Peasant Gardens versus Convenience

One of the big trends in gardening these days is planting a multilayered garden with edible plants as ground cover, shrubs, & fruit trees, with a few herbs and/or ornamentals thrown into the mix. I was intrigued by this concept in the mid-70s. I learned my lesson well—the hard way.

Mixing layered plants with & under fruit trees is a royal pain in the @#s. You’re forever looking for a place to step without squishing the other, lower plants. It must increase the picking & pruning time by a factor of three to ten times. Another problem is finding any fallen fruit so as to not leave any pests or diseases around to infect the tree the next year.

The mixture of layers of bearing crops is really based on peasant culture, especially in the tropics. If you read the books carefully, you’ll find a lot of the “models” are actually based on non-temperate plantings. The tropics has a completely different soil ecosystem. The tropics stores most of its nutrients above ground for rapid availability of nutrients. In temperate zones, it’s the other way around. Soil not in the tropics, such as most of America, stores much of the nutrients in the soil. To take a tropical model & transfer it to a temperate climate is fraught with the possibility of failure.

Furthermore, the tropical models usually stem from a highly knowledgeable peasant demographic. The people are trained via many generations of cultivators where tried-and-trusted cultivation techniques are common. The tropical ecosystem combined with skilled knowledge of the ecosystem often makes for lush, multi-layered plantings. In America, most families have two working people. What to do in the “spare time” is critical. A layered planting takes so much extra time that I don’t recommend it. Rather than the two photos of peach trees with roses, irises, and dozens of other plants beneath & beyond the dripline of the tree, I prefer clustering fruit trees in a zone with continuous mulch as seen in David Ulmer’s front yard. The time saved for other recreational activities is greatly increased. The planting of beneficial insect attracting plant well beyond the current & future diameter of the fruit tree works fine as must beneficial insects can easily fly into fruit tree zone to pray upon pests.

It’s a matter of choosing between an aesthetic bias, a preference an intellectual concept, or the convenience of zoning the trees together. This doesn’t mean linear rows like a commercial orchard. Instead I plant fruit trees on an irregular spacing to look more like a grove of trees. Another excellent approach is to plant two, three, four or more trees in the same planting spot—as David does. The photo without plants & a continuous mulch beneath is a planting for David’s wise use of fruit trees. This gives the opportunity to increase the variety of fruit while looking less like a typical orchard.

“BUY FROM THE SOURCE TO HELP KEEP WRITERS WRITING”


Let me know what you think. Visit my web site, www. rkourik.com, to learn about my new book on drip irrigation and other gardening books. Thanks, Robert

Peasant Gardens vrs. Convenience

One of the big trends in gardening these days is planting a multilayered garden with edible plants as ground cover, shrubs, & fruit trees, with a few herbs and/ornamental thrown into the mix. I was intrigued by this concept in the mid-70s. I learned my lesson well—the hard way.

Mixing layered plants with & under fruit trees is a royal pain in the @#s. You’re forever looking for a place to step without squishing the other, lower plants. It must increase the picking & pruning time by a factor of three to ten times. Another problem is finding any fallen fruit so as to not leave any pests or diseases around to infect the tree the next year.

The mixture of layers of bearing crops is really based on peasant culture, especially in the tropics. If you read the books carefully, you’ll find a lot of the “models” are actually based on non-temperate plantings. The tropics has a completely different soil ecosystem. The tropics stores most of its nutrients above ground for rapid availability of nutrients. In temperate zones, it’s the other way around. Soil not in the tropics, such as most of America, stores much of the nutrients in the soil. To take a tropical model & transfer it to a temperate climate is fraught with the possibility of failure.

Furthermore, the tropical models usually stem from a highly knowledgeable peasant demographic. The people are trained via many generations of cultivators where tried-and-trusted cultivation techniques are common. The tropical ecosystem combined with skilled knowledge of the ecosystem often makes for lush, multi-layered plantings. In America, most families have two working people. What to do in the “spare time” is critical. A layered planting takes so much extra time that I don’t recommend it. Rather than the two photos of peach trees with roses, irises, and dozens of other plants beneath & beyond the dripline of the tree, I prefer clustering fruit trees in a zone with continuous mulch as seen in David Ulmer’s front yard. The time saved for other recreational activities is greatly increased. The planting of beneficial insect attracting plant well beyond the current & future diameter of the fruit tree works fine as must beneficial insects can easily fly into fruit tree zone to pray upon pests.

It’s a matter of choosing between an aesthetic bias, a preference an intellectual concept, or the convenience of zoning the trees together. This doesn’t mean linear rows like a commercial orchard. Instead I plant fruit trees on an irregular spacing to look more like a grove of trees. Another excellent approach is to plant two, three, four or more trees in the same planting spot—as David does. The photo without plants & a continuous mulch beneath is a planting for David’s wise use of fruit trees. This gives the opportunity to increase the variety of fruit while looking less like a typical orchard.

“BUY FROM THE SOURCE TO HELP KEEP WRITERS WRITING”


Let me know what you think. Visit my web site, www. rkourik.com, to learn about my new book on drip irrigation and other gardening books. Thanks, Robert

A Tasty Way to Landscape

Long before the Berlin wall came down, the arbitrary horticultural barriers between the vegetable garden and the flower border, between fruit trees and shade trees, and between herbs and ornamental flowers had already begun to crumble. This was due to a new trend known as edible landscaping, which sprang up in the mid-1970’s and combined food-growing and landscaping with a sense of design, an eye to color and the intention of producing bountiful harvests.

A beautiful edible landscape, garden or allotment is a feast for all the senses — imagine sculptural green broccoli set off by vivid orange and yellow calendula petals; the sweet fragrances of rosemary and lavender wafting throughout the garden; the taste of sweetly-tart 'Pink Pearl' apples with marbled pink and white flesh (Seen above in bloom and as cooked in a tart.) or a rainbow of color on salads topped with the spectacular edible blossoms of pansies, nasturtiums, roses, or anise hyssop.

Peasant farmers are perhaps the world’s greatest organic edible landscapers, since without the resources of wealthy industrialized civilizations, they naturally grow a great amount of their food right next to (or very close to) their homes, practically guaranteeing well-tended fresh produce. Edible landscaping is peasant gardening done within the limitations of our busy modern times. In other words, organic edible landscaping is nothing new, just a timely revival. In my book (Designing & Maintaining Your Edible Landscape - Naturally - still in print after 24 years, see my web site www.robertkourik.com), I draw upon both the intuitive peasant gardeners as well as the latest in horticultural science.

Golden Rules for Edible Landscaping
Regardless of where you live, there are a few important guidelines to consider for a well-designed and productive edible landscape. Over the past 25 years, while teaching about, installing and designing such landscapes, I’ve formulated what I call the “Golden Rules of Edible Landscaping,” to deal with common stumbling-blocks. Some examples:

• Start ever so small.
• Try to plant your vegetables no further from the kitchen sink than you can throw it
• Be lazy; let nature work for you.
• Time and money spent early means even more time and money saved later.
• Plan in advance; make your mistakes on paper, not in your landscape.
• Try to incorporate plants that serve more than one use.

Avoiding the Tyranny of Edibility
Some people assume that an edible landscape involves replacing all their ornamental plants with edibles. Heavens no! A landscape made entirely of edible plants would be an enormous burden to all but the most compulsive gardener, the wealthy, or the retired. The concept is to have a productive landscape which appears ornamental in its overall design. In my book I recommend those with yards less than 2400 square feet should have no more than 50% of the area planted with edibles (and this figure may be ambitious). The main point is to start very small and grow only what you can reasonably harvest without having to turn your edible landscape into another full-time job.

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Let me know what you think. Visit my web site, www. rkourik.com, to learn about my new book on drip irrigation and other gardening books. Thanks, Robert

Foxy Flowers - Foxgloves

My garden is full of dozens of foxglove that have seed themselves, leading to a wide range of colors-from creamy white to pink, rosy pink, and almost deep red.

Our eyes see delightful beauty in our gardens. People see all the colors of the rainbow; red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet. Bees do not see red and can only distinguish between six colors:, blue-green, blue, violet, ultraviolet, and yellow. They can see a color called "bee's purple," a mixture of yellow and ultraviolet.

Some of the splendor in garden flower remains unseen. Each foxglove blossom has a different set of splotches all the way into its throat, like little runway guides leading to the sweet nectar. These are intriguing enough. But there’s more. A pollinating bumble bee see something beyond our vision. Bumble bees have a pair of six-sided, compound eyes and three simple eyes. Even with such complex eyes, their sight is accurate for only about three feet. A special light guides bumble bees on their lusty journeys for pure nectar. Bumble bees see ultraviolet light. A pattern of ultraviolet coloration lures a bumble bee into the foxglove flower’s throat. These patterns unseen by our eyes act like the signals of an airport’s landing strip. And the ultraviolet splotches of color don’t match the random splotches we see in the sunshine.

The earth’s protective atmosphere shields us from much of the sun’s ultraviolet light (radiation). Enough ultraviolet radiation filters through to aid bumble bees in their daily journeys. Even on a cloudy day, the bumble bees see the ultraviolet spectrum by cloud-penetrating ultraviolet light. What assists bumble bees on their quest for pollen and nectar can cause us to sunburn—part of the two-sided tapestry of life.

In each blossom the pollen is in the roof of the flower so the upper body of the bumble bee is brushed with the pollen as the bumble bee goes deeper into the blossom to seek out the sweet nectar (as seen here). After flying to another flower, the pollens are mixed and seed formation begins. The pollination process leads to plants with a mixture of colors. An isolated stand with creamy flowers will have cream colors until a seedling of a rose-colored blossom pops up nearby. Then things get interesting as different blends of color appear.


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Let me know what you think. Visit my web site, www. rkourik.com, to learn about my new book on drip irrigation and other gardening books. Thanks, Robert

Mustering more info. about mustards

More fooder for the discussion about mustard plants growing in vineyards.

In college, Knoll, who has a Ph. D. in Chemistry, researched the science of allelopathy—the study of the toxic or antagonistic chemicals (many of which are called secondary metabolites) which some plants produce. These compounds act, in Knoll's words, "as ecological chemicals to gain an advantage over other plants and act like an ‘immune system’ for the plant." These chemicals have a number of impacts, such as stunting the growth of other plants or suppressing their germination of seed. For example, Rick points out: "All Brassica roots exude a secondary metabolite (glucosinolates —related to mustard gas) which inhibits grass-seed germination; this slows down the grasses and lets the Brassica get a really strong start. It doesn't kill the grasses; it's just a mechanism for competition."


(From Bob's Newsletter, Vol. 1. No. 2. See www.robertkourik.com to buy the entire article about Rick Knoll, one of the best organic farmers in Northern California.)

“BUY FROM THE SOURCE TO HELP KEEP WRITERS WRITING”


Let me know what you think. Visit my web site to learn about my new book on drip irrigation and other gardening books. Thanks, Robert