Leonard Moorehead, The Urban Gardener: Spring Busts Out!

Saturday, April 25, 2015

Leonard Moorehead, GoLocalWorcester Gardening Expert

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.

-William Wordsworth

No one is immune. Busy streets, next week’s bills, final exams, we move onward. Thermostats are lower, fresh air floods through open windows. Colors change, brighter shades abandon black, our migration into spring is irresistible. Our parks and green lawns no longer hint, one song after another follows cardinals, red-winged blackbirds, the haunting tones of mourning doves, vigilant robins prowl upright and alert. Now is the season for the most sophisticated urbanite to shed their heavy coats, eat lunch outside and dream, let’s plant a garden.

You are not alone. It may be a flower pot or a vacant lot. All of us have green thumbs in spring. Don’t resist. No space? No time? Don’t know how? Well, we have cures for these obstacles; joyous spring tides float every boat. Our information age proposes; it is spring that disposes, doubts fade as urban gardeners surpass their country cousins and suburban friends. Many of us forget to wear gloves and fingers accustomed to keyboards and anti-septic hand lotions long to dig, turn soil, grip hand tools. Independence and loneliness are urban traits gardeners deny, our goal is to create, grow foods free from chemicals and genetic engineering. Join your local community garden.

Urban gardeners’ plot and plan new gardens. We see spring bulbs in bloom among parks and corners. Forsythia and apricots are in bloom, defiant yellow and lovely white petals cover these hardy survivors. Carefully cut a sprig or armload of forsythia, about pencil thick is right. Our Victorian ancestors considered the forsythia hopelessly exotic, like azaleas and rhododendrons. Now commonplace forsythias were new, brought to America aboard steamboats and clipper ships. Harvest forsythia with youngsters; beware of sharp blades and clippers. Examine the simple flowers. Notice the shrub’s shape, where it thrives in semi-shade and loves sunshine. Consider the season, the place, arching sprays of branches that lean outward and tip down. Gardeners learn their skills one plant at a time and all plants introduce useful common themes. Plunge the cut forsythias into a deep vase or re-purposed five gallon pail found like mine besides a full dumpster.

Keep the water fresh with an aspirin and change every couple days. Request younger eyes to watch the bump like root and leaf nodules on the bark and report any changes. Keep cut ends moist and darkened by the vase; roots will start on the nodes. The bright although scent free blooms are soon replaced by green leaves. Treat the wet bark with rootone, a rooting hormone essential to all garden kits and plant in pots. Keep moist. Presto! A new shrub will thrive. Too tame for you? Venture into new frontiers and use this most basic of propagation techniques on shrubs and vines.

Do not rest here. Surely the desire for spring greens is deep. By now it’s likely your plot is no longer soaked from melted snows and frozen rains. Mix into soil as much organic material as possible. Search for varieties with deep colors, a sure sign of complex vitamins, minerals, and the essential trace elements we need for health. Purple and red lettuces, cauliflowers, chard, beets, peas and broccoli are prime candidates for the cool early spring garden. Plant now for harvest in the first days of warm weather. The same space will support several successive crops with a modicum of timeliness. Just now I’m soaking a packet of sugar snap peas in a bowl of water.

Seeds germinate quicker when soaked overnight in cold water. Those with acorn like hard shells will soften when soaked, a natural process in the soil, like so much else in gardening, we guide and assist. Snip with nail clippers the most obvious end of seeds; this will free the first root’s germinal tip to enter the seedbed full of micro-organisms and soil borne nutrients. Plant seeds according to the packet directions. Mix very fine seeds with vermiculite or seed to avoid errant breezes from scattering them off the kitchen table or into other seed beds. Typically seeds are planted in straight rows. There is some merit in this method, for example in an un-mulched bed, weeds and volunteers will sprout helter-skelter. It takes time and experience to identify sprouts and young plants, their formation into regimental lines helps identify carrots from cucumbers. However, there is no reason not to form patterns with your seedlings, such as cross hatches or Greek keys. Like-wise, consider colorful foliage and alternate yellow, red or white Swiss chard varieties in the same bed for visual interest.

Good organic practices often begin and end with mulch. Permanent mulch is desirable for most urban soils. Construction, fires, pavements, lead paint or other pollutants may have wiped out the complex biological systems that give meaning to soil as more than very small stones. Common soil tests are for ph, whether a soil is acid or alkaline. Generally speaking, in North America and certainly according to each region, west of the Mississippi is prone to alkaline soils and eastwards the soils are acidic. The ph level affects the availability of nutrients and many plants are adapted to conform to fairly narrow ranges in ph. In cities let’s be more sophisticated.

Community gardens are certainly tested for much more than ph. Of concern are heavy metals once universal in paint and petroleum lubricants. Many verdant lots between old houses were once houses that have burned or been demolished, often long ago. No community gardens are planted on so called brown fields until soil remediation, usually trucking away pollutant laden soil to landfills and protected from leaching into aquafers and running water. We have a long way to go on this although much has been done to address the universal concerns of postindustrial cities. Sure, there are sites that practically glow in the dark. However, intrepid gardeners have faced this dilemma and found cures.

Raised beds are within sight on paved grounds. Former asphalt paved school yards are now enclosed with raised beds filled with compost free of heavy metals, such as lead and mercury. Fresh gravel and sand fill covered lots are good foundations for new planting beds. Urban centers are gold mines of organic materials; indeed our cities are magnets that draw nutrition laden food stuffs from the countryside. Much is available. My coffee pot daily contributes a few ounces of coffee grounds to the rose bushes just outside the front door. Years of small doses become dense thickets of cheerful roses inches from cement sidewalks. Virtually every coffee shop in America donates their coffee grounds to anyone willing to pick up and transport to the nearest garden. Maybe that will be yours.

Gardeners have favorite tips. Burlap bags are one of my favored re-purposed items. Not nearly as ubiquitous as in the past but still around, these distinctly fragrant bags always have interesting backgrounds, “Sustainable Coffee” or “Product of Honduras” are on some of mine. Just about the right size for almost anything, they are perfect to kneel upon when close to the ground. Forget about dirty or worn through knees. Or just leave them in place for a temporary and friendly path in the growing areas of larger gardens. They function as mulch and keep soil away from shoes and clothes. Easy to move or replace, they will break down into humus in a season. If I have enough at hand, I cover compost piles with them to keep organic materials moist and restrain run off. On a subtle level, burlap is a pleasing honey brown that is sympathetic to most eyes.

We grow as we garden. Spring calls to us in many ways and most of all to be among our fellow beings. Life comes in many forms as any city dweller acknowledges with world weary eyes. However, pause, breath deep, be still. Look around and sure enough, there are dancing daffodils and then our hearts with pleasure fills.

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.