To: Permaculture ibiblio <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
Subject: [permaculture] Censorship: was Encouraging "volunteer" crops in urban landscapes
Date: Sun, 14 Nov 2010 22:37:03 -0500
Send failed. Trying again. This has happened MANY times in the last
few months. Is anyone else having this problem?
K
-----Forwarded Message-----
From: Keith D Johnson
Sent: Oct 31, 2010 9:46 AM
To: Permaculture Ibiblio List
Subject: Censorship: was Encouraging "volunteer" crops in urban
landscapes
The first 4 times I sent this to the list it never made it. Maybe
it was because it had the word "guerilla" in the subject line.
I never heard back from anyone about their own local "volunteer"
crops, though I'm curious to compare notes.
So, who is stopping email from reaching the list? ISPs?
Should we be concerned?
Has anyone else experienced this kind of censorship?
Thanks,
Keith
-----Forwarded Message-----
From: Keith D Johnson
Sent: Sep 24, 2010 4:33 PM
To: Permaculture Ibiblio List
Subject: Encouraging "volunteer" crops in urban landscapes
Any groups like these (below) happening in your regions?
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.
We don't have any "official" guerilla 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 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.
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;
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, mulch, N),
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.