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  • From: "Lawrence F. London, Jr." <venaurafarm@bellsouth.net>
  • To: permaculture <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [permaculture] Encouraging "volunteer" crops in urban landscapes
  • Date: Tue, 05 Oct 2010 23:23:42 -0400

On 10/5/2010 10:26 PM, Keith Johnson wrote:
In Bloomington, IN, there are lots of community gardens, a new community
orchard, urban farmers, farmers markets, university gardeners, local
seed growers / sellers cooperation, increasing levels of garden / farmer
training and support.

You are lucky to have that in your region. Not everyone does.

We don't have any "official" guerrilla gardening groups locally (that I
know of) but as a seed saver I find myself thinking about all the things
in my garden that could grow on their own, or with little support, in
wilder urban niches. I have in mind a diversity of plants with multiple
yields and the creation of mixed seed / cutting collections of locally
adapted, low maintenance, often self-sowing, occasionally high
nutritional value, beneficial insect / bee / butterfly attracting,
colorful, fragrant, sometimes perennial, economically valuable,
nitrogen-fixing, wildlife food / habitat, and mineral-accumulating types
of plants that could also partially self-employ those who establish /
manage / harvest them.

That is a A Plan! Great thinking. Now time to do it.

Maybe a tall order but doable, I think..

A few of the plants that would lend themselves to some neglect under
less-cared-for conditions in my local (going on zone 7 [was zone 5 25
years ago]) list include (in no particular order)

+ > amaranth,
+ > magenta lamb's quarters,
+ > cilantro,
dill,
carrot (especially the cosmic red and purples which bloom in rosy pinks
and are swarmed by beneficials),
+ > walking or Egyptian onion,
leek,
chard,
lettuce,
radish,
+ > ground cherry (Physalis spp.), tomatillo,
broom corn (Sorghum),
wheat,
long beans,
lablab beans (hyacinth bean),
sunflowers,
balsam impatiens (I grew them as understory in the asparagus and
scattered through the garden and they shaded out weedy competition
beautifully, butterflies and pollinators love them, simple and
effortless to weed),
cup plant (Sylphium),
indigo (Indigofera tinctoria [polygonaceae], I have white- and
pink-flowered types of this beautiful blue-dye plant that self-sow in
the greenhouse and outdoors);
the moschata branch of the cucurbits (solid stem, borer resistant) and
includes tromboncino, butternut and others;
+ Red Orach, beefsteak leaves - used in Umeboshi Plums & with pickled ginger or alone in traditional Japanese macrobiotic cooking> orach (Chenopodium),
motherwort (careful, succeeds easily in poor soil),
celosias (very elegant, colorful and beneficial hosts),
garlic (plant cloves or bulbils),
+ > field / winter / Austrian peas,
kale,
collards,
senna (short woody, N-fix, bee forage, yellow flowers for 1-2 months),
baptisia (blue, yellow and white varieties, perennial, N-fix),
Amorpha fruticosa ("false indigo", bee forage, fodder, mulch, N - highly
recommended),
cherry tomatoes,
buckwheat,
liatris,
hollyhocks,
zinnias,
marigolds,
hibiscus,
sweet potatoes,
stonefruit,
paw paws,
service berry (from seed and side shoots),
currant / gooseberry (from cuttings),
+ > thornless blackberries and
che fruit (melon berry / Chinese mulberry, fig / mulberry family, can be
grafted onto wild Osage orange [Maclura]).
Apples could be grafted onto crab apples and hawthornes, pears on to
ornamental pears.

Grow apples from seed and plant orchards of them.

What would your local lists look like?

wild mustard
persimmon
eleagnus, fruiting variety
wild cherry
mulberry
fox grapes
wild strawberries




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