"I love that you've brought this to attention. An extensive database of uncommon but resistant and hardy plants/foods could be developed and organized by climate. Ease of growth and processing should also be taken in to account. I will try to…"
A crash course in changing the world.
Using Plants as Allies
Last night I spent hours poring over references on companion planting and beneficial insects as well as seed catalogs. I've been trying to figure out what plants to put into a demonstration garden at Growcology to show the positive effects of beneficial insects, as well as controlling pests on our spring and summer gardens without using pesticides that kill all the good guys...
I realized a couple things. For starters, nature/God wastes nothing. Even food that has gone to seed and is no longer palatable is still working in your garden. Not only does it provide you with seed to plant many more of the same thing the following year, but the flowers often time attract beneficial insects that predate on the pests that can infest a garden.
I also realized that plants are brilliant. At first glance they seem like they lack communicative and perceptive organs, but that is not the case. They're constantly relaying information through colors we can barely see, pheromones we can barely smell, subtle movement and adaptation to changes in moisture, light, soil, and the beings surrounding them. They send out calls to other plants, to birds, to bugs, they amass armies to defend and harvest them. In many ways, plants call the shots for people. What exactly do WE get out of our relationship with kentucky blue grass, or brugmansia, or bougainvilla. We spread these plants all over the world, spending billions of dollars of energy and water maintaining them, and for what? Because they look nice? Thats just the plants way of getting us to do what it wants (spreading and being taken care of).
Another thing I noticed was that all these plants that provide nectar and shelter to beneficial insects are kind of hard to find. We already have a large number of them in our garden, and about a third of them we have seed packets for, but there are dozens that I couldn't find anywhere in the stacks of seed catalogs and endless internet pages I searched through. Apparently no enterprising plantsman or plantswoman has targeted that niche and marketed not only the seeds and seedlings but done the research on how effective these plants are at controlling pests. I found a bit of research from Michigan on flowering times (useless here in California), and alot of hybrid versions of the heirlooms that were recommended, but found it surprisingly hard to find certain varieties of cosmos, zinnia, and yarrow, or concrete info on how many to plant and how far from the fruits and veggies I want to protect.
So now I've got another thing to stack onto the huge pile of things I want to do...
Becoming a plantsman that provides seeds for plants that nurture other plants, that build the soil, that improvie the quality of life of plants and the people that love them.
I realized a couple things. For starters, nature/God wastes nothing. Even food that has gone to seed and is no longer palatable is still working in your garden. Not only does it provide you with seed to plant many more of the same thing the following year, but the flowers often time attract beneficial insects that predate on the pests that can infest a garden.
I also realized that plants are brilliant. At first glance they seem like they lack communicative and perceptive organs, but that is not the case. They're constantly relaying information through colors we can barely see, pheromones we can barely smell, subtle movement and adaptation to changes in moisture, light, soil, and the beings surrounding them. They send out calls to other plants, to birds, to bugs, they amass armies to defend and harvest them. In many ways, plants call the shots for people. What exactly do WE get out of our relationship with kentucky blue grass, or brugmansia, or bougainvilla. We spread these plants all over the world, spending billions of dollars of energy and water maintaining them, and for what? Because they look nice? Thats just the plants way of getting us to do what it wants (spreading and being taken care of).
Another thing I noticed was that all these plants that provide nectar and shelter to beneficial insects are kind of hard to find. We already have a large number of them in our garden, and about a third of them we have seed packets for, but there are dozens that I couldn't find anywhere in the stacks of seed catalogs and endless internet pages I searched through. Apparently no enterprising plantsman or plantswoman has targeted that niche and marketed not only the seeds and seedlings but done the research on how effective these plants are at controlling pests. I found a bit of research from Michigan on flowering times (useless here in California), and alot of hybrid versions of the heirlooms that were recommended, but found it surprisingly hard to find certain varieties of cosmos, zinnia, and yarrow, or concrete info on how many to plant and how far from the fruits and veggies I want to protect.
So now I've got another thing to stack onto the huge pile of things I want to do...
Becoming a plantsman that provides seeds for plants that nurture other plants, that build the soil, that improvie the quality of life of plants and the people that love them.
Views: 16
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Comment by Clayton Wilson on March 5, 2010 at 9:39pm
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I've always found the internet as a poor horticultural database. You have to go local. Anyway it has never been something I've bothered to research despite the fact I spend ours and ours in the garden a year... I've spent most of my March rotavating already. As for companion planting: I'm told Carrot's Love Tomatoes by Louise Riotte is a good book to take a look at, infact I have my own copy... Somewhere.
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Comment by Nick Heyming on March 5, 2010 at 9:48pm
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I have it too. Its not bad, but its more of an encyclopedia of gardening techniques than a real guide to companion planting. There's very little empirical data available on that subject, as its not really in the best interest of chemical companies for people to have plants and bugs do all the work...
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Comment by Amanda Jeffrey on March 5, 2010 at 11:59pm
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My very favorite plant database is Plants-For-A-Future - a directory of some of the most useful 7000 plants. You can find plants suitable for any purpose (medical, culinary, other uses) different locations and by common or latin name. This is the database that made me fall in love with stinging nettles!
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Thats a good one! I also like Horizon Herbs, they give alot of good info in their catalog, and you can buy the seeds from them!
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Comment by Shannon Henry on March 6, 2010 at 12:13am
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Have you read Michale Pollan's The Botany of Desire? He selected four plants that are cultivated and prized by various human societies and looks at each from the perspective that the plants are using us to spread their influence. It's a fairly quick and thought-provoking read.
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Sounds great, I'll have to check that out... I have two of his books, need to jump into them.
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Another resource with discussion on companion planting and organic methods of pest control is The Vegetable Gardener's Bible by Edward C. Smith. Excellent book. There may be some things you are looking for in it.
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The thing that keeps coming up for me is:
How Much? How many of these companion plants do you need?
How Far? What kind of spacing do these plants need?
What variety? Do you have to use a specific heirloom variety, or would any member of the species do?
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Comment by Thomas Pinkerton on March 22, 2010 at 11:55am
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I agree with the "Go Local" fellow. For instance, one of the best plant my mother used in her garden was called Spider Wort (Central IL, by the way). You'll never find it in seed catalogs or nurseries, because it is a wildflower that's generally looked upon as a weed because of its favored location: ditches and along railroads. It's one of those wonderful, unkillable plants that can survive in atrocious soil and flowers for a good deal of the summer. Looks a bit like chicory. Anyhow, it was an anchor plant of her gardens for years, sent into places where other plants feared to tread.
So, yes. Just an anecdote to go local, and keep an eye out for those hardy wildflowers. They can often be the biggest boon to your starting gardens.
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