Leonard Moorehead, The Urban Gardener: All For Love

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Saturday, February 14, 2015

Leonard Moorehead, GoLocalWorcester Gardening Expert

It happens all the time. The heart is the seat of the urban gardener’s soul. Restless, the lonely hunter seeks more, more to give, to share, to embrace. Swirling snow storms, great frozen snow drifts, lone pots sport sugary white caps. Frost heaves are common, neither field nor deck is immune. Yearning fills our heart, gardeners cultivate visions, visions of bright green salad greens, endearing blooms, fragrance, and taste. We eat, perhaps our companion is an African violet on the window sill or a brace of purple cyclamen. Never alone, our heart beats, one after another. Love has many expressions. A rose is a rose is a rose. Whatever its name, we are drawn to one another. Happiness is around us, for each there is one, within and without, we dream, act, and seek. It happens all the time.

Color punctuates form

Color punctuates form, fragrance enrolls other senses, our gardens are love’s metaphor. Never known to utter an unkind word, betrayal foreign, love’s care is as basic to growth as sun and water. Ardor moves us forward, hopeful, nuance offers more details, a leaf, a bud, the tender emergence of something new. We know it’s good, there are risks, difficult choices, eternal moments of joy never lost to time. Every bloom is a token. Gardener’s marvel at life’s mystery, the flowers are preludes to seeds, each seed a combination of fertility made manifest in the future tense.

Unto everything there is a season

Unto everything there is a season. Love prevails. Love trumps hardship. Fear not the snowy. Beneath the frigid air, forgotten containers cracked by swollen frost, windows and doors secured, urban gardeners thrive. Each of us has a pile or more of brilliant seed catalogs. Treat yourself to love’s minor pleasures, the page by page description of growth. Luck is love’s cousin. Stumble across new varieties, greet old friends somehow overlooked and eager to meet again. Urban gardeners have never had it so good, passion knows no restrictions. Horticulture recognizes dense city populations, apartments, decks, community garden plots offer challenge and opportunity. Hard to get, love finds a way.

Container gardening

Container gardening has legions of fans. Enjoy the myriad forms of containers. Many are works of art in sturdy pottery. Do it yourself types punch holes in the bottoms of repurposed five gallon buckets scavenged from dumpsters, repainted in pleasing colors and complete with a helpful vail for moving and turning. Seed developers help us with plants developed for small spaces and maximum yield. Dwarf fruit trees, are grafted with spectra of apples. Dwarf peach trees have affordable apricots, plums, and nectarines grafted to one trunk. Lovely to see, dwarf fruit trees bloom in fragrant white and every shade of pink. A water color paint brush replaces pollinating bees as mindful gardeners dust pollen from bloom to bloom. Abundant fruits are not empty promises. You too will experience true love as bloom transitions into small immature fruits. No obsession is more reasonable than to coddle your container fruit trees. In other ages, entire orchards of oranges and lemons were moved in and out of shelter to the garden. Urban gardeners have luck with fragrant gardenias, citrus, even the enchanting jasmine, grown in pots.

Containers are natural

Containers are natural for gardeners with balconies and decks. Window boxes have illustrious history, metal rings built into walls offer space to grow geraniums. Vertical garden schemes are gaining traction. Entire city building walls can be draped in tough fabrics complete with pockets to hold soil, turning the utilitarian into ever more productive niches for plants. Customize hanging pots for your needs. Put your signature on each as every garden is a reflection of the gardener. Do keep up with watering. For me, old watering cans kept brimful of water prevent wilt and dried plants. Do not let your love wither on the vine.

Ultimate expressions

Perhaps the ultimate expressions of container garden are grafted tomatoes and potatoes. Both are related species. Grafting is an ancient technique mastered through practice, natural and productive. Tomatoes are now offered grafted to potatoes. Up grows the tomato in a large pot, cherry tomatoes being ideal for container gardening and potatoes crowd the pot beneath. Love makes for some humorous combinations, promoters have overlooked the intrinsic fascination of tomato and potato grafts and call it: Ketsup ‘n Fries. Courtship is fun and comedy is as much an element of urban gardening as sunrise and sunset. Smile a little.

Love creates

Love creates more love. Always special, love thrives when fed. Fish emulsion is the time tested organic container fertilizer. Mix up half gallon batches in old plastic milk jugs. Condensed, fish emulsion exploits the by catch once carelessly thrown back into the sea after target species are frozen or packed in ice below decks. Hydroponic gardening, powerfully driven by marijuana cultivators, replete with grow lights, computer monitored lighting, heat and watering systems is no longer a horticultural sideline. African violet and orchid growers pioneered the basic systems, technology has entered the fray and advances in research have changed the vocabulary. It’s possible to buy complete systems customized for the home. Utilitarian stainless steel cabinets merge right along with common appliances like washers and dryers. Vigilant gardeners are hardly eliminated, soft wear monitors temperature, photoperiods and humidity.

Ever hopeful

Ever hopeful, space conscious urban gardeners are finding ever more nutritious plants. The Luther Burbanks of today are breeding container plants with higher concentrations of nutrition. Higher levels of flavonoids and antioxidents, are found in purple and green leaved vegetables. Science has established that organically grown foods typically contain 10%-90% more anti oxidents than those grown on so called factory farms.  Tasteful organically grown food is a winning argument for me, added nutritional punch is very persuasive.

Start collecting

Start collecting containers and materials for building them now. Lay in a bale of peat moss and a large bag of perlite for mixing up batches of your own potting soil. Compose lists of plants you enjoy eating and seeing or those linked by love to others.  Fortune favors the prepared gardener. Happily, like love, gardening has far too much depth for complete regulation. Love’s eternal quest is most expressive home grown. It happens all the time.

Leonard Moorehead is a life-long gardener. He practices organic-bio/dynamic gardening techniques in a side lot surrounded by city neighborhoods in Providence RI. His adventures in composting, wood chips, manure, seaweed, hay and enormous amounts of leaves are minor distractions to the joy of cultivating the soil with flowers, herbs, vegetables, berries, and dwarf fruit trees.

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