Category Archives: Horticulture

Chard Gone Wild = Garden Omelet

June 7, 2008 by The Manic Gardener

When I got up this morning, everything was different. No water falling from the sky; no rain. From my bedroom window I could see the mountains over my neighbor’s roof. No fog, no low clouds.

Downstairs, there was a weird brightness to the world. I had to squint to see, and when I looked up, I couldn’t see at all. What was–wait, I remember–it’s–it’s–it’s sunshine! Yes, the sun was shining. I would get into the garden today.

So I made an omelet for the Significant Other and myself. (If you cannot follow the reasoning here, go away.)

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Posted in Food & Recipes, Indoor Gardening, Organic Gardening

Tagged food and menus, organic gardening

What’s for lunch? Dandelion Salad

June 6, 2008 by The Manic Gardener

I admit it; I share the usual North-American prejudice against dandelions. But both the weather and I are so seriously behind this year that I’ve started adding dandelion leaves from my weeding excursions to the few spinach, lettuce, mustard, and chard leaves big enough to cull.

After all, the things are chock full of good stuff: vitamins A and C, plus iron (more than in spinach), phosphorus, and calcium.

I wasn’t at all sure that the various sons and husbands on the premises would tolerate this addition, but there have been no complaints, and the salad has been disappearing at quite a clip. Today I took the next step: I added the flowers to my salad. They, too, have vitamins A and C. Here’s the result:

Several years ago I noticed there seemed to be two different sorts of dandelion around, one with its familiar, deeply lobed leaves, and one with much shallower indentations. The second seemed far more palatable–lighter, less bitter, more tender– than leaves of the one, the true, the original dandelion. I prefer the interloper for both texture and flavor.

But I began to wonder if I was poisoning my family (heavy metals yesterday, toxic greens today–as son #2 says, That’s how we roll–) so this afternoon before lunch I spent some time on the Web, with the result that I am now thoroughly confused. In summary: there are two different plants–false dandelion (Hypochoeris radicata), and fall dandelion (Leontodon autumnalis)–that might be mistaken for the common dandelion, but sources disagree about which has shiny leaves and which hairy, and almost no source covers both.

I can’t say, then, what precisely I’m eating, which is not good. However, a number of sources did state that none of the close look-alikes are poisonous, and that’s good. So I went ahead and ate my salad.

Which was delicious.

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Posted in Food & Recipes, Weed Control

A Lighter take on Heavy Metals

June 5, 2008 by The Manic Gardener

Given that my "Heavy Metals in Wood Ash" post appears to have gone over like a lead balloon (yuk, yuk), I thought I’d try a shorter version and see if that flies.

To start at the end: a fair amount of research has been done, all of it concluding that it is safe to use wood ashes in gardens in moderation. The ashes contain only trace amounts of heavy metals, and the metals do not move into whatever is grown in them. And yet, on-line question and answer gardening sites often do not mentioned this research or its conclusions.

That makes me mad. I expect people handing out advice to know their stuff. Silly me.

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Posted in Environment, Organic Gardening, Research Spin-off, Soil & Amendments, WILT, or What I Learned Today

Heavy Metals in Wood Ash–??

June 3, 2008 by The Manic Gardener

The Question

So I'm doing my research on soil amendments, (still for the same article) and I'm reading up on wood ash, and I see this: "they can also be a source of heavy metals that you don't necessarily want in your garden." Damn straight. But was it true? (If you just want the answer, go to the end of this post, Results, Conclusions, and Celebrations.)

That quote came from about.com's gardening site, and in this short article Marie Iannotti ended up taking the reasonable position that "a small amount of wood ash will add some nutrients and be beneficial to most soils," but that "Large amounts should be avoided."

Still–heavy metals? They're almost as scary as cancer these days. And since I've been using wood ashes for several years, I have a real investment in this. Also, I'm doing research, ya know, and when I do research, I mean, I DO it.

(One of my rules is to cite only government and university sources. Not that they're infallible–ha!–but since I'm trying to promote organic techniques, I figure I'll convince noone if I cite green organizations.)

In Search of an Answer

I dug around some. Fingers a-tremble, I typed "wood ash fertilizer" and fearfully scanned the results. One, a study by the Finnish Forest Research Institute, said that "Migration of heavy metals into plants is reduced when their solubility is reduced. Increased soil pH prevents metals from dissolving. Wood ash increases the pH value of soil, reducing acidity." Ash means higher pH which means fewer heavy metals in crops. Whew. Furthermore, they concluded that, in the particular soils they worked with, "wood ash does not accumulate metals in edible berries and mushrooms" even fifty years later. This was what they call a long-term study.

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Posted in Organic Gardening, Soil & Amendments

Bowing to the Inevitable

May 28, 2008 by The Manic Gardener

All evidence to the contrary, I do have a garden.

This is what we generally call the Circle, I’m not sure why. (Actuallly, it looks sort of square here, which is weird.)

When we moved in seven years ago, there was a circular hole in the cement of our patio. Herbs, I thought, since the Circle is about two steps from the French doors to the dining-room/kitchen area. Yes, and some perennials for color. Restock with annuals every year? Forget it.

The first time I took a shovel to this dirt, I just about gave up the plan to plant anything at all. It was almost solid, knit together with a mat of finely meshed roots. I dug through it all, mixed in plenty of compost, and set out the first plants. Well and good.

That fall, I decided to add more compost, and being still under the impression that all amendments must be dug in, I got out the shovel, set it to the dirt, and found–the same thing I’d encountered that spring.

This went on for a couple of years. (I’m a slow learner.) Then, I noticed that although some things never did well in the Circle, others thrived. I could put pansies from the same box, on the same day, into the Circle and into the border by the lawn, no more than five feet away, and the former would languish while the latter would grow to the size of small bushes.

My little spring bulbs, however–snowdrops, grape hyacinth, miniature iris–did just fine, and I never heard a peep out of the delphinium. Anemone flourished, as did the tiny red-flowered native cliff anemone.And the herbs–oregano, sage, thyme–kept us supplied all year long.

Clearly, it was time to throw in the trowel. So I did. Anything that wanted to live there, I decided, would have to make it on its own. It would get no help from me. Since then, the only digging I’ve done there has been to make holes for new plants.