It Ain’t Over (Don’t start Persephone’s Lament, just yet)

November 9, 2015PASSION, PERTINENT, PRACTICEAnn McCulloh

by Ann McCulloh

This ecstatically blue and gold November day, with temperatures in the 70s and honeybees buzzing happily in the purple aster blossoms, gives ample support to my passionate assertion: “The season’s not over, everybody!”

I resist with every fibre of my being the common idea that gardening in Cleveland begins on Memorial Day and whimpers to a close around Labor Day. End the calendar’s tyranny! Don’t go inside before the snow flies! Everywhere you look there’s evidence of abiding life. It’s in the late blooming asters, monkshood and mistflower. Witness the fresh blossoms of borage, calendula, allysum and roses that spring forth with new vigor now the nights are cooler and the rains more abundant.

My zucchini and summer squash are putting out new fruits.

Fresh rosettes of tasty foliage emerge at the base of all my herbs: parsley, mint, oregano and lemon balm – just in time for me to cut and dry for the onset of winter. One of my favorite salad greens, mache (aka corn salad, and Rapunzel salad) scattered its seeds in May, to lie dormant all summer. Look at it popping up through the straw everywhere!

This is a tender little rosette like miniature Boston lettuce, which can be harvested from now through March from under a covering of straw and snow. Kale, collards, chard and tatsoi are other cold-hardy greens that won’t quit for just a few frosts.

All this and more tell me there’s always plenty going on both above and below ground (where the growing never really stops.) I may retreat indoors for a month or two. But come January there’s “winter sowing” of hardy perennials and cold-loving annuals (more on that in a future post), branches to cut and force indoors, and the flowers of witchhazel, Lenten rose and snowdrops to call me back outside.

–Permaculture Recipe– Red Currant Pie

November 6, 2015GENERAL INTEREST, PERMACULTURETom Gibson

by Tom Gibson

Currants–red, black, pink, etc.–are something of a mystery to Americans. Faced with a bush brimming with ripe berries, even Americans with broader-than-average taste palettes will look, admire….and then walk right by. That was my experience this last summer, at least, in a community garden with eight or so free-to-member bushes. I’d pick several pounds of bright red berries, wait an interval of several days for others to take their turn, and the bushes would remain almost as full as before. Why the lack of interest?

For the perennial/permaculture gardener that is no idle question. For currants happen to be easy to grow, fruit prolifically in both shade and sun, and are virtually immune to deer pressure. And they’re a staple of European cuisine–from the UK through to Russia. So what’s the problem?

First, they’re sour. You can’t just pick and eat. So that means, second, that they require processing. Europeans juice them and serve with breakfast. If that’s too bracing, one could mix them into smoothies with blander fruit like bananas or pawpaws. My wife and I used the latter, and the results are tasty.

Third, Americans don’t have a tradition of cooking with them, so we don’t have much choice of currant recipes for more complicated cooking.

Through the miracle of the Internet, however, those recipes are now at our fingertips. But–and this is the fourth barrier–those recipes are often in a foreign language. That creates a real mental barrier, to be sure, but one that can be easily surmounted with a fool-proof search strategy and a simple right click.

Here’s a take-home-exercise–the first, I believe, in Gardenopolis Cleveland history. First, pick an ingredient, in this case “red currants” and the word “recipe” and then “translation” and the European language of your choice. Second, inspect the foreign language recipes and their pictures. Click on one you think might be interesting and then right click for an instant translation into English.

Here’s an example. Having followed step one for German, we get “Rote Johannisbeeren” and “Rezept”. After inspecting our many choices, we click on the following link: http://www.chefkoch.de/rezepte/1410421245910330/Rote-Gruetze.html. Now right click and then click on “Translate into English.” Voila! A delicious, yet simple, way to serve both red and black currants.

Finally, here’s link to a recipe (in English!) for red currant pie that we have made several times and that has proven a big hit with company. http://allrecipes.com/recipe/18480/red-currant-pie/. The lemon in the crust plays nicely off the red currants in the filling. My wife advises that, if you have too much difficulty rolling out the sticky dough, just add a little more flour and “pat” (rather than “roll”) the dough into place. The only other change to the recipe my wife makes is to drizzle the top with melted semi-sweet chocolate. Without that, the resulting pink filling looks too much to us like Pepto Bismol.

Poem: The Buck

November 4, 2015POETRYElsa Johnson

by Elsa Johnson

The buck

Came trotting up my sidewalk

fast

nose to the ground

nostrils wuffling

swerved

just before the porch steps

– at the top of which

I was standing –

glanced up

and back down

fast

as if to say:

‘Human

at this moment

you are not remotely

important to my life’

and hustled on

too obsessed

to be flag-ish

One track mind

ten point sex

drive

The nose knows

what counts

Our Book Review Corner: “The Indestructible Houseplant,” by Tovah Martin

November 3, 2015BEAUTY, PASSION, PRACTICECatherine Feldman

by Catherine Feldman

I just read Tovah Martin’s “The Indestructible Houseplant” and I am happy to announce that I have discovered a new outlet for my Plant Gluttony. She endorses full-green-immersion-indoors, and that sounds like a good goal to me!

I have always kept my houseplants to a minimum, because I like to leave my plants to do their thing without too much fussing on my part (Garden Sloth Method.) Most of my experiments with houseplants have not fared well due to that approach. Now, I have discovered (and I hope, you will, too) a host of houseplants that can take a fair amount of neglect, yet provide much pleasure to the eye and soul. Winter is taking on a whole new cast! She encourages us and shows us how to have gardens, forests even, in the house. Inside could reflect the outside. Think of the beauty, clean air, and sense of relaxation! I can’t wait. Recommended.

Extra tip: Watch how she combines plants with containers. That’s the magic.

Fast Food Permaculture?

November 2, 2015PERMACULTURETom Gibson

by Tom Gibson

A very busy, single career woman friend of mine is planning her permaculture garden. What, she asked me, could she plant that would be really easy to harvest and eat?

She’s a yogurt-for-breakfast kind of person, so my first thought was berries. Raspberries are easy to harvest and freeze, and only require a bit of care in the early fall disposing of spent canes and trimming new ones to encourage multiple fruiting stems.

Red and black currants are others that require even less work and could be sweetened with honey to eat with that yogurt.

She also eats a lot of greens. So I suggested Turkish rocket, a perennial that also requires minimal care. In early June, its buds form broccolis that can be harvested multiple times, and its leaves are also good in stir fries.

A second would be lovage. (She reads this blog and liked the possibility of lovage in pasta. See link: http://www.gardenopoliscleveland.org/2015/10/recipe-corner-lovage-pasta/).

Some easy-to-grow annuals would include swiss chard and kale.

A quasi-ground cover for her sunny location would be yarrow, whose young feathery leaves are good in salads and whose flowers can, depending on the cultivar, bloom a variety of colors.

My co-editor Ann McCulloh suggests June-bearing strawberries, as well as peppermint, spearmint, lemon balm, violets (flowers and leaves),

and daylilies. The buds of the latter are excellent in stir fries.

Then there are the perennial stand-bys, asparagus and rhubarb. Once planted, they grow for 20+ years.

Walking onions are also a good one-to-one substitute for scallions, with the advantage that they come up first thing in the spring, even as the snow is melting, and are available to eat through November. In August, they form seed bulbs at their tops, lean over and plant themselves–thus the name “walking” onion. Once again, little or no care required and constant warm weather availability.

Finally, no permaculture garden would be complete without at least one “dynamic accumulator” (or fertilizer plant) and one nitrogen fixer. For the former, I’d pick sterile Russian comfrey, the one non-edible in this group. It simply does too good a job of building soil to ignore–and is attractive.

For the latter, I’d pick sea buckthorn, whose berries make a great, high-antioxidant juice. The plant is dioecious, which means that you must separately plant both one male and up to seven females to get fruit.

How’s that, my friend? This would be a combination of fruits and vegetables that practically serve themselves!

On the Day of the Dead

October 31, 2015POETRYElsa Johnson

by Elsa Johnson

My mother will unpack herself from her box of

ashes move to a comfortable chair look at me

critically and say : You’re wearing that? And maybe

this time I will have the will to not run and change

my clothes My father will reassemble himself from

the soil under the lemon tree in Arizona come

north for the day sit at the table drooped scowling

over his cigarette like a crow or Ichibod Crane

while my brother who brought him mutters humph

humph at all he disapproves of on principle

which is everything — my house my head my heart

Toward the end my dead lover will come line them up

and dance them all back to dust… while I smile and wave

Crying : Goodbye! Goodbye again… Same time next year?

–How Much to Mulch?– by Lois Rose

October 30, 2015GENERAL INTEREST, PRACTICELois Rose

by Lois Rose

I recently attended a talk by Linda Walker-Scott, an Associate Professor and Extension Horticulturist at Washington State University (see her blog theinformedgardener.com) Her talk about mulch and sustainable landscape provides the backbone for my comments.

Organic mulches are by far my own choice. I use many kinds of mulches, including straw (left to sprout its seeds for a few months before using),

pine fines,

compost from my husband’s heap,

bark chips, wood chips(aged, free from the city),

(By the way, let wood chips age before using them if you are concerned about disease. Add compost underneath the chips if you are concerned about nutrient deficiencies. Dr. Walker-Scott pointed out that well aged wood chips do not drain soil of nitrogen. Myth exploded.)

compost and manure,

and closely grouped living plant material.

Why Mulch? Beside providing nutrients to the soil, organic mulches are helpful to beneficial microbes, enhance biodiversity of “macrofauna”, help trees and shrubs get established, and improve soil structure, lessening compaction and allowing soil aggregates to form. (Tilling and digging can destroy the colonies of microbes, mycorrhizae, other important soil components.)

When to mulch: before annual weeds become established—fall or spring. Remove perennial weeds in early spring (easiest to pull or dig), then apply mulch. Better than pulling or digging is mowing or cutting to the ground. Remove everything to a brown bag away from your garden

Deep mulch decreases weed germination by limiting the amount of light that reaches seeds. Weed seeds can remain for years in the soil until—voila—exposure to light and moisture encourages them to get growing. Coarse mulch can help retain and increase the amount of water getting to the soil beneath. Weeds and plants that grow through the mulch are easier to pull. Meanwhile the mulch is preventing erosion.

Thick layers of mulch, 8-12 inches, are excellent for restoration sites and control of invasive weeds like ivy. She recommends heavy layers (4 to 6 inches) around ornamentals for a low-maintenance landscape. I was taught that no more than 4 inches of mulch should be applied to the soil around shrubs and trees. This is definitely a different take on depth of mulching.

Deeper mulch, and courser mulch, gives the most benefit and the fewest drawbacks.

Mulching No-No’s: Keeping mulch away from trunks of trees and shrubs is necessary to prevent rodents, insects and diseases from being given a free ride. Never pile mulch on perennials, only around them. “Volcano” mulching, where the ignorant landscaper piles mulch up against the trunks of trees, making it look like a volcano, is definitely a no-no. The question is: when you see this on the street—do you stop your car, go over to them and say, “what the hell are you doing?” Or, do you give them a sheet printed with the proper way to mulch. Or do you stop door to door to let your neighbors know that they are damaging their trees and shrubs by doing this?

I have been sorely tempted. Considering that you are investing in the hopefully long life of your tree, why treat the trunk this way?

Notching the Wheel

October 28, 2015POETRYElsa Johnson

by Elsa Johnson

There goes another notch on the wheel : goldfinch

changing his summer garb to drab sparrow guise –

the way the missus goes all year — only a hint

of yellow leaking through as he barbers sunflowers

And now comes actea round again she of many

names — cohosh bugbane cimicifuga : Fairy

candles that open their small white asterisks

and cast out their honey-scent to draw in late

bumbling bees The trees are breaking their too-

green-too-chemical bonds Origami is at

her drawing board in the attic lost in dreams of

color: crimson vermillion and coral lake In

the wings dragon quietly fans his icy breath

listening for the next notch of the wheel

Garden Sloth: Fall Clean-Up…Or Not

October 28, 2015UncategorizedElsa Johnson

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.

A Gardener Reviews “The Martian”

October 26, 2015GENERAL INTEREST, PERTINENTCatherine Feldman

by Catherine Feldman

“The Martian,” in theaters now, revels throughout in the abilities of the New Man: the kind of person who uses numbers and computers to manage daily tasks as well as to innovate. Almost all of the diverse roster of characters are supremely capable in this way and they are fun to watch in action. But only our hero, Mark Watney (Matt Damon,) stranded alone on Mars, has the full range of skills necessary for survival.

Like Adam, Mark is the First Man on a planet, yet he has thousands of years of human development and knowledge at his fingertips. In addition to his technological abilities, he is a botanist with the inspiration and ability to increase his food supply by growing a garden. He confidently takes the risk of planting his ration of potatoes! He knows that he needs water and fertile soil, so he uses his background in mechanics and chemistry to create a water-making machine and in ecology to inoculate the soil of Mars with bacteria from recycled human waste. He also has character traits that enable him to survive the loneliness: he is humorous, brave and persevering. Using these strengths to meet these challenges, Mark becomes the Future Man, a hero who grows a version of Eden out of next to nothing. This delights us.

Mark faces and overcomes challenges on Mars that may have some similarity to the consequences of climate change on Earth: devastating storms, barren soil, extreme temperatures, lack of water. What appear to us heroic abilities now may become the basic survival skills of the future. A big scary challenge!

Fortunately, we would not be alone. There is another component to Mark’s survival that is at the core of this movie: community and friendship. The world and his teammates come together to bring him back to Earth. Will we be able to work together with bravery, ingenuity, and skills to survive the coming changes? And even to grow a new Eden here at home?

GARDENOPOLIS Cleveland

Greening a City — news from the trenches

It Ain’t Over (Don’t start Persephone’s Lament, just yet)

–Permaculture Recipe– Red Currant Pie

Poem: The Buck

Our Book Review Corner: “The Indestructible Houseplant,” by Tovah Martin

Fast Food Permaculture?

On the Day of the Dead

–How Much to Mulch?– by Lois Rose

Notching the Wheel

Garden Sloth: Fall Clean-Up…Or Not

A Gardener Reviews “The Martian”