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Garden ecology
Jun. 20th, 2011 04:43 pmI'm not much of a gardener. I once kept some African violets alive for several years by ignoring them except for moments of panic. It's not the recommended treatment, but they seemed to like it. So much of the actual gardening around here falls to Dave. It's his decompression and meditation, plus the occasion for a bit of obsessive knowledge-gathering now and again.
The asparagus has been naturalizing, escaping its nice neat bed and seeding through the lavender patch in one direction and the clover in another. We've long given up any hope of containing the arugula: it's a weed. Ditto purslane. Ditto... I don't know what all else. We regularly have lettuces pop up in odd places and as for parsnips -- Dave decided to plant them in the back alley (communal property but the neighbors don't care if we cultivate it) which is very, very hard-packed. Several years of letting them go to seed later and we have a thousand parsnip plants. We did eventually get rid of the tomatillos, at least I think they're gone. You need 2 plants to make babies and they produce way too many for just the two of us. We gave away dozens of seedlings a couple of years back. A handful of carrots got away from us, meaning we didn't harvest them while they were still tender, so we let them go. now they're 3 feet tall and about to make a gazillion carrot seeds. This bodes well for next spring. That old chard plant over by the grapefruit tree is still alive after 4 years, although so bedraggled I don't have the heart so snip off its few healthy leaves. And the rhubarb got happy and robust this spring, promising a good crop next year.
After some under-the-house proofing, we've settled down to a mutually agreeable relationship with skunks. It turns out that not only do they not wreak great havoc on garden plants but they happily snarf up all the bugs and grubs and things you don't want. We haven't seen gophers for about 4 years, and believe that the skunk-friendly habitat has something to do with it. The one rule is Never Let The Dog Out At Dusk. Ever. No matter what he tells you.
Our garden is also a-buzzing with bees. More honeybees and fewer native bees this year, but all of them in ecstasy over the clover, the lavender, the borage, the blackberry flowers. We planted bee-balm and it should bloom soon. As a consequence of some or all of these measures, our garden is also teeming with lady-bugs (many of them in pairs in, er, compromising positions, promising even more next season or whenever they next hatch). They're after the aphids which are after the... you get the picture.
We're all connected, aphids and lavender and skunks. And spiders and garter snakes and screech owls (wonderful sound at night) and the nest of stellar's jays on top of the ladder leaning against the house.
The asparagus has been naturalizing, escaping its nice neat bed and seeding through the lavender patch in one direction and the clover in another. We've long given up any hope of containing the arugula: it's a weed. Ditto purslane. Ditto... I don't know what all else. We regularly have lettuces pop up in odd places and as for parsnips -- Dave decided to plant them in the back alley (communal property but the neighbors don't care if we cultivate it) which is very, very hard-packed. Several years of letting them go to seed later and we have a thousand parsnip plants. We did eventually get rid of the tomatillos, at least I think they're gone. You need 2 plants to make babies and they produce way too many for just the two of us. We gave away dozens of seedlings a couple of years back. A handful of carrots got away from us, meaning we didn't harvest them while they were still tender, so we let them go. now they're 3 feet tall and about to make a gazillion carrot seeds. This bodes well for next spring. That old chard plant over by the grapefruit tree is still alive after 4 years, although so bedraggled I don't have the heart so snip off its few healthy leaves. And the rhubarb got happy and robust this spring, promising a good crop next year.
After some under-the-house proofing, we've settled down to a mutually agreeable relationship with skunks. It turns out that not only do they not wreak great havoc on garden plants but they happily snarf up all the bugs and grubs and things you don't want. We haven't seen gophers for about 4 years, and believe that the skunk-friendly habitat has something to do with it. The one rule is Never Let The Dog Out At Dusk. Ever. No matter what he tells you.
Our garden is also a-buzzing with bees. More honeybees and fewer native bees this year, but all of them in ecstasy over the clover, the lavender, the borage, the blackberry flowers. We planted bee-balm and it should bloom soon. As a consequence of some or all of these measures, our garden is also teeming with lady-bugs (many of them in pairs in, er, compromising positions, promising even more next season or whenever they next hatch). They're after the aphids which are after the... you get the picture.
We're all connected, aphids and lavender and skunks. And spiders and garter snakes and screech owls (wonderful sound at night) and the nest of stellar's jays on top of the ladder leaning against the house.
