permaculture

["Lawrence F. London, Jr." <venaurafarm@bellsouth.net>]

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