Front Yard Farming
September 3rd, 2010I’ve seen articles recently about global food shortages and feeding our populations and whatnot, bunch of scare tactics mostly, but when you sit down and think about it, there is a lot of land that could be used to grow food, but isn’t.
Highway medians, roadsides, parks, but mostly, front yards.
Some backwards and oppressive cities have ordinances requiring you to have x percentage of front yard as perfectly green lawn, and if you try to put in garden beds, xeriscaping, or just don’t remember to water, they fine you.
Garden beds require less fertilizer, less water, and less labor than lawn, and can make you money when used right. Sure, kids can’t play in gardens like they can on lawns, but unless you live on a very low traffic street, you want them playing in the back yard anyways. On my street, which is 4 lanes, I put in a new super secure gate as soon as my son learned to walk just to make sure he can never go into the front yard.
So, assuming you don’t live in a third reich city and can plant your front yard as you wish, why not get rid of the grass and put in planter beds? On a side note, I think it is funny the same sort of people who put in the stupid lawn ordinances are the types who act like chicken littles about food shortages.
My front yard is full of planting beds and I add a new one or two every year (it is almost an addiction for me).
I grow a mix of ornamentals and edibles in my front yard, I’m too much of a landscape artist to fully commit to just utilitarian gardening like I showed in this blog post on growing your own food. Plus, I want to sell this house one day (probably in about 5 years) so I have to be cognizant of resale value.
Right now, in addition to the sweet potatoes, apple trees, pawpaw tree, and herbs I am growing in my front yard, I’ve got a ginormous 15′x15′ mound of butternut squash. My wife calls it “The Blob” and we always see people walking by scoping it out. A few years ago squirrels told me where to plant my squash and so I did so this year. Butternut squash are versatile in the kitchen, and fairly easy to grow. A little supplemental watering if there is a drought, and that is it. They can be affected by powdering mildew, so a fungicide can be helpful, but they are one of few squash varieties resistant to squash vine borer.
I’m letting the blob grow all it wants, I’ll just mow around it (not that I’ve had to mow, we’ve had a drought lately, hence the wilty leaves). I’ll probably get 60 pounds of squash off of these plants, all for the price of a pack of seeds. It might not be the most attractive thing in the world, but a squash vine is not a permanent landscape feature, it can be removed at any time. So to grow it or another vine (such as watermellon) in your front yard all you need is a small planting hole/mound (with improved soil please), and then let it spill over onto the grass, and mow around it. Unlike a crop like say corn, you don’t have to commit a large portion of your yard to permanent garden if you don’t want to. You could also grow pumpkins this way as a project for the kids.
For most squash you don’t even need to start them until June (or even later if you have a longer growing season than we do in Michigan), and they take a little while to get going, so it isn’t as if it’ll cover your yard for the entire summer either.
My Favorite Tree Died, A Lesson in Plant Biology
September 2nd, 2010My favorite tree has died. I have blogged about it a lot, and the posts will be mentioned below in the related posts section.
It was a Forest Pansy Redbud. I’ve had bad luck with the spot that I planted it. It is very full sun, from dawn to dusk, I had two weeping cherries die, but I think they were infected with bacteria at the nursery, then I ordered a redbud mailorder, and grew it for a year, and spring came and the blossoms were the wrong color, so I gave it to a neighbor, and finally bought my Forest Pansy.
In Memoriam
This tree was really great, it has a fairly unique purple foliage color, not red, or burgundy, but purple. In addition to the typical redbud pink flowers in spring. I like trees and plants with more than one feature. So both leaves and flowers.
I was so excited at how well it was doing last year, very full with leaves, nice color, growing great. Then a wind storm came and it had grown too great because branches were too heavy and the trunk split. I blogged about this and tried to fix it. I was able to maintain the current foliage last year after the damage, but the leaves on the weaker half never grew this spring. So I cut that half off.
Then we had a hail storm that damaged all my plants with large leaves, like redbuds. So the tree was looking really straggly.
Then we’ve had a drought for 2 months that just ended today, just one barely rainy day that whole period.
This is where the plant biology comes in. Redbuds like shade, they are an understory tree that likes to be sheltered by big oaks and whatnot. My spot, as I said, is full sun, and Redbuds can grow there, mine did very well in 2009 and before, but they need moisture.
Plants leaves lose moisture based on sun exposure and heat, the more direct sun, and the hotter it is, the more moisture they lose. If you’ve ever seen a squash plant on a hot summer day, with the wilting leaves, that illustrates the point. With squash the leaves will recover during the night or after a watering, some others, like a redbud, will get crispy and scorched.
So, in general, plants that prefer shade do so because they have a hard time providing enough water from their roots to their leaves when in full sun. Think of it like the water is actually flowing, if the flow rate out of the leaves is greater than the flow rate up from the roots, the leaves wilt and could scorch or die.
So, my redbud was able to thrive, despite being in sun, because I kept it watered.
This year, during the drought, I kept it watered as well, but it wasn’t helping. After I cut it down I discovered why. At one cross section, because of the split trunk damage and a previous scar from before I bought the tree, 80% of the tree’s cambium layer was dead. This is the layer of green flesh directly below the bark where trees do all of their “living.” So the roots had access to water, but there was a bottleneck getting it up to the leaves. I knew the cambium layer had been damaged when the trunk split, so I did a lot of pruning of the leaves to try to keep things in balance.
Unfortunately, even with the pruning, the tree could not stand up to the two months of heat, constant sun, and less water. There was to much cambium layer damage, for a tree that really needs to be at it’s best to handle full sun.
So I cut it down. I’ll plant one again some day when I have a different house with a spot for one in shade.
To replace it I waffled a lot, I kept going back and forth between different ideas. First I wanted a pine, but something tall and narrow. Then I decided I wanted a columnar maple, and really got interested in a “Newton Sentry” maple which is this really neat tree that grows 60 feet tall but only 6 feet wide. However, the only source I could find had short ones, and if I know we’ll probably be moving in 5 years I would never see it get to it’s potential.
Then I thought about doing a chinese red birch, because the bark is amazing, but I couldn’t find any source for those except seeds, which of course would take a really long time.
I finally decided on a “Royal Frost” Birch. This tree has burgundy foliage and interesting white peeling bark, bit of a standard birch, but at least two points of interest on it. I was able to get a 14 foot tall one for only about $60, which was by far the cheapest option in a price to foot comparison from among the ones I had shopped around for. It doesn’t have much trunk caliper, but it is tall. My forest pansy had a beefier trunk, but wasn’t more than 7 feet tall. So this fills the space well.
Birches are often sold in single trunk or multiple trunk forms. Some people like multiple trunk forms, or “bushier” forms, I’m not sure why, but multitrunk birches don’t grow as tall. Considering I was going for something tall and narrow, I went with a single trunk birch, so that it’ll grow narrower and taller. But if you ever buy a birch mail order or something, make sure you know what kind of trunk form it has, because many are trained to be multitrunk.
Juvenile Cardinal Fearless & Frolicking
August 31st, 2010Cardinals mature very fast, just a week ago (maybe less) I saw this cardinal learning how to fly, it had just left the nest. Yesterday, while filming something else, he came to visit, and got really close to me. Since I had the camera ready I decided to film him, it is so rare to see cardinals at this stage of development since they are at it only for a short time.
This little guy had no fear of me, and at one point flew down within inches of my feet. Watch the video below, or at Youtube for HD. Also included are partial shots of my water feature, and this just underlines another reason to have a water feature, they attract wildlife like nothing else.
Use Compost, Save Money
August 22nd, 2010Behold! My new Pinus Contorta “Taylor’s Sunburst”!
I know it doesn’t look anything special now, but this is one rare and amazing plant. In the spring the new growth lights up to a bright yellow (in contrast with the dark green older growth) in an amazing display. In Spring it will look like this:
So, did I name this post incorrectly? What does this tree have to do with compost and saving money? Well as I said, this is one rare and amazing plant. At Gee Farms, where I bought mine, a new grafted one about 6 inches tall is $50. A 4 foot one is $900. Mine, listed at 2 foot (but really two and a half+, I was told it has been potted up for sale at that size for 2 seasons), was $200.
Pretty expensive. If 4 feet is $900 then each half foot is over $100, and each inch is just under $20, lets round up and call it $20 an inch.
I make my own compost with my compost tumbler, but despite the fact that I compost just about everything I can. All garden waste, tree trimmings, all kitchen scraps that aren’t meat, etc. Despite all that, I garden so much I can’t make enough compost to fulfill all my garden needs. So I always ending buying more.
At the garden center 40 pound bags of topsoil are about $1 each, 40 pound bags of composted manure are $1.50 each. The compost however is a far far better growing medium. When you plant something you have just that one opportunity to improve the soil, you need to take it.
I’ve heard in some places when you plant a tree you should mix some native soil into the planting hole because you don’t want the tree to get “confused” or “disappointed.” I don’t buy it, for one, trees don’t think, they don’t have feelings, and in nature, all the time, will tree roots go through different types of soil. Secondly, I’ve noticed no problems planting trees in super improved soil, in fact, I’ve noticed only benefits. I think this whole theory was a result of one guy’s poor intuition that unfortunately caught on.
So anyways, you should always plant your new plants in the best soil possible, and full compost is the best soil possible. Yes, it is more expensive than top soil, but it is not expensive, it is still cheap, just not as cheap. Suppose a tree planted in composted manure grows just 1 inch per year more than a tree planted in top soil. With my new tree that 1 inch is worth $20 a year. I only needed to buy 4 bags of compost for this tree, so that is only $2 in extra cost, for $20 the first year, and that is if the compost only gives me 1 extra inch, if it gives a larger benefit the benefit is even higher.
Of course my tree is really expensive, not all trees are, but mine is also slow growing, and not all trees are. If you had a fast growing tree like a lombardy poplar you might get an extra foot or two per year by planting in really good soil.
An ounce of prevention equals a pound of cure, and a bag of compost up front can give you pounds of wood down the road. Spend the couple extra quarters up front and get bagged compost for all your planting (I also plant veggies directly in it), your plants will do better, and the increased yields and growth will far far outweigh the incremental cost of the compost.
Selling my Favorite Daylily
August 19th, 2010
“Purple Maze” is my favorite daylily bloom, I saw it, I had to buy it, I paid a lot of money for it. I bought it when it first came available directly from the hybridizer, I think I paid $200. Kind of embarassing really, but I really like it. Apparently others do too, I’ve seen many people say it is their favorite daylily.
I recently had to move and divide it and I have 1 extra fan (the others I planted elsewhere on my property). So I’m selling it. I just listed it on ebay. So if you’re interested, head over there.
This has got to be one of my favorite reasons for growing perennials. Multiplication. Just dividing plants alone can provide you with some payback down the years, or the ability to trade, to gift, or to just expand your garden for free. Then if you do a little cutting or seed based propagation you can get even more.
I wanted to do a border of “When my Sweetheart Returns” Daylily, I bought one plant at $25. As it grew I divided it again and again, very aggressively, and now I have about 20 small clumps, which is what I needed for my border.
Pressure Pond Filter Saves the Day, Green Water Goes Away
August 16th, 2010In Spring 2008 I made a water feature in my garden. It has mostly been a huge success, I love the looks of it, I love the sound the fountains make, the fish are fun. It overall adds a certain something to the garden that I didn’t know was missing until I had it.
However I have had a bear of a time keeping the water clear. For the first couple months after I made it it stayed clear. However once the pond got established, it got dirty. I could barely get the water clear for brief periods of time. In 2009 I bought a new pump/filter set. The same kind I had originally, because the first died. It is a small pump in a box with filter pads that goes inside the pond. It doesn’t work, I don’t recommend it. The new filter/pump did some good, but most of 2009 and all of 2010 so far (once it warmed up) the water has been murky and dark. I haven’t even fed the fish in months (and they’re alive, so they must be eating the algae and whatnot).
My pea soup water, immediately after installing my new filter
The pump I had kept dying, these pumps just suck. The filter kit is like $100 bucks too, so expensive junk. I don’t want to buy a new one each year. I had resigned myself to having algae problems because I don’t want to put the time into doing all the chemicals and testing and whatnot. But I wanted the water sound, I wanted the movement, the bubbling, the fountain. It is soothing. So I knew I needed a new pump and filter, one that was easier to clean, because I figured I’d have to clean it super frequently like I did with my current one just so it could barely cope.
I settled on this external pressure filter and pump set as seen in the Amazon link here. It has a backflow valve to allow me to clean the filter without opening it, which is what mostly attracted me to it.
It also includes an internal UV filter, which should help kill algae, but when you first install the filter you’re supposed to let it run with the pump for a day before turning the UV on, to make sure there is no leaks in the electrical area.
As it would turn out, the UV filter isn’t needed for me. The pond pump and filter are supposed to be able to handle a pond 5x larger than mine, and in 24 hours, BEFORE I had even turned the UV on, it had turned my green opaque swamp water crystal clear. No new chemicals added. I had even tried an 80% water swap out a few weeks ago and it didn’t help, but 24 hours with this new pump and filter and my water is crystal clear.
Sure, this setup was expensive, around $250, but I had already previously spent $200 on filters/pumps that suck. So if I had bought this from the beginning the premium I would be paying would be much smaller. Plus this pump is big enough where I can now add a waterfall, which I plan to do next year.
Installation was simple, the hardest thing was standing in Lowes and getting the multude of different sized tubings and couplings to do the connections, splits, and diverters I needed to do the hookups I wanted.
The results, 24 hours with my new pump and pressure filter
Thuja (standishii x plicata) “Green Giant”
August 14th, 2010
Green Giant Thuja’s are fast becoming one of the most popular plants for the landscape, and for good reason. They are one of the fastest growing known evergreen trees. They can grow as much as 5 feet per year or more.
The result from a supposed cross between a Japanese thuja and the US native western redcedar (not a real cedar, actually thuja plicata,) it looks strongly like the plicata and definitely different from the (at this point) more commonly planted eastern white cedar (also not a real cedar) which is thuja occidentalis most commonly seen in garden centers as Emerald Green Arborvitae.
This plant family has really confusing common names, but hopefully you can follow along.
Anyways, probably about 6 years ago I bought one, just one, and planted it. Then moved it, then moved it, then moved it. I moved it three times in three years, finally planting it on the north side of a fence where it had good soil, but little sun.
The last two years once it reached a “critical mass” of growth and started getting some sun thanks to it’s height, it started taking off. It is growing really fast now, and is getting big. In the picture, the fence is 6 feet. So my 2 foot tree ordered online, transplanted three times, and planted in shade, has grown that fast, as an evergreen.
Deciduous trees can often grow that fast or faster, I’ve seen trees put up multiple feet of new growth in a year, the cherry tree immediately to the right of the thuja is only about 3 years old, but it is getting near it’s top (and is in extremely improved soil). But such deciduous trees cannot top this thuja for attractiveness, and in the winter, it is still there.
For a hedge, or a border, there is nothing better.
In the below pictures I found when doing some reading the trees were planted in 2005 at 10 inches high only, now the biggest are over 12 feet.
When Thuja Green Giant first started being offered by nurseries and garden centers it was somewhat expensive, and many places still overcharge not realizing it. But I just bought a few weeks ago on ebay 12 of them, 3 feet high, shipped free, for $50. Around $4 a tree, really good deal.
Deer will eat them, of course, perhaps the only downside of this plant, but they will grow tall, they will grow fast, they are very attractive, and the lumber is valuable and useful. All around an excellent tree to grow. And yes, only $4 each.
Some times a tree or plant is marketed and sold by nurseries in their catalogs and it doesn’t live up to the hype. Green Giant definitely does, highly recommended.
Hail Damage on Crops and Plants
July 3rd, 2010
A few weeks ago we had a pretty bad storm that included some hail. I believe most people usually embellish the size of the hail they experience, I won’t do that, so let me honestly say we were dealing with blueberry sized hail. It didn’t fall for very long, but long enough to cause some misery.
Every large-leaved plant I grow got damaged. Spinach, hostas, grapes, lettuces, just to name a few.
The damage was pretty severe and in the case of my food crops, retarded their growth somewhat. It was like someone shot my garden with a shot gun, leaves had holes torn right through them, it was hail though, not bugs, because nothing was eaten, you could pick up the tatters and reform them into a perfect leaf.
As a home gardener it sucked a little bit, of course, but I cannot imagine what it’d mean for a farmer, a spinach farmer could have his entire field ruined, but I guess that is what crop insurance is for. Still, that did not always exist, in older times it had to have caused an immense hardship for communities if there was a hail storm.
In fact, I think hail is probably the worst weather disaster that can befall crops. A flood can be avoided through site selection, and floods tend to occur in Spring, leaving you fertile soil for summer planting, and a late freeze sucks, killing plants, but it is early enough in the growing season to start over. A mid summer hail though could kill or ruin everything, and it may be too late for another crop to be started. Definitely the worst of the lot if you ask me.
Gardening, Cooking, and Making Your Family Healthier
June 11th, 2010I am really into nutrition, sometimes that zeal will permeate this blog, this post is one of those times.
I’ve talked significantly in the past about growing your own food, growing healthy foods, and whatnot, and I’m not going to merely be rehashing that here, you can look in the related posts in the bottom.
Instead I want to talk more specifically about nutrition and cooking, but in a way that is only applicable to gardeners, for a reason which will become evident.
My personal relationship with food has morphed into mostly considering it as fuel. There probably isn’t a person out there who would even consider putting substandard or contaminated or the wrong sort of gasoline in their car. Afterall, they don’t want their engine to break down and car repairs can be costly.
And yet people don’t seem to give the same care to their own body, and if you think mechanics bills are high you should see doctor’s bills. The fact is our bodies are engines, and if you don’t put in the right fuel your body will break down, and that affects your quality of life.
I don’t like salmon, I will never crave salmon, I would prefer almost any protein to salmon, even other fish (except for tuna, tuna is gross). But I try to eat salmon every week, because it is very healthy for you (wild caught as much as possible though, even if frozen. Frozen wild caught > fresh(thawed) farmed). Likewise, for the past quite a few years (5 maybe) I’ve had the exact same thing for lunch almost every day. Normally people might want variety, but I see my lunch merely as fuel for my body and I treat it as such. So I have a protein smoothy with bananas and either raspberries or blueberries depending on seasonality and what I have in the house.
I don’t mean to get all preachy, but I just think that if more people thought of food as fuel, rather than a daily source of pleasure and indulgence, we wouldn’t have all the obesity problems we have as a society.
But I digress. Today I am making shredded chicken enchiladas. I cook some onions and chicken with some salsa, stock, and other seasonings for a long time until it gets all shredded then I add some reduced fat cheese, assembled the enchiladas, and bake.
However I added some ingredients you may not typically think of for enchiladas. Swiss Chard, Beet Greens, and Purslane.
These three foods are superfoods. Swiss chard and beet greens are closely related (looking identical from the ground up) and extremely healthy. They are probably the healthiest leafy green you can eat, and they stand up well to cooking. They are also very easy to grow. If allowed to go to seed they will reseed here in Michigan. I don’t even have to plant swiss chard anymore, it just grows in my chard bed because I always end up letting a few go to seed at the end of the season. With swiss chard and beet greens you can eat both the leaves and the stalks, though I only added the leaves today, and with beets you of course get the superfood roots that have incredible nutrition benefits, beets are perhaps the single best food preventer of colon cancer. Both the roots and leaves are high in fiber as well, and tons of other nutritients.
Purslane is so easy to grow it is like a weed, in fact, it is a weed. Though I grow a cultivated variety of it that is more upright than the weed version. You can eat any version though. In addition to being high in nutrition, and like chard being able to stand up to the heat in cooking, it is the highest known plant source of Omega 3 fatty acids, including EPA type Omega 3s, which is the good kind also found in fish. Purslane also reseeds readily, plant it once and never plant it again. Of course, as a weed too, it tolerates drought, and can grow almost anywhere, needs little fertilizer, etc.
Now, here is where it gets interesting. It doesn’t always make sense to buy these plants at the store (nevermind that you can’t really buy purslane most places in the US), a whole bunch of swiss chard might be hard to eat if you’re only using it as an additive, but if you garden, you have the opportunity to grow these very very very easily to grow plants (both can go in containers too, especially purslane), and only harvest what you need when you need it.
So, during summer, I add one or both of these plants to almost everything I make. I can add them to soups, stews, stirfry, pasta sauce, casseroles, anything mixture like such as my enchilada filling tonight, and of course salads, basically anything I cook that is not grilled or a dessert. They add nutrition to meals for free, without changing taste (for those picky eaters) and most probably won’t even notice they’re in there unless you tell them. So you’re sneaking nutrition on your family. There is hardly any excuse not to do this really.
Spinach is another option for this manuever, but it isn’t quite as easy to grow (it has more pest problems, neither purslane nor chard/beets seem to be bothered by any leaf pests, at least around here), and also isn’t going to reseed for you. It also typically doesn’t get harvested all season like the other two can be. With chard/beet greens and purslane you can pick off leaves as you need them for a longer period of time and the plant will keep producing, spinach won’t do that for as long and bolts quicker.
If you can dedicate just a few square feet of your garden to these two plants you’ll have a perpetual source of sneaky goodness you can add for added nutrition to all your summer cooking. I highly recommend it.
The Right Type of Ivy to Plant Near a Wall
May 27th, 2010
There is one mistake you really, and I mean really, don’t want to make in your landscape. You absolutely do not want to plant the wrong type of ivy for the wrong reason. Very bad things can happen.
First a word on vines…
Vines climb through a variety of methods, and it is important for you to know what they are and how they work.
1. Mechanically This is where a vine twists or turns around some support or framework naturally. Through a natural process the vine senses a nearby structure, and wraps around it. Examples of this type of vine include kiwi and clematis.
2. Tendrils Some vines grip mechanically, but through special growths called tendrils that grow out of the vines. They reach out seeking supports and then wrap around them. Examples of this type include grapes and cucumbers.
3. Suckers Some vines grip surfaces with suction cup like devices that adhere, even to flat surfaces. This category includes boston ivy.
4. Roots Some vines have roots that dig into surfaces to secure them, most ground cover vines work this way. Examples include english ivy, sweet potatoes.
So, about ivy
The two main types of ivy people grow are boston ivy and english ivy. If you allow english ivy to grow up a wall it will do so, and it will use roots, and the roots will dig into your wood, masonry, stone, or concrete, and tear it apart eventually like water expanding in a crack or a tree’s roots lifting a sidewalk. It can destroy the side of your building, a very costly mistake. English ivy is a ground cover, a great ground cover, but do not let it climb on things you want to preserve. If it you let it climb a tree it’ll also tear off the bark and kill the tree. It is evergreen though, which is why people may be drawn to it.
Boston ivy on the other hand looks great climbing up walls, my wall in the picture has a yellowish cultivar climbing up it, which I chose to be different and because it was shady I thought it would brighten up the wall to use a lighter colored plant. Because boston ivy uses suckers it doesn’t really damage what it climbs on, though it can hurt painted surfaces. Boston ivy is not evergreen, it will turn pretty colors and drop leaves in the fall, the trade off of having it not destroy your walls.
When you’re at the garden center and looking at ivy they’re not labeled as such, and many people have made the mistake of training english ivy up a wall, including yours truly many years ago, don’t make the same mistake.
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