Eat Your Lawn

My goal is to have an edible landscape. This means that a majority of plants have some sort of culinary purpose for me or for the beneficial wildlife I am trying to attract.

When you think of food production in terms of a landscape, it really opens your eyes to appreciate all qualities of the plants we grow to consume. You don’t need coleus or begonias when you can have an even more beautiful bed of Bright Lights Swiss Chard. Asparagus fern, why not just plain asparagus? Need something tall in the background? Grow corn. There are several varieties that have burgundy coloring in their leaves, stems, and silk that is just lovely. Forget about morning glories and plant Scarlet Runner Beans instead. They have the sweetest red flowers and the beans are delicious. Another favorite landscape plant of mine is Globe Artichoke. The plants grow into huge specimens with silver foliage. They are very dramatic and can yield a dozen or more tasty appetizers. I also love Fennel. The airy fronds dance in the wind and are a favorite snack for butterfly caterpillars.

I also expand my definition of an edible landscape to include wildlife I want to attract. I need birds in the yard to keep the bugs down, so I grow plants that will attract them. Amaranth (weed them into your salad), Echinacea, Cosmos, Barbados Cherry, Rose varieties that produce hips, Pigeon Berry, Lantana, and Chili Pequin all provide color and treats. Birds like low cover to hide in while they are scoping out the groceries, so I've included Bamboo Muhly and berry producing shrubbery like Agarita and Yaupon.

And what about that grassy lawn? Get rid of it. It is a total waste of water and human resources. Replace the blades with Thyme, Marjoram, Winter Savory, Peppermint or Oregano (or a blend of all of them.) They form a thick, green carpet that you can walk on. Heck, you can even mow them if you want (talk about a head rush though!) They stay low and don’t take nearly as much water to keep green. They also bloom and will attract bees and other pollinators to the garden.  If you want more "real" grass, try a native Texas Sedge (Carex texensis), which is what I put in.

It takes courage to do this however, because your yard will not look like everyone else’s. Peer pressure can be hard to overcome and you can bet you’re efforts will generate plenty of comments. However, I’ve always found that including your neighbors in your plans and sharing the fruits of your labor go a long way to smooth the path. They’ll start to think you are a genius as you sit in your lawn chair amongst the fragrant herb lawn, sipping an ice tea watching them slog it out with the lawn mower. Wave to them and ask them to sit with you for a spell. You might just be able to find a second career as a landscape consultant.

Building a Bog in Midst of Drought

As a gardener, I always want something I can't grow in my current surroundings. While in Oregon it was winecup (Callirhoe involucrata.)   I planted them dutifully each fall and every winter they rotted in the ground.  Putting them in gravel didn't help because the surrounding clay soil was so waterlogged that they ended up swimming.

Of course now that I am in Texas they grow with abandon in my garden.  Duh.  So now what I am I up to now that my heart's desire has been found?  A bog.  That's right.  I'm smack dab in the middle of a region in terrible drought and I want a bog.  In the Northwest my whole yard was a bog, so why the sudden urge to live in a swamp?

Chinese Water Chestnuts.  

My friend Clyde gave me a pot of Chinese Water Chestnuts to grow in my pond.  He had planted a few of the corms he found at the Asian grocery store and found that they multiplied quite rapidly.  When I brought them home I separated what he gave me and planted them in my pond.  What is interesting to me is that the water chestnut itself is a corm that forms off the roots.  I was disappointed that the pot didn't yield anything but figured that it was just too crowded.  I put just a few plants in the pond and composted the rest.

They went crazy!  The are spectacular 5 foot plants that have small catkins like a cattail reed.  However when I went to pull one of the pots out of the water I discovered that they had all grown together.  I had to get out the pruning saw to hack them apart.  And alas, when unpotted the chestnut yield was still zero.

So I spent time on the Internet.  I discovered that the Aussies have great success growing their water chestnuts in bogs.  A few of them have dug special bogs and others are using containers like stock tanks.  They grow them in peat or other spongy material so they are easy to harvest.

So I got to thinking.

I decided to dig a bog and plant a tuff tub in the ground below the pond in front of one of my drainage shafts.  When I put the pond in I actually have it partially sitting on cinder blocks so water cascading down from my neighbors actually goes under it. The cinder blocks are oriented to form a culvert of sorts.  I put the bog right in front of it so when we get a downpour, the runoff goes into the bog.  The tuff tub has holes drilled into the sides about 2/3 of the way up to facilitate drainage.  The Australian gardeners didn't have their plants totally under water so I am following their lead.

Cinder block culvert will fill bog.

I put concrete edging around it to keep things from washing out.  The water will fill the bog, then continue down the gravel pathway like it does today.

I considered putting peat or moss in the bog but my timing, for once, was perfect.  Peat moss is just decomposed plant material that's been sitting in water.  Since it's fall, I can make my own from leaf mold instead.  I layered leaves with the soil from the excavation, using about a 1/3 soil to 2/3 leaf mix.  I compacted the layers by walking on them each time I added leaves.  Sort of like crushing grapes for wine!  Okay, not the same, but fun nonetheless.   

The last step was to add water.  We are expecting rain so I only poured in about 5 gallons.  I'll add more later in the week if needed.  I'm going to let it sit until next weekend then will probably add more of the leaf/soil mix along with the plants.

Aesthetically it should turn out really well.  The plants will grow tall enough to form a nice green backdrop behind the seating area I've built around the pond.  I'll have to add water to it so plan on the rainwater we store for the pond.  Being buried in the ground will keep things a little cooler and the thick growth on top should inhibit some evaporation but I'm not kidding myself.  We'll just add water at the same time we refill the pond.  At the worst of summer it's about every four or five days.

I'm hoping that with more room, more soil oxygen, and looser growing medium I'll have water chestnuts to add to our Thanksgiving dinner!  Wouldn't that be fun?  Now, what to grow in the pond where the water chestnuts used to be?  I'm thinking Minnesota Wild Rice...

Garden Envy

I get an inferiority complex every time I visit The Natural Gardener plant nursery.

It’s not the staff. They are the very definition of helpful and friendly. Nor is it the breadth of plant materials. I’m pretty knowledgeable about most kinds of plants and am getting better with native Texas flora. And it’s not the customers. I usually end up helping people while I’m there. It’s the Master Gardener plant-desk hot-line-answerer in me that dispenses garden advice when asked. I guess I either look like I know what I’m doing (is it the dirty clothes and the floppy hat?), or I’m just there and have a friendly face.

No, it’s their dang demonstration garden that makes me feel totally inadequate. All those lovely raised beds with the square-foot gardening planting method illustrated to perfection. The plants are huge, the colors are vibrant, and there isn’t a weed in sight.

Yes, I know they have “staff” to take care of this. Yes, I know that they actually get to see their garden every day – unlike me who has to leave and come home in the dark during the week. Yes, they have all that great soil and custom made fertilizer. It doesn’t matter. I still walk away thinking that I should have something just as stunning growing in my yard.

Yet when I get home and look at my patch, it’s really not that bad. My front yard is really nice, by my standards, and full of interesting things to look at. People stop all the time to admire it and tell both Ed and I how much they enjoy it. The back yard is less landscaped, but still orderly and purposeful. I explain to people that it’s my production agriculture space. I have it arranged in an interesting way with my raised beds serving as a crown around my herb bed. My trees are still young, but they will be stunning in a few years when they form my fruit orchard hedge.

And my vegetable beds aren’t that boring. I mass plant everything and forego rows and precision placement – I get more yield that way. I tend to rotate the varieties I plant and can have purple carrots, red yard-long beans and blue potatoes at any time. My Swiss chard is gorgeous, my citrus trees smell heavenly, and the purple kohlrabi looks like space aliens. I’ll have fat swallowtail caterpillars on my fennel and dill, orange fritillary butterflies plaguing my passion vines, and a regular patrol of mockingbirds, cardinals, doves, and blue jays very soon. The green anole lizards are going to love my rock patio and I should have toads hanging out in the compost, and chirping frogs living in the rain gutters. Hummingbirds and dragonflies buzz around the herbs so much that it can be hazardous to go out and harvest.

Hmm. Maybe the folks from The Natural Gardener should come to MY house.