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  • From: "Tradingpost" <tradingpost@gilanet.com>
  • To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Livingontheland] Think OUTSIDE THE BOX!
  • Date: Sun, 26 Dec 2004 08:26:34 -0700


Reprinted with Permission of Robert Waldrop

Think OUTSIDE THE BOX!

http://www.oklahomafood.org/edible.htm
Growing a beautiful edible landscape in an urban neighborhood

Presentation by Robert Waldrop at the Arkansas Oklahoma Horticultural
Industries Trade Show, Springdale, Arkansas, January 10, 2003

When people think about growing food in urban areas, the first idea is
generally to hide the vegetable garden somewhere in the backyard, and all
too often, that means "out of sight, out of mind". At my house Oklahoma
City, this isn't an option, as the property has no back yard, so I had to
figure out something else.

There are four major influences on my garden philosophy.

(1) The Japanese farmer Masanobu Fukuoka, author of the One Straw
Revolution, who first began to spread the word about "no till farming" in
the 1970s. More information about the Fukuoka farming movement can be found
on line at http://FukuokaFarmingOL.net .

(2) Permaculture, as presented by Bill Mollison and David Holmgren, about
which more will be said presently. For further information about
permaculture, there are a number of links in the forest gardening section
of my website page, http://www.bettertimesinfo.org/alllinks.htm

(3) My belief in the importance of living lightly on the land comes from my
religious faith which teaches me that it is my moral duty to be a
responsible steward of earth's resources. The average urban landscape
wastes a tremendous amount of water and uses incredible amounts of chemical
fertilizer, pesticides, herbicides, and fossil fuels, and destroying the
land is not a way to be a responsible steward. There has to be a better
way, and that is what I am looking for.

(4) I am a fourth generation Oklahoman who grew up on a farm, and from my
earliest years I learned to appreciate the goodness of food that is grown
close to home. The wisdom of our Oklahoma ancestors remains as important
and relevant today as it was during the Depression. Growing food is a way
to both create wealth and conserve resources, while at the same time adding
greatly to the quality of one's life.

I began my project with a standard American city lot in the Gatewood
neighborhood of Oklahoma City, an area that was developed in the 1920s.
When I bought the property, there were 2 large mature elm trees (on either
side of the driveway), a mature pecan tree, and patches of daylilies,
mints, lemon balm, and garlic chives. The rest of the property not occupied
by buildings, sidewalks, or driveway was bermuda grass lawn. Over the last
3 going on 4 years, I have gradually changed the landscaping to the point
that last summer I had over 100 different varieties of useful or edible
plants growing, 2/3rds of them perennials.

DESIGN PHILOSOPHY

I am not a trained landscaper nor do I have long experience with designing
edible landscapes. I am basically making this up as I go along, and I am
always learning new things, by studying available materials, by applying
basic principles, and also by making mistakes and successes. There is
nothing quite like putting plants and seeds into the ground to teach a
person important lessons.

Remember the old story about the way to boil a frog is to simply increase
the heat very slowly so that he doesn't notice he's about to become soup?
This is the way our food system has deteriorated, one little step at a time
our sensibilities have become so degraded that we actually will pay money
for a tasteless, watery supermarket tomato that was picked green, shipped
thousands of miles and than gassed to turn red. Unfortunately, the gas
doesn't do anything for the taste.

To get away from this, one solution is for me to grow more food myself, to
create wealth from my labor, the soil, and plants.

So I think about a forest. We can easily find 7 different layers: (1)
mature canopy trees, (2) under story trees, (3) shrubs and bushes, (4)
ground covers, (5) climbing vines, (6) roots, and (7) herbs and smaller
plants. There is also a much less visible "layer" (or perhaps population
would be a better word) of micro flora and fauna, busily at work, as well
as insects, worms, and other wildlife, all of which contributes to the
greater whole around them.

My lot, which measures about 220' by 85' and has a house, duplex, and
detached garage on it, is not big enough for a lot of mature canopy trees.
The two mature elms I started with were taken down by ice storms over the
last 3 years. I do have one mature pecan tree in back, but my neighbors
across the street have mature trees. The closest thing in nature that I can
think of to describe my situation is "forest edge", the place where the
trees thin out and become prairie. Lots of light, yet some dappled shade
here and there.

For under story trees I am planting semi dwarf fruit trees. I expect to add
another 4 trees or so (I have been having failures 2 years in a row in
getting apricot trees to start, I would like 2 apricot trees and 2 sour
cherry trees).

I have a number of shrubs and bushes and plans to add more. Currently I
have Oregon grape, blackberries, bush cherries, elderberries, clove
currants, high bush cranberry, and aronia. As you can see from the map and
key I have passed around, I have lots of different kinds of smaller plants
and herbs, many perennial, some annual. Ground covers include the chocolate
and lemon mints, plus I have planted clover and vetch everywhere as cover
crops. Climbing vines include grapes and luffas, dewberries, boysenberries,
and I plan to add passion flower. Roots include onions, shallots, day
lilies, potatoes, and sweet potatoes.

How do you put something like this together? One plant at a time, of
course, but there are some basic principles to keep in mind. I'll list 15
of them here. Most of them are derived from lists that can be found in most
texts on permaculture and natural farming, plus my own personal
experiences.

(1) Observation.

"Gardener, know thy land," would be the gardening equivalent of "Physician,
heal thyself." You can learn a lot by simply looking at your land, whether
it be great or small. Consider my little place, 225' by 85'. You wouldn't
think a little patch like that would have many microclimates but it does. I
have cold spots and warm spots, some places are dry and others wet. I'm
still learning, and I'm also still impacting this land so things change. If
I plant a tree in a spot, it will change that place. Sometimes the change
is good, sometimes not. I've already decided I need to move some things
around. And when I do that, I am liable to have to change some others.
Eventually I'll get it right, but in the meantime, before you start, you
have to spend some time simply observing the land.

Observation also includes yourself as the garden designer, the others who
live on the land, and the community in which the land is located. All of
this impacts your design. If you think about the whole field of landscape
design, it's easy to see there are many schools and many possible ideas for
design principles. For example, a formal garden would be absolutely
symmetrical, balanced, lots of straight edges and if there are curves, they
are perfect. A more natural garden would not be so symmetrical, there
wouldn't be many straight edges and curves might take many shapes. Between
these two poles there are many options. So spend some time also observing
yourself and your community.
(2) Multiple uses.

Black-eyed peas, besides providing food, also fix nitrogen in the soil and
provide mulch. Logs used as landscape elements provide (1) habitat and food
for worms and other little critters, (2) places for humans to sit, (3) cat
petting perches, (4) are aesthetically pleasing to look at, and (5)
potentially could grow mushrooms. Not a bad deal for something that a lot
of people would just throw away. Edible flowers provide (1) beauty, (2) are
very tasty to eat, and (3) they attract bees and beneficial insects. The
vines on the trellis (1) yield grapes (wine & jam), (2) leaves (mulch and
stuffed grape leaves), (3) provide shade. Mulch (1) moderates the
temperatures of the ground, (2) helps control weeds, (3) encourages
earthworms, and (4) composts in place, thus feeding soil flora and fauna
and the plants Also not bad for something that many people put in plastic
bags and bury in holes in the ground. There's lots that has to be done even
in a small garden ecosystem, and it's better for the plants to do their job
than for the gardener to rush around doing backbreaking labor and spending
piles of cash to make up for the lack of a functioning ecosystem in the
garden.

(2) Relative location.

Everything has its place, and everything is in its space, so to speak, but
everything in the garden is also related and if you ignore the way plants
interact with each other and the environment, you're just making extra work
for yourself. If you look at nature, nothing grows in isolation, and
generally also not in monocultures. Rather, plants exist in communities.
You have mature trees, under story trees, climbing vines, herbs, and etc
all growing together, mutually supporting each other.

Permaculturists talk about plant guilds in the same way that vegetable
gardeners talk about companion planting. For example, a plant guild
centered on a fruit tree would want plants that are nutrient accumulators,
nitrogen fixers, mulch producers, bee plants, pest repellants and ground
covers, while at the same time producing useful products. Everything has
places in the garden where it will do well, and where it will do not so
well. The trick is to find good places for everything so they are able to
do their work as plants, thus taking a load off the gardener's back.

(3) each important function is supported by many elements.

If it's important, one cannot afford a failure. So rather than planting one
kind of lettuce, I planted 8. Nitrogen fixing is important, as this is an
all organic process, so I have planted 2 kinds of clover (a white clover
and crimson clover), vetch, black-eyed peas, and a redbud tree.
Diversity is critical, and if you don't believe that is true, look what
happened in Ireland due to the potato blight. How many millions starved or
immigrated because one plant failed? Natural systems are characterized by a
diversity of species of flora and fauna, and so must be the edible
landscape. If you come to my house for a salad in summer, it will have
maybe 15 different items. Imagine what an upscale restaurant would charge
for such a plate. I think that ultimately we will have more than 200
different varieties of useful or edible plants growing on our little land,
but it will take a few more years to get there.

(4) planning for energy efficiency

This is less about "miles per gallon" and more about "work for the
gardener", although this does have implications for fossil fuel
consumption. Food grown close to home does not embody much in the way of
fossil fuel, but every calorie of agribizness food you buy has at least 7
and sometimes as many as 12 calories of fossil fuels.

It is better to frontload some work at the beginning, as you are setting
things up, so you have less to do later. And the best kind of frontloaded
work of course is intelligent design so you don't waste time, money,
effort, or resources, while at the same time achieving a sustainable yield
that can be harvested for the benefit of you and your family.

Once you plant an apple tree, you don't have to plant it again next year. I
don't till any of my garden beds once I have them made, and I make them
without tilling or even removing the sod. Every bit of soil is mulched. I
recently made a detailed inspection of the garden, and found that every
single bed was loaded with earthworms and night crawlers. The first year I
bought a 5 gallon bucket of worms and released them onto the first beds I
made, they have obviously multiplied. (I have also released some night
crawlers that my various roommates have bought for use as fishing bait.
Whenever I find such a container in the fridge, I release them in the
garden.)

One application of energy efficiency in the garden is the use of zones to
plan the garden. Zone 0 is the habitation of the human persons who live on
the land, zone 1 being high maintenance plants that are visited often, zone
2 is perennial but cultivated plants like berry bushes and fruit trees that
aren't visited so often. Zone 3 is orchards, pasture, animal areas, zone 4
is semi managed, semi wild areas for gathering, and zone 5 is wild
unmanaged area. In an urban setting, all that most people will have room to
implement is generally zones 0 through 2. My kitchen is at the back of the
duplex (which is no longer a duplex, I have converted it to single family
use), so the herbs, greens, and salads are within a few steps of the back
door or across the driveway. Berries and fruit trees are further out. They
require less maintenance, but the greens and herbs are visited virtually
every day, so it makes sense to put them close at hand.

(5) use biological resources, minimize inputs

I use no commercial fertilizers, pesticides, or herbicides, although the
bermuda problem has sorely tempted me. I make a lot of compost and use it,
and also have encouraged worms and other beneficial insects. This last year
there were lots of lace wings, lady bugs, and praying manti in the garden.
I am not self sufficient in terms of avoiding all inputs from outside of my
garden, I bring home bags of grass clippings, leaves, and wilted flowers
from my church for the compost pile, but I think that eventually I will be
able to close that cycle. To border the beds, I used logs from the elm
trees on my property. Some of the mulch and compost was made from the
shredded small limbs of the trees taken down by the ice storm.

One thing I have failed at for three years is growing squash and pumpkins,
due to problems with squash bugs and cucumber beetles. This year I am
planting buffalo gourds among the squash, as there are anecdotes that it
will repel squash bugs and cucumber beetles. This is a potential biological
solution that will not require the use of poisonous pesticides.

There is no necessity that requires the use of pesticides, herbicides, and
chemical fertilizers. Pesticides, herbicides, and chemical fertilizers come
into play when humans have failed by destroying an ecosystem or by not
creating an effectively working ecosystem (or by failing in adapting or
evolving an existing system). It makes simply no sense to destroy the soil
that is designed to nourish plants, but that's the basis of much gardening
these days.

(6) Energy cycling

The way we live is filled with energy sinks. We spend piles of money to
heat water and then throw all that heat away by draining the hot water into
a cold sewer in the ground, without even trying to at least recover the
useful heat, not to mention reuse the water. Many such examples of flagrant
waste and energy gluttony could be cited. We should remember what our
grandparents told us: WASTE NOT, WANT NOT.

One way to waste not want not in gardening is to make your own compost.
Food scraps, garden waste, newspaper and etc are recycled into useful
compost via natural processes. If not composted, they are typically thrown
in the trash and buried in a landfill or washed down a sewer via a
"disposal". Kitchen disposal's should be renamed as "money shredders" or
"wealth wasters" because that's what they are.

Natural forests and prairies do not waste energy in this matter. Everything
is recycled. The more your garden does this, the less work you have to do,
the healthier the garden will be, and the more bountiful will be the
harvest.

We are also investing in super insulation for the house, as we do not use
air conditioning. In the summer we open doors and windows and use fans to
pull air in and out of the house. We also put a trellis along the western
wall so that now the west windows are shaded in the summer with grapevines
and mulberry bushes. We have made window quilts to use during the winter
inside to help hold heat in at night.

(7) work with natural forces, not against them

In nature, if a piece of earth is laid bare, plants rush in to heal the
breach. First come what we generally call weeds, then bushes and then
trees. This is the principle of natural succession. In an edible gardening
landscape, you help this process along by substituting useful or edible
plants for volunteers.

Much gardening and landscaping these days is a matter of working against,
not with, nature. From this attitude of opposition and dominance comes our
heavy reliance on commercial fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides. We
kill the natural fertility with poisons and chemicals, and then we try to
grow plants in a dead growing medium by substituting artificial fertilizers
for the complex natural system that has worked pretty well for several
hundred million years.

But even if we avoid chemical traps, there's still plenty of ways we can
work against, rather than with nature. In the first year I planted currants
I bought from an out of state nursery catalog, and they fried in the
summer. The second year I bought clove currants, an Oklahoma native, from
an Oklahoma nursery, and planted them so they got some shade in the hot
afternoon sun and they have thrived. The first year I worked against the
natural forces, the second I worked with them.

People often come by and want to help, and generally, the first thing they
want to do is reach down and pluck up a dandelion (dandelions generally
grow in just about every bed on my property). This is such a problem I am
thinking about putting small signs here and there amongst my beds, "Please
don't pluck the dandelions." Dandelions are incredibly useful. Their long
taproot brings up trace nutrients from down deep, they contribute to mulch,
and all parts of them are edible. Not to mention how pretty their yellow
blossoms looks. Pulling them is working against nature. It is better to let
them alone, and enjoy their beauty and usefulness, and let them do their
job, thus working with nature.

Another way to work with nature is to create polycultures of annual and
perennial plants. I have no garden beds devoted to just one plant, all of
them have a variety. My garden will always require some "cultivation", but
it will never require e.g. tilling, or excessive amounts of watering or
poisons.

Perhaps the most important thing is to pay attention to the soil. Much of
what we do in gardens, such as tilling, and using pesticides, herbicides,
and chemical fertilizers, is harmful to the long term health of the soil.
Herbicides and pesticides destroy the micro flora and fauna that are
essential to healthy soil. With lots of earth worms, you won't need to
till. It is better to let the worms do their job rather than a human try to
do a worm's job with backbreaking labor.

(8) Optimize edge

I think of my project as a "forest edge" garden, such as might be found at
the point that a mature forest evolves into a prairie. In ecology, it is
evident that such "edges" between ecosystems tend to be more productive and
diverse than the systems that are merging. So edges are good, and that is
true of both the garden as a whole and its various parts. One advantage of
a curved line over a straight line in a garden is that more plants can grow
along curve than a straight line.

(9) Use natural patterns

Nature doesn't have a lot of straight lines and square edges, and neither
does my garden. All of my beds are irregular shapes. One element I intend
to add this year are spirals, which are small mounds with plants spiraling
up them to the top. One thing that makes vegetable gardens not generally
considered to be front yard material is that they are all straight rows.
But my cabbages and broccoli and etc are scattered among everything else,
so even though they are very useful and edible, they also look good.

(10) optimum size

Permaculturists generally speak of small systems, and that is the scale
that most gardeners work at. We would like to have a farm some day, where
we would grow food for distribution to the poor. In the meantime, I think
it is important to learn what to do with what I have before me. If I can
learn this 225' x 85' bit of land well, then later if I do get more land I
might have some idea as to what to do with it.

Appropriate size is a consideration when you are putting things together in
the garden. There are lots of details. A garden bed should be about twice
the width the gardener can reach, that way the center can be reached from
both sides. Pathways should be wide enough to get a wheelbarrow down them,
but no wider than is necessary. Etc.

(11) Start small

The first year I did only 3 beds, less than 100 square feet total. The
second year I added more, the third year we got to the present place, and
this year I will be adding more beds. It won't be until the fifth year that
all of the lawn is disappeared. Actually, the very first thing I did was
make a compost pile. "We start small or we don't start at all," is good
advice for beginning edible landscapers. Be willing to accept small
harvests at first, as an edible landscape will take time to develop its
harvest.

(12) Work smart and minimize backbreaking labor.

It's important to think things through and pay attention to details. To
illustrate this, let me describe one of my major mistakes. I made my garden
beds by first putting down a layer of mulch, then two layers of brown
cardboard, more mulch, and then some topsoil mined from elsewhere on my
property. Then I planted into that surface and covered with more mulch.

The big mistake I made was to not at the same time mulch the paths. Who
knows what I was thinking of, but that one mistake has caused me a lot of
extra labor which is just now getting under control. So from the beginning,
mulch the paths as well as the beds, assuming you are building your project
on top of garden sod. This is called "sheet mulching." I do not remove the
sod at first as that is the most biologically active layer of soil. It will
compost in place and thus be very useful. Instead of mulching the paths,
you could take the sod off of them, compost it, and return it to the tops
of the beds, but that is more work the first year.

(13) Use color effectively.

We are talking about edible landscaping in an urban area here, so it's
important to use color effectively. This is something I am still
experimenting with, but useful and edible plants are also colorful and
beautiful and the colors can be combined very effectively to create
incredible displays. The first year that I used crimson clover as a cover
crop brought a nice surprise, in early spring, my yard and garden beds were
covered with beautiful crimson flowers. People driving by would stop and
ask, "What is that growing there on your yard?" Many plants generally
considered to be ornamentals are also edible, this is especially true of
flowers. Every part of the day lily plant is edible - flowers, roots, and
leaves. Rose petals are edible as are the hips (which are a major source of
vitamin C), as are Rose of Sharon flowers and red bud flowers (also the
seeds may be ground for flower). Rye can be as beautiful as ornamental
grasses. Purple coneflowers besides being beautiful are also an important
medicine plant.

Winter color can also be found among the edibles. Right now (January 2003)
I have beautiful kale plants, purple, pink, and green. Every time I chop a
head to eat, they grow back in pairs, so I have some plants with 4 heads on
them. Arugula (a self seeding annual salad crop) is still green, as is
salad burnet and french sorrel, and of course the sage. Oregon grapes,
besides producing an edible berry, also have glorious copper colored
foliage. Rue is a nice silver green that is still bright in the winter. For
Thanksgiving I made a table decoration with branches of tarragon, rue,
Oregon grape, horehound, and arugula, and sprinkled bright red rose hips.
And of course, the vetch and clovers are growing all winter long. The lemon
and chocolate mints are still green and thriving, even after snow. And even
though I don't think we consider broccoli a winter crop, I have several
broccoli plants that are still thriving, and producing heads even though I
have cut them regularly. Silver beet is another colorful plant that
survives into winter, and as an edible it is a "cut and come again" staple.

Fall and spring color are also found among the edibles. In spring there are
blossoms on the fruit trees and berry plants, and I highly recommend the
sand plums for beautiful orange and red fall foliage, as well as the
interesting shapes in which they grow

Many wildflowers are also edible or medicinal or produce dyes, and many of
them that are suitable for this area are also local natives. Another show
stopper is the maximilian sunflower, which produces multi branched plants
covered with yellow blossoms.

(14) Plug the gaps and fill the layers.

When I pulled the shallots, garlic, and multiplying onions in June, I
filled in the gaps with black-eyed peas. If anything failed, I put
something else in its place. Keep the mulch intact and add as necessary.
Mulch is really important both for soil conditioning and weed control.

Don't hesitate to scatter some seeds at random and see what happens. I did
several beds of a salad polyculture with 8 different kinds of lettuce, plus
buckwheat, radishes, ground cherries, and tomatoes. Except for the
tomatoes, all the others were sown by simply broadcasting and then
raking/mulching. I let some of everything go to seed, and I have a nice
little January crop of baby greens under the mulch.

"Fill the layers" refers to the seven niches of a forest garden (mature
trees, under story trees, etc). Each niche, except perhaps for the first
"mature canopy trees" (this depends on the size of the lot) should have
several elements in it. I don't have room for more than one mature canopy
tree, but my neighbors have them.

(15) Use decorations appropriately and outline boundaries..

Some folks like lawn decorations, others don't, I do. No, I don't have any
pink flamingos, but we're making some miniature wooden "oil derricks" which
will substitute for tomato cages, and also provide supports for both peas
and hops. Other possibilities include gazebos, trellises, arches, and
windmills.

When I made my first beds, I thought, "Hmmm, this looks a bit ugly." But
then I outlined them with logs, and that made all the difference in the
world. Proper treatment of boundaries is important for most neighborhood
aesthetics.

CONCLUSION

So these are some of the facets of my garden design project. The important
thing is to get started, if you wait until you know everything about
gardening, you will harvest even one tomato. You can always build a compost
pile, and once you get that going, you can try sheet mulching an area and
making a couple of beds.

Don't think that you have to draw everything out on paper first. If you can
do that, that's fine, but I'm not really talented or experienced with that
so I haven't done it. I get a general idea in my head as to where I want to
go, and then I do a little at a time, always looking at it to see if it
looks different and adjusting as necessary. Zoning your garden space is one
of the more important design principles, and the best place to start is
literally on your doorstep.

One final point. Don't be in a hurry. Growing a healthy, attractive, and
productive edible landscape doesn't happen overnight, even if you have a
lot of money to throw at a situation. But patience, coupled with love,
intelligent design, and good work can create for you, your family, and for
those who will come after you, a beautiful and abundant garden.

http://www.oklahomafood.org






  • [Livingontheland] Think OUTSIDE THE BOX!, Tradingpost, 12/26/2004

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