Monthly Archives: September 2015

Plants We Like: Blue Mistflower (Conoclinium coelestinum)

BEAUTY, PASSION, POLLINATION
by Ann McCulloh
 Blue Mistflowers (Conoclinium coelestinum) are that lovely shade of periwinkle which falls between lavender and powder blue…
A hardy (to zone 5) native  perennial, its late-season nectar attracts lots of butterflies. It really comes on beautifully in September, making a nice, fresh contrast to the prevalent yellows and whites of other fall wildflowers. The stems are a sort of dark cherry color, and at 24″ stand taller than the similar annual Ageratum often sold for springtime bedding. A bit further south this plant is considered a too competitive, but here in Northeastern Ohio it’s often a welcome addition to partly shady or damp gardens. In our current bone-dry season, my newly-planted  specimen required only occasional watering. Here it is on September 25, 2015.
Blue Mistflower

“After Blueflags” by Elsa Johnson

POETRY

by Elsa Johnson

After Blueflags

(Homage to WCW)

We stopped to gather pods

from the milkweed plants

where they grow

in the meadow

amid tall grasses

that wave

as wind blows

and rain falls

and runnels the ground

toward the swale

where we planted blueflags

one spring

in water

with sunflowers beside.

The milkweed pods

are like fat fish

which we pull

from stalks

and carry

in our pockets

and our arms

to the ditch

where our hands grow sticky

with white sap

as we pull apart pods

for the seeds inside

lined up like fish scales

tied to silk threads

which we rend and scatter

so they drift

in wet air

Milkweed pods
Milkweed pods

Plants We Like: Milkweed-Schmilkweed – What Do Those Darn Monarchs Want, Anyway? by Elsa Johnson

POLLINATION, PRACTICE

Elsa Johnson

Monarch_In_May

We constantly hear how the Monarch butterfly population is at risk because they are dependent on milkweed plants for survival.  What does that mean?  Is timing important?

The answer to both questions is … not quite so much for the adult Monarch butterfly as for the Monarch caterpillar.  The caterpillar, the larval stage of the butterfly, MUST have milkweed. It eats nothing else.    

IMG_2281

Adult Monarch butterflies drink only liquid, mostly in the form of nectar that they suck up through a tiny tube (called a proboscis) just under the head. They can get nectar from a variety of flowering sources. To attract adult Monarch butterflies, one need only plant a variety of nectar rich flowers, including the various species of milkweed native to one’s area.  As the non-breeding Monarch’s  – that is,  the migrating population of Monarch’s (as opposed to the breeding stay-at-home population) fly southwest on the migration to Mexico, it is important that they find nectar sources along their route. This should be a variety of flowering plants with staged flowering times to give both stay at home and migrating Monarchs a continuous food source. Milkweed of course should be included in the mix.

It is the stay-at-home breeding population that specifically need milkweed plants. Adult butterflies lay their eggs only on milkweed plants because in the caterpillar stage of their life cycle Monarch’s eat only the leaves of milkweed plants. They can denude a milkweed plant of its leaves (but that’s ok; the leaves will regenerate).

Monarch friendly areas should be not be mowed or cut back until butterflies have migrated from the area (a good reason to practice garden sloth on either a small or large scale).  For large areas, mowing in patches insures that pollinators always have access to undisturbed habitat and can recolonize mowed areas. Avoid the use of herbicides and pesticides.

There are 13 species of milkweed native to Ohio. The most common to the fields of Northeast Ohio is Common Milkweed (Asclepias syriaca).

Asclepias_syriaca_-_Common_Milkweed 2

You can find large stands of this milkweed in the Great Meadow of Forest Hill Park (feel free to take some pods home!). This species can spread aggressively — though for now we are not convinced that is such a bad thing.

The milkweed species are most often found in area nurseries are Swamp Milkweed

( Asclepias incarnata)

swamp milkweed

and Aesclepias tuberosa, with its startling orange flowers.

milkweed- orangeasclepiastuberosa_sa_1_lg_0 (1)

Both respond to garden sloth by self- sowing. Interestingly, caterpillars on A. tuberosa have a greater survival rate then on the other milkweeds. 

Links:

Milkweed information sheet: monarchjointventure.org 

The  Xerces Society : milkweed seed finder database

Floraofohio.blogspot.com 

Milkweed pods
Milkweed pods

After Blueflags

(Homage to WCW)

We stopped to gather pods

from the milkweed plants

where they grow

in the meadow

amid tall grasses

that wave

as wind blows

and rain falls

and runnels the ground

toward the swale

where we planted blueflags

one spring

in water

with sunflowers beside.

The milkweed pods

are like fat fish

which we pull

from stalks

and carry

in our pockets

and our arms

to the ditch

where our hands grow sticky

with white sap

as we pull apart pods

for the seeds inside

lined up like fish scales

tied to silk threads

which we rend and scatter

so they drift

in wet air

Milkweed gone to seed
Milkweed gone to seed

Barbed: Then and Now by Elsa Johnson

POETRY

Barbed : Then and Now      

           (‘ homo homini lupus’: Plautus)

Elsa Johnson

0629150856

 It was Acanthus mollis that found its soft

voluptuous way a-top the severe slim

columns of the temple of Olympian Zeus

that took six hundred years to build and was

 finished (at last) only to endure intact a single

century before being reduced to a stockpile of

marble construction blocks   Those columns needed

spikes : A. spinosus – each lurid leaf and flower

 armored   Walking past it several times each day

I think …surely a plant for a feral culture :

barbed – as in barbarian   What use sweet reason

when the wolves sweep down ? …howling   death

 death  death   (yours – not theirs)  …destruction

singing through their veins …their shining eyes

In Connecticut by Elsa Johnson

POETRY

In Connecticut

Elsa Johnson

Above the beach at Hammonasset a whirl of

many swallows circled just below where clouds

formed flat-bottomed as though resting on

a surface we could not see :  piling up

billowing above into the hued sky   Just there

was where the swallows flew their continuous

rotation    The water … was New England cold…

we lingered only an hour   When we left

the swallows still winged and swirled   sustained

by what…  …we could not see   Early evening

on my son’s front porch   we watched two quarrel

some hummingbirds visit the feeder    High — high

above —  a clearly modeled three dimensional

moon hung waxing in a still bright sky

Call and Response

POETRY

0719152058g

Elsa Johnson

I say grace is where you find it   …sometimes

in such unexpected places   Amazing

that the fleas hoping to camp on Loki’s face

moved him to try to talk like a bird   There he sat

high up in a flea-less open second floor window

opposite a wire where a robin perched and chirped   

and he chirped back   or tried to   Such strange

sounds coming from a cat I did not at first hear

attempted conversation    only slowly perceived

each single syllable birdcall met by ‘erk!’ from cat

…and then… later —  at day’s end —  in the garden

when the light changed   infusing all with gold   

the blue sky deepened   and the clouds glowed back

like one of those Renaissance paintings …like grace 







One Thing I Learned This Year by Diana Sette

Uncategorized

What I Learned This Year

By Diana Sette

To say simply what I’ve learned in the garden this year can be done so in three sentences:

1. Explore what is possible.

2. Never stop engaging with and building community, this is the greatest resource.

3. Know your personal limits, respect them, and ask for help when you need it.

When We Started

In many ways I relearn and practice these lessons every year in the garden- sometimes I am left with greater feelings of satisfaction than others, yet always grateful for the garden lessons.

I am constantly overdoing it, ambitious and ever exploring.  This quickly ties in my third lesson- know your limits.  This season I’ve practiced this in taking a new position as I work with Possibilitarian Garden, our community-based garden on E 117th St off of Buckeye Rd.  I see all the work that there is to do to improve the soil, to connect with neighbors, listen to the land, and woo the beneficial pollinators.  Yet I am only one person, and I have a family and a full-time job, and numerous other organizations I play significant roles in- and I have to check myself constantly to make sure I am gardening within my limits.

That doesn’t mean that I am not always remaining open to what is possible, because I am.  Because my vision has only grown clearer of the regenerative community space that a garden can play.  The plants and the people that gather around and amongst them in community is what continues to show and clarify this vision for me.  And just like my baby seedlings, that vibrant vision for community I hold only grows in mind, and this garden has reminded me again this year to continue to nurture it because the pay off is long-term.  Because it is a regenerative cycle.  And because a community garden will only build upon its potential fertility for gardens and community, if I nurture both community and gardens.

Finally, it is the community that makes a community garden, and this is what I am continuing to learn here.  Margaret Wheatly sums up a key lesson that resonated with me this season, “Our communities must support our individual freedom as a means to community health and resiliency.  And individuals must acknowledge their neighbors and make choices based on the desire to be in relationship with them as a means to their own health and resiliency.”

diana sette what I learned

So whatever I planted in my community garden this year, it has been in community and based on the desire to be in relationship with community.  The importance of this is what I learned the most this year.

*If you are interested in getting involved with Possibilitarian Garden, we are having a Harvest Party and Work Day on Sunday, September 27 from 1-6pm, and will be a fun event of planting pollinator friendly plants, sheetmulching, grilling, spoken word, sweating and getting dirty with new friends!

Contact me at Diana_sette@yahoo.com for more info.

 The garden this autumn

A Hike to Holden Arboretum’s Carver’s Pond by Elsa Johnson

Uncategorized

A Hike to Holden Arboretum’s Carver’s Pond

Elsa Johnson

0910151538c-1

When the Cleveland Museum of Natural History holds its annual symposium there are GREAT  opportunities to go on hikes that visit some of northeast Ohio’s very special places.  The hike to Carver’s Pond is one of these.  I’ve been on this hike several times, and it is always rewarding. The pond is a Holden Arboretum holding, but lies outside the arboretum proper and can be visited only with special permission and a guide (ours was led by Holden’s own Roger Gettig). 

So the first part of our trip involved first getting to the place where the hike began, near an enclosure where Holden is testing the pest or pathogen resistance of various trees and shrubs.  Then one wanders through a large unmown field (full of bee-full goldenrod this time of year) where Holden has planted more trees to observe over time (White Pine, Dawn Redwood). Then you tromp a long way through an oak/beech forest,  overlooking a creek that is in some places a hundred feet below…

And then you are there.

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What makes Carver’s Pond fascinating is that it lies in a submerged valley that itself lies thirty feet above the creek below.  The natural outlet at the west end of the pond has been blocked by a beaver dam, creating a water impoundment of about 5 acres, studded with water lilies and dead trees (in which heron used to nest but no longer do) . There is no one around except some ducks and herons. It is very, very quiet. 

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The way out is faster but steeper: no sloth possible. My butt muscles are tired. It was a good hike. 

A Permaculture Solution for Goji Berries by Tom Gibson

PERMACULTURE, PRACTICE

A Permaculture Solution for Goji Berries

Perhaps permaculture’s most memorable adage is “The Problem is the Solution.” Do you have too many slugs?  Maybe the solution is adding ducks which will eat those slugs and turn them into eggs. 

Canadian anemones certainly aren’t as annoying as slugs, but they are extremely aggressive and were crowding out some of my food-producing ground level plants like woodland strawberries and ramps. 

Yet I had mixed emotions about trying to eliminate them. The Canadian anemone’s white flowers attract a variety of pollinators. And their mat of fine surface roots that strangle their plant competitors also provides lush habitat for worms and arthropods. Pull off the “scalp” of living Canadian anemone roots and you’ll find soil that incorporates previously decayed roots, holds moisture and builds a wonderful, crumble-in-the-hand tilth.

Was there a permaculture solution somewhere in that mix? I thought of my goji berry plants, the Asian imports much hyped for their anti-oxidant value, but which, in my garden, had never lived up to their growing potential. Maybe a berry or two in late August, but, instead of the promised September profusion, a quick fade in a location that was sunny, but probably a little too dry.

The goji berry plants have relatively deep roots. Could they possibly thrive in all that rich, moist soil under my Canadian anemones?

Short answer: they have, and how!

goji picture Goji berries growing in a bed of Canadian anemone.

The berries are coming nonstop and provide a great addition to fruit salads.

Companion planting in other mat-like groundcovers would probably produce the same results.  I’ve got another goji berry plant planted in the middle of sweet woodruff, and it’s doing almost as well.