Leonard Moorehead, the Urban Gardener: Ave, Presto!
Saturday, July 29, 2017
Why the rush? Pause, breath deep, flex toes, be still. Gravity holds our feet, sense its omniscience, downwards into the core, upwards through bones and muscles. Square off shoulders, lift up the chin, smooth the furrowed brow. Again. Go ahead, repeat. Our vibrant gardens are balms, their tangible energy quiets.
It’s too hot to hurry. Gaze into the garden, color, scent and form invite freedom. Away? New faces, languages, and locations are good for everyone. Freedom is within and travels well, our gardens are stoic microcosms. Never dull, our return is festive. Our gardens greet us, welcome home.
Like Jack’s beanstalk, so much is grown. Upwards, sunflowers observe the solar east west transit, the first Gold Finches chirp, their plumage blends seamlessly into the golden blooms. Sunflowers are indigenous North American plants of great variety. Constant mulches capture sunflower seeds Gold Finches drop below. Thin volunteers, remove the spindly or those close together, break up longer stems, tear the large foliage, leave right on the mulch.
GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE -- SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLASTWhimsy assures no single place is the volunteer sunflower’s domain, their only demand is sunshine. Remove older, lower leaves, allow more sunlight onto lower neighbors. Encourage children to plant reliably viable sunflower seeds. Quick to grow in summer’s heat, sunflowers lift more than the eye, their uncanny ability to inspire smiles and good will is priceless. The urban sunflower plant excels as a specimen plant. Mammoth is the towering variety whose large seed heads nod downwards. Gold finches groom the seeds from the outermost inward. Harmonious geometry is evident as seeds spiral to the center. Do keep a bird bath nearby, fresh water attracts birds.
Mexican sunflowers, or Tithonia, bloom as well in slightly less sunlight. Their orange zinnia like blooms are profuse. Thin mercilessly, these sturdy plants are expansive. Mine are descendent from a neighbor’s garden in an urban community garden. Observe community plots. Space limits our lexicon. Borrow from other gardener’s success. Each garden is a unique reflection of human cultures. Botanical genealogy traverses continents, our animals, birds and neighbors introduce wide vocabulary. Dead head or remove blooms just after their prime. Tithonia, pinched and groomed, are easy to care for, nearly to neglect. Ardent gardeners have met their match however, medusa like, two blooms emerge for each snipped off. Tithonian’s vigor defies all but that first hard frost. Harvest the seeds.
Save the overlooked mature seed filled flowers in common brown paper lunch bags in a cool dry place such as the basement’s furthest corner. Plainly label paper seed bags with magic markers. Include year, name and comments. Ordinary wooden clothes pins hold the bags just fine on a clothesline strung between rafters. Keep away from furnaces, water heaters and passage ways. Share.
Garden harvests are legion, many plants remain “true” or un-hybrid such as Tithonia. Willing to gamble? Hybrid seeds revert towards ancestral plants, phlox is a common example. Dame’s Rocket blooms along roadsides and seashores, a far cry from the gardener’s hybrid “Pink Eye” types growing on the other side of the fence. Colonists returned Dame’s Rocket to England in the 17th century, Victorian Americans received novel hybrids in exchange. Phlox seeds are easily collected and often self-sew, changing colors and height along the way. Prefer to keep hybrid phlox? Lift and divide clumps during spring or fall, each division a clone rather than genetic diverse seed.
Spot out the garden for those mischievous freeloaders who show up at dinnertime. Some masquerade as others, wood sorrel resembles crane’s bill perennial geraniums. Others, such as Virginia creeper and bittersweet, send vines under mulches. Gently trace vines to their roots and remove away from the garden and not into the compost heap. Rather orthodox? Dig a pit beneath topside and bury below, leave no part exposed to fertile topsoil or sunlight. A good practice is to dry out the vegetation. Some, such as the humble day flower can defy hefty odds. Morning glories fail to thrive in humus rich soil. Unwrap or snip morning glory vines that shade out their host, such as your heavily composted tomatoes.
Harvest peppermint, spearmint and lemon balm. The mints are excellent companion plants. They thrive in raw mulches and accelerate humus creation. Nip the leafy stems separate from roots. The root systems are easily pulled up from permanent mulches. I tuck the root systems into the large leafy compost heap already covered by mints found earlier in the spring. Their vitality retains moisture and shades the compost heap’s surface otherwise a sterile layer of dry leaves. Dry the harvest as bunches hung from rafters or on a smaller scale, the hall closet. Mints repel insects, enjoy the original natural scent, much synthesized.
Dead head coneflowers you haven’t presented to family and friends. Like their cousins, Brown Eyed Susan, many will self-sow, mature Echinacea also forms thick clumps surrounded by smaller descendants. Lift and divide or let nature takes its course. Carry snipers into the garden, cut back Shasta daisies, Marguerites, just after full bloom and enjoy a freshet of new blooms later this summer. Nip the center growth tips or apical meristem of chrysanthemums and asters to encourage lateral flowering growth. Shape dwarf fruit trees in the same manner.
This year the New England states had a cold snap when stone fruits such as apricots and peaches bloom. Fruitless, the trees are rapidly branching out. Snip distant tips first, customize the garden towards your reach. Pears did a little better, remove smaller pears from any twins or triplets. The survivor will benefit into epic proportions.
Harvest beets, pull up as mulch the last lettuces and radishes. Plant beans, often found at bargain rates on discounted seed racks. Beans offer a wide array of choices to taste. Fill in blank garden spots with beans to harvest long before frost and into early fall. Beans and zinnias are great fill in plants that thrive in warm soils. Push the bean sowing and harvest as far as late August, not only do beans offer fine eating, they improve soils as a green cover crop.
Thick mulches make for fertile potato beds. Gently pull away mulch and remove the largest potatoes, re-cover the smaller spuds for later harvests. Distribute potato plantings among several locations. Tall Turk’s Cap lilies, chrysanthemums, and spearmint are good companion plants. With fingers crossed, no striped potato beetles have infested these combinations.
Visit farmer’s markets and purchase potatoes at much lower prices as food rather than as seed. Pick out smaller spuds in wide array of purpose or colors, a novelty are blue types. Often overlooked under the mulch, potatoes naturalize for me, often popping up in forgotten locations. Potatoes easily root, cut larger potatoes into pieces with several “eyes” or wherever a rootlet emerges. Plant on cultivated soil and cover with 6”-8” of mulch. A wooden complimentary paint stirrer diverts any traffic until foliage emerges.
Whew, far too busy for hot summer days? Inhale the garden’s aroma, be still. Listen for the hummingbird’s whirr. Watch their zip and zap from beebalm, Rose of Sharon, anise hyssop, and hollyhocks. Pick flowering lemon verbena tips, a sprig of peppermint, or pineapple sage and make a cold drink. Sit under the grapevines and fig bush, lift up a toast to all that is good. Grin. Weren’t you the beach goer who stuffed seaweed into the beach bag? Own it, gardener’s understand. Flip flops? Incomprehensible.
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.
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