above ground.

Below ground soil is truly amazing, for in both the garden and the forest within that uninteresting looking ubiquitous soil exists a universe of diverse microorganisms, fungus, and bacteria with important jobs to do bringing nutrients, minerals, oxygen, and water to the roots of plants and trees. And a world of necessary microscopic predation goes on there too (for this is always the price life pays for life). That is healthy soil, sustained by and supporting the intricate, exquisite interrelationships of this complex, rich system. Intact, undamaged, these systems are self-sustaining. However, many of our common practices damage the soil.

All plants sequester carbon, as does oil, but exposing bare soil to air allows the soil to lose carbon into the atmosphere. Soil should be either planted or mulched.

Heavy equipment regularly and repeatedly rolling over the ground compresses soil, reducing its ability to absorb and hold oxygen and water, and also kills microscopic organisms that plants and trees need for health. Try to keep the use of heavy equipment to a minimum.  

Breaking up the soil by plowing or spading also loses carbon from the soil, and perhaps more importantly, breaks up soil structure, disrupting mycorrhizal structures and microscopic animals, and severing root connections and root interrelationships necessary for plant health.

Last — chemical fertilizers kill beneficial organisms, thus destroying soil health, and making plants dependent on repeat applications. Build soil health through composting and returning organic material to the garden.             

by Diana Sette

PERMACULTURE IS CONSTANTLY WORKING to model systems after designs in nature, and the practice of hugelkultur is a prime example. Before we get into talking about hugelkultur, I invite you to imagine the forest floor of an old growth forest. Layers of humus, maybe little slopes from tree roots, or moss-covered, decomposing fallen logs, cover the landscape. Herbaceous plants unfurl in the crevices and atop mounds. Self-mulched surfaces produce rich, organic matter from which mushrooms and shrubs spring. Decaying leaves are food for worms, insects, and other arthropods. There is no need for a hose to water, and if it down-pours there, it is unlikely to flood, as the carbon-rich soils have such an extensive water holding capacity. In addition to that, no human needs to fertilize the trees, or the ferns, or the herbs and shrubs producing beautiful berries and nutrient-dense greens. No, this system is self-sustaining and regenerative.

From this springs the inspiration for hugelkultur.   Hugelkultur is a raised bed with an intentionally layered structure with large wooden logs as the base layer. Layers atop the thick fallen-tree-like-foundation include smaller logs, branches, twigs, manure or other high nitrogen organic waste, local soil with indigenous microbes, straw, compost, wood chips, grass clippings, and even food scraps. The idea is essentially to recreate the conditions of a forest floor by building a raised bed with a compost pile that balances the carbon (“browns” like wood and straw) with the nitrogen (“greens” like food scraps, manure, or grass clippings) all put into the raised bed.

Sepp Holzer, a permaculturist from Austria, popularized the hugelkultur practice as a way to build a self-fertilizing garden with minimal irrigation and increased growing space and microclimates. Many people across the planet are beginning to implement this practice in their garden-farms. Why? For lots of good reasons!

First, once you start working with trees and perennials, any gardener can tell you that it’s not hard to accumulate a large pile of cuttings from pruning, or from rotten wood. Therefore, hugelkultur is a practice that supports putting those waste products to good use by recycling their nutrients.

Second, hugelkultur is a great way to build soil. As mentioned above, the layering process,  similar to “lasagna gardening” but with wood and logs included, is like building an instant compost pile in your raised bed. Also, if you’re gardening in an area with compact clay soils or water-logged areas, hugelkultur beds can be the solution to building soil through raised beds.

Third, to reiterate the point above, hugelkultur beds are self-fertilizing because they are built to be like slow-release compost piles that feed the microbial life in the soil, giving access to nutrients and minerals in the earth.

Fourth, hugelkultur beds require minimal irrigation. Woody material has a great capacity to store water—by imitating the forest floor and building a raised bed with dead woody material as the base, you are creating a growing bed that can hold water in its structure. The wood retains moisture and feeds it slowly to plants as needed.

Fifth, the practice of hugelkultur supports the conservation of water and also increases drought-tolerance.

Sixth, like any raised bed, the mound structure of hugelkultur provides a height advantage that is more resilient to floods. In addition to simple mounding, the log layers will work to absorb excess water and spread it upward, while the height will keep many plants growing at a higher level high and dry. 

Finally, hugelkultur expands the “edge” and microclimates available to grow in. Think of the ever-popular herb spiral that capitalizes on the variation of height and growing conditions in a contained spiral pattern. The plants at the top enjoy slightly warmer and dryer soils, while the plants toward the base of the spiral enjoy damper and cooler soils. The same scenario plays out for the hugelkultur bed that is more angled.

While many hugelkultur beds are built to be a more rounded, half-circle type shape, others can be taller or triangular to better leverage the potential for diverse growing conditions or microclimates. The extra steepness of the tall triangular shape also allows for the natural settling of decomposition. Some hugelkultur builders have utilized wooden pallets as a base for the sides of the hugelkultur bed to help support the structure of the steepness, while also providing a little more foundation for planting at various heights. People who build hugelkultur beds more tall and steeply also report the benefit of an easier harvest due to less bending and reaching. Clearly, the reasons to build a hugelkultur bed are extensive!

How to build a hugelkultur bed

Materials needed:

• large logs or tree trunks (best if soaked overnight or for a few hours beforehand). The type of wood you use for the beds is important. Softwoods like apple, alder, poplar, dry willow, and birch are generally best—similar choices as you might make for growing mushrooms. Avoid eucalyptus, cedar, or cypress because of their acidity and/or anti-fungal, anti-microbial properties. 

• water • medium-sized trunks & branches

• shovel

• spade

• wheelbarrow

• ground stakes, rope, or spray paint (optional, but helpful)

• small branches (not necessary, but useful)

• recently pruned green material

• organic waste/manure/food scrapes

• local soil

• compost

• straw

• wood chips (optional)

Step 1: Decide on the location of the bed.

Step 2: Use the ground stakes/rope/ spray paint to outline the bed. This step is especially useful, and highly recommended when working with a larger group, so that everyone understands and can easily visualize the plan.

Step 3: Use spades and shovels to edge the outline, and then dig a 3-4” trench. Important: save the soil for later.

Step 4: Place the large logs as the bottom layer of the trench. This will help to improve drainage and retain humidity of the bed soil. It is preferable that the logs are pre-soaked prior to using, as this will significantly help the soil and microbes get off to a good start in maintaining moisture for the bed. If logs are not pre-soaked, another option is to run the hose during the process of layering the bed as to wet all materials.

Step 5: Place smaller tree trunks and branches on top of the bigger ones. 

Step 6: Place organic waste, or recently pruned green material on top of that. This nitrogen layers will balance the slow-to-break-down high-carbon layers of wood.

Step 7: Place the soil from Step 3 on top of the pile. This will seed indigenous microbes into the bed.

Step 8: Cover with compost to give soil health a jumpstart. 

Step 9: Top off with either straw or wood chips, and plant within the top layer of the bed. Plants that need less water should be planted towards the top of the mound, and those that need a larger amount of water should be planted near the bottom.

Many hugelkultur gardeners recommend waiting a full moon cycle before planting the bed to allow for settling and integration of the layers. The devil’s in the details… A few notes to consider when building a hugelkultur bed: Have all materials prepared and ready on-site before starting. Building a hugelkultur bed can be hard work with the lugging of large logs and piles of soil and wood chips. It’s always a good idea to get a group together to help. Maybe offer it as a free skill-share event about hugelkultur beds, or be ready to offer the nutrient-dense food that will be growing soon. However you do it—remember, many hands make light work! Save annual prunings for hugelkultur layering materials. If you want an added bonus of mycelium, when soaking wood materials in water, you can use mycelium powders mixed into the water as an inoculant to jumpstart the soil food web for the new raised bed. For the top of the hugelkultur mound, select plants that need less water like garlic, and for the bottom, chose plants that enjoy more water like beans. 

If one does want to use irrigation for the hugelkultur bed (e.g., in drylands or during extreme drought), there are a couple options to consider. One option is to shape the hugelkultur bed in a more tiered fashion, allowing for lines of drip irrigation to be laid down and staked along the top ridge, then along two tiered levels on the sides of the bed, and two more along each side at the base. Using drip irrigation is the most water-saving approach.

However, another option for irrigation that is perhaps more efficient in utilizing the benefits of how the moisture flows through the hugelkultur bed, is implementing irrigation channels. This method of irrigation is particularly useful if your growing area is prone to flooding. Have fun and happy hugelkultur!

∆ Diana Sette is a passionate community cultivator, gardener, writer, facilitator, and mother. She is a Certified Permaculture Teacher and Designer, and is the Co-Founder of Possibilitarian Garden (Facebook: Possibilitarian Garden) and Possibilitarian Regenerative Community Homestead aka PORCH (www. buckeyeporch.org) in Cleveland, OH. Diana serves on the board of The Hummingbird Project (hummingbirdproject.org), and Green Triangle (greentriangle.org). She is a frequent contributor to Gardenopolis Cleveland. More on Diana at dianasette.wordpress.com.

by Tom Gibson

August is pollinator party time in my backyard.  Not just the steady savoring of mint by the great golden digger wasp.

Not just the business-like mining of comfrey pollen by bumblebees.

And not just careful, trip-weary harvesting of hardy ageratum pollen by monarchs on their way south.

No, the real disco atmosphere—one imagines a sparkling ball and an unlimited supply of rave—occurs just above my patch of boneset (Eupatorium Perfoliatum)*. Wasps (especially), bees and other insects lurch onto boneset’s little white flowerettes, hold their position for a split second, then burst off to the next plant.  They’re just so excited. And the variety! Big wasps, little wasps, bees, moths, butterflies, little flying things I don’t have a name for. Rarely do any of the feeders pay attention to their companions (though I have seen smaller, more aggressive mason wasps deliberately knock more cumbersome digger wasps off a flower).  A true feeding frenzy.

The only calm insect I observe around boneset is the occasional dragon fly, a non-pollen consumer and pure predator. It waits motionless for minutes on a garden stake and then swoops through the mayhem to gather a small insect meal.

I like insect-on-insect predation in my garden, and boneset is a great way to encourage it. In all the scientific journal articles I’ve read on the subject, boneset is at the top of the list of for attracting predators and parasitoids. (The latter lay eggs in host insects who eventually provide a greet-the-world, first meal for the hatched larvae.) The more predatory wasps and flies, the fewer insects like Japanese beetles that will eat my plants.

Boneset produces blossoms consisting of dozens of small white flowerettes (like Queen Anne’s lace, carrots, etc.) that make a good fit for wasp mouth parts. But their pollen must contain some special chemicals, too, that I haven’t seen described in any journal. Whatever they are, they drive wasps, bees and flies nuts.

Here are a few of the insects that stopped long enough for an iPhone close-up.  (I never worry about getting stung; the insects are just too intent on locating boneset pollen.)

Here’s a paper wasp:

…and a carpenter bee:

A soldier beetle and a black hornet.  The former eats aphids among other things and emits a poison that makes it inedible to potential predators…. like hornets. 

But what happens when a defenseless herbivore finds itself on the same flower as a hornet? The same as a zebra and a lion at the same watering hole.  Give the lion plenty of space.  I’ve seen an ailanthus web worm moth like the one in the upper right of this picture dive under a boneset bloom to escape from a wasp and hide there until danger passes. The little mason bee on the left, however, poses no such threat.

Here’s a syrphid fly, one of those parasitoid egg layers I mentioned above

And is this a wasp or thick-headed fly?  I think the latter; the two circles on its abdomen are a possible clue. Many flies have evolved to look like more dangerous wasps.  The thick-headed fly parasitizes bumblebees.

*Boneset gets its odd name from its use in (very) primitive folk medicine. Because boneset leaves join right through the stem (see picture below), folk healers would wrap broken bones in boneset poultices and give their patients boneset tea—all in the hopes for similar joining.

by Elsa Johnson

Origami – in a snit of pique – swept

the table clean of the red and clear

yellow she had been working on –

nothing was right – and they drifted

down to the white below.

Or…   Work complete

she lay aside the scissors

and cleared the table off.

The leavings drifted

to the white below.

Or…   Cupboard so full

that she must edit – only

the best remain.  The rest

drift    to white below.

Perhaps   benevolent

she chose to share…

and they drifted down

to the white below.

Or – mistress of her craft – Origami

gold with joy   clothed in her best

white dress   fills her arms with

glowing red and yellow    spinning

throws them…     Slowly swirling

they drift down

to the white

below.     

by Elsa Johnson

Most of us were brought up to think good gardening means a yard that is all cleaned up and neat-as-a-pin. To this end we blow all the leaves out of our gardens and remove every bit of organic debris – the leaves, the floppy stalks, the gone-to-seed-heads of various grasses and flowers.  We take all of this organic material and get rid of it, or hire someone to get rid of it. As if the aural assault of leaf blowers all summer has not been enough, in fall it ratchets up even more. How do we stand it?

The answer is : we don’t have to. We should be keeping all that good but messy stuff on site. To pay someone to cart it away is like giving away gold (on several levels).  What??? ! …You say.

Yes — a messy garden is a good garden for lots of reasons.  You don’t see mother-nature out there with a leaf blower (well, yes, there’s the wind). The leaves fall, the other vegetative debris topples onto them, and over time this material decays, adding stored nutrients and organic bio-mass back to the earth. This is how you grow soil that doesn’t need annual applications of manufactured chemical ferilizers to help plants to grow.

Part one is: it helps to have an area where you can stockpile vegetative debris, preferably somewhere out of sight.  Ideally this is a compost pile where you put your other vegetative organic wastes.  Part two is you can bed down some of your plants for the winter under a blanket of leaves.  If you can shred the leaves, that’s even better; they will break down faster. Some lawn mowers can do this. Leaf mulch under shrubs can be left on all year-round.

And if you leave some seed heads on at least some intact perennials, the beneficial birds and insects will thank you (dropping a tiny note through the mail slot) … the birds for leaving a food source, and the beneficial insects for leaving a place to lay eggs and overwinter. But be careful to choose native plants for this purpose and avoid non-native or invasive plants.

If you must tidy up the garden, make it a part of the garden where neatness really matters to you (what will people say?!).  Be strong. Walk away.

Cleveland Metroparks plans to continue hosting this event to help spread the word about native plant gardening.

A Letter from One of our Readers

Dear Nocturnal Marauders,

We must talk regarding your abuse of my hospitality during the last six weeks in which you quickly discovered there was no longer an elderly dog in residence.

I really don’t mind your taking a refreshing dip in my lovely backyard water garden but I truly hoped when you no longer found tasty suet treats hanging on the tree, you might take your nightly splash parties elsewhere.

Silly me.  I so hoped we could live in harmony.  But alas, you take advantage of my hospitality in the wee hours of the morning by breaking my pickerel rush, upending the water lilies, disconnecting the fountain and relocating the light.  This is getting very old!

Sadly for me at this time, you seem to have the upper hand.  Since you do not hibernate, my fondest wish is you find this location inhospitable during the cold winter months and relocate to bigger and better digs…far, far away.

Your Worn Out Hostess,

Rosemary Boschi