Leonard Moorehead, the Urban Gardener: June Smiles
Saturday, June 06, 2015
Most of us
Most of us ration time and space. Fortunately, pots and ever better selections of iron shepherd hooks permit growth where once emptiness defined space. Ever demanding devices ignore our need to nurture, cultivate, and enact beauty. Nature is the friend that carries us forward. Abandon incessant demands. Let’s explore the bounty inherent just outside and beyond pavement, walls, internal combustion. Planting is urgent enough and grooming has begun. Gardeners are versatile folk, just starting? You will discover resilience. Breath in the fragrant roses, the sweet honeysuckle. Mentholated sprigs of pepper, spear and chocolate mints exhale nourishing aroma. Strengthened, we bend and fold over dead headed tulips, daffodils and the smaller spring snowdrops, muscari and crocus. New growth is on its way.
Like ears close to the heart
Asparagus, like ears close to the heart, their spears pierce through thick mulches skywards. Their close green ranks are miracles of aspiration, they leap upwards daily to form green mists of petite triangular yellow blooms. Sun lovers all, the asparagus bed is one of your best long term plantings. Abundant harvests over 5-6 weeks nourish the body, their close ranks delight us. Observe closely, small fern like sprouts at their feet are ample proof the fertile blooms will form viable red seeds. Leave the plants alone, your work is done. In a couple years the perpetual rain of red seeds tucked into the mulch each autumn will replenish the store bought two year roots. Expect twenty years or more from original plantings, tuck in the red seeds and leave some for birds. A legacy forms and your efforts reach far into the future. Optimism is the gardener’s core.
Plant thickly
I plant thickly and expect fertile, organically rich soils to nourish successive plants. Thick permanent mulch is your friend. Simply pull aside the mulch, scratch the humus beneath and sow seeds. Wooden paint stirrers are my reminders; I write plant and date with magic marker on one side to prompt memory. As soon as the second flush of leaves sprout, bring back the old mulch and tuck around the new plants, remove crabgrass or thin surplus seedlings and toss aside onto the mulch top. Seeds are valuable. Slow down; kneel comfortably on a burlap bag laid over the mulch for clean jeans and knees. A trowel is handy for scouring the humus; an arm’s length customizes growth to your reach. Why not? Each garden is the gardener’s signature testimony their personal harmony with nature. Impulse drives urban gardeners to nurture impossible dreams manifest as reality. Seed rows are not so much conformity as easy identification. Observe and practice, each seed has identity and characteristics. Fine seeds, like mustard or lettuce are best mixed with sand and poured into half inch trenches drawn across openings in the pulled aside mulch. How often has a chance zephyr blown seeds out of the palm? A mixture of sand and grass seeds is a classic garden technique assured to widely distribute seed with plenty of room to grow. Rows allow the young or ignorant to associate names and intent with any stage of growth. Have fun with seeding, triangles, circles, squares are fine choices over the long straight line. Spirals, swirls, Greek keys are options. Exercise every muscle.
Consider Swiss chard
Consider Swiss chard, a leafy beet primarily known for its nutrition packed foliage. Happily, nutrition is not a dull affair, Chard is inexpensive and may be found in white, golden yellow and vibrant red stalks. The seeds for each color appear the same, keep the packets separate and devise a custom woven pattern that tightly utilizes space and soon creates a living tapestry. Forget the plain beet patch. Beets deserve a role in any garden. Plant them between perennials and among long season crops. Beets are delicious at any stage of growth. Too late in life I learned to taste the foliage, often mentioned in passing as eatable when focus is upon the tuberous root. The leaves are delicious! Fill in spaces temporarily open, for example among tomatoes. The tomatoes will grow upward and out over the summer; the beets will thrive at their feet and fill salad bowls and gardeners with nutritious food long before the tomatoes claim attention.
Urban gardeners
Urban gardeners often migrate to garden centers and buy started plants. Save your money. Select long season, hot weather plants such as peppers, tomatoes, eggplant, or delphinium, foxgloves, marigolds’, and petunias or parsley that need very early greenhouse conditions to buy. Transplants jumpstart a garden. Don’t hesitate however to plant seeds. A host of garden plants are simple and reliably grown from seed. Be patient, many erstwhile gardeners overlook marking plant spaces. Gardeners may be puzzled. Is this sprout is a crabgrass or parsley? Belief triumphs over facts. Take your time, mark the space and plant the seeds in shallow trenches, press down, cover with a thin layer of humus and press. I use my hands for all of this; season after season of perpetual mulch has many rewards. Not least is to create friable soil. Thick humus does not require much in the way of tillage. Doubtful? Keep adding organic materials to the soil, persevere, and believe. Fingers sense magic in the soil; we bridge existential gulfs as our fingers probe life filled soil. Do not fear. Savvy gardeners relish creating rich dark loam, the thin layer of humus that supports life. The nearby hose will wash off the soil; its nourishment endures much longer.
Seed
Seed chamomile, barilla, verbena, amaranth or Love Lies Bleeding, cleome and rejoice. Year after year, volunteers will appear and gardening becomes more a practice of thinning than planting. Tolerate ambiguity. Soon enough, the uncultivated margins and pathways will sport charming self-sown herbs, flowers and perhaps sunflowers to garnish the primary planting areas with desirable companion plants. Anise hyssop, jonny jump ups, and poppies prefer their freedom; they thrive when allowed to roam on their own. Bountiful gardens wear many guises; seed planters know the garden from soil level. Benefit from the view close to the soil. Arrest and add to mulches grasses, purslane, chickweed, lamb’s quarters and other common plants but allow the volunteers to thrive. There is magic among the odd bloom or thicket of sunflower sprouts that remind us of former seasons and the eternal nature of gardens. I thin out the sunflowers remove spindly or less vigorous sprouts, allow the more hearty to grow up. Sunflowers are classic volunteers, mine tower 12 feet or more each summer and attract hordes of gold finches, their golden yellow and black plumage blends seamlessly into the large seed heads.
No garden is static
No garden is static and few are confined to one period of the year. Gardening prevails year round. Release yourself from one planting in spring to return months later and harvest tomatoes. Rather, consider the many successive plants that thrive in sequence. A small space can be an abundant Mississippi of growth. Likewise, we no longer must separate flower, herb and vegetables into separate gardens. Such divisions ignore the diversity found in nature. Gardens mimic, they do not replace nature. Victorious gardeners guide and persuade, we do not force or compel. Grapes, kiwis, and honeysuckle vines are fine examples. Urban gardeners are ready to garden up wards; we envision vertical space as well as horizontal. Embrace many dimensions and discover a doubled world.
Arbors host grapes and roses
My arbors host grapes and roses; often they are referred to as the “grape” or the “rose” arbor. Wait! It’s not that simple. Along with the grapes are kiwis and heavenly scented honeysuckle. Anyone can lie beneath the arbor and enjoy the grapes, early, mid and late season, green table grapes or Concord grapes hang from the high arbor. Kiwis hesitates for a year or two and then leaps into action, clamoring over the arbor and reaching skyward, delighted to share upward mobility. Fragrant honeysuckle blooms at night and into the day, all absorb sunshine and provide a cool shady place to contemplate the garden. The eating is fine too, last season’s grapes emerge as jelly and walk under the arbor on toast with morning coffee. I guide the vines, tenderly handle the new growth and persuade the vines with taut jute twine. Long afterwards the twine has disappeared and the vines retain the form.
June is rightly named
June is rightly named after the Roman queen of heaven. As mother and source of birth and bounty, Juno embodies nature at her most romantic. Roses offer color, scent, and form. Vigorous turf is bright green, clovers attract hard working honeybees, life abounds. Song, dance, joy are Juno’s legacy. Go outside and enjoy the garden. Don’t have one? Run, don’t walk to the nearest community garden and claim that last space or two. A cornucopia is yours, vote with your feet and find truth among others, use your hands, breathe deeply, focus upon life emergent. Peace and tranquility are yours; it is there among the petunias and humble clover for a season, rooted in the heart, forever.
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