Edible Perennial in the bed.

My perennial garden in the front is undergoing an overhaul. (Yes, I know I just put it in last year but I am a gardener right and gardeners are infamous for reorganizing, aren't they?).

One of my decisions is to keep the front more of a perennial, self seeding garden, as opposed to the potager it is now. In other words, to have fewer annual vegetables. That doesn't mean it won't have veggies. Oh no. It will just have more biennual or perennial vegetables. I have salsify growing, which will have a lovely purple flower in its second year, and will be replanting parnip roots for their dramatic flower. I will also be transferring my 'radicchio' chicory with its arresting blue flower to the front.

These will join all sorts of nibble plants such as:

Seen grown here with overwintered hot peppers, nasturtiums, sage and thyme.


Also showing moonbeam coreopsis, a cultivar of a NA wildflower, gypsophilia repens - great for dry areas, basil, and lobelia.

Jeruselum artichokes, horseradish, rhubarb, daylilies and egpytian onions in my 'wild side bed'


The giant plant is Jeruselum Artichoke.

I adore the dramatic leaves of horseradish. Here seen with tansy that somehow snuck in.


Aples, plums, red current, gooseberry and rugosa rose as part of the foundation planting:


Seen her with native ninebark, hosta, iris and peony. Oh and a kid, nicknamed worse than the birds. This is where she was headed in the above picture.

I will, however, miss the strange looks of people passing by the cabbage planted with the lavender.


Cabbage temporarily planted where there are some so far well behaved raspberry vines...

I should probably include an

Optimistic Gardener Warning

I am planting the salsify beside a false sunflower. And the parsnip as a background plant. The chicory will probably grow in front of the parsnip, with the cosmos. As chicory is my favourite flower, I was happy to discover that radicchio has a flower nearly identical to the wild type, except the buds have a pleasing jewel tone before opening.

Photo updates next year.

Links:

A wild food site. How to identify and prepare chicory

Salsify flower - aren't they pretty!

Nursery season and impulse buyingFence plants

It may be true that many a nurseryman or woman knows me, possibly even by name. They may also note my habit of wandering around, reading all the labels then not buying anything.

I can't help going but I do try really hard not to buy anything. Many women have the reputation of being compulsive book shoppers (you thought I was going to name some clothing item didn't you?) but I have a problem with plants. What stops me is that many of the best deals are for plants that I can't in good conscience fork over cash for. A neighbour or gardening friend is bound to have it in abundance. All I need to do is ask.

Either that or it is painfully easy and significantly cheaper to start it by seed. And I am not forgetting about growth medium (sterilize regular dirt or compost in the oven), pots (yoghurt containers), or light (I do have florescent bulbs but my solanums - tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, ground cherries etc... - get priority). Many plants can and prefer to be direct seeded.

Free over the fence

1. ground covers - these include periwinkle, bugleweed, creeping jenny (highly invasive), barren strawberry, mother of thyme etc...
2. hostas - I have been offered these numerous times when I've shown appreciation of their massive plants.
3. any member of the mint family - spearmint, chocolate mint, peppermint, pennyroyal, bergamont/monarda, oregano
4. yarrow (come to my house for some please)
5. iris
6. daylily
7. bell flower, especially the creeping kind
8. violets (plenty out back for all who are interested and I am sure that I can keep up with demand)
9. lilac - suckers will grow faster than you think
10. lamb's ear
11. rhubarb
12. raspberry / blackberry etc...
13. ox-eye daisy - the weed is just as pretty as the cultivated variety, really
14. chinese lantern / physalia
15. many ornamental grasses with spreading rhisomes like ribbon grass
16. lupin - at least in some yards, like mine, there's little stopping it

I could go on, but you get the idea. If it doesn't have some fancy varigation (like that gorgeous green-white-pink varigated jacob's ladder with the clear blue flowers, be still my heart) then it is probably owned in abundance by someone you know.

Not only that but many bushes easily air layer. In my yard this includes:

1. Euonymus
2. Currant - including the alpine currant hedge
3. forthysia
4. culinary thyme

That's not to mention the self-seeding annuals. Probably someone down the block is right now is cursing a flower that you covet because of its over-exhubarant reproduction. They are furiously pulling up hundreds of seedlings which could have been transplanted into your yard to continue the cycle of amazement at the germination rate of just one stray cosmos/black eyed susan/nigella/etc...

If you live a couple fences down from me, feel free to stop by and stare too long at a plant you are interested in. Chances are, I'll give you a piece so you can save your money for a good shovel (or that fantastic varigated jacob's ladder... sigh).

Impulse buying on site:

Sometimes, it is not the plant so much as the new garden bed that you have need to fill. This is one of the most common problems I have. There is a naked spot in the garden and there are rows upon rows of pretty plants giving me that orphaned puppy look. Therefore I have devised a native plant list to take with me. It is surprising what I have discovered that I grow in my garden which is native. Also there are a number of native plants species or cultivars available that the local wildlife would really appreciate.

You may be thinking 'She's not preaching about native plants again! They're soo dull.' But check out the list of plants I either already have that are native or would like to get:

Pearly everylasting
Jewelweed or touch-me-not (cultivar)
Sundrops
Bergamont, red and pink (cultivar)
Trillium
Bleeding heart
Coneflower
Mexican hat / prairie coneflower
Helen's tears (cultivar)
Geranium (cultivar?)
Common Bellflower
Foamflower (cultivar)
Aster
Anemome (cultivar)
False sunflower
Columbine (cultivar)
Sweet Cicely
Evening primrose
switchgrass / panic grass
spotted deadnettle
Pussytoes
Dogwood
Wild rose (cultivar)
Buttefly weed
Blue phlox
Obedient Plant
Black-eyed susan
Solomon's-seal
Dutchman's breeches
Bird Cherry
Violets
Trout Lily
Coreopsis (cultivar)

I have to thank an early plantcycle event for most of the above plants.. All he said at the time was that they did very well in his garden, were vigorous and very pretty. He was right!

Fletcher's Wildlife Garden has lots of information on native plants they use in their own landscaping. If I see that the plant is on my 'okay' list then I feel better about purchasing it but if not then I remind myself to wait until their annual native plant sale which this year is on June the 2nd.

(They also have lots of good information on how to propogate these plants. I feel it necessary to include that you should always check to make sure that a native plant is not endangered before collecting, that it is best to collect only a small percentage of the seed from a number of plants rather than all from one and if the plant must be propogated vegetatively be careful not to hurt the parent plant. Okay, done, now go turn your backyards into cultivated wilderness!)

Links:

Gardening with native plant links
basic plant division

The lawn's a yawn - part IIalternative ground covers in Ottawa

It’s an invasion!

Ground covers, by their very nature, are invasive. In fact, what you want is to cover ground as quickly as possible. As any gardener knows, grass seems to grow best in your garden bed… One of the jobs I do NOT look forward to every year is re-cutting the edges of my garden to dig out any grass rhizomes that may have wandered in. How invasive a ground cover is will depend on happy it is in the spot you have picked for it (and the species of course). So we want our ground covers to take over, but not necessarily to spread outside our yard and take over the entire world, or at least nearby wilderness.

Therefore, to start, here is a list of common ground covers that are on the ‘bad plant list’ according to Ontario Nature:

Sweet woodruff / sweet scented bedstraw (Galium odoratum)
Crown Vetch (Securigera varia or Coronilla varia L.)
Bugleweed / carpetweed (Ajuga reptans)
English Ivy (Hendera helix)
Moneywort / Creeping Jenny / Creeping Charlie (Lysimachia nummularia)
Lily of the Valley (Convallaria majalis)
Leafy spurge (Euphorbia esula)
Goutweed / bishop's weed / snow on the mountain (Aegopodium podagraria L)

Did I just name everything that you have? Yeah, I had the same feeling. We got rid of our lily of the valley a couple years back because my daughter was attracted to the poisoness red berries, and I have been attacking the pretty but spready creeping jenny for some time now.

May I suggest the smother and bake approach if you want to get rid of a ground cover but don't want to use the herbicides of mass destruction (ie. round-up). In other words, water then cover with several layers of clear plastic with the ends firmly fastened and then bake the ground for several weeks (also known as soil solarization), followed by covering in several layers of newspaper, overlain with black plastic, and if you want some clear plastic for good measure. Leave this on the whole season if you can. Next, dig the soil to remove any roots, taking care with species that propogate by root division not to 'till' the ground. Finally, plant several successions of cover crop to out compete anything that remains, or mulch heavily. If that didn't work, try again. And yes, I know it is hard to get creeping jenny roots out of a rock garden - I have the callouses to prove it.

Go wild, don't water, do both


Artist's** impression of Wild Ginger in flower


Getting around the constant concern of whether your ground cover will cover the wrong ground, you can plant native species. What follows is a list of plants that are suited to different growing conditions and are either native, or are good for xeriscaping (gardening with low water requirements).

By no means is this a complete list but it's somewhere to get started. Also, I chose these sites in the links mostly for the pictures of each sites, please double-check all cultivation information.

* native plants
(x) xeriscaping

Dry shade (under a tree, north side of house)

Foamflower (prefers some moisture)*
Barren Strawberry (will also take more sun)*
Periwinkle (real spreader, beware)(x)
Virginia Creeper (prefers some moisture)*

Spring Sun (deciduous trees)
All of the above category plus:

Trout lily* - spring cover
Trillium* - spring cover
Wild Ginger*
Mayflower / False Lily of the Valley (moist soil)*
Mayapple (according to Gardening with Wild Flowers by Frances Tenebaum 1973, combines well with spring flowers, hiding yellowing foliage late in the season)*

All sorts of native ephemerals would do well here. Keep in mind that ephemerals die back in the summer so then a leaf mold mulch would take over, or combine with other groundcover. They will, of course, have different tolerances to road side living, especially with all the salting they do here in the winter time.

Filtered Shade / part sun (light deciduous trees, less than 6 hours sun)
All of the above two categories plus:

Mountain Bluet / perennial bachelor buttons(x)
Snow in summer (aggressive but pretty)(x)
Violets (give it some moisture, some sun and it’ll give you a show)*
Monarda*
Canadian Anemome*
Wild Geranium

Moist shade (where moss grows)

Moss!*
Ferns*
Virginia Creeper*

Acidic, heavy shade (under conifers)

Bunchberry*
Bloodroot* - spring cover
Solomon’s seal*

Some people give up and use mulch. Also, you may consider pruning out some of the lower branches to allow in some more light, but I’d go with mulch…

Full sun, dry (often sharply drained)

Pussytoes*(x)
Thyme (mother of thyme)(x)
Moss Pink / Creeping Phlox(x)
Barren/mock strawberry*(x)
Creeping juniper (prefers acidic soil)*(not sure exactly its distribution)(x)

Soggy Areas

Blue eyed grass*
Blue Flag Iris*

Heavy Traffic Areas

Why do we love grass? It isn’t exactly low work but few of us organically inclined folk do much in the way of weeding so it might get fed, watered, mowed, and raked, maybe even aerated if you are an energetic lawn care person. Yes this does take up quite a few Saturdays but there is an appeal to the lawn… it takes a lot of foot abuse.

So if you have a really high traffic area, hardy grass is still the way to go. To cut down on fertilizing or top dressing , mix in at least 20% white clover, more is okay.

If the area just needs a path, look around for materials that you could use. In Ottawa:

• mulch - free cedar mulch in Ottawa
• leaf mulch - make leaf mold
• tree rounds - cut a large tree trunk into rounds
• flat blasted quarry stones.

Neat ‘to eat’ ideas:

Patchwork Thyme quilt

Do you have a place with thin, dry soil? Consider replacing it with different thyme species such as wooly thyme, variegated thyme, mother-of-thyme, etc… You can make undulating waves, divide up a large circle or some other patch work design. There is a house nearby who uses this idea around their rock path toward their house to great effect.

Edible Ground Covers

I grow self seeding sweet cicely (an anise tasting sugar substitute that likes partial sun) for its cheery white flowers and lacey foliage. Claytonia perfoliata is a hardy salad green that grows wild in western north america. I hear it does well under trees (we'll see) and sometimes I selectively weed around purslane which makes a nice mat. There must be others that would work well also. The mint family, for example, is agressive and tasty - try lemon balm, various mints, or the native bergamont.

Tips

Take some, I insist

Remember how I said that groundcovers are by their nature invasive? Find someone with an overgrown yard (or just a whole lot of periwinkle) and ask for some. Groundcovers often spread by underground rhizome, root where stems touch the ground, or expand quickly so they are likely to share. In Ottawa, go to plantcycle if you have extra or would like to see if someone else does.

Waves of colour and texture

Plant large areas with the same ground cover for best effect. If you just have a small area that you want to convert consider a perennial bed or a rock garden with low growing plants that don’t require much (if any) supplemental watering. This is especially good for those areas that are dusty dry with brown grass by mid-summer.

Gardening in the drizzle

The best time to transplant is when you can expect some reliably cool weather, without frost - such as in late spring or early fall in Ottawa - for at least a couple weeks so that plants can establish good root systems before they are assaulted by severe weather. Cloudy days and evenings are the best time to actually put the plants in the ground.

Use staggered rows to put in clumps of ground cover, except for clumping grasses, which look nice in geometrical patterns (so I’ve been told). Weed well first, especially perennial weeds such as dandelion. Remember to mulch around area that they are to spread to keep down weed competition. Even better, use ‘weed fabric’, newspaper or cardboard first, plant into slits, and then mulch.

Ground cover means no weeds right?

Trillium - very pretty ephemeral groundcover that dies back in summer.

Not exactly...

You will need to water and weed frequently when just transplanted to allow the plants to establish well. Then taper off the watering to normal levels which ideally for native or xeriscaped plants will be not at all.

In the spring, and early summer, weed well and often so you won’t have to do as much later on. Though, in my experience, groundcovers don’t need much weeding, they do need some.

In fall, put down your shredded or whole leaves on woodland gardens to act as mulch and soil conditioner.

Oh and send me your alternative groundcover pictures!

My experiences:

The lowest care groundcovers in my garden are phlox, mother-of-time, euonymus, pussytoes, beebalm (monarda), ox-eye daisy, violets (want some?) and creeping jenny (though I am trying to eradicate this). I have also had luck with the self seeding annuals alyssum, german chamomile and sweet cicely.

By the way, the ox-eye daisy is from my lawn. I noticed the tell tale leaves when I was keeping the dandelion population low so my neighbours wouldn't look sideways too often, and transplanted it on a whim into my garden proper. It grew thick, lush and spread well. This lawn-evolved variety keeps its leaves low, not more than 3-4 inches (under the mower blades) and throws up 6-10 inch flower spikes. It is beautiful. If you're feeling brave, or just have an affection for weeds, try it!

Last year, I planted many more groundcovers, and I will let you know how they do over the years.

Stay tuned for more on turfing the turf!

1. Add Edibles
2. Go Wild

Go to part 1

Links

Plant Conservation Alliance (US based but relevant to Canada)

great post on Dougs Green Gardening about nurseries selling 'thug' plants

Environment Canada's site on invasive plants

Canada Botanical Conservation Network - invasive plants

Ottawa National Forest noxious plants

Native plant supplier - Evergreen

Plant supplier - Gardensnorth

Ontario Wildflower Site - Andy's northern Ontario Wildflowers









Common Violet

** I haven't been in the habit of taking pictures of groundcover so I sketched a couple for you!

My favourite wild landscaping book (out of the 8 or so that I have) is Gardening with Wild Flowers by Frances Tenebaum 1973. It is information dense though, of course, all information has to be cross-checked to make sure that it is up to date. I often find that older gardening books are dense in information whereas newer books keep information more neatly contained in tables etc... but lack those little details that make the difference.

The lawn's a yawn

Lawns are a YAWN is my motto. Parterre raised bed in the rain, dizzies my head like champagne.

Taken from CONFESSIONS OF A BOTTOM FEEDER an how-to essay on how to life on the fat of our oversized society. I can't say that I fall in line with everything that's said but I love the radical recycling aspect.

Who needs a lawn? The rant part:

It requires too much nitrogen and water, looks crappy if there's a drought, or too much shade, and isn't a particularly effective weed barrier (chortle, chortle). You could go for the low weed meadow look but then your neighbours (read mine) might give you annoying advice to which you have to smile, act stupid as if you didn't realize that you had to 'water' the grass, and back slowly away to plan your next assault on the turf.

My yard pre-garden was pretty much all the big mean green. The previous owners had a 'company' that came over regularly to give it an 'organic' program of native plant annilation (chemical weeding), baby beetle destruction (japanese beetle grub prevention) and growth exagerators (fertilizers). We also have an irrigation system that had been put in. Let me tell you - if the deluge that we get in Ottawa is insufficient to grow good grass then grass should not grow here.

My yard:

The green bits are the lawn which has been reduced by more than half (the rest just masquarades as lawn if you don't look too close).

Reasons for having a lawn:

When I started to get rid of the lawn, I thought we should keep some for the kids to play on. But thinking back to when I was a kid, I always gravitated to the edges of a garden, the places where there were overhanging trees, secret hollows in hedge rows or wild meadows. If I happened to be stuck with only grass, I hunted for the daisy or dandelion in the monotonous green. Lawns did not inspire me. The only activity that I can think of that needs a lawn is some sort of organized sport and there are other venues for that sort of thing. Sure it's nice for kids to have a running-around-crazy-place but exactly how much space do they realistically need? As my husband puts it, 'he had a concrete stoop'. Mind you, when I met him he couldn't identify a thistle... so perhaps he lacked something.

The only other reason I can think of for this lawn thing is that it is like a living patio, a blank space that highlights the taller aspects of the garden. There are great alternatives to low growing groundcovers, or the extremely low water and nutrient requirements of real bona fide patio stones if you can afford those.

Alternatives to lawn - go native:

Add some low care perrenials. In Ottawa, Fletcher's Wildlife Garden demonstrates how to use native plants in many types of landscape plans including sunny borders, rock gardens and shade places. Remember, native plants like it here and require very little care to give spectacular results. Native wildlife appreciates them too! Fletcher's Wildlife garden has a plant sale every year, so contact them for details. Or you could winter sow some wildflower seeds if you have them. I suggest winter sowing because in Ottawa, most plants require a cold dormant period to germinate. If it is fall when you are reading this just toss the seeds in the area where you want them to grow. You may want to mark a spot where you put the seeds so you can compare seedlings for weeding - I write from experience.

Kindly reminder: when collecting wild flower seeds make sure they are not in any way endangered and don't collect all of them from one plant.

Stay tuned on more alterantives to the lawn...

1. Add edibles
   
2. Alternative Ground Covers
   
3. Grow wild - the mini-forest
   

Links:

Landscaping with native plants, Ottawa: http://www.ofnc.ca/fletcher/howto/index.php