Spring Showers bring...soaked gardeners

Welcome to the glory of spring and the promise of summer! We are reapidly approaching that point in the year when the grass demands mowing, the birds are out there singing like crazy and the soil is warm enough to support your summer crops. The rain is regular, the nights are cool and the mosquito population isn’t quite up and running. In short it’s one of the best times of the year to be a gardener. The test gardens themselves are rapidly evolving into something of a state of unmatched beauty as the dormant plants for the most part are awakened and going about business. Much has been done but even more remains to be done and that brings us to another episode of Lost in the Farmer’s Market.

Before I start into the details of our first test of the year, I’d like to share some pictures from the gardens that I thought you might enjoy.

Yellow German Bearded Iris  (Iris germanica)in all it's glory, these guys are so bright, you can see them from across the property.

Exploding ourward in a ball of blooms is the inflorescence of the herb Chives or Allium schoenoprasum.

Even the blackberries are in the springtime act as they are coated in blooms, The bloom also reveals that blackberries are in the rose family

As you may have heard the first experiment of the 2013 year was a growth comparison between various soil mixtures to see what if any effect the use of Bio-char would have on a basic crop. In the case of our test we used four Radicchio plants of similar size, and created four different soil mixes one of which was spiked with a set amount of bio-char. Photos were taken at three-day intervals to visually chart the subject plant’s growth and at the end of the study the plants were each measured for width and height. Notes regarding observations on soil moisture retention, and overall vigor and color were also kept just for the sake of later review. I might add the Radicchio plants selected were of a dark red variety for the express purpose of determining health and nutrient deficiency.

03-22-2013 - A motley bunch they are, but then again for Bonnie plants which are notoriously under-developed not too bad.

03-28-2013 - The end of their first week and all is well

04-02-2013

04-08-2013 - From this point on most of the test plants get over their exposure caused coloration and start shifting back to green.

04-14-2013 - This was about when I realized the soil mixture seemed to be trying out every other day you can see the odd downward pucker in all the plants.

04-20-2013 - I goofed a bit on this one, you can see my boot in the picture.

04-26-2013 - The last day of the trial. It is clear the compost soils beat the pants off the coco fiber soil.

As a side note not a single one of these plants was given fertilizer, just rainwater from the rain barrel nearby. It's a funny thought but these photos also show a sort of time-lapse display of the weeds growing below, and it's funny to see whats down there. How many can you Identify?

In case you were wondering, in the picture from left to right the plants had the following soil mixtures; Coir fiber soil mix, straight compost, Compost with worm castings added, and Compost with worm castings and bio-char. It is also clear through the alternating sequence of pictures that the compost, castings and bio-char plant developed faster and was larger. Now obviously this was just a test to see the relative effectiveness of such a treatment, but at least in a laboratory setting bio char seems to clearly do something. In fact as far as leaf greens are concerned if I could get a hold of enough of the bio char to do a planting row test using winter crops I’d gladly do so. In short I do think the Bio-char is useful; there is also evidence to suggest its introduction alone has a clear and visible effect on plants.

I might add as an afterthought once the trial was over the radicchio plants were repotted into bowl planters so they could grow on and hopefully make a good salad item later. They currently reside on the front porch and the root development in all the compost plants was noticeably better then that of the plant in the coir fiber mix. The bio-char plant however had only marginally better root growth as compared to the other compost types which suggests that bio char may make additional nutrients available in amounts that encourage steady growth. Stay tuned for our next trial which is the creation of a anti-erosion berm.

Just as a note to all you readers out there, I will have a table at the Fayetteville Farmer’s Market this weekend. The Market is located on 325 Franklin Street, and will be open on Saturday between the hours of 9am to 1pm. As with the last two weeks I’ll be present and teamed up with the Sustainable neighbors, so you can come on by the sustainability booth and get some cool info and ask any garden questions you might have. As promised here is the plant list of what will be available for sale at the booth.

Cucumbers & Melons: Kiwano (2x), Armenian Cucumber (1x), Poona Kheera Cucumber (1x).

Leaf Greens: Red-Leaf Amaranth (3x), Turkish Rocket (4x).

Herbs: Blue African Basil (2x), Siam Basil (2x).

Ornamentals: Castor Bean “Red Weed” (3x)

Fruit: Strawberry (1x).

Tomatoes: Heirloom Cherry Mix (5), San Marzano (6x), Gold Rush Currant (1x), Red Currant (1x), Red & Yellow Currant Mix (1x), Sweet Pea Currant (1x), Mexican Midget (1x), Solar Fire (1x), Underground Rail Road (1x).

Eggplant: Nyakati (2x), Early Black Egg (1x), Turkish Italian Orange (2x), Louisiana Long Green (2x).

Potatoes: Dark Caribe (5x), Carola (5x)

As you can see we’ve got some good stuff coming to the table this weekend but in the following weeks as things mature out on the growing Plot more will become available. Also, I might add that copies of the book Southward Skies will be available at the booth also.

That last brings a close to our first post in the month of May. I hope to see you all at the market and barring that stay tuned here to find out the results of our field tests and other cool stuff. Thank you for reading and as always keep ‘em growin!

Springtime Changes

Welcome back to another edition of lost in the farmers market where we look into the nature of organic gardening and it’s practicality for self-sustainability. Today is somewhat of a belated double-post. As some of you may know there has quite a bit of busy times over at the test gardens as control of the property has passed to BL2 and by extension LITFM. This of course means that for the first time in history we will be doing tours during the summer and our first on-site Sustainable Neighbors crop mob will be occurring in a few weeks. 

This is the area targeted for the crop mob.

As you can see this patch of earth has lost a lot of its viable topsoil and is in need of some serious repair. Originally those tree roots were buried but compaction and erosion due to vehicle traffic has ruined this area and it is our ambitious goal to recover it with an innovative anti-erosion project. It is my hope that some of you sustainable neighbors in the Fayetteville area can join in on this project when the time comes. I digress on that, the shift on control of the property has had me personally tied up for two weeks straight as soon as the work load lessened it was like spring was showing me that there was light at the end of the tunnel so here is an entourage of spring color for all of you to enjoy.

These are Bird’s Foot Violets. I planted them two years ago and thought they had died. They bloomed for the first time this year.

This is the tiny azalea often seen in the mailbox garden at the front of the property, it was dug early last year and moved to the shady rock garden where it bloomed for the first time.

This is a set of irises given to me by a client who had some to spare during my first year of operations as BL2. They once bloomed as a bicolor, blue and white but have become this pure white. This is the second year they have bloomed.

As promised in an earlier episode, here is a picture of those pincushion flowers planted last year. They came into bloom quite heavily this spring.

The blue columbines awakened late but are making up for lost time as you can see here.

This Coral Bells was a salvaged plant as it was found dumped by the side of the road near one of my client’s houses. I cleaned it up and put in this three gallon nursery pot with some improved soil and it over wintered rather well.

The coral bells is not a part of the shady rock garden and is part of the failed 'Mint hill'.

While not colorful the White Ischia figs broke bud first and already are bearing the largest figs.

Last in the group is the new growth of the Fetterbush in the shady rock garden. For note this is a Leucothoe axillaris, which is not the same as the rainbow fetterbush.

This plant stands as a example of making sure to put the right plant in the right place as it did horribly for three years where it was and then in the shady rock garden it’s multiplied it’s size several times. Much like the azalea mentioned before it’s rewarded me with heavy blooms and in this case dramatic foliage color.

Needless to say spring is a marvelous time it is the renewal of ones own faith in nature and I have to report that the nest in my hanging pansy basket from a earlier post has occupants, at last sighting there were four little eggs in the nest and visual confirmation of some sort of tiny bird possibly a wren. It seems they like that sort of basket and so I’ll leave it in position from here on out.

That last bit aside as some of you may know there was no Urban Farm Day this year, it seems Sustainable Sandhills decided to let the concept go. The good news is that along with Sustainable neighbors I am now going to help man the booth at the Fayetteville Farmer’s Market which means the odd and exotic plants as well as copies of the book will be available through that venue. Now due to the odd winter and early spring weather my crops will be available in staggered fashion but if you stop by you can make reservations for items or ask about the status of stuff.

A close up of the bulblets expanding from the stem tips of an Egyptian or Tree Onion aka Allium proliferum. Sadly we are completely sold out of this plant for the time being though more may be available later in the year.

This weekend you can expect to see a LOT of tomato varieties, Angels Trumpet, Vietnamese Coriander, Chinese Foxglove, Flowering Ginger, Betony, Saint Johns Wort and whatever else looks ready to go and gets loaded on the truck on Friday evening! I can tell you this, it’s been a fantastic year for the crops and we went a little overboard with the seed so expect some varieties you may not have ever heard of.

That said the Fayetteville farmer’s market is located at the transportation museum in downtown Fayetteville and runs on Wednesdays and Saturdays. Sustainable Neighbors is present on Saturdays from 9 am through 1pm or the entire time the market is open. For note I will be keeping the same hours as sustainable neighbors so feel free to stop by and say hi. As a final note, next week the results of the soil test trials will be completed and available here on the blog so stay tuned for that info and as always folks keep ‘em growing.

April Showers and whatnot!

Welcome back to another episode of lost in the farmers market! Despite the gaps in our update schedule we have a good first episode of April for you here and it starts with two cool images from the field. As some of you know half of gardening is finding those odd things that make your garden go from rank and file to masterpiece. Some of these interesting facets of nature though are what comes before the plant emerges.

The wonders of nature can be as complex as a fully grown plant or as simple as these seeds. The Asian Winged Bean has quite interesting bronze and brown colored seeds.

Most people don’t think that calla lilies have any place in the garden, these black calla lilies sure are one of the incredible symbols of spring.

The second item is this guy. I bet some of you out there never thought that you could grow Calla Lilies in this climate as a perennial but you can. This gardener has done so and as you can see this variety is exotic and striking. But beyond the plants is the use of statuary and metalwork in the garden. For many metalwork in the garden means odd statues or fences but for this gardener she has a statue with a interesting sentiment.

I spotted this in a client’s garden just this week and thought it’s hard to argue with that!

Plants and statuary aside there is this bad news from capitol hill. It seems The president assigned the Farmer Assurance Act which in reality should be called the “Mega Corporate GMO force-feeding act” for it’s clear effect on the landscape of the GMO battle. The original article that came to my attention is here at this address below.

http://www.salon.com/2013/03/27/farmers_and_food_safety_advocates_lead_monsanto_backlash_partner/

I can say this is not a good sign but more so it means we need to be a bit more vigilant about our purchasing and materials. Political maneuvers aside I would like to talk about something that is kind of related, and that is grain. I’ve gotten a few questions about how much area someone might need to grow a crop of a specific grain. After digging through university websites and various growers associations around the United States I’ve finally got an answer for all of you urban farmers out there who want to give it a go.

Corn - For the home owner this average is about 35 lbs per 100 square feet roughly. From that final estimate you can ascertain what a ten square foot plot (3.5 pounds?)might yield if managed well.

Barley - Barley was an easy one; literally it takes 100 square feet to produce 10 pounds of barley grain on average. This space-efficiency means that the average gardener in a 10 square foot garden could be producing a pound that could be stored for winter.

Rice – Rice is a conundrum, we think it requires standing water and yet this is really part of the traditional cultural care to reduce the competition as most weeds cant grow in the standing water. Cultural practices aside you could likely produce a pound of rice with aggressive fertilization practices in a 15 square foot area if you mimic the flooded fields. If you skip on the flooded field effect then you may be able to produce a pound of rice in about ten square feet. For note unlike with dried beans sold at the grocery store, rice sold at the store will not likely sprout as it’s been hulled already.

Wheat – Remember wheat grows best when soil pH is more towards the alkaline side, and then within certain limits of weather. For backyard use a 100 square foot plot might produce about 5-6 pounds of grain. Scaled down, that means a more manageable 10 square foot plot might produce about a little over a half pound of grain in theory. I might add this is calculated for modern wheat varieties, Kamut and the older heritage varieties might have better results.

I hope the grain information helped, all of the numbers are reverse-calculations from numbers on the acre level. Admittedly I’ve never tried to grow grain in the test gardens mostly due to a lack of interest but this doesn’t mean you should not. At the very least corn is very easy to grow and non-GMO varieties are easy enough to get.

Bud break for flowers of a Rabbiteye blueberry.

Initial budbreak is still quite pretty but the later stages are no less attractive.

Final flower emergence on rabbit eye blueberries confirms that they are indeed a member of the Ericaceae group or in english the heath family.

I wanted to include this timed photo of flower emergence on the stand of blueberries at the test gardens. It is normal for rabbiteye blueberries to have emerged by now and they do add a unique color and dorm to the gardens. As noted in an earlier post my blueberries never quite went dormant and seem to have just flatly resumed growing. As far as fruiting plants go, thankfully blueberries are very tolerant and inexpensive for a gardener of any skill level to use. The down side is you need at least two or three to ensure pollination. On the other hand the bumblebees and honey bees love the flowers of the rabbiteye blueberries so, they can be part of your early spring plan for providing food to pollinators. But in other sectors the last of the cabbage family crops are rolling in and this week we pulled this record haul of reg giant mustard.

Total weight, 6lbs, 1 ounce. the longest leaf int he batch measured at 16" the heaviest leaf was approximately two ounces due to it's unusually thick stem.

Not bad really, in fact despite my earlier thoughts, I may yet pull another harvest from the mustard crop before the summer crops go in the ground. Even so by sheer bulk the mustard yet again by length of harvest period and sheer volume even when proportioned to match the other cold seasonal crops still out produced everything. Red Giant is a keeper for next year, and I hear through Marsha Howe that it even did incredibly well on the bridge. But of course this is not the only plant available in the gardens for eating.

Paris Market Carrots at their sweetest and ready for harvest. I can either grow them on at this point or pull them at this size.

This is a Cardoon (Cynara cardunculus ), it's a edible relative of the Artichoke (Cynara cardunculus var. scolymus). 

The Cardoon above has taken a few years to get to that size and it's finally turning into something substantial. The cardoon itself is considered the wild originator of the artichoke and it's spiny inflorescence can be eaten the same way if treated with care. Personally  I don't know if I'll let it bloom or make some wild artichoke dip, we will have to see how that works out even so it's quite a interesting foliage plant. Now speaking of things related to edibles I thought it would be cool to show some of you out there what flowering ginger looks like.

Flowering Ginger in 1/2 gallon pots.

For note Flowering ginger as far as I know is not edible, but it's sweetly scented flowers are gorgeous and it self-propagates rather well. The plants pictured above will be part of BL2's annual plant sale so yes you can get some of your own rather soon. Also they are perennial from zone 7 southward so these guys are your ready replacement for Canna.  As a final note for this double-wise episode, I have the latest find in a garden center that has been added to the collection.

Opuntia cylindrica cristata - "Emerald Idol Prickly Pear"

As the caption notes this is a member of the prickly pear family, and it's clearly also a monstrose form cactus. Now, typically the cylindrica group of the opuntia family has a very specific look; essentially a overall cylindrical stem with occasional branches and some have pseudo-leaves. A monstrose form like this tends to result from a  mutation of a growing tip where the 'stem' or pads don't elongate normally creating a bizzare form like what you see. The 'cristata' part of the name notes that this plant forms a crest of sorts. I picked this one up because it reminded me of the other monstrose cactus I already have but I know that opuntia tends to grow much faster so it makes for a greater demonstration of cactus care. In the long term expect periodic comparison photos of this cactus. for note upon getting this one home I repotted it into that pot you see with plenty of root room. Opuntia grow really fast when fertilized so I expect this one to be owning that pot soon.

This wraps up a double-episode of Lost in the farmer's Market but don't worry, tune in next time to see some more garden mayhem and a peek at the BL2 production lines as well as a little bit about soil testing. As always folks Keep 'em Growing!

Spring hath Sprung; Onward to Shovel Duty!

Greetings and Salutations, the first day of spring has sprung (Wednesday March 20^th ) and here we are with a larger then average episode of Lost in the Farmer’s Market. For those of you who were wondering there were no episodes posted in the last two weeks due to midterms in college and a sudden glut of landscaping work for BL2. In short  I was pretty busy (in a good way) and honestly, there was little to cover since march is one of those months where you want to think about the outdoors more but the weather is so bizarre that it’s hard to write about certain things. With that said I think I have a rather good article for you with some cool stuff in it.

The Dessert Kiwis are back!

The first thing I must remind you of is an upcoming date, next Sunday is March the 31^st, and that is Easter. For us gardeners in the sand hills region it’s the last likely date of frost which means you can begin planting your warm season plants in the garden if they are large enough. Given the relative lack of stable temperatures during March however a few of my warm seasonal- plants are delayed by a week or so I won’t be planting anything until Mid-April at the latest. The spring last frost date is suggested and each yard will be different, but generally the Easter date is used as it’s easily found on most calendars and most cant miss it. For you gardeners up north, the last frost date in the New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and Pennsylvania areas tends to be about Mother’s Day or May 12^th. Personally I used to wait until the 15^th just to be sure however.

 One of the sure signs it's spring is that birds of all sorts return, and int he Fayetteville area that is usually marked by entire flocks of Robins. However see the hanging pansy basket? This basket has been hanging in that spot since last year when I put the pansies in. That stick like stuff jutting out isn't part of the coco-fiber liner it's a bird's nest. Some house sparrows decided to set up shop in the basket by building a nest between the pansies using mostly pine straw and bits of asparagus stalk. The big twig you can see above is part of a flowering top of asparagus plant, it used to even have little dried asparagus berries on it too. Wild birds serve an important role in pest control and are totally worth encouraging by providing bird seed in the winter months. Speaking of pest control.....

For note, if you look in the lower right corner...the neighbor's dog Photo-bombed this shot..that is one scary guard dog. check the zoomed photo for why.

Yes, the Neighbor's guard dog sees all...she does not judge..all shall fall by the power of her laser eyes! Moments after this image was taken my camera mysteriously caught fire.

One critical annoyance of our region and climate is the damage that fire ants can do to even the best strawberry bed. If you factor in squirrels and other critters you might have a hard time growing your own strawberries in general. On the heels of the successful growing of strawberries last year I've decided to grow them in hanging baskets this year in lieu of annuals. This is one of the better ways to avoid ant damage however... I may have to find ways to prevent bird damage. Even so, I don't mind sharing with the birds since they're already helping the Clark ranch by eating pests and of course singing.

 Despite the weather temperatures and the mayhem of March it self some of our winter crops are doing just fine. Both of these pots were started back in September, and were nursed along through winter. Now my cilantro (on right) is rapidly approaching harvesting size. The Swiss Chard (on left) has almost tripled in size and may make for a decent salad green in a month or so. This just goes to show that you can grow nice looking and edible potted crops to save space. Anyone who's been to the ranch lately knows the front porch is lined with stuff like this the mother load of non-lettuce salad fixings!

Out of tragedy comes Triumph!

 The spring report isn't all good news, as the Yam bed which is used to grow cabbages in the winter was hit by a vehicle and utterly destroyed just a few days ago. The cabbage was mostly salvageable as a mini-harvest but otherwise it was not worth it to rebuild the bed...yet. The bricks along with the surplus bricks from the combining of HP1, HP2 and the main asparagus bed  were used to raise HP3 to a height unmatched by any garden bed in the ranch to date, Two feet above ground, with six inches below ground. This makes HP3 the tallest bed on the property with a soil column of 2-3 feet one foot of which is below ground. This works out really well for me as I was planning to grow Armenian Cukes or Kiwano Melons in this bed. The soil mix is composed of the original bed soil a 8" layer of organic composted turkey manure, a layer of the yam bed's soil and then a final 4-6" of composted turkey manure. In short I figure this bed will be growing stuff like gang busters!

Garden bed enhancement and recovery aside there is something else I need to give props to, and thats the first LITFM book recommendation  that isn't one of our own books (southward skies). Since spring is a time of growth and renewal I want to take as moment to recommend some spring reading.  If you check Amazon.com, you can find a series of books by a very talented author named Amy Stewart. Her past books include “Wicked Plants: The weed that killed Lincoln’s Mother and other Botanical Atrocities” and “Wicked Bugs: The louse that Conquered Napoleon’s Army & Other Diabolical Insects”. For note I have both and they are incredibly good reads and are informative for new gardeners and skilled land managers alike. The book I am referring to today however is her new book “The Drunken Botanist: The plants that create the world’s great drinks” which was released about the 20^th of March. Mrs. Stewart honestly handles this topic, with the same skill and attention to detail as she did her prior two books and yet keeps it’s down to earth so every reader can understand. Needless to say I’m currently reading the book myself but in one sitting I plowed through 107 pages out of 362 pages which is pretty much the mark of a good book when you can put it down. Simply put if you are a gardener and want a good read or need to get a gift for a gardener you know this one or the other two books mentioned are good options. For note here is a direct link to her page on Amazon.com’s site so you can find the books I’m referencing.

http://www.amazon.com/Amy-Stewart/e/B001HO17M8/ref=sr_tc_2_0?qid=1364151775&sr=1-2-ent

 

Books Aside I’d like to show you a plant feature. As some of you know, inevitably whenever I go about doing my usual business as a Landscaper at the various nurseries I encounter plants that are weird and strange but more so I often find things that I inevitably have to add to the array of botanical I keep as house plants. This week was no different and of course again I have to give bLowes props again, as I was there to buy a cell-pack of annual vegetables for use in the first of the 2013 plant experiment and saw the plant in question in passing.

This may be tiny Pachypodium Geayi or Madagascar Palm.

I have to admit, I think this is a Madagascar Palm however it is so small and so nondescript it could also be a Euphorbia milli or Crown of Thorns.  The thorn arrangement says it's Madagascar Palm and the lack of leaf development makes it's identification a bit tricky. Either way I see it as a win as I like both plants. Now before you ask, this plant and the others with it were unlabeled which I consider an pretty irresponsible act of negligence by the grower. For note, Costa Farms produces these and they have had some bad press about the poor quality of their orchids. According to the Costa Farms site they neither sell Crown of thorns or Madagascar Palm so...needless to say I'm not exactly fond of the grower but then again if bLowes would settle on a single supplier like Angel Plants I would not be writing this paragraph.

At the store I looked for a larger specimen and failed to find one so this little guy is now in the living room next to the desert rose. Both Crown of  Thorns and Madagascar Palms are nice plants because they require little int eh way of care except good light and occasional watering. Both have a coating of large and visible thorns coating their stems which make them pet and child resistant and neither is poisonous. Both are rather terrible tasting and the Euphorbia produces milky latex sap, which can cause skin irritations for some. Both are candidates for Interior defence-scaping, if you can imagine this growing under or beside the window when a burglar climbs in and grabs a handful you get the idea.

For note there are two types of Madagascar Palm in the trade, Pachypodium lameri (the most common) and Pachypodium geayi (less common), they are difficult to tell apart and honestly it may be better to just tag them as Pachypodium species. But enough of the plant-geek action let me tell you a bit about the year’s first experiment.

Well it’s spring, and of course with it comes the various yearly experiments that I operate as part of the skye project. Our first experiment was suggested by the talented Marsha Howe, as we were discussing soil test reports and soil amendments for the MLK highway Bridge/ coffee Klatch.  The conversation ended up about Bio-Char which is wood that has been charred to a point it becomes ultra-crumbly charcoal. Bio-char is currently undergoing trials as a soil nutrient anchor and as a major soil amendment for depleted and otherwise unsuitable soils. Marsha proposed a test using a small sample of Bio-char using worm castings as an activator to see how it compares to other soil media. Amazingly Marsha had some and some worm castings to go with and the experiment was officially started on the 21^st. 

The first experiment of 2013 is a simple one, the goal is to determine if or if not bio-char can improve plant growth noticeably. To that end I have selected four test plants all of which are Red Chicory (Raddicio) each plant will be potted in a 4” round plastic pot for the duration of the test which is six weeks. In five day intervals the group will be photographed to photo-document growth. The soil mixture of each will be proportioned to demonstrate the qualities of the various soil media.

From right to left: plants 1-4 spaced in a zigzag to increase space between plants.

Plant 1: 0.5oz Bio-Char + 1.5oz Earthworm castings + 4.0 oz Sterilized Compost.

Plant 2: 3.0 oz Earthworm Castings + 3.0 oz Sterilized Compost

Plant 3: 6.0 oz Sterilized Compost

Plant 4: 6.0 oz Coir-Based Potting Mix.

All the above plants will be placed outside in an eastern facing to receive morning and midday sun in a wire-tray and tagged numerically. The test plants will receive only rain water for irrigation and no additional fertilizer. The stage is set to see what happens, let’s see how this turns out in six weeks through 9 photographs with any luck the report on this, due in the first week of May will be useful. 

Whew, that was a long post, but as spring heats up there will be less gaps in posts and more information. Some upcoming projects include the Berm project which will be the subject of a Sustainable Neighbors Crop mob, the Voyage to Big Bloomers (early summer) and the Fall Drainage Project which will also probably be a crop mob event and be roughly in October. Beyond that in our next episode expect info on how the seedlings are doing.

As always folks keep 'em growin!

Urbanite the stuff of...oh nevermind!

Welcome back to another episode of lost in the farmer’s market! As you can see we are getting closer to the wonders of spring and the delightful harvests of summer. Outside the birds are back as scores of sparrows, catbirds, cardinals, thrashers and, robins are out singing their little heads off. As for you the gardener you have heard me talk about seed catalogs and planning and well I think I sort of beat those topics to death.  Today’s topic is a wild card that came up while out on a work site this week.

Today’s topic is “Urbanite” and no, this is not a country term for a city dweller. Urbanite is a residual byproduct of urban development and is commonly available for free where ever construction is going on. In short the material called Urbanite is really scrap cement from sidewalks and foundations, its cheap durable and no harder to use then field stone. I admittedly have no idea who first came up with the term “urbanite” but I do know that it is a catchy term that sounds much better then ‘scrap cement’. Plus I can imagine if one were driving about town in a pickup truck looking for areas to “quarry” urbanite it probably would not be that hard to find. New construction or refurbishments of buildings or even the replacement of a sidewalk can provide a lot of urbanite. I have to state that of course as with any salvage item you should ask permission before hauling anything off.

I realize that some of you out there may be thinking we’ve gone bonkers at LITFM with the urbanite suggestion. Others might be flat out thinking something like the following.

“Eww its busted cement why would I use that?!”

The obvious answer is the cost of stone and brick. For note a ton of ‘black forest’ field stone costs between $150 and $200. A single band of Pinehurst type bricks at retail level will easily run you a little below or above a hundred dollars. When I say castle block typically used to make retaining walls isn’t cheap, I mean it. Honestly shelling out two to three dollars per 22 pound castle block and knowing you will need at least three concourses means you will be digging deep in your pockets.

 I might add I am no fan of impermeable surfaces such as pavement but since concrete is generally a mix of sand, gravel, lime and a major sticking agent it is actually semi-permeable.  Since Urbanite is semi-permeable, this means it can aid in moisture retention, and since it’s essentially artificial sand stone it could aid in keeping the soil warm. There is also the chance that if the urbanite you use was made with lime as it weathers it may help in countering acidic soil Ph.

This is the naturally occurring form of urbanite.

That aside I won’t sit up here and say that urbanite is the wonder material of tomorrow as it has its difficulties. As you can see in the above picture, the urbanite pieces are quite variable in size and shape. The below picture depicts a retaining wall-raised garden bed combination is made of irregular pieces of urbanite some of which are four to six inches thick. This leads to a clear observation of the first and second natures of urbanite, the pieces are often irregularly shaped, and may be rather heavy. Even so, the above urbanite was used to make the below retaining wall. Now that’s not bad,  we have a curved retaining wall that is relatively pet-proof due to height and can be cultivated to add to existing garden space.

Stacked Urbanite can make for interesting raised beds.

http://suburbanhermitoffayetteville.blogspot.com

A major use of Urbanite can be found at the link above. That link goes to the web log of the Suburban Hermit of Fayetteville.  Look closely at the walls used to make his terraces, that’s finely lain urbanite but you wouldn’t be able to tell if you didn’t see it in person. It looks comparable to the finest dry laid field stone walls. Quite literally that is the best case scenario, think of how much urbanite is not in a dump somewhere because he turned a waste byproduct into a functional material.  I might add that you too could do this; it would only take some initiative and a source of urbanite.

Now I have to make some observations about the two demonstrated uses of urbanite. In the first example the retaining wall has visible amounts of tumblehome; as the bottom is visibly wider then the top. This design aspect is common in load-bearing walls because it spreads out the weight of the earth behind the wall and any water weight across a greater surface area.  Additionally the slope, height and curvature serves both to stop soil erosion, create a micro-climate and it happens to be pet proofed.

In the case of the Hermit’s work, his contoured urbanite walls are part of a cleverly designed and complex integrated terracing system. The core of what he did is to negate a bare slope with little in the way making this potential terraced backyard garden utopia. If you looked at his blog photos you can see he crew all kinds of cool stuff very successfully. This means that both his terracing is wildly successful but also his accompanying plant selections approved of his design and rewarded his efforts with serious productivity.

In short we are both combating erosion with the same material. Our style of construction and the reasons for why we built what we built are as different as the environments we built them in. In the end the Urbanite walls are unique, functional and work in different environments, and only you can determine which approach is best for you.  This brings us to the end of today’s episode and I might note that you can always contact myself via this blog, the Suburban Hermit of Fayetteville through his blog  or the meetup.org group Sustainable Neighbors on their meetup page about anything pertaining to urbanite.