Leonard Moorehead, The Urban Gardener: Spring into Action

Saturday, April 09, 2016

Leonard Moorehead, GoLocalWorcester Gardening Expert

Courtesy of Leonard Moorehead

Robins prowl greening lawns, cardinals sing heart felt song, sparrow tribes colonize shrubbery, red wing black birds find wetlands and riverbanks for their own, swans court life-long mates, kestrels, red tailed hawks, even the eagles and ospreys circle above our waterways for migrating buckies and build ever larger nests. There are many ways to measure spring, from huge tides along coasts, wind patterns re-orienting to the south and south west, once stationary constellations, planets and stars move into new positions, there is no denial. Spring, the most heartfelt of seasons, the time when the old passes the torch to another generation is upon us.

Embrace the groundswell of change. Our calendars indicate official last frost dates are still six weeks away; culture ignores tell-tale local indications of the season. Pay attention among the thickly settled urban regions to local, more predictable sings of spring. Sidewalk gardens, community plots, vacant lots, and our park lands offer finely tuned spring markers. Most of our garden plants march to the same drummers as wild uncultivated plants. It is fun to link cultivation with the ancient cycles open to all inquiring minds. As if spring didn’t place enough demands upon students, families, and our myriad pursuits, respite and a more ponderous guide freely offers advice. Turf is a fine example. Each green patch of lawn grows every day temperatures rise above 45 degrees. Lots of spring greens match turf growth. Our garden spaces are not anomalies; rather they are concentrations of cultivars who respond as strongly as any common roadside plant to day length, rainfall, soil fertility, drainage, soil ph, and the ability to get along with companion plants. Match garden plantings with local growths.

Urban gardeners, especially those in community gardens that are re-claiming spaces long occupied by buildings or industry, are starting from scratch. Don’t despair. Raised beds, so easy on the back are magically transforming abandoned lots into cultivated areas. Many garden pioneers garden over paved or rubble strewn grounds. Once magnets for plastic bags, careless dumping of old furniture, and worse, the arrogant dismissal of precious space as wasteland; open lots are no longer unprotected. There is no doubt we are experiencing a cultural shift away from past practices. Spontaneous seed sowing bike rides spiral out from local gardens, guerilla seed sowings are re-introducing native plants from handfuls of seeds thrown along bike paths. Neighborhoods are finding common bonds as gardens establish common denominators where once race, class, income and national origin were the chief descriptions.

Legacy plantings maintain a firm grip on our spaces. No single feature is more common than the lawn, a gardening conceit of modern times. Gardening is hands on labor and no task is more arduous than keeping green turf thick and lush. Massive service industries remove lawn care from the home owner and trade images of green golf courses and sheep pastures in rural places for cash. A sophisticated chemical industry is needed to satisfy turf’s appetite for heavy feeding, machinery replaces the grazing animals that forced grass lands to adapt to constant trimming and low height. Perhaps you’re like me. Herbaceous borders grew larger, the grassy spaces smaller, less time spent behind a loud gas engine mower and more quiet time devoted to putting in flowers, herbs, trees and shrubs. No longer is the lawn the alpha and omega of our homes.

My lawn disappeared and became a hollow square. Simple paths or grassy lanes enclose a large rectangle and are in turn surrounded by wide borders. I was lucky to find a small side lot too small for speculators to build over every inch but large enough to explore the many aspects of landscape gardening. The grassy lanes lend definition to the fenced in space, addling the allure of the many secret gardens common to urban spaces. Freed from oppressive need for wide expanses of expensive open spaces seldom walked upon or devoid of regions given over to peace and reflection, urban gardeners are inch by inch moving away from the dominance of the lawn towards the joys of the garden space. There is still a role for turf in the garden. I believe turf is returning to one of its oldest and most enjoyable functions, a passageway between shade and light, from care to tranquility. Here’s how I’ve transformed a neglected lawn into a green oasis.

Peg out your planting beds, strings run between sticks is all it takes. You may run a line of pelletized limestone down each boundary string as a durable but ultimately disappearing boundary. Once I made the very basic hollow square, the grassy lanes were the old, tired turf, one constantly cut to remove naturally replenishing organic materials away. There are many grasses nor a dictum that turf be a single species. Let’s get to that shortly, all gardening begins with soil.

Cut turf short in the beginning. Rake the turf with a hard landscape rake, loosening bare patches and removing dead plants. Gather the debris together and put into your compost. This might be at first a simple hole in one of the beds set aside from the turf. Test your soil for ph. Lands east of the Mississippi River are generally acid, New England has acid soils and the additional legacy of glacial actions which not only scrapped away topsoil but leached away trace minerals and nutrients as glaciers melted away. The good news is that we often have deep sandy and gravelly soils between ledges and rocks that are moist, quickly drain, and offer fine footing to roots. We need only duplicate the slow process of accumulating organic matter into the soil. Slow, that is, in nature. In the NE regions of North America temperate forests cover soils with a year’s bounty of leaves that eventually, at about an inch a millennia, form dark rich loam. We can speed that up a lot.

Courtesy of Leonard Moorehead

I added dolomite limestone, a pelletized form of natural lime easy to handle and inexpensive over the entire garden space, turf likes soil on the “sweet” side of neutral as do many common garden plants. Next, I added a sprinkling, following directions on the bag, of the simple non petroleum based product “Ironite”. This primitive and old fashioned fertilizer has a wide spectrum of trace minerals and elements, the same naturally occurring essential supplements all plants require. Turf has a hearty appetite. Ironite’s merits are low cost and long slow, impact which reduces water runoff into storm drains directly into nearby estuaries. I simply measure out enough for 100sq feet at a time (a little more than a cup), erring on the side of less, and scatter by hand. Do this, as for all hand scattered supplements and seed, on calm windless mornings.

Like most gardeners, few tasks are completely accomplished at once, fortunately, one can start and stop this process as children, pets, loved ones and other distractions pull one away from the garden. Like most projects, divide into manageable pieces and do one section at a time, never pressure gardening, a slow persistent pace enhances peaceful reflection and attention to the small things, such as bird song and inner growth. Take your time, do not quit. Breath, engage the entire body, bend stretch move in rhythms natural to your body at any age. Some sing, others chant. Gardening is a universe within a mustard seed. You’re a part of a greater whole. Plant your feet firmly on the surface; imagine yourself as a tree, roots searching for greater depth through the feet, bringing up water and nutrients through you into the growth reaching higher into the sky. Breath. Separate troublesome thoughts or any thoughts at all and release them onto passing clouds, pay attention to the deeper blue sky beyond. Let the clouds carry issues away, permit the endless sky beyond to occupy the places once teeming with ideas. I think you’ll like this, as in most projects, start a little at a time and continue, never quit. Foreign at first, this practice will soon become an essential part of every garden endeavor. Peacefulness will accompany you from the garden, another healthful harvest.

I cover the old turf with an inch or two of compost, just enough to obscure winter’s surviving, greening growth. Rake out lumps with a hard landscape rake but not obsessively or over wrought. Hand tools are a joy and feel the rake between your fingers and hands, (wear gloves!), get comfortable with your tools. Always lay down rakes off passageways with the tines facing the earth. Somewhere is a rule that rakes are stepped upon, often the innocent and unwary, frequently by forgetful gardeners. A handle suddenly leveraged into the nose is a seasonal reminder to be thoughtful, gardening is a thinking person’s game. Pay attention, please. A throbbing nose or black eye is not required for successful gardening.

Turf in its place accents other plants. Bright green turf has a hearty appetite. Milorganite is a turf fertilizer long cherished by organic gardeners, the treated and dried sewage from Milwaukee’s early 20th century socialist mayors who created municipal heating and sewage treatment plants that have served locals and others well for a century. Wastes from the brewing, yeast, and grain mills are diverted from Lake Michigan, toxins removed, and the resulting dried sludge has robust amounts of nitrogen, the turf Viagra.

I have great results with annual topdressings early each spring and just before the advent of cold weather in early October. Once a year, perhaps overkill, I add Bacillus Thurengensis or BT. BT is a benign bacterium that infects the larval grub stage of many destructive insects such as Japanese beetles, cutworms, nor does it harm earthworms or bees. An infected grub becomes a time bomb of BT in the soil, the grub perishes but the BT endures to infect the next generation of grub. Brown patches are no longer symptomatic grub infestations in the turf nor later do hordes of beetles feast away on grape leaves, lilies, or beans. Apply powdered BT over the turf and be patient as resident grub populations become infected, die and establish hostile zones. Safe for soil, water, gardeners, and nearby food plants, bacterial insect controls trump heavily promoted chemical insecticides that require many precautions. Stop paying for strong marketing efforts.

Lastly and this is always a joy, I spread fresh grass seed over the topdressing. Leaves inevitably smother out the odd corner of turf. Crabgrass control is a challenge for anyone with turf, try not to disturb topsoil put into turf, crabgrass thrives in disturbed soils and like BT may remain dormant in soil for years to emerge and haunt the gardener. Try not to walk on the turf for 7-10 days until the new seeds and last year’s turf have germinated. The topdressing appears daunting at first. Spring rains will wash the compost into the top layer of soil and the turf will grow up and through it, nourished in a natural, whole manner. Bamboo is a gigantic form of grass and will respond well to virtually the same techniques. The ability of bamboo to digest huge amounts of shredded leaves and other organic material is remarkable.

Spring green is the finest kind. Listen carefully for the cardinals song, the sparrows constant squabble, observe robins probe and capture earthworms. Welcome gentle showers. Turf is very rewarding when integrated into the general garden plan. Urban gardeners may have turf as a true alternative to lawns.

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.