Liberated Gardener

The Leaf-Mobile Arrives

I've been getting a lot of compliments on my truck's paint job when I pull up at gas stations these days. One friend christened my truck "The Leaf-Mobile."

 

This is my 1990 Chevy S-10 pickup truck. I bought it ten years ago when it had only 24,000 miles despite being 10 years old then. The owner had the use of company car and only used the truck on weekends to haul fertilizer. He apologized for not having time to clean the truck before he showed it to me (I was the first to respond to his ad.) But when he lifted the hood I swear my first thought was that the engine was clean enough to eat off of. The only reason he was selling it was the gout in his left leg made using the clutch a pain--so he had already bought himself an automatic S-10. 

My mechanic gave it a clean bill of health so I bought it, figuring it would last me 20 years, since I only put about 4000 miles a year on a work truck (I only work in neighborhoods contiguous with mine.)

Within a year the grey paint began to flake and peel. And after ten years there were rust spots and a very blemished complexion. When a body shop offered coupons for 50% off on a paint job I had them sand out the rust and paint it John Deere green. They gave me a $600 job for $300. 

Then despite Chris' doubts I bought some dark green automotive spray paint, clipped some leaves from the garden and used the leaves as stencils and voila. 

Below, the Leaf-Mobile delivers a Leaf-Stabile.

 

Clothes Line Posts = Garden Sculpture

With the warm, dry weather we've been able to reduce our power company's use of coal and oil (and conserving our money for our Travel Fund) by putting a lot of laundry out on the clothesline to dry instead of using the dryer.

 

If you think these clothesline posts look a little odd, then obviously you've no appreciation for art. 

I installed these posts after Chris heard that I had built sculptural clothesline posts for a client. She asked "When are we going to have a clothesline?" 

I don't like the idea of the cobbler's children having no shoes, so I kicked the idea around awhile and created this sculptural clothesline, which I call "Spanish Dancers." 

I put all the actual clothes lines on the same side of the posts so that I could position the posts at the edge of our property, between a rolled bamboo fence from Bamboo Fencer and our still-under-construction patio. 

The lumber is sustainably harvested Ipe; a rot-resistant wood from South America. To keep it from turning grey in the sun, I've given it a couple of coats of Tung oil. The lines are a black cord I bought at the Army surplus store. The wooden clothespins are from a dealer who bought them in East Germany. I cut the tops, arms and notches of the posts freehand with chainsaw, circular saw, jig saw and chisel. 

I've got a commission for another one that I'm going to build of locally harvested cedar and attach it to the side of a deck. It will be shaped like a conventional clothesline post, meaning a 'T' shape. But with the cords attached to glass insulators from old power lines. So it will look like an old-school power line. Kind of fitting for something that saves energy. 

Below is the original sculptural clothesline post, named Clothesline Christ in homage to all the domestic goddesses who've kept our clothes smelling fresh over the millennia. 

 

Trellising Vines the Smart Way

That last post about laying out soaker hoses, showed a picture of Carolina jessamine being trellised. Which reminded me that there is a smart way to trellis vines and a...uh....standard way. The standard planting of vines that I've seen usually looks like the pic below. The poor vine is still trussed up the way it was in the nursery, looking like a Saturn V rocket at the gantry, with half-a-dozen zip ties holding it to a 2' length of bamboo. Standard practice is to leave the vine that way and expect that somehow the vine will know that it needs to spread out to the right and left to meet it's mates 4'-6' away, in order to fully cover the trellis. 

But the vine only knows it wants more light so it rockets straight up the trellis, leaving big ol' gaps on both sides. 

 

The Smart way to plant a vine on a trellis, would be to remove the zip ties and the bamboo, as those things are only valuable in the nursery. (the pot is only valuable in the nursery, but you don't leave it in place when you plant do you?) And then you lay the vine down parallel to the trellis as in the photo below. If the individual sprays of the vine will separate, I often lay some down to the left and some to the right, if I want to cover a wider swath. (Don't worry if you break a few sprays--there's more where they came from.)

By laying the vine down, you will get a lot of shoots running up to the sunlight in a sweep (as in the photo below), instead of all of them running up the same avenue. 

 

This is a different site, but it's a couple of years further along. 

(As I'm sure you've heard--in the first year vines sleep, the second year they creep and the third year they leap. Of course for the first year, they are interested in establishing deeper roots, as any plant can only grow as much top as the bottom can support, so being patient is also being realistic.)

With vines laid all along the base of the trellis from one end to the other, my client is getting pretty uniform coverage by the jessamine, rather than a stop-and-start effect that comes from vines planted with their bamboo intact. 

The photo below shows the site a year and a half later, with the jessamine in flower from one end to the other. Pretty smart huh?

 

 

3 Perennial Edibles in One Bed

 

Prices for fresh fruits and vegetables are rising partly because of the cost of fossil fuels for transportation. But our household’s cost for asparagus, rhubarb, raspberries, figs, artichokes and blueberries are the same as last year because we grow these perennial fruits and vegetables ourselves. Produce in the average family’s grocery cart traveled about 1500 miles. That burns up hundreds of gallons of fuel that would require the planting of thousands of trees to offset all the greenhouses gases produced. Lots of our produce, on the other hand, traveled much less than 1500 inches getting to our table. And instead  of burning up  fossil fuel, we burn up a few hundred calories working in the garden. That offsets the calories in the bowl of vanilla ice cream that I buried under a pile of alpine strawberries for dessert last night. How’s that for guilt-free pleasures? I saved the Earth and my waistline at the same time.

 
 

Prices for fresh fruits and vegetables are rising partly because of the cost of fossil fuels for transportation. But our household’s cost for asparagus, rhubarb, raspberries, figs, artichokes and blueberries are the same as last year because we grow these perennial fruits and vegetables ourselves. Produce in the average family’s grocery cart traveled about 1500 miles. That burns up hundreds of gallons of fuel that would require the planting of thousands of trees to offset all the greenhouses gases produced. Lots of our produce, on the other hand, traveled much less than 1500 inches getting to our table. And instead  of burning up  fossil fuel, we burn up a few hundred calories working in the garden. That offsets the calories in the bowl of vanilla ice cream that I buried under a pile of alpine strawberries for dessert last night. How’s that for guilt-free pleasures? I saved the Earth and my waistline at the same time.

I’ve kept an organic vegetable garden for over 25 years, but about 10 years ago, I wondered if it wouldn’t be less work to grow perennial fruits and vegetables for the table in addition to annual vegetables. After putting perennials in the ground the first time, there’s no tilling, no planting and no pulling spent plants out every few months. Don’t get me wrong—I love our vegetable garden, but I think of the annual tomatoes, peas, greens, broccoli and other vegetables as toddlers that need regular attention, while the perennials are more like pre-teens; old enough to be a bit independent, but they still like adults enough to want to stay close to home. And like pre-teens, they do need occasional help with grooming—mulching and pruning in the case of the perennials—but given the higher per pound cost at the store for these crops and the intensity of good flavor and texture we get when we can put fresh cut asparagus straight on the grill, they are more than worth that small amount of effort.

 

 We grow the raspberries, asparagus and alpine strawberries all together in a circular raised bed edged with basketball sized stones, because they all like very good drainage. We harvest the asparagus shoots til near the end of May and then let them grow up into ferny bushes that shade the alpine strawberries from the summer sun.  We’ve also recently planted a few perennial fruits and vegetables that we’ve yet to harvest: apple, sweet cherry, cardoon and lovage. All these perennial fruits and vegetable need at least 6-8 hours of full sun to produce well. But we’re growing some other plants in mostly shade, such as figs, native paw paw trees (produces a banana flavored fruit), Solomon’s Seal (you can eat the shoots similar to asparagus), ostrich ferns (the fiddleheads are edible) and mayapple, a native woodland groundcover that has a fruit that to me  tastes just like a scuppernong grape, but without the seeds and tough outer skin.

Gardening goes better with books and two that I recommend for someone intrigued with growing perennial fruits and vegetables are Perennial Vegetables by Eric Toensmeier and the NC Fruit and Vegetable Book by Walter Reeves and Felder Rushing.

Most of our edible perennials come from a nursery called  Edible Landscaping,(website of the same name).

Finally, you might be wondering how we manage to squeeze all these perennial fruits and vegetables onto our 1/6^th acre lot? We simply put our fossil-fuel consuming lawn on a diet. I mean, who wants to eat grass?

 

 

 

Cedar Arbor

My last project before taking my summer break from garden-making, included this arbor built from cedar trunks and branches.

The clients asked for something that looked like elves made it. I also drew on my memories of beaver lodges, with branches twisted through each other and loose ends sticking out. 

 The arbor also serves to define a transition from the public space to the private space of their front yard garden.  A transition from the everyday space of the neighborhood into the magical space of the garden. 

 

Aerial Pumpkins on the Way

Probably everyone knows that pumpkins are vines, but you probably don't think about them growing on a trellis. 

 

Here's a closeup of a tender tendril that's strong enough to lift the plant and the pumpkins themselves up off the ground. 
 

 

We planted these pumpkins the second week of June and little over a month later they are just starting to flower. When we have some colorful fruit, I'll post those photos too. 

The red trellis is cobbled together from some shelf racks from a defunct store bought for $10 apiece. The paint will fade to pink over time and they will get surface rust, but they will stand up to the weather for many years. They are held up by a 5' length of rebar pushed into the ground at each end and tied to the rack with tie wire. Jute twine would probably do for the season too. 

Pumpkins generally do fine just running on the ground without a trellis, but they do tend to get underfoot and the fruit can rot on the ground if we get endless weeks of rain. 

This way we can keep the paths between beds clear of the vines and keep the fruit off the ground. At harvest time we won't have to bend over either. 

And it looks pretty. 

A Slate Roof Gets Grounded

Slate roofs can last about 100 years. But even so, a lot of people would rather tear them off and replace them with asphalt shingles that only last about 20 years. Why? Because they don't want to pay for the occasional repair on their slate roof. They aren't saving money and to my eye their house looks the worse for it--but hey, to each his own. 

Adding environmental insult to aesthetic injury, most of these slate shingles end up in municipal landfill. A truly sad end when you think of the labor that went into quarrying the slate, shaping it and installing it. 

With an eye for beautifying gardens and a feel for what it took to shape these stones, I've salvaged a fair share of intact slate roofing shingles and have put them to use in various gardens for edging beds, like this one below, which I installed about 10 years ago. 

 

They are sturdy and handsome, natural and salvaged. A perfect look for a liberated garden. 

Here's a larger view of the entire garden bed, originally created about 20 years earlier for a single Japanese maple tree. 

(I was brought in on this job because the maple was suffering from singed leaves and dying limbs. If you want to learn what the Liberated Gardener did to remedy this situation, check my blog tomorrow for that story. )
 

 

Installing the roofing slate as an edging is a very low tech activity. 

I used a square-point shovel (a spade or edger would do also) to create a vertical slit right slap next to the original brick edging--or concrete walkway--about 6-8" deep. The slates are only about a 1/4" thick, so I then lined up a slate on its side in line with the slit and pushed it down a bit into the opening by hand. Then I used a mallet (a dead-blow hammer would work too) to tap it in as deep as necessary so the exposed height would be about 4 inches or so; high enough to hold a 2-3" layer of mulch in place. 

I then set the next slate into the slit, while butting its end up against the first slate. Tapped it down till the top was level with the first one and then installed the third one. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Generally roofing slates are about 10" across. So if you can create a slit at least 6" deep with the shovel, you'll be okay. 

If the slates are wider than you can push down into the soil, decide how much you want to remove, stack a few of them, mark the top one and cut through them all with an old circular saw and a new masonry blade. 

I say an old circular saw, because the dust from cutting stone will get into the saw and eat the bearings until it quits working. But once you've bought a masonry blade (better yet a longer-lasting industrial diamond blade for about $20) and you see how easy it is to cut stone--and brick--you'll probably want to dedicate that saw to these kind of projects. (And set up a fan to blow the dust away from you.)

And once you've installed your lovely, salvaged edging--so much prettier and longer lasting than any of the plastic crap made from fossil fuels, and cheaper than steel edging, which rusts and looks neglected--you can plant some candytuft or oregano to gently grow over the edging for that relaxed cottage garden look.

And then relax yourself in a shady chair with a view of your permanent slate-edged bed. 

 

Making a Trellis for Peas and Beans from Bamboo

Peas can grow on the ground, which might be good if you're a kid, but I find I like to bend over less than I used to. Picking peas and beans from a trellis keeps them cleaner and saves time and strain in the picking.

I harvested some 2" bamboo from the overgrown alley at my old house in the Burch Ave. neighborhood and cut it to about 8' long to get it home in the truck. The peas were already planted and had grown about 12" high and were waving around searching for something to climb. 

As you can see in the picture, I set a pair of bamboo at each end of the 4'x4' raised bed and used tie-wire (twine would work fine too--I just used what was handy) to make an "A" frame. Just cut a piece of wire long enough (about 16" or so, length of wire will depend on size of bamboo) and wrap around once and twist the ends together.

An advantage of tie-wire is that you can then use a wrench to grab the twisted ends and twist them tighter to snug up the pieces of bamboo. I then used a third bamboo to hold an "A" up temporarily by leaning them together ( a helper can be useful to hold things in place while you tie them, but if you're handy and take your time to think out your steps, you can do this alone if need be).

Another piece of bamboo that reached from the bottom of one "A" to the crossing point of the other "A" was tie-wired (and tightened with pliers). A diagonal like this is necessary to keep the whole thing from falling over. The final piece of bamboo (cut with a saw to the right length) straddled the top of each "A" horizontally and was tied and tightened.

With the bamboo frame in place, I just needed something to drape on it for the peas to climb on. I had a short section of galvanized fence left over from a project that fit in both dimensions. Any kind of netting would work or you could use jute twine to weave your own netting. I've seen one gardener use twine to weave a netting that looked like a big spider's web--so there is no law that the netting has be be composed of a series of rectangles or parallel lines. The peas won't notice.

In fact you could use a tangle of branches laid against the bamboo if you've been doing some pruning. Peas and other vines evolved clambering up twigs and branches anyway,  so they'll be right at home.

And then if you've planted Sugar Snap peas you and your sweetheart can stuff your faces with the green candy in May/June while sitting on the porch admiring your handiwork.

Everlasting Tomato Cages

For years I promoted using concrete reinforcing wire to make the best tomato cages. These cages (trellises) need no staking, no tying up the tomatoes, they're tall enough (5'x18") to handle a healthy indeterminate tomato vine,  they have a lovely patina of rust,  they last almost forever and can live outdoors in the off-season. These things are real timesavers in the garden and they are so superior to those dinky, galvanized cages that most garden centers and big box stores sell. 

But few people used them. Then it dawned on me that not every gardener had a truck that could haul an 80 lb. roll of wire or had a set of bolt cutters that it takes to cut this heavy-gauge wire. And since you can get about 25 cages from one roll, most gardeners aren't going to want to spend $100 or so on a roll, when they only need a few cages to trellis their tomatoes. 

So last spring I put the word out that I would sell tomato cages for $12 each (and put the money in our Travel Fund). And sold about 100 of them over the course of a week. 

This spring, we're a bit busier, so I didn't market them as much and due to the recession, I cut the price back to $10 each and still sold about 50 of them this weekend (April 10/11). 

Have had some conversations with garden centers about selling them on consignment. May not get to it this year--we're leaving town for a month on April 29th. Maybe next spring. 

Below is a pic of a young tomato plant getting started inside a cage. I used to stake the cages (with tent stakes) but that was a pain and then it struck me that simply setting 3 or 4 of the cages cheek-by-jowl and tying the tops together with a bit of twine would create a big enough foot print so they wouldn't topple over even in a storm. 

Creating these would be a good project for a community garden. All you need is someone with a truck to pick up the wire, a set of bolt cutters and a space to work in and you're good to go. 

Instructions:

1) Use the bolt cutters to remove any clips holding the roll together. 

2) Use some weights (such as a couple of cinderblocks--I put them in a couple of milk crates to have handles) to hold down the wire so you can cut it. The ends of the wire are sharp and it's springy. It wants to bite you, so use the weights to hold the wire on the ground. 

3) Count out 10 squares (they are 6"x6"--big enough to pull out a one pound tomato with your hand) and then cut the end of the wires on the 11th square. 

4) CAREFULLY remove the weights one at a time. 

5) Pull the edges of the cage together and bend over the cut ends to hold the cage together in a circle. 

6) Plant and mulch your tomatoes on 18" centers in a square or triangular pattern and put the cages over them such that each cage is touching two other cages. 

7) Tie the tops of each cage to 2 other cages with hemp or jute twine (although zip ties or tie wire would be fine too). 

8) Enjoy the time you Don't spend staking and tying up your tomatoes.