My Small Garden

 For several reasons, my gardens are limited

in size but that does not mean I cannot go large. The beginnings.

Wild But Not a Weed

Chicory is a perennial and one that many consider a weed; it certainly is persistent enough. Formally known as Cichorium intybus ), it is a member of the family Asteracea.

Chicory is well know, the roots, that is, as a coffee substitute but if I was to wild cultivate it for this or any other edible purpose I would want to know more about the soil where it is growing.>

The young leaves can also be used in a salad. However, once again if I was planning to wildcraft the leaves I would need to know more about the site other than chicory was growing there.

For example, how long has the site been abandoned, in an urban setting, there can be a number of areas where buildings once stood but have come down for one reason or another. Depending upon what the purpose of the building was, for example, industrial, and how long ago it came down, you may just want to enjoy looking at the wild things rather than eating them.

You could collect a soil sample and get it tested, at your own expense, if sufficiently motivated.

If the motivation is strong within you, take a trip to the local municipal office and find out who owns the property and gather all the information you can.

It may be worthwhile to contact the owner and find out what you can about the site. Meanwhile enjoy the wild garden. Nature is a fine gardener, observe and learn.

Why I Garden?

Why do I garden? There is no single reason that underscores why I like to grow plants, just as there is no single plant, I like to grow more than the others. There are a number of reasons why I enjoy spending time in a garden.

First, I believe that people need a hobby, interest or activity, call it what you will, that takes their minds off their day to day realities.

All of us are busy and often have a number of different thoughts or things to do that are competing for our attention.

Speaking of things to do, your hobby or personal interest should not result in you developing another list of things to do. That is not helpful and may indeed take the fun out of the doing.

That does not mean that you do not make a plan, without a plan you may never get started or get started and then have no idea what to do next.

It simply means that your plan is not the law; it is not engraved in stone, and can be changed or tossed aside, in favour of another approach.

I find gardening to be the perfect activity and that is primarily why I garden. It can keep me enjoyable occupied all year round, either doing it; reading about it; ordering seeds or planning the garden and even redrawing last year’s plans.

When I sit down with a seed catalogue, the day’s news and events slip from the forefront of my mind and images of what the plants will look like when they grow. 

This leads to giving some thought to where the new plant(s) will look best and where they will most benefit in the existing garden.

Will this be the year I plant that flowering crab-apple that I have been reading about or perhaps a redwood dogwood. These thoughts nudge out the concerns about the economy, the environment and all the bad news that fills the media.

An hour spent with a seed catalogue in the deep of winter refreshes my mind and awakens the hope that Spring brings when the gardening season begins anew and old friends reappear and new ones are waiting to be discovered.

I garden because I love spending time outside; feeling the wind and the sun on my face and hands.

Of course, these days you need to protect yourself from any prolonged exposure to the sun’s rays but a hat works and gardening gloves serve many purposes.

I love to grow things; there is immense satisfaction and sense of accomplishment from watching a flower come alive from a seed that you planted a few weeks prior.

Gardening offers you an opportunity to make decisions and choices. It is your garden. You can decide what you want to grow; how much you want to grow and what you will do with what you choose to grow.

I often refer to the garden as a place that exists between Nature and Civilization and the gardener is responsible for maintaining the balance between the two. When you create a garden, you are opening the door to remembering the connection that exist between humans and Nature; a connection that is very real, whether we acknowledge it or not.

Gardens do not require chemicals poured over them to thrive; that is the gardener’s job to create and maintain the conditions that allow the plants to mature and reproduce.

The garden is a learning ground where you can learn about botany, biology, math, history and become acquainted first hand with the processes that make the garden grow.

You see the relationships between the various beings who work with you to make your garden grow.

Birds and butterflies, for example, bring their beauty and other services to the well-tended garden. Bees carry out the important work of pollination and you observe the connection between what the bee does and your garden’s growth.

I garden because I love to grow things and watching a plant break the surface as the seed spring into life is always a wonder and an encouraging moment. I like to have cut flowers for our house and do not want to buy them but step outside and cut them myself. That way I know that they were grown without artificial pesticides and fertilizers.

Tomatoes are a favourite food but the ones I buy at the supermarket just do not have the flavour that the ones I plucked off the vine in my own garden do.

It is only truly fresh when the farthest distance it travels is the distance from my backyard to my kitchen table.

Simply spending time sitting in a comfortable chair in the backyard after a slow stroll through my garden is one of the best ways that I know to calm my mind and relax at the end of the workday.

As I take my first step into the garden, I can feel the day’s concerns sliding off me. My eyes begin to focus on the plants, their fruits and foliage as I look to see what has changed and how each plant is faring.

Then when the quiet inspection is complete, I sit back and watch the dance of life performed by the bees, butterflies and other small creatures who are busy at work maintaining the garden while I sit back and enjoy the view.

There are many reasons to garden and each one of us may well have our own and that is another reason that gardening is a delightful way to spend our time; our gardens are our own creations; and we are free to pursue our own interest when in the garden.

Gardens, both great and small, are a refuge from the concrete and asphalt world that surrounds so many of us as we travel back and forth to work.

Anyone who wants to, can garden; it is a matter of will and design and is a wonderful opportunity to get away from it all without ever leaving home.

Great Gardens Grow

Great gardens take time. The learning curve never ends.

When people ask me how to get started with a garden, one of the first questions I ask them is how much time do you have to spend in your garden each day?

The reason I ask this question is people often have great gardens in their minds but in their daily lives, they simply do not have the time to care for those gardens. Sure, the first few days are full of energy as the garden bed or beds are prepared and the seeds and seedlings are planted and everything is watered.

But then life happens and the busy schedule that is many peoples’ reality starts to take over and tending the garden gets put aside or left to the weekend. Now, once a garden is established, you do not need to visit it every day, although I do recommend that if you really want a thriving organic garden then allow yourself at least five minutes each day.

During those five minutes, all you are doing is observing, looking for changes like any unwanted visitors or signs that something may be wrong, brown leaves, chew marks and so on.

This early warning will increase your odds of saving the plants before the problem zooms out of control.

Also, in unusual weather, heavy rains, excessive heat or not enough heat, you need to care for your plants, to help them endure the extremes, and still produce the flowers, and vegetables you want.

Great gardens take time. Do not start a garden you do not have to have the time to tend. Be sure to enjoy a quiet stroll around the garden. You are looking for anything unusual, so you can handle it, pests, diseases, before the situation gets out of control, then,  back and watch nature do her thing.

When you calculate your time as part of the overall garden design process you will avoid building a garden that is too big for your lifestyle and also avoid the disappointment that can follow, especially if this is your fir

My Small Garden, 2019, Year 1, Day 1

This is from last year. I plan to expand the Small Garden a bit, maybe a foot or 2. then add compost. The plot's purpose is to grow some food, have plants for seed and to do a small bean breeding project. There is ample room.

Favourite Fower Photos

I do not have one favourite when it comes to flowers, but many. This is one. Do you have a favourite Post a photo in the comment section.

How To Attract Butterflies

 There are two things that butterflies are seeking: one is nectar, the food that adult butterflies need, and the other, host plants, the place where the female will lay her eggs and the food that caterpillars need. Both are necessary to create a successful butterfly garden.

It does take some thought and a bit of planning but then so does any successful garden. You need to know which butterflies are native to your region. You need to know what they like to eat and where they sleep, in short, you need to know butterfly habitats and habits.

Your public library or nature-society can be a very useful source of this information.

Let's start with a look at the butterfly.

Adult butterflies and moths have mouthparts that are shaped into a long, coiled tube. Butterflies feed on liquids (nectar) and they get all their food through this tube.

Their offspring or larvae, on the other hand, have chewing mouthparts, which they use to devour leaves.

The eyes of the butterfly are large, rounded compound eyes. This allows them to see in all directions without turning their heads. Butterflies are nearsighted, like most insects, and are more attracted to large stands of a particular flower than those planted singly.

Butterflies do not see the colour red as well as we do, however, they are able to see polarized light (which tells the direction the sun is pointing) as well as ultraviolet light, which is present on many flowers. This helps guide them to nectar sources.

Butterflies use their antennae to smell and their sense of smell is well developed. All butterflies' antennae are club-shaped, as opposed to moths, which can be many shapes but often are feathery.

Nectar Preferences (food)

Different species of butterflies have different preferences of nectar, in both colors and tastes. If you want to encourage different butterflies to visit your yard then your best bet is to supply them with a wide range of nectar source or plants.

Diversity is the keyword here, ecosystems thrive on biodiversity. This is an opportunity to explore and have some fun and a chance to engage your imagination.

Consider a circular garden bed that is just off of centre in your front or back yard. You can use twine or even a garden hose to lay out the circle. It does not have to be a perfect circle. A diameter of 4 to 5 feet is sufficient to add beauty and function to the yard.

If you combine wild and cultivated plants and use plants with different blooming times of the day and year you will encourage a wider range of butterflies to stop by.

When you plant your flowers in groups of the same plants this will make it easier for butterflies to see the flowers than singly planted flowers would.

Housing:

If you want the butterflies to stay in your garden and raise a family then you need to provide them with food plants where the females can lay their eggs. Some females are pickier about which host to lay their eggs on than others.

The butterfly larvae are also distinctive. Some caterpillars have hairs or forked spines, which may be or may not sting (often the hairs are just for show).

Certain swallowtail caterpillars imitate snakes or bird droppings. Other caterpillars, like sulphurs, blend into their surroundings very well.

If caterpillars are eating excessive foliage from a prominent or desirable part of a plant and you want to place them elsewhere then use gloves to move them if they're hairy to the backside or another less noticeable portion of the plant.

All insects are cold-blooded and cannot internally regulate their body temperature. Butterflies will readily bask in the sun when it is warm out, but few are seen on cloudy days.

It is a good idea to leave open areas in a yard for butterflies to sun themselves, as well as partly shady areas like trees or shrubs, so they can hide when it's cloudy or cool off if it is very hot.

A flat rock placed in full sun will provide the spot that butterflies need to bask. Butterflies like puddles. Males of several species congregate at small rain pools, forming puddle clubs.

Permanent puddles are very easy to make by burying a bucket to the rim, filling it with gravel or sand, and then pouring in liquids such as stale beer, sweet drinks or water. Butterflies love overripe fruit, that has been allowed to sit for a few days.

Garden Design Fundamentals

There are two things that you need to remember when designing a garden. Pay attention to both and you will create a space that you and your family can enjoy.

The first one is simple: It’s your garden. You do not have to please anyone else with your plant choices but yourself.

The second one is what I call the right plant right place rule or RPRP. When you place a plant where the conditions give it what it needs (water, soil, light) that plant will do well and reward you with fruit and flower throughout the season.

For RPRP to work you need to know three things:

One: what are the conditions where you are planning to garden, for example how much sunlight and/or shade?

Two: Be sure the plant gets the water it needs. If you are in a dry area, use plants that can tolerate the dry conditions, if the site is wet, use plants that like it wet.

Three: will the plant grow in your garden hardiness zone.

More on zones in a future hub,

Talk with the staff at the local plant nursery, ideally seek out the manager or owner when you have specific questions.

Now that you have the bare essentials we will move on to the other design elements that will help you create a garden that everyone can enjoy.

Basic Garden Design Elements:

· Line is likely the most important design element and certainly is the one you will most often use in your design. For an informal look use, a curved line, for a more formal one use straight lines..

· Texture is defined in 3 categories. 1-Coarse includes plants, structures and hardscapes that are bold and large. 2-Medium texture takes in many plants and smaller structures. 3-Fine includes plants such as ferns and grasses and structures that are thin and delicate.

· Form is the shape and structure of your plants, hardscapes or garden structures.

· Colour is the visual POP in your design. Blues, Purples and Greens are calming and seem to move away from you. Whereas warm colours like red, orange and yellow seem to bring things closer to you.

· Scale or proportion in the landscape is simply the size of your plants or structures and how they relate to each other and the area you are landscaping.

You now have the basics. It does not matter whether or garden is large, small or somewhere in-between if you follow RPRP and apply the five design principles you will enjoy the results. Happy gardening.

The Food Chain

If you want to understand an animal’s behaviour, the most effective way is to observe that animal in its natural habitat, its ecosystem. For example, watching what an animal or bird eats will give you important information about that animal.

The food chain, or what eats what is the living part of an ecosystem. A food chain shows how each living thing gets its food. Some animals eat plants and some animals eat other animals.

Al of this is possible because of the relationship between the Sun and the Earth. The Sun reaches the Earth and provides the energy that ecosystems need to produce the green leafy plants that form the basis of our food system. This process is called photosynthesis.

Photosynthesis converts light energy into chemical energy; the leaves of green plants receive energy from the sun and transform this into food that animals and humans, for example, can consume.

In photosynthesis, the energy absorbed by chlorophyll transforms carbon dioxide and water into carbohydrates and oxygen. Chlorophyll channels the energy of sunlight into chemical energy.

All the food that people eat is dependent upon plants for their basic energy source. This is true whether people consume plants, animals or both. The animals that we eat, eat the plants or derivatives of the plants, to produce the food (meat) that we turn into steaks, chops and burgers.

Vegetarians and carnivores may argue over what makes an acceptable meal but both rely on photosynthesis for supper.

Just where do human sit on the food chain? Well, food chains are composed of producers, consumers, which are broken down into herbivores and carnivores, and decomposers. All are essential for the circle to keep on turning.

Humans fit into the consumer category and humans are both herbivores and carnivores and some will say that humans are actually omnivores, because when faced with starvation, we will eat just about anything, including each other.

I often hear people refer to humans as being at the top of the food chain, but consider this; you are out walking along a forest or mountain trail when suddenly just up ahead there is a grizzly bear looking straight at you, who is higher on the food chain at that moment/

You are swimming in the ocean and are suddenly confronted by a shark, who is lunch?

Okay, these are extremes examples and properly trained and armed the human is likely to come out on tops in either encounter.

Let’s look at a smaller example, the mosquito, they feed off of us and other warm-blooded animals, sure we can slap them and spray them and coat ourselves in lotion to keep them at bay but should one get a good drink from us and we may become ill.

Lyme disease is another threat carried by very small beings and to get even smaller still what about the colds and flues that assault humans every year? Where do they sit on the food chain?

By studying food chains and the interconnected relationships between the various members of the chain we are able to gain an understanding of how Nature works.

Everything eats and this is the common ground that connects us all together. Everything plays a role and we do not really know what role anyone element plays until after it vanishes and things begin to change.

What we do know is that creature had someone for lunch and was someone else’s lunch? Who will go uneaten and who will go unfed if that creature is removed from the ecosystem?

What effects will these changes bring? These are questions that need to be answered before we shrug off a species’ disappearance from the Great Food Chain that is Earth.

Permaculture Guilds

Hi, this video by Heather Jo Flores provides an excellent look at what guilds are.

How to Start a Vegetable Garden

Bob Ewing 

 more

Contact Author

How to start the vegetable garden

. There are three things that you must consider if the garden is to be successful; sun, soil and water. The garden will need six to eight hours of sunlight per day in order to produce vegetables or flowers.

Soil comes in three basic types, clay, sand or loan. The ideal soil is a sandy loam. There is a simple way to determine the type of soil in your garden. Pick up some soil with one hand, roll it into a ball. If it forms a ball that break apart readily it is loam. If a ball does not form, it is sand. If a ball forms but does not break apart easily, it is clay.

This primer will help you plan and design your first garden; it does not matter what you decide to grow, vegetables, flower, herbs or all three, the steps are the same.

Step One:

There are two questions you need to answer at this point.

1- What do you want to grow?

2- How much time to you have to garden, each day, and week?

It is important to match your schedule to your interests; you do not want to start a garden that is too big, as it is likely to become a burden and that will take all the fun out of the project.

It is equally important not to put in a garden that is too small as your yield, what you get back for your labour, will be smaller than you expected and you will be disappointed and perhaps discouraged.

Step Two:

Now is the time for the garden plan. Don’t panic, this is simple; a plan helps you stay on track, makes maximum use of your gardening time, is fun and can be changed whenever you desire.

You now know what you want to grow and how much time you are willing to commit to the growing and maintenance. Now you must determine:

1- Where will your garden grow? The backyard, most likely, but where, well for most cut flowers, herbs and vegetables you want a spot that gets full sun for 5-6 hours a day, minimum.

2- How big will it be? The size depends upon what you want to grow and how much. A good cut flower garden can be fairly small in feet 6x6 will do; same for a herb garden. Now unless you are prepared to convert your whole backyard into a vegetable garden and even then, you are not going to grow all the food your family needs, so pick you 3-5 favourite vegetables and focus on them.

3- Homework time. You need to know the plants you plant to grow, the public library can be a great source of information as can the Internet. You can also visit a local plant nursery and have a chat with the manager.

4- Put the right plant in the right place and it will thrive.

Read this hub, for details on building the garden bed. Speaking of reading, if you are planting seeds read the seed package. The information there is meant to be followed, so do so. If you are using plants then read the tag that should be in the pot with the plant, the same story; if it is, not then ask.

Gardening is a rewarding activity that does not have to be difficult or time-consuming, just be sure to build the garden that matches your needs, wants and schedule.

Consider keeping a journal. Record what you planted, how it fared and anything else that you notice. This information will be valuable when planning next year's garden.

Global Decline in Plant Growth

This is a must read.

"A lack of water vapour in the atmosphere has caused a global decline in plant growth over the past two decades, resulting in a decline in growth rates in 59 per cent of vegetated areas worldwide."

source