- Animals, Bees, Birding, Compost, Fungus and Mushrooms, Gardening adventures, Health, Heirloom Plants, Hugelkultur, Microbes and Fungi, Natives, Other Insects, Perennial vegetables, Permaculture and Edible Forest Gardening Adventures, Predators, Rain Catching, Reptiles and Amphibians, Seeds, Soil, Water, Water Saving, Worms
Plant Guild #6: Groundcover Plants
Artichokes are mining plants, but also have a low enough profile to be a groundcover plant. They make excellent chop-and-drop. Flanking are lavender, scented geranium (left), and borage. In most ecosystems that offer easy food for humans, the ground needs to be covered. Layers of leaves, organic matter from animals (poo, fur, carcasses, meal remains, etc.) , dropped branches and twigs, fallen flowers and fruit, and whatever else gravity holds close to the earth, compost to create soil and retain water and protect the soil from erosion and compaction. Areas that don’t have this compost layer are called deserts. If you want to grow an assortment of food for humans, you have to start building soil. Even in desert communities where there are some food plants growing, such as edible cactus, mesquite beans, etc., there is biodiversity on a more microscopic scale than in old growth forests. In deserts the soil needs to absorb what little rain there is and do it quickly before it evaporates, and plants have leaves adapted to have small leaf surfaces so as not to dry out, and there are few leaves to drop. Whereas in areas where there are large forests the weather is usually wetter, tall plants and thick underbrush provide multiple layers of protection both on the plants and when they fall to layer the earth.
Nasturtium reseeds itself annually, is edible with a bite of hotness, detracts aphids from other plants, and is charming. Don’t let it get away in natural areas, though. A quick way to build soil in plant guilds is to design for plants that will cover the ground. This isn’t necessarily the same groundcover as you would use to cover embankments. For instance, iceplant can be used in a pinch, but it really isn’t the best choice in most plant guilds unless you are in a very dry climate, and your plant guild is mostly desert-type plants: date palm, etc. Annuals can be squash or other aggressive food-producing vines such as unstaked tomatoes. However you don’t need to consider just ground-hugging plants; think sprawling shrubs.
Scented geraniums are a great ‘placeholder plant’. These Pelargoniums (not true geraniums) come in a wide variety of fragrances. We’ve found bird nests in these! When guests tour through Finch Frolic Garden, they often desire the lush foresty-feel of it for their own properties, but have no idea how to make it happen. This is where what I call ‘placeholder plants’ come in. Sprawling, low-cost shrubs can quickly cover a lot of ground, protect the soil, attract insects, often be edible or medicinal, be habitat for many animals, often can be pruned heavily to harvest green mulch (chop-and-drop), often can be pruned for cuttings that can be rooted for new plants to use or to sell, and are usually very attractive. When its time to plant something more useful in that area, the groundcover plant can be harvested, used for mulch, buried, or divided up. During the years that plant has been growing it has been building soil beneath it, protecting the ground from compaction from the rain. There is leave mulch, droppings from lizards, frogs, birds, rabbits, rodents and other creatures fertilizing the soil. The roots of the plant have been breaking through the dirt, releasing nutrients and developing microbial populations. Some plants sprawl 15′ or more; some are very low-water-use. All of this from one inexpensive plant.
Squash forms an annual groundcover around the base of this euphorbia. Depending upon your watering, there are many plants that fit the bill, and most of them are usable herbs. Scented geraniums (Pelargonium spp.), lavender, oregano, marjoram, culinary sage, prostrate rosemary, are several choices of many plants that will sprawl out from one central taproot. Here in Southern California, natives such as Cleveland sage, quail bush (which harvests salt from the soil), and ceanothus (California lilac, a nitrogen-fixer as well), are a few choices. Usually the less water use the plant needs, the slower the growth and the less often you can chop-and-drop it. With a little water, scented geraniums can cover 10 – 15 feet and you can use them for green mulch often, for rooted cuttings, for attracting insects, for medicine and flavoring, for cut greenery, for distillates if you make oils, etc.
Sweet potatoes make a great ground cover. Choose varieties that produce tubers directly under the plant rather than all along the stems so that you don’t have to dig up your whole guild to harvest. Groundcover plants shouldn’t be invasive. If you are planting in a small guild, planting something spreading like mint is going to be troublesome. If you are planting in larger guilds, then having something spreading in some areas, such as mint, is fine. However mint and other invasives don’t sprawl, but produce greenery above rootstock, so they are actually occupying more space than those plants that have a central taproot and can protect soil under their stems and branches. Here at Finch Frolic Garden, we have mint growing freely by the ponds, and in several pathways. Its job is to crowd out weeds, build soil, and provide aromatherapy. I’d much rather step on mint than on Bermuda grass, and besides being a superb tea herb, the tiny flowers feed the very small bees, wasps and flies that go unsung in gardens in favor of our non-native honeybees (there are no native honeybees in North America).
Here’s a general planting tip: position plants with fragrant leaves and flowers near your pathways for brush-by fragrance. You should have a dose of aromatherapy simply by walking your garden path. Mints are energizing, lavenders calming, so maybe plan your herbs with the pathways you take in the morning and evening to correspond to what boost you need at that time.
Consider groundcover plants and shrubs that will give you good soil and often so much more.
Next up: Vining Plants.
You can find the entire 9-part Plant Guild series here: Plant Guilds: What are they and how do they work? The first in a series. , Plant Guild #2: Canopy , Plant Guild #3: Sub-Canopy , Plant Guild #4: Nitrogen-Fixers, Plant Guild #5: Mining Plants, Plant Guild #7: Vines, Plant Guild #8: Insectiaries, Plant Guild #9: The Whole Picture.
What makes up a plant guild. You May Also Like
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Podcasts with Diane Kennedy
Two podcasts with me talking about permaculture, Finch Frolic Garden, and how you can save money and the world through gardening! 🙂 Please let me know what you think:
This is a podcast with Sheri Menelli of earthfriendlyhomeowner.com, where I talk pretty much without a pause for breath for about the first ten minutes. Recorded in May, 2015.
http://www.earthfriendlyhomeowner.com/ep7-interview-with-diane-kennedy-of-finch-frolic-gardens-and-vegetariat-com/
This is a podcast with Greg Peterson of Urban Farm Podcasts, released Jan. 7, 2016, and you can listen to it several ways:
Urban Farm U:
http://www.urbanfarm.org/category/podcast/
iTunes:
https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/urban-farm-podcast-greg-peterson/id1056838077?mt=2
You can sign up for free to hear all their great podcasts here.
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Plant Guild #4: Nitrogen-fixing Plants
Photo credit USU What is the first of the three chemicals in bagged NPK fertilizer? Nitrogen. Nitrogen is so important for the health of plants that isolated into a chemical, along with phosphorus and potassium, it can keep plants alive and active. But as the human body becomes ill when it is just fed junk food each and every day, so will your plants when they can’t assimilate the other nutrients in the soil.
Again, in permaculture it is all about the microorganisms in the soil. We provide food, water and shelter for them, and they open up the nutrients that are already in the soil on which the plants feed. When you dump a lot of anything on the soil, its going to kill microbes. Dumping bagged NPK fertilizer on the soil burns the creatures in the soil, just as if you poured acid on them. They die, and it will be awhile before the irrigation and rains delutes those chunks of fertilizer enough so that microbes can again live in the soil surface, but by then its time to dump more chemicals on the ground. The plant gets a high, but will never be able to adequately draw out the trace minerals it really needs to complete its diet, which soil microbes provide to it, because they are burned out of existence by the chemicals.
It would be pompous for us the believe that plants, which began about 450 million years ago on Earth, just fiddled around until their true keepers (humans) came along and evolved enough to produce chemical nitrogen to dump onto their roots.
photo credit www.bio.miami.edu In fact, there are many ways that nature gets nitrogen into the soil. Lightning strikes, rainfall, cut greens, fresh poop, fallen ripe fruit, all help. Most of all, there are soil bacteria which can transform atmospheric nitrogen into fixed nitrogen: inorganic compounds that are usable by plants. More than 90% of nitrogen harvesting is done by these organisms. There are non-symbiotic (free-living) bacteria called cyanobacteria (or blue-green algae), and there are symbiotic bacteria that form relationships with particular plants. These symbiotic bacteria, namely rhizobium and Frankia, invade the root hairs of select plants and create enlargements on the roots called nitrogen nodules. This process sounds and looks similar to wasps stinging oak branches and creating galls; however, the frankia are helping the plant; symbiotic rather than parasitical. Atmospheric nitrogen is inert, therefore unusable by the plant. When the bacteria get their little hands into it, by changing it into ammonia and nitrogen dioxide the nitrogen is freed up to be used as the plant and the bacteria needs. When the plant roots die, the nitrogen is released into the soil. So, the plant, with the help of the bacteria, is sucking nitrogen out of the air, breaking it down and releasing it as a usable nutrient source in the soil. Who needs chemical fertilizer?
Nitrogen-fixing Bacteria, Sem Photograph Only certain plants still have the capability to join in this symbiotic relationships; some families have just a few species that can do it, and it is unknown if they developed the talent, or if the rest of the family eventually lost the talent. Legumes and all members of the Fabaceae family is the most commonly known and used nitrogen fixing family. Peas, beans, cowpeas, and clover are all commonly used cover crops. When mowed they produce both green mulch and release nitrogen into the soil. However, there are many shrubs and trees that are also nitrogen fixers. California Redbud tree, mesquite, mountain mahoganies, alders, ceanothus (California lilac), sea buckthorn, bayberries, cassia, acacias, lupines, and many more. There are also riparian plants such as azola, gunnera, some lichen and cycads which fix nitrogen with cyanobacteria.
California redbud trees offer beautiful spring flowers which are edible, lovely fall color, and are nitrogen-fixers as well! In fact, 40-60% of native plants are nitrogen fixers. When you are planning your garden, your vegetable beds, your native Zone 5, and especially your orchards, you should be incorporating that percentage of nitrogen fixers into your design. Many of these can be mowed as cover crops, or used as quick-growing nursery plants, as canopy, or as chop-and-drop.
Chop-and-drop is when you grow your own fertilizer around your crop plants, and instead of purchasing and distributing fertilizer, a couple of times a year you take out a hand scythe and quickly cut back the nitrogen-fixing plants, scattering the tops around your food plants as mulch. When the top of the nitrogen-fixing plant is severely cut, the plant doesn’t need as much root base so it allows some to die, which distributes nitrogen into the soil. A double-whammy for your soil, and a small, easy and satisfying workout for you. Shazam.
Very important: when planting nitrogen-fixing plants there has to be the compatible bacterium in your soil for the whole thing to work. Purchasing inoculated seed for the first sowing on new planting areas is very important. As different bacteria react with different plants, study up some to make sure you are buying the right stuff if you are going to inoculate seed yourself. Then make sure that you are providing those tender bacteria with food, water and shelter – habitat – so that they can live and prosper. And what is the best habitat for soil microbes around food producing plants? Yep, mulch. Sheet mulch especially, and several inches of chopped leaves best of all.
You can find the entire 9-part Plant Guild series here: Plant Guilds: What are they and how do they work? The first in a series. , Plant Guild #2: Canopy , Plant Guild #3: Sub-Canopy , Plant Guild #5: Mining Plants, Plant Guild #6: Groundcovers, Plant Guild #7: Vines, Plant Guild #8: Insectiaries, Plant Guild #9: The Whole Picture.
- Animals, Bees, Birding, Compost, Fungus and Mushrooms, Gardening adventures, Hugelkultur, Natives, Other Insects, Perennial vegetables, Permaculture and Edible Forest Gardening Adventures, Predators, Rain Catching, Reptiles and Amphibians, Soil, Water, Water Saving
Plant Guild #3: Sub-Canopy!
The many layers of a food forest, Finch Frolic Garden. Yours doesn’t have to be this rampant and wild; your plant guilds can look perfectly proportioned and decorative and still be permaculture. The next part of this scintillating series of What Is A Plant Guild focuses on sub-canopy, or the understory. Sub-canopy does many of the same things that upper canopy does, in a more intensive way.
Smaller trees are ‘nurseried’ in with the help of faster-growing canopy trees; in other words, the upper canopy helps shade and protect the sub-canopy from scorching sun, high winds, pounding hard rain and hail, etc. However, sub-canopy trees can also be made of the slower, longer-lived canopy trees that will eventually dominate the plant guild/forest. You can try these guys for tree falling. I’ve talked about how, if an area of forest was wiped clear and roped off, in a hundred years the beginnings of a hardwood forest will have begun. This is due to succession plants making the soil ready for the next. Each plant has a purpose. This phrase is an essential mantra in permaculture because it lets you understand what the plants are doing and then you can let them do it. So if you planted a fast-growing soft wood canopy tree, maybe even one that is a nitrogen-fixer, such as ice cream bean, or acacia, with a sub-canopy trees that include both something that is going to stay relatively small such as a semi-dwarf fruit tree, along with a slower growing, hardwood tree such as an oak which will eventually become the true canopy tree years down the line, then the original softwood tree would eventually be sacrificed and used as mulch and hugelkultur after the hardwood tree had gained enough height. Wow, that was a long sentence. At first that hardwood tree would be part of the sub-canopy until it grows up. Meanwhile there are other true sub-canopy trees that stay in that height zone for their life.
What makes up a plant guild. Remember, too, that plant guilds are relative in size. If you have a small backyard you may not have room for a tall canopy tree, especially if it is detrimental to the rest of the property. So scale the whole guild down. Canopy for you could be a dwarf fruit tree, and sub-canopy could be blueberry bushes. In a vegetable setting the canopy could be corn or Jerusalem artichokes, where you either leave the dead canes up overwinter (a great idea to help the birds), or chop and drop them to protect the soil, which mimics the heavy leaf drop from a deciduous tree. The plant guild template is the same; the dimensions change with your needs and circumstance. Get more details on how to take good care of the trees with the help of experts.
So sub-canopy buffers sunlight coming in from an angle.
It receives rain from the upper canopy further slowing it down and shattering the droplets so that it doesn’t pound the earth. The lower branches also help catch more fog, allowing it to precipitate and drip down as irrigation. Leaves act as drip irrigation, gathering ambient moisture, condensing it, helping clean it, and dripping it down around the ‘drip line’ of the trees, just where the tree needs it.
An oak working a temp job as sub-canopy until it grows into canopy, being a support for climbing roses and nitrogen-fixing wisteria. This is the formal entrance to Finch Frolic Garden. With its sheltering canopy it holds humidity closer to the ground. In the previous post I talked about the importance of humidity in dry climates for keeping pollen hydrated and viable.
It further helps calm and cool winds, and buffers frost and snow damage. Sub-canopy gives a wide variety of animals the conditions for habitat: food, water, shelter and a place to breed. While the larger birds, mostly raptors, occupy the upper canopy, the mid-sized birds occupy the sub-canopy. Depending upon where you live, a whole host of other animals live here too: monkeys, big snakes, leopards, a whole host of butterflies and other insects using the leaves as food and to form chrysalis, tree squirrels, etc. Although many of these also can use canopy, it is the sub-canopy that provides better shelter, better materials for nesting, and most of the food supply. And again, the more animals, the more organic materials (poop, fur, feathers, dinner remains) will fall to fertilize the soil.
Sub-canopy gives us humans a lot of food as well, for in a backyard plant guild this can be the smaller fruit trees and bushes.
Sub-canopy also provides more vertical space for vines to grow. More vines mean more food supply that is off the ground. A famous example of companion planting is the ‘three sisters’ Native American method… what tribe and where I’m not sure of… where corn is planted with climbing beans and vining squash. The corn, as mentioned before, is the canopy, the beans use the corn as vertical space while also fixing nitrogen in the soil (we’ll discuss nitrogen fixers in another post), and the squash is a groundcover (also will be covered in another post). There is more to the three sisters than you think. Raccoons can take down a corn crop in a night; however, they don’t like to walk where they can’t see the ground, i.e. heavy vines, so the squash acts as a raccoon deterrent. To stray even further off-topic, there is also a fourth sister which isn’t talked about much, and that is a plant that will attract insects.
Back to sub-canopy, while some of it can be long term food production trees or plants, it too can also have shorter chop-and-drop trees. Chop-and-drop is a rather violent term given to the process of growing your own fertilizer. Most of these trees and plants are also nitrogen fixers. These fast-growing plants are regularly cut, and here is where the difference between pruning and chopping comes to bear, because you aren’t shaping and coddling these trees with pruning, you are quickly harvesting their soft branches and leaves to drop on the ground around your plant guild as mulch and long term fertilizer. If these trees are also nitrogen fixers, then when you severely prune them the nitrogen nodules on the roots will be released in the soil as those roots die; the tree will adjust the extent of its roots to the size of its canopy because with less canopy it cannot provide enough nutrients for that many roots, and it doesn’t need that many roots to provide food for a smaller canopy. Wow, another huge sentence. In this system you are growing your own fertilizer, which is quickly harvested maybe only a couple of times a year. Chemical-free. So, by planting sub-canopy that is long term food producing trees such as apricots or apples, along with smaller trees and shrubs that are also sub-canopy but are sacrificial to be used as fertilizer such as senna or acacia or whatever grows well in your region, you have the most active and productive part of your plant guild.
Sub-canopy, therefore, provides shelter for hardwoods, provides a lot of food for humans as well as habitat for so many animals, it provides fertilizer both because of its natural leaf drop and because of those same animals living in it, but also as materials for chopping and dropping, it buffers sun, wind and rain, holds humidity, offers vertical space for food producing vines which will then be in reach for easier harvesting, and much more that I haven’t even observed yet but maybe you already have.
The next part of the series will focus on nitrogen-fixers! Stay tuned. You can find the entire 9-part Plant Guild series here: Plant Guilds: What are they and how do they work? The first in a series. , Plant Guild #2: Canopy , Plant Guild #4: Nitrogen-Fixers, Plant Guild #5: Mining Plants, Plant Guild #6: Groundcovers, Plant Guild #7: Vines, Plant Guild #8: Insectiaries, Plant Guild #9: The Whole Picture.
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Our Annual Marketplace, and Last Tours of 2015
Our fourth-annual Finch Frolic Marketplace will take place Nov. 21 and 22nd from 9 – 2. We’ve been working like little permaculture elves, harvesting, preparing fruit and vegetables, canning, baking, and inventing new recipes for your table and for gifts. We have a curry spice mixture that is amazing. Our record white guava harvest has allowed us to create sweet guava paste and incredible guava syrup. We’ve pickled our garlic cloves, as well as zucchino rampicante, and our Yucatan Pickled Onions have a wonderful orange and oregano base that is fabulous. Of course there is Miranda’s small-batch Pomegranate Gelato, Whiskey-Baked Cranberry Relish, and a selection of curds (passionfruit, lemon-lime, and cranberry). So much more, too. We’ll also be selling plants from several sources, and some collectibles and knick-knacks from my home. Please come support a small business early – a whole week before Small Business Saturday! Your patronage allows us to continue teaching permaculture.
Join us for a tour! Our last two Open Tours will also be held that weekend, each at 10 am. The tours last about two hours and we should be having terrific weather for you to enjoy learning basic permaculture as we stroll through the food forest. Please RSVP for the tours to dianeckennedy@prodigy.net. More about the tours can be found under the ‘tours’ page on this blog.
Finch Frolic Garden will be closing for the winter, from Thanksgiving through March 1. However, Miranda and I will still be available for consultations, designs, lectures and workshops, and we will be adding posts to Vegetariat and Finch Frolic Facebook (you don’t need to be a member of Facebook to view our page!).
Have a very safe and very happy holiday season. Care for your soil as you would your good friends and close family, with swales, sheet mulch and compost, and it will care for you for years.
Diane and Miranda
- Animals, Bees, Birding, Compost, Fungus and Mushrooms, Gardening adventures, Heirloom Plants, Hugelkultur, Living structures, Natives, Other Insects, Perennial vegetables, Permaculture and Edible Forest Gardening Adventures, Photos, Ponds, Rain Catching, Recycling and Repurposing, Reptiles and Amphibians, Seeds, Soil, Water, Water Saving, Worms
October Garden
A huge dragonfruit; this kind is white inside. October is one of my favorite months, even when we’re on fire here in Southern California. This year we’ve been saved, and October is moderate in temperature and lovely.
A volunteer kabocha squash vining its way through a bush. 
Our first ripeing macadamia harvest from a 3 year old tree, with a dragonfriuit snaking through. 
Edible hibiscus, volunteer nasturtiums and pathway across the rain catchment basin. 
Into the wisteria-covered Nest. Summer has lost her vicious grip and we have time until the holiday rush and winter cold. Finch Frolic Garden has withstood the heat, the dry, the inundations, the snow and the changes, all without chemicals or much human intervention.
Grasshopper freshly out of last instar. 
The curly willow trellis. We’ve lost some trees and shrubs this year, but that is mostly due to the faulty irrigation system which delivers too much or too little, and is out of sight underground.
Urbanite pathway. 
Bulbs will pop up year round for wonderful surprises. Permaculture methods in sheet mulching, plant guilds, swales, rain catchment basins, and the use of canopy have pulled this garden through.
Loquat in bloom. 
Bridge over currently dry streambed. 
Bamboo bridge. 
A gourd in a liquidamber. The birds, butterflies and other insects and reptiles are out in full force enjoying a safety zone. A few days ago on an overcast morning, Miranda identified birds that were around us: nuthatches, crows, song sparrows, a Lincoln sparrow, spotted towhees, California towhees, a kingfisher, a pair of mallards, a raven, white crowned sparrows, a thrush, lesser goldfinches, house finches, waxwings, robin, scrub jays, mockingbird, house wren, yellow rumped warbler, ruby crowned kinglet, and more that I can’t remember or didn’t see.
Squash! 
This birch has strange red fruit in its top boughs… 
…a volunteer cherry tomato that is fruiting inconveniently ten feet up. Birds have identified our property as a migratory safe zone. No poisons, no traps. Clean chemical-free pond water to drink. Safety.
Squash and gourds happily growing out of the hugelkultur mound. 
A surprise pumpkin hiding in the foliage. 
A huge and lovely gourd. 
Vines taking advantage of vertical spaces by going up the trees. You can provide this, too, even in just a portion of your property. The permaculture Zone 5.
Why did the gourd cross the road? To climb up a liquidamber, apparently. 
A glimpse of pond through the withy hide 
Mouse melons on a tiny vine. More cucumber than melon, they grow to be olive-sized. 
Time for me to get in the water and trim back the waterlilies before the water temperature drops! 
Purple water lilies in the pond. I’m indulging in showing you photos from that overcast October morning, and I hope that you enjoy them.
Eden rose never fails. 
Sweet potato vines escaping the veggie garden; the leaves are edible. 
See the long tan thing on the trunk? That’s a zucchino rampicante, an Italian zucchini. Eat it green, or leave it to become a huge winter squash. 
Violetta artichokes regrowing in our veggie garden, with a late eggplant coming up through sweet potato vines. You May Also Like
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My Plea Against Gravel
Here in Southern California, as in many other areas, we are finally legally recognizing the drought. There are rebates in place for those who take out their lawns, and here in Fallbrook there is a 36% water reduction goal. Many people just don’t know what to do with all that lawn. A very unfortunate continuing trend is to dump half a ton of colored gravel on it. Please! NO! First of all, once down gravel is nearly impossible to get out again. Gravel, like all rocks, is thermal mass. Instead of having a large rock heating up and radiating out heat, with gravel there are tens of thousands of surfaces radiating out heat and reflecting light and heat back up. It is the worst kind of hardscape. All that reflected heat and light heats up your home, making you use your air conditioner more frequently which is a waste of energy, and also dries out the air around your home. Desertification reflects light and heat to a point where moist air moving over a region dries up. There is less rain, or no rain. Most trees and plants trap humidity under their leaves. Gravel reflects light and heat back up under those leaves and dries them out, sickening your plants and trees. Pollen travels farther on humid air; it can dry out quickly. If you are relying on pollination for good fruit set between trees that are spaced far apart, then having some humidity will increase your chances of success.
An area of Wildomar, surrounded by hillsides of chaparral that hasn’t been destroyed. These homes have mostly gravel yards and denuded, compacted backyards. Very little rain penetrates, and all the weeds that nature sends it to help repair this gash in the earth are promptly poisoned. This is death to us and our planet. By laying gravel you are turning soil into rock-hard dirt, because microbial life cannot live closely under it. That robs any plants you have stuck into the gravel of the food they need from the soil, which is opened up through microbial activity. You are adding to the heat value of the hardscape around your house causing you to cook in the summer and use more air conditioning. You have reduced habitat to zero. You have added to global warming by reflecting more heat and light into the sky. Although gravel is permeable, usually the ground below it bakes so hard that rain doesn’t percolate. I’ve read sites that want to you increase the albedo effect by laying gravel. In the short term albedo helps cool the atmosphere, but as a result of too much reflected light dries everything out. Think of the dark coolness and dampness of forests… that are now bare ground.
What do you do with your lawn instead? There are many choices that are so much better for the earth and your quality of life. First step, cut swales on contour on any slopes for best rain harvesting. Flat lawn? Easier still. Turn your lawn into a beautifully landscaped lush native garden. I’m not talking about a cactus here and there, but a creation with the awesome native plants we have in Southern California. Some of them such as Fremontia can die with supplemental summer water!
A beautiful border and plantings of California natives. Very low water use here, and very high habitat! There is a chocolate daisy that smells like chocolate. Oh yes. And how can you not want to plant something called Fairy Duster or Blue-Eyed Grass? A native landscape planted on soil that has been contoured to best catch and hold water, and amended with buried wet wood (hugelkultur), will give much-needed food, water and breeding grounds to countless birds, butterflies, native insects and honeybees.
Or put in a pond. Wait, a pond during a drought? Yes! Ninety-nine percent of California wetlands have been paved over, drained or are unusable. Where are all the animals drinking? Oh, wait, we are in the epicenter of extinction, mostly due to wetlands loss. There are very few animals left that need to drink. Those that are left have to take advantage of chlorinated water in bird baths and swimming pools. The microbially rich and diverse clean, natural water that fed and sustained life is just about gone. So what can you do? If you have a swimming pool, you can convert it either entirely to a pond, or into a natural swimming pool that is cleaned by plants.
A natural pool upgrades your pool to a lovely pond without the use of chemicals. Suddenly instead of having this expensive eyesore that you use only a couple of months a year and pour chemicals into year-round, you have a lovely habitat that you want to sit and watch, and even better, swim in safely without turning your hair green or peeling your skin. You don’t need to clean the pool all the time, and you don’t need to put in chemicals. If you are in the San Diego or Los Angeles area, call Dr. Robert Lloyd of PuraVida Aquatics for a consultation and conversion. If you don’t have a pool, then build one that is cleaned by plants and fish. You don’t need a filtration or oxygenation system because the biology does it all. Where do you get the water from to top off your pond?
Native Pacific Chorus Frogs enjoying our clean pond at Finch Frolic Garden. Connect your pond to a lovely, planted stream that is connected to your laundry water or graywater system. You are buying water every day, so why not compost your water through phytoremediation and have a pond full of great healthy chemical-free water that is wonderful to look at and is an oasis for thirsty animals and insects?
Or install a food forest. With good soil building and rain catchment first, and planting in guilds with sheet mulch around trees and on pathways, you will be using a fraction of the water you pour on your lawn and yet harvest lots of food. Too much food? Share it with a food pantry!
Or start a veggie garden without digging any sod.
Create a lasagna garden right on top of the lawn and start growing immediately. Layer cardboard, sticks, grass, food scraps, leaves, more grass, more food scraps, more leaves and top it with about 8 inches of good soil, then plant right in it! That lovely standing compost heap will slowly turn into good soil while killing the grass beneath and growing crops for you immediately.
If ridding yourself of a lawn just breaks your heart, then substitute the high-water use grasses for a native grass mix that is comparable. Look at S&S Seeds for prices or for seed choices. Water a few times with Actively Aerated Compost Tea using any rainwater you may have caught in those 50-gallon containers and your grass roots will travel so deeply that they will find groundwater. Check up on the work of soil microbiologist Dr. Elaine Ingham and see how easy AACT is to make and use.
There are so many alternatives to using gravel that aren’t expensive, that are an investment in your property and in reclaiming habitat while beautifying your home and saving money. So please, just say, “NO,” to the gravel. Tell a friend!!
Which one of these would you rather live in? Which do you think is better for the earth and for the future generations?
Finch Frolic Garden, year 3.
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Pathways Can Help Your Garden!
A finished section. Footpaths and/or vehicle access paths are absolutely necessary for any yard. Unfortunately, weeds love growing in them. Worse, the pressure from footfalls, wheelbarrows and vehicles compress and compact the soil, pressing the soil grains together so tightly that oxygen – and therefore life – can’t exist often up to several inches or more deep. Any life, that is, except for the grasses and other weeds that nature sends in to help repair the soil. Bare ground will be greatly compacted by rainfall, which will then erode paths as it runs, unable to soak through that spaceless ground. Once wet bare pathways are often unwalkable until they dry out, and have to be resmoothed. In our hot, dry areas, bare earth or graveled pathways reflect heat and light back up. That reflected heat and light dries out the underside of plant leaves, where species such as Live Oaks have over the millennium developed leaves that curl to expose less surface to the hot sun and to gather moisture underneath. Reflected heat and light dries out the air as well, and any hope of slight humidity to help water plants through months of dry heat is gone. If you have open-pollinated vegetables that rely on breeze for pollination, all that open pathway actually decreases your germination because pollen – such as from corn – will dry out in arid conditions. Humidity that you can keep in your garden will keep pollen more viable longer.
A wealth of freshly chipped wood – two dump-trucks full! The challenge: to spread it all in a week before our first tour. Yikes! What to do? Covering pathways with gravel is a common solution. I hate gravel. It heats up and becomes a thermal mass in the summer, further cooking your soil and air. It doesn’t suppress weeds and weed-whipping becomes an exercise in avoiding shrapnel. You can never get it out of the ground once you apply it, and chunks of gravel don’t do soil much good for planting. If you trip and fall on gravel it does terrible things to your knees – I had a piece lodged in my kneecap after a stumble some years ago (sorry for that cringe-worthy item).
A 1/2 inch of cardboard or newspaper with mulch on top. Covering the soil is better, but not best. Bark will help rain bounce and then percolate, is dark so it won’t reflect light and heat as gravel does, and it decomposes. It is also expensive to buy, and because it decomposes you have to re-buy it every couple of years. Decomposing bark may be adding elements to your soil that you don’t want depending upon the source.
More progress as the afternoon wears on. I have experienced all the options above. The best method of countering all these issues that I have found also repurposes and recycles. Sheet mulch. Yep. You’ve heard it from me before and it proves itself every year. There is more to it, though.
I disturbed a couple of nesting mice in one of the unused Kenya bee hives. First of all, please, please, please never use plastic. You can read about white pollution and the layers of plastic merging with topsoil in China and cringe. Plastic will not last. It will always be around in pieces. You will be poisoning your soil.
At the most basic, you can cover your pathways with 1/2″ of cardboard and newspaper, and top it with wood chips. I obtain my wood chips from arborists who save paying a dump fee by dumping it in my yard. If you’d rather have a more uniform look then purchase your bark. Either way the cardboard and newspaper will make the chips last years longer. More importantly the cardboard and newspaper form a protective, absorbent layer that protects the soil from compaction. Have you looked under a log or sheet of abandoned plywood in awhile? All the white tendrils of fungus, insects, worms, lizards and roots are thriving there along with billions of soil microbes all because they have that protective layer that keeps moisture in and compaction out. That microclimate is what you are forming with cardboard and mulch pathways. Since microbes free up the nutrients in the soil from which plants feed, you are creating more food sources for your plants. Tree and plant roots don’t end at the dripline, they reach out towards whatever source of water and nutrition they can find. If you are top-watering rather than deep-watering, then roots are abundant closer to the topsoil. By sheet mulching pathways you are extending food sources for your plants and trees, which now can stretch underneath the paths, link together with other roots through fungal networks, and become stronger and healthier. You also are creating habitat which is a food source for the entire food chain. Cooler, humid areas are better for bees and insects that pollinate, and the predators that feed upon them such as lizards, toads, frogs and birds. Just by sheet-mulching your pathways you are improving your environment as a whole. How can you NOT want to do this?
Sheet mulching around trees is much the same, except you add a little manure or compost tea if you have it. Sheet mulched pathways hold moisture and create some humidity which allows for better pollination and helps keep your plants from scorching in arid areas. If you live in a wet area or very humid area, use thicker layers of cardboard and mulch, which will help absorb moisture from the air and deliver it to the ground. Decomposition is quicker in wet areas, so using several inches of cardboard with mulch will last much longer and will again keep down compaction. Compaction in rainy areas is just as bad as in arid areas because of the erosion and flooding it causes.
More progress as the afternoon wears on. To catch rainwater and allow it to percolate into the soil rather than erode away topsoil, you dig rain catchment basins or swales. Swales are ditches with level bottoms, and can be a foot long (fishscale swales) or the length of your property. Swales should be positioned perpendicular to the flow of water. You can create swales across pathways, fill them with mulch, top them with cardboard or old plywood, and mulch on top to match the rest of the pathway. Water will be caught in the swales and won’t wash out paths on hillsides.
MIranda working on a large pathway near our large hugelbed. Going a step farther, you can ‘hugel swale’. Hugelkultur is layering woody material with dirt. This introduces organic material, oxygen and nutrient pathways into the soil and holds moisture into the dry season. You can dig deeply in your pathways, layer old wood (sticks, branches, logs, whatever you have) with the dirt, up to soil level, then sheet mulch. Your pathways are now waterharvesting alleys that you can walk on, and which will really feed your plants. And you just repurposed old woody cuttings.
This mulch will greatly help the Asian pears and cherries which struggle with the dry heat of the summer. The ground will be kept moist and reduce evaporation, holding in humidity. We’ll be planting more heavily in this area, too. In very dry areas plants and trees do better in sunken beds, especially those that require a long chill time. Cold settles in holes. Moisture runs downhill, therefore dew will accumulate at the bottom of holes. You can either plant in holes and have your pathways higher, or if you have an established garden (such as I do) you can build up your pathways so that they become slightly higher than your trees and planting areas. We are working on that at Finch Frolic Garden, here in drought-stricken San Diego county.
So before I launch into yet another long lecture, the idea for pathways is simple: sheet mulch with cardboard and wood chips. If you live in a wet area, use several inches of both. If you live in a dry area, use no more than 1/2 inch of cardboard (or else it will absorb moisture from the soil) topped by at least an inch of mulch (no limit there!). If you want make super pathways, bury woody material before you sheet mulch. If you live in a dry area, raise your pathways above your planting beds. If you live in a wet area, lower your pathways so water can drain away from your plants (unless they love wet feet). Never use plastic, and please rethink gravel.
Then sit back and enjoy your yard and all the food and nutrients and abundance you have set the stage for, all using recycled materials that will last for years. Congratulations!
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Vertical Space
Pipian From Tuxpan squash, from Baker Creek Heirloom Organic Seeds. When planning a garden for lots of any size, be especially aware of vertical spaces. Have an unsightly fence? A wall that needs protection from the sun? A hot, bright patio? All of these areas are perfect for growing vertically.
A Canada Crookneck climbs over a plum tree. For an existing wooden fence, string wires vertically or in a crossed pattern, depending upon what you will be growing. For a chain link fence… just plant! You can certainly grow annuals such as beans, squash and peas, but for perimeter fences I’d advise long-term plants that fill other functions as well. Heirloom climbing roses can cover a fence, create a barrier for trespassers, provide habitat, be ascetically pleasing, and provide edible flowers and vitamin C-rich hips. Remember that in permaculture everything should serve at least three purposes.
Passionfruit vines work beautifully on overhead trellises. Wire is strung the length of the trellis, with shade cloth over the top. The vines don’t need any help to fill up the gaps. Passionvines are evergreen perennials with rampant growth and provide good crops of heavenly-smelling nutritious fruit, as well as being the host plant to the Gulf Fritillary caterpillar. Even the perennial scarlet or golden runner bean would provide you with food and flowers for about six years.
This curly willow trellis we put up in late spring and planted squash along both sides. The squash love the trellis, and the trellis adds a nice touch to the pathway. Do you have a cement porch or patio where the sun reflects heat and brightness into your house in the summer? Cover it with a simple trellis, sturdy enough to hold vines. There are many ornamentals that would work (wisteria, trumpet vine, virgin’s bower, morning glory, etc.), but think about passionfruit, kiwi or grapes. Outside a west-facing wall is a perfect place for a planted trellis, that will help cool that side of the house during the summer. The sides of sheds can be used vertically, either with simple wire that can be removed later or with wooden lath (preferably recycled).
Strange fruit in this lime tree? 
Yes! Its a zuchino rampicante vine. This heirloom zucchini can be eaten green, or if allowed to age will harden into a uniquely-shaped winter squash. If you have existing trees, use them as vertical space. One faction of a plant guild is a vine. Vines act as groundcover, shading the soil and retaining moisture while producing mulch. Vines also can grow up trees and help shade their trunks from weather extremes.
A Canada Crookneck climbs over a plum tree. Meanwhile the fruit and vegetables are off the ground and won’t suffer the predation by animals or ground insects that it may normally receive. Plus, it is fun to see squash up in a tree.
Um… that is definately a pepper tree. But what is hanging in it? 
Strange fruit, indeed! A small fence around your kitchen garden is inexpensive, recyclable, keeps nibbling critters out, and can double the size of your growing space.
T-posts and hardware cloth around the kitchen garden adds so much more growing space, and keeps critters out. Delicata squash is enjoying the late summer sun. One project that I’d like to do this winter (just one? Ha!) is to nail up old rain guttering on the outside of my little shed and make a small natural pond at the base. I’d plant the gutters heavily with strawberries, and maybe greens, and then install a pump that circulated water from the pond up to and through the gutters. The water would then empty back into the pond. The fish and plants in the pond would be fed and happy, the plants in the gutters would be watered and fertilized, and I’d have unnibbled strawberries that were easy to pick, as well as repurposing the old gutters.
Please choose only organic, and if possible, heirloom seeds. It is so important to not poison the wildlife and ourselves with chemicals and plants whose DNAs have been tampered with to withstand more chemicals. I buy from Baker Creek (the catalog is to die for.), Seeds of Change, organics from Botanical Interests , from organic seed savers and from Peaceful Valley Organics (which have terrific prices on high-quality bare root plants such as strawberries!).
More squash helping shade the trunks and the soil around a nectarine. So when planning your next season’s garden, don’t just think outside of the box, but think of growing up the sides as well!
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Using Smuck, or Using Food Waste
One afternoon’s haul of smuck. Just when I was mourning the fact that our household didn’t create enough food waste to generate lots of compost, I received an email from a former visitor to Finch Frolic Garden. She volunteers at the Fallbrook Food Pantry, where they distribute balanced food supplements to over 800 families a week who earn less than the US poverty limit. They receive raw, outdated fruit and vegetables from grocery stores and other sources, sort through it and have to discard what isn’t safe to hand out. The volunteer knew that I composted and wondered if I’d like to pick up the residue so that they wouldn’t have to throw it out. She and the director had been taking it home, but it was too much for them. Four times a week I’ve been picking up buckets of smuck, or what I call the rotting fruit and vegetables, and often its too much for me as well.
Boxes of mixed smuck were difficult to pick up and very, very juicy. Buckets are better. There has been a grace period where my daughter and I nearly broke our backs picking up cardboard boxes sodden with fruit juice that stained our clothes and our car, and spent lots of time cutting produce out of plastic bags and containers, but the Food Pantry staff have been wonderful about usually opening the packages and using only old pool buckets.
One drawback is that very little of the smuck is organic. We are constantly amazed at how fruit and vegetables remain hard on the outside while rot on the inside. These peppers were hybridized to be solid enough to ship without bruising, at the expense of flavor and nutrition. My back, my clothes and my car thank them. Fortunately others have been picking some smuck up. The man in my life happily takes lots of it to feed to his compost worms. We’re a great match.
My daughter and I empty the buckets into the chicken coop.
Charlotte, Bodicea and Esther/Myrtle with a new batch of smuck, heavy on the bananas. The girls love it. I make sure they eat lay crumble and calcium as well to keep laying, but with the smuck they’ve reduced their intake of crumble and hence have lowered my expense.
The girls going after the smuck. I pitchfork straw and weeds over the top and within a few days most of it except some citrus and a coconut or two is pretty much gone. There is a fly problem, but with the flies there have come more flycatchers and lizards, and the hens eat the insect larvae that emerges in the compost.
This is Agatha, named after a favorite mystery writer. She’s here just because she’s so lovely. The picking up of smuck, hauling it down the hill and into the coop, de-packaging, cleaning buckets and fighting flies and ants, three – to -four times a week has been a time-consuming and very, very icky job, but the thought of all that free waste going into the dumpster keeps me at it. This is bacteria-heavy compost material, which is excellent for growing non-woody herbaceous plants such as our own vegetables and herbs.
I’ve also layered the smuck with cardboard, paper waste from the house (tissues, paper towels, cotton balls, Q-tips, junk mail, shredded paper, etc.) under the bananas.
A pile of fruit, veggies and cardboard, partially covered with clippings, at the food of our big banana. A citrus to the side likes it, too. Bananas love lots of food in the form of moist compost around their roots; in fact, they are commonly planted in banana circles with understory plants and the center of the circle is a place for waste products to deteriorate. In our dry San Diego climate we don’t have that kind of tropical moisture to help it rot, but the compost does become a sheet mulch and really helps create soil.
Miranda adds a melon to the banana circle smuck. One inch of compost reduces watering needs by ten percent, so a pile of wet smuck layered with carbon items such as dry cuttings and cardboard is excellent. I throw cuttings and pine needles over the top to keep down the rotty fruit smell, which doesn’t last long anyway.
Sugar cane and passionfruit enjoy the smuck layers under the banana – kind of a banana semi-circle. When creating new impromptu trellises for melons and squash in unimproved soil, Miranda and I dug trenches, threw in wet wood and dumped buckets of smuck right on top then covered the trench with dirt. We planted seeds in handfuls of good compost and away they went. We also used some of the mostly composted soil from the Fowl Fortress directly into the kitchen garden .
We augmented the kitchen garden soil with nearly-composted smuck dirt. Due to the wide variety of fruit and vegetables in the smuck buckets we’ve had some interesting volunteer plants. Tiny tear-shaped tomatoes that had been sold in plastic containers for natural snacks, a sweet potato, other tomatoes, and melons. At least we thought they were melons.
Melon vines taking over the kitchen garden… but not the melons we expected! Miranda was wondering about pulling them out of the kitchen garden because they were taking over without apparently producing a flower. A couple of days ago she investigated further and found a real surprise. We have about thirty kiwanos growing under the foliage!
Kiwanos with lots of blooms lurking beneath the foliage. I’ve never eaten a kiwano. Wikipedia says: Cucumis metuliferus, horned melon or kiwano, also African horned cucumber or melon, jelly melon, hedged gourd, melano, in the southeastern United States, blowfish fruit, is an annual vine in the cucumber and melon family, Cucurbitaceae. I’ve seen them in the smuck buckets, and it just figures that of all the green melons and orange melons that we’ve thrown in there, something like these would grow! None have ripened to the light orange color as yet, which is good because it gives us time to figure out what to do with them.
When they turn orange they’ll really look like blowfish fruit! You May Also Like
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