Leonard Moorehead, the Urban Gardener: Red White and Blue
Saturday, July 01, 2017
Fife and drums, stars and stripes, salutes pop, Roman candles spout, we parade. Bonfires, Philharmonics play the 1812 Overture, we gather on street corners, crowds celebrate. We salute the flag in our majestic plurality. Our common good and individual rights are in dynamic tension. Urban gardeners are histories legacy. Gardens reflect the gardeners’ natures, each individual creates growing spaces rooted in cultural myriads, all stars and stripes above within.
I can’t leave color alone. Lush green foliage is always welcome, encouraged. The endive, rocket, Cos, launch upwards, picked leaf by tender leaf, their random knot like plantings are very productive in moist, dark humus exposed all day to full sun. Draw spoiled hay and seaweed up close between plantings; perhaps as thick as 6 inches or more. Plant thickly, gently thin. Mulch helps distinguish plants. Thick mulch, sometimes a torn brown paper bag beneath it, traps moisture and discourages all but the most persistent weed. Kneel on mulches, their soft cushion soil free and comfortable. With a woven basket found at a yard sale near-by, pick. Wash off the pickings with the garden hose, basket and all. The straw basket will swell and last much longer than one eternally dry.
Pick foliage outside in. Pick’s laconic action is artful handiwork. Do not assume all know the best approaches for sustained yield or highest quality foods available anywhere. Each cultivar requires suitable handling. Art enters the fray, use both hands, and get to know the cultivars. Pull up the lamb’s quarters, chickweed, purslane, violets, and must distained, crabgrass, shake soil free from roots, and add to the mulch. Or I tuck them beneath shrubs or out of sight beneath the mulch. Often, for instance they grow far beyond belief disguised among thriving lilies, I snip stems into small pieces with the clippers never far from use. I leave them as is to tend to the salads patches. Now comes the tender handling of the salad crop. Much is added to soil, less removed, we do not extract, we replenish, nurture, and grow. The stream of bio-gradable materials is a Mississippi in our cities. Divert from the landfill.
GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE -- SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLASTPull gently. Little if any soil adheres to plants with shallow root systems. Nothing is more peaceful than thinning down the salad plantings. Mornings before strong sunshine and heat urge us towards the shore’s cool breezes is best, busy gardeners make virtue of necessity. After work I often look beyond busy streets and devices. Impatience behind those who txt before moving ahead from green to red traffic lights plagues drivers. Once at home, basket in hand, I kneel in the garden. This is not labor.
Inhale. Pureness exudes from every leaf. Our secular age selects its beliefs. There is no question in my mind other gardeners sense more at work in the garden than science’s ever more sophisticated description. Kneeling is more ancient than furniture, our bodies respond, there’s no wonder our ancestors describe sprites who dwell among the leaves, nymphs inhabit trees, satyrs buzz bloom to bloom. There is soul in the most humble petunia. Reverence may not be a vitamin. It nourishes without vinaigrettes. Belief is beyond sect. Keep breathing and enjoy the physical pleasure of being alive. Surrender to the peace that’s beyond description. Fill your basket.
Our soils are now warm enough for rapid germination of beans, squashes and cucumbers. Most spring greens are rushing to send up seed stalks. Remove salads more rapidly now. Before the lettuces bolt is when to share abundant crops. Eat the finest foods minutes from the earth with family and friends. The spaces once dedicated to spring gardens are just right for the summer beans, squashes and cucumbers. So late? Multiple plantings in one spot? Yes, do not flee the garden or confine planting to a particular season. Urban gardeners produce much from small spaces. I also have success sowing zinnias, tithonia, cosmos, and verbena in empty spaces for bloom as summer heat becomes golden fall.
Later plantings avoid the spawning cycles of striped cucumber beetles, squash bugs, and other pestilences. No need to spray insecticides upon insects that have appeared and diminish from lack of food. Plants are unequal in their use of soil nutrients. Nitrogen encourages foliage growth in the spring green plantings. A second sowing of legumes like beans or the now passing varieties of peas fixes nitrogen gas through symbiotic microscopic relationships with root bacteria. Turn under mature, harvested crops as natural fertilizer. The soil is restored and improved through natural sequences. Urban gardeners improve soils. With an eye to maturity dates on packets, usually 60-90 days, heat and sun loving vegetables will germinate and swiftly replace the spring greens. Have fun and plant nutritious yellow, purple, white, and of course, the ubiquitous green, beans. Once in the ground, take a salad to the beach or in the cooler for holiday trips.
Do not restrict yourself to monocrops. The urban garden is not industrial agriculture. For us is the delightful horticultural playground. Our lexicon the vast heritage of our many peoples. We guide nature, few places are of one type plant but many. A diverse array of plants foils insects and some plants, like strawberries, travel. Variety attracts many different birds and pollinating insects. Include a bird bath, always a living oasis in well drained cities. Allow your garden mobility and be richly rewarded. There are excellent companion plants whose presence benefit neighbors. Others purpose may appear axillary. The mints colonize thick layers of shredded leaves and speed up transition from leaf to humus. Waves of spearmint and peppermint reward gardeners who allow them to hustle along spoiled hay, leaves, or other organic materials. Their fragrance uplifts as they fill empty spaces. Mints that colonize heavy mulches do not form deep root systems, they are easily pulled up as needed, to dry, or replant in the oldest compost pile. They’ll continue their pioneer conversion of mulches into humus much faster than miro-organisms or earthworms.
Old Glory is red, white and blue. Potted red geraniums are nearly carefree. Resist consumerism and regard the geranium less as a sprig of parsley packed with a steak but more as robust explosions of passionate red. We have many choices, express yourself. I love the daisy family for its simple elegance. Democratic daisies are testimony the common are as important as the few. Their pronounced white and golden pollen filled centers are winners. Distribute daises among the sun lovers. They tolerate poor soil available to the most recent gardens. They thrive without care, remove old blooms and be twice rewarded. Daises are natural sources of potent insect resistant compounds, painted daisies or pyrethrum is the botanical source of pyrethrum based insecticides. Grown in the garden their formidable defenses extend beyond themselves and foil out breaks of unbalanced insect populations. Lift and divide these hardy perennials late each autumn and plant trios around the garden.
Borage is naturalized in my garden. Source of medicinal oils, borage is delicious as a cucumber flavored salad green. Eat any part of the plant fresh from the garden. Or if like me, faced with volunteers sprawling onto the turf or into the roses, snip their water filled stems close to the ground. I lay jute twine on the turf, cut the plants flush with the ground and lay on the twine. It’s all eyeball measurement, when I have enough I tie the lower ends in tight bunches. Hang the borage in dim, dry, well ventilated spaces. A couple 1 inch pipes cross hung under the rafters in the garage and in the cellar are perfect to hang borage and other herbs to dry. Slowly the rafters fill with aromatic plants. Their benevolence continues long beyond the garden. Borage has the rare distinction of solely pink or blue modest flowers on the same plant. Their flowers are often moments of finesse for bakers and gourmets who garnish cakes or yogurt for visual delight and taste. When snow flies, a steaming cup of borage mixed with other herbs comforts gardeners devoted to seed catalogs and a longing for the dazzling red, white and blue of July 4th. Tend your gardens friends, join the parade into the future.
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.
Related Slideshow: 10 Things to Do In New England Before Summer’s Over
Related Articles
- Leonard Moorehead, The Urban Gardener: The Great Melt
- Leonard Moorehead, The Urban Gardener: Patience is Virtuous
- Leonard Moorehead, The Urban Gardener: Let’s Go Green
- Leonard Moorehead, The Urban Gardener: Vernal Equinox
- Leonard Moorehead, The Urban Gardener: Spring Poised on the Equinox
- Leonard Moorehead, The Urban Gardener: Hope Springs Eternal
- Leonard Moorehead, TheUrban Gardener: Snow is Good for Gardens
- Leonard Moorehead, the Urban Gardener: Spring’s Snowy Prelude
- Leonard Moorehead, The Urban Gardener: Seeds in the Snowbed
- Leonard Moorehead, The Urban Gardener: All For Love
- Leonard Moorehead, The Urban Gardener: April Opens with Kindness
- Leonard Moorehead, The Urban Gardener: Spring into Action
- Leonard Moorehead, the Urban Gardener: June Smiles
- Leonard Moorehead, The Urban Gardener: Celebrate Roses
- Leonard Moorehead, The Urban Gardener: Strawberries and Love Divine
- Leonard Moorehead, The Urban Gardener: Solstice Climax
- Leonard Moorehead, The Urban Gardener: Oasis of Peace
- Leonard Moorehead, The Urban Gardener: Sweet Memory
- Leonard Moorehead, The Urban Gardener: Peerless Pears
- Leonard Moorehead, The Urban Gardener: Container Gardens for Urbanites
- Leonard Moorehead, The Urban Gardener: Spring Busts Out!
- Leonard Moorehead, the Urban Gardener: Asparagus at Last
- Leonard Moorehead, the Urban Gardener: Everyone is a Gardener
