Nature vs Nurture

At this time of year when I have been foraging, I start to reflect on the differences between wild and cultivated plants. When ramps and fiddleheads are at their peak there is virtually nothing to be seen in a vegetable garden.

Jessica and Alex picking ramps on Mother's Day, 2014,  accompanied by Scylla

Fiddleheads earlier this past weekend beginning to unfurl

Of course it is not really a justifiable comparison. If we were restricted to hardy plants we couldn't grow tomatoes and peppers which need to be started indoors since they need a longer frost-free growing season than we have here. I'm always finding potatoes when I dig the beds in the spring - but that's because I somehow missed them when digging last year's crop. But if I didn't rotate the beds for potatoes, very few would survive the growing season because the potato bug overwinters in the soil. With no control they would devastate the potato foliage preventing the plants from producing tubers underground. But I have never found a summer squash or cucumber seedling that survived a winter hibernation. Likewise with beans. Carrots and beets and all the biennials would undoubtedly be overcome by weeds even if they were left to flower and set seed for a crop two years later. Wild carrot (Queen Anne's Lace) thrives in the wild but because all of its energy goes into producing flowers and therefore seeds, the root is fibrous and skimpy.

But greens are a difference story. As long as you grow open pollinated lettuces, mustards and kales and allow them to flower they will drop their seed. After a winter under the snow, when conditions are favourable, they will germinate. Despite, or perhaps because of, the various weather scenarios they experience - everything from late frosts and snow to temperatures in the 30C's and full sun they grow hardy and well adapted to their very local environment. I then transplant these seedlings into beds refreshened with compost and manure.

Earlier this weekend weeding the bed of lettuces and spinach seeded last fall

A close-up of the bed with lettuces on the left, spinach on the right

Another greens bed. The lettuce on the top germinated from seed  that overwintered from lettuce plants left to go to seed and the seedlings on the bottom were sown a week ago from seed saved and stored inside all winter.  

I also plant a crop of spinach and onions in the late fall. Like the lettuce they start growing when conditions are suitable and provide a crop at least four weeks earlier than seedlings direct sown.

Fall planted spring onions

Permaculturists aim to reproduce, as much as possible, a woodland ecology; as many perennials as possible, a canopied treescape with large trees at the top, then fruit and nut trees underneath, soft fruit below like berries and finally strawberries and traditional market garden vegetables at ground level. It always seems to me, the optimum approach is to take the best ideas and/or the strategies easiest to employ from wherever you can glean information. I love my rhubarb patch - one of just three plants we inherited - who knows how old it is. Other than using the leaves from harvested stalks as mulch it needs no care.

The rhubarb patch

Another perennial vegetable I grow which I planted a few years ago is sorrel. It is not universally liked, but for those who are fans they love it for its crisp lemony taste.

Sorrel

It would be nice to have a greenhouse to get a jump on the season. But you really need to live where your greenhouse is, to monitor ventilation and temperature. I don't have that situation. But with some perennial vegetables, fall sowing and letting plants flower and go to seed, I can manage to provide a smooth procession from foraged plants to cultivated ones, by relinquishing a certain amount of control and working with nature, at least some of the time. So, not nature vs nurture, but nature and nurture.

Growing fruit

When we bought the farmhouse 24 years ago we inherited three plants; a huge spruce tree in the front which the previous owners, the Brady's, who lived here for 51 years, planted as a Christmas tree, an old apple tree which I have suspected might be a Snow apple and Charlie had the same feeling, and two rhubarb patches. Since we never pay attention to the apple tree, neither pruning nor spraying, it just does its own thing, occasionally bearing fruit and more often, losing huge limbs whenever there is a windstorm. One rhubarb plant was in an area which I wanted at a certain point to be a perennial bed (in my Vita Sackville-West period). In digging it out I discovered their roots reach down and down and down, almost to China. But with successive savage attacks it ultimately succumbed. Now, of course, I wish I had that second rhubarb plant, although the one survivor (of me) produced 15 pounds of rhubarb this year. Compare that to the new rhubarb I planted three years ago which is barely surviving.

Our old faithful, the inherited rhubarb

The apple tree has been obliging in its dotage by finally producing a progeny. Time will tell if it actually is the same kind of tree. The apples are small and quite green with a red blush, a very white flesh and tart flavour. Every few years the fruit is almost blemish free and makes for good eating. But more often they make their way into applesauce.

The original apple tree complete with downed but hanging-on-by-a-thread limb still producing fruit 

The new little apple tree, badly in need of liberation from the surrounding quackgrass

Three years ago I decided I wanted to grow more fruit. First of all I planted a raspberry hedge along the west side of the new vegetable bed in the field. Then the following spring I went to a workshop on hardy tender fruit and, inspired by what I learned, planted three haskaps and four of the new hardy Romance shrub cherries, developed at the University of Saskatchewan. They are called "sour" but they have a Brix (the scale used to measure sugar content of fruit) of 22 while most commercial tree cherries have a Brix of only18! Alex tells me haskaps are an "indicator species" providing information on the characteristics of a specific area's soil, climate and conditions generally. I understand they are indigenous to every province except British Columbia and are known for being the first to bear fruit, in June. I have yet to see that since they have not yet produced their white flowers for me.

One of the shrub Romance cherries

A two year old haskap

I also heard at Ken Taylor's workshop about the hardy table grapes he had bred and ordered 50 from his nursery. Most of them survived and when I ran into him at the Guelph Organic Conference in January earlier this year he told me not to bother yet with pruning - very good news. I became very excited when one of his grapes seemed to be growing extremely vigorously. Unfortunately, upon closer inspection, it was a new wild grape dwarfing its two year old, more highly bred cousin.

One of Ken Taylor's Hardy Table Grapes 

The vigorous wild grape honing in on its more delicate domestic relative 

Many years ago I was very excited about growing (and maintaining the genetics of) relatively rare heirloom apple trees. What a process to select the trees from the catalogue! Did we want Standard, Dwarf or Semi-dwarf? Were we interested in early, mid or late season? For their intended use did we like dessert, eating, cider or sauce apples? Should the rootstock (since all fruit trees are grafted) be hardy, semi- hardy or suitable for the sub Arctic? We finally selected, ordered and eventually received and planted our 8 tiny whips; six survived until this winter when two more died. For the first time ever we actually have some apples, at least until the few remaining on the tree join their siblings on the ground.

One of our heirloom apple trees bearing fruit - finally

The same tree dropping most its fruit on the ground

For years my mother has picked her red currants and given them all to me to make into jelly. Last year she read that thinning and pruning the bush would give it renewed vigour. I understand that because we just did the same thing, for the same reason, to our mock orange. But this is a case of being in it for the long haul. The mock orange is now about a third of its former size and my mother's red currant has spent all its energy on new growth at the expense of producing fruit. Other years she picked about ten 500 ml containers. This year she got two. I planted three red currants and another three black currants three years ago. The red currants produced some fruit for the first time this year -  a minuscule 250 ml.

Our three year old red currant, the fruit tends to be hidden behind the leaves close to the ground

All to say I think it is very challenging to grow fruit. From selection of the specific plant to protection against rodent damage to the trunk in the winter, to spraying (we don't), to hoping for pollination in the spring and then anticipating all that effort will produce even just a little fruit. And sharing whatever little bounty there may be hasn't even been mentioned. My raspberry bushes are finally producing for the first time and I was so excited to come up and see if the berries were ripening. Well, if possession is 9/10th of the law, then the permanent residents have already staked their claim.

I hope whoever ate those two raspberries enjoyed them as much as I would have

A much older purple raspberry planted in the original vegetable garden

The local wild raspberry known as "blackcaps" which I make into raspberry vinegar

And the raspberries are not the only victims. Someone has been eating my sugar snap and snow peas. Some of the ravaged peas are low hanging and others are up at least four feet. I'd like to know what is going on. Is it a variety of animals? Or birds? The place has become lousy with chipmunks and red squirrels. I only see them in the garden around the house, never in the vegetable beds. But just because I don't see them doesn't mean they're not having their way behind my back. I kind of feel like Allan Lamport, Toronto's mayor from 1952 to 1954 and known for his malapropisms, who famously said "If someone's gonna stab me in the back, I wanna be there". I feel "If someone's gonna cheat on me I wanna be in on it!"

An heirloom Golden Snow Pea enjoyed by our resident wildlife

At least our dinner guest has both good and varied taste - here Sugar Snap peas provided a delicious snack

But there is the occasional success. I'm glad that tomatoes are a fruit. I can grow them! And years ago we had a mulberry tree at the city house. Whether we intended to plant one of its seedlings here at the farmhouse or whether it piggybacked in the compost I brought up, I can't remember. But we now have a beautiful mulberry tree. While we don't eat its fruits, the birds do. And what birds; flocks of Cedar Waxwings, Orioles, Bluejays. and of course Grackles and Starlings.

The tomatoes have almost reached the top of Josh's 6 foot frames

The mulberry tree, full of birds at this time of year when it is laden with berries

An Argument Against Raking

Every spring one of the rituals we all feel good about, and many enjoy, is the raking of garden beds. Removing all that tired-looking debris from the autumn, ground down by the ravages of freeze and thaw and snow cover, is a horticultural form of spring cleaning. And like all de-cluttering it feels like an accomplishment. You can see where you've been and feel virtuous and proactive. Right?

Well, maybe not. It is true garden beds look tired when they're untouched and they look organized and tidy when they've been raked. But when we clean them up what are we actually doing to those beloved beds?

My unraked garden bed looking admittedly a little bleak

But early species crocuses brighten it up a little 

When we rake the beds are being stripped of nature's way of returning fertility to the soil. Fallen leaves,  dead annuals and the die-off of perennials are all sources of organic material. Many resources have been taken from the soil by the plants in order to produce leaves, flowers and perhaps even fruit or nuts. The residue from the previous season is nature's way of sustainably replenishing that fertility. That garden trash is food for the microbial and worm life in the soil and they, in turn, given food and opportunity, will turn those raw materials into a vast array of nutrients. Without this ongoing feeding of the soil we are starving it. No wonder we love Miracle Gro and petroleum based artificial fertilizers. When we aren't nourishing our dirt it responds to any sustenance, even something totally artificial and nutritionally deficient. This is sounding so familiar; it's funny how the analogy of soil to people and the food for both is so completely parallel.

It is interesting to note that when we take a walk in the woods we don't look at the humusy forest floor and think, "Yuck, I need to organize some volunteers to properly rake this woods". A helpful reminder that so many of our prejudices and aesthetic biases are all about context.

Second growth woods with its carpet of fallen leaves

In fact, healthy woods are an example of a sustainable ecosystem in action. Death and regeneration follow each other as amounts of sunlight change. Fallen trees rot into the ground providing fertility and increased microbial and fungal life. There is a storied profile to any mature balanced forest. The top layer here in Ontario is hardwood trees, below are understory trees and then further down shrubs and perhaps rambles. And then there is the forest floor. Depending on availability of sunlight and soil profile there could be ferns, mosses, perennial 'weeds', ground covers and in the spring the lovely "ephemerals", ramps and at different times of the year, mushrooms.

This fallen tree will eventually return entirely to the earth

Here the stump of a felled tree - almost unrecognizable as anything but rich humus earth

There is enough soil on this exposed rock to sustain clumping grasses which will prevent water and wind erosion

A smattering of beech saplings taking advantage of the extra sunlight provided by the opening up of the trail

A bramble growing in a sunnier spot at the edge of the woods

A self seeded conifer

Even this old split cedar fence will add to organic richness as it breaks down

If gardens aren't raked, as the season progresses the embedded plants will grow and hide some of the offending mess. The organic cover will act as a thin layer of mulch conserving moisture, suppressing weeds and maintaining a much more even temperature. And the microbial life in the soil will slowly transform the raw organic material into a richer, crumbly dark chocolate cake - looking soil. Real alchemy.

Some leaves have pulled away at the base of this sugar maple revealing a beautiful dark soil

Change is possible. It is not that long ago that virtually every front yard was planted in that monoculture we call a lawn. Now it is an exception to see a front yard given over to nothing but grass. The next transition is to seeing garden 'waste' as garden 'gold'  - a resource to be treasured and revered.

It is worth remembering that the Great Dust Bowl of the 1930's happened in an organic, that is a pre-petroleum-based pesticide, herbicide and fertilizer era. But it certainly wasn't a time of sustainable agriculture. And the biggest genocide perpetrated on the soil was stripping it of its cover. Denuded of perennial grasses there was nothing to hold the topsoil in place. Grasslands, like forests, are an example of a balanced and sustainable ecosystem. And what grasslands and forests have in common is there is never a single square inch of exposed soil.

One year I had a neighbour who I didn't know very well volunteer to visit me at the farmhouse and do some work in the garden. I was thrilled because there is always much more to do than I can handle. I was aghast when she proudly pointed out to me that she had taken the initiative to carefully remove every bit of debris from under the rhubarb plant. Little did she know that I deliberately tuck all the leaves I cut off the harvested stalks around the base of the plant. Rhubarb is a perennial and a heavy feeder. Because of both characteristics it needs lost of organic material to keep it strong and long-lived. It is also very sensitive to drought and will send up flower shoots and stop producing new stalks very quickly if, without a protective mulch, it is allowed to dry out. I'll never know if my volunteer interpreted the expression on my face as shock or awe.

So let's raise a glass to indigence - at least in regards to raking our gardens. Like people, they really look much more attractive fully-clothed than naked.