A Garden Homemaker: Lupine

by Julia Frisbie

posted June 27, 2021

It’s lupine season! This plant will always remind me of the happy summer weeks I spent in the mountains of northeastern Oregon as a child. I love seeing her by the roadside. I held her purple/blue spires in my arms on my wedding day. I’ve slipped her seed pods into my pockets for years, and like Ms. Rumphius in a favorite children’s book, scattered them when we found a place to call our own.

Like all legumes, she works with a symbiotic bacteria to fix nitrogen in the soil, enough to meet her own needs and also share with neighbors. She has a long taproot that breaks up compacted earth. She can collect moisture from the air, with leaves shaped like tiny hands that cradle a single dewdrop in their palms. She makes a huge mass of greenery each year, only to lay it all down on the ground after the first frost, protecting soil from winter runoff and feeding the microbial community below. Her nectar feeds bees and her seeds feed birds.

In other words, she is a homemaker, showing up to disrupted or neglected soil and creating beauty and fertility. She can make something from almost nothing.

I’ve invited lupine to my yard as an early succession plant. Right after I mulched over most of the lawn in our front yard, I scattered lupine seeds. For several years, a long hedge of lupine has lived alongside what’s left of the grass:

 

As I add longer-lived plants to the landscape, I’m gradually pruning/removing the lupine to make space. Many perennials take years to get established and come into their own, and lupine fills out the garden around them while they bide their time. Lupine self-sows readily, but she’s easy enough to remove, so as long as I’m paying attention she doesn’t choke other plants out. Here’s a first-year peony growing in the shelter of lupine:

 

I often call on lupine as a companion plant for young trees. Planting a nitrogen-fixer in the same hole as a baby tree is something my partner learned while volunteering at the Bullock’s Permaculture Homestead on Orcas Island. I dig up the lupine, taproot and all, and plop it right in there among the roots of the sapling. Abundant nitrogen allows the sapling to make lots of new greenery (and, I think, helps it feel less lonely and more at home). Here’s a little plum tree hiding from deer among the lupine:

 

You can sow lupine any time of year, but my favorite way is to take my cue from the plant herself, and spread her seeds right after they pop from her wonderful fuzzy seed pods in July. I cut the seed heads when they get dry and begin to rattle, and then I pile them into a washtub basin and invite my four-year-old to thresh them by jumping up and down on the pods until the seeds are released. Then we winnow by pouring seeds back and forth between buckets in the middle of our street on a windy day. This ritual yields a quart of seed from our couple dozen plants. If you’d like some for your garden, I’d be delighted to give them to you. That’s part of how I respond with reciprocity to lupine: by finding good homes for her seeds. They’ll be part of Transition Fidalgo’s seed bank. Email info@transitionfidalgo.org to get connected!

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Gardening Barefoot

by Julia Frisbie

posted June 17, 2021

This time of year you may see me stepping slowly and gingerly through the world without shoes on. I’m working on my “summer feet.” Lots of us remember being barefoot most of the summer as kids, but I never grew out of this habit. In the spring, I am rebuilding my calluses so that in the summer I can be barefoot as much as possible. I like feeling the temperatures and textures of the world around me. 

Being barefoot in the garden is especially useful. Because I mulch with arborist wood chips, I have to walk carefully to avoid splinters and puncture wounds, and this forces me to slow down and notice things. 

 

My feet take the temperature of the soil daily. At first it’s mostly information of the cold and muddy variety, which tempers my over-enthusiasm to get seeds in the ground. If I’m barefoot, I don’t get fooled by a warm day in late March. The soil has a longer memory than the air, and my feet can tell that it’s still too cold for tender annuals. When it’s finally warm enough to be comfortable, I know I can plant my corn and beans. 

In the height of summer, my feet tell me when to water, and where. The arborist chips can be dry even when the soil is moist below– they feel spongy and cool. But if the arborist chips get crunchy or warm, I know it’s time to water. 

I’m more aware of critters when I’m barefoot, because I don’t want to step on a bee, a slug, or a squishy caterpillar. It still happens from time to time, and it’s unpleasant, but at least I’m aware of it. If I had shoes on, I’d be snuffing out that life without even knowing. My bare feet let me know where rodents are tunneling, because they’re sensitive to the contours of tiny underground passages as they cave in under my weight. 

In essence, being barefoot is a useful tool for focused attention. 

If you want to start experiencing the world through your feet, and you’re not in the habit, you may need to build up your tolerance on gentle surfaces like grass, moss, sand, or patio pavers. 

 

Once that’s comfortable and you start trying other surfaces, try the following mental substitutions for “pain” or “discomfort”: 

• Scratchy

• Rough

• Intense

• Like a foot massage

• Warm or cold

• Wet or dry

The more you do it, the more I think you’ll enjoy it, and the more receptive you’ll be to information from below. In the privacy of your garden, you don’t have to worry about what anyone else thinks. If you have questions, the Society for Barefoot Living has answers. 

Your gait may change based on the texture of the ground. When you’re barefoot, it’s often less comfortable to lead with a hard heel-strike, so the first part of each step becomes a gentle embrace of the earth by the wide pads on the ball of your foot. You may find your toes spreading out and unclenching as you use them to feel your way. Some people say it’s good for you. All I know is that it feels good. 

You know what never feels good, no matter how many miles you walk on it? Asphalt. It’s the only surface that’s ever given me blisters. Walk barefoot on it sometimes anyway. Imagine what it would feel like under hoof, or claw, or delicate webbing. Paving over the world has consequences. 

Once your bare feet have acclimated to your garden, take them to the forest. Watch out for the easily accessible trails in the ACFL near parking areas– there’s often broken glass in the summer from ne’er-do-wells. (There’s a special place in hell for people who break glass in the forest.) Take the less-traveled trails. The duff under a cedar grove is so spongy as to be intoxicating. At the end of the summer, when your feet are leathery, try running through the forest barefoot. Almost nothing makes me feel more alive. The world is a basket of gifts, an endless sensory adventure. Fall in love with it, feet first. 

 

Floricanes

by Julia Frisbie

posted June 10, 2021

Some raspberries and blackberries fruit on first-year canes. Those are primocanes. You plant them, eat berries the first summer, and then cut them to the ground in the winter. The next year and every year thereafter they return and make more berries, and then you cut them down afterwards. Simple. 

Other raspberries and blackberries fruit only on second-year canes. Those are floricanes. You plant them, they make lovely leaves, but there are NO flowers and NO fruit and you think, “what did I do wrong?!” If you prune them back, you won’t get berries the next year, either. I think a lot of people get frustrated and give up on floricanes. But I’m here to tell you that they’re worth the fuss, and I’ll explain the management system that’s worked for me. 

I grew up in berry country (Oregon’s Willamette Valley). My great-grandparents had a berry farm, and my dad remembers being nestled in the backs of pickup trucks among flats of marionberries. He got in trouble for pelting the speed limit signs with them. When my husband and I transplanted ourselves up north to Anacortes, we brought berries with us. They now cover about 80 feet of our fence line. All this is to say I’m marginally qualified to explain floricanes. 

Raspberry and blackberry plants have a root underground and a crown right at the soil surface where new growth comes from, both of which are perennial, meaning they live for years. From the crown, canes are produced each year, and each cane is biennial, meaning it lives for two years before dying back. The canes create leaves, flowers, and berries. There’s a lot of genetic variation in the fruiting habits of wild berries, because the plants have a better chance of attracting berry-eaters to distribute their seeds if they don’t all make berries at once. Selective breeding by humans has taken domestic berries in two directions: one that favors production of berries over a long period in the fall of each cane’s first year (primocanes), and one that favors production of berries over a short period in the summer of each cane’s second year (floricanes). For example, my red fall raspberries are primocanes. My golden summer raspberries are floricanes. The best known floricanes are probably domestic blackberries like marionberries and loganberries. If you’re not sure which sort you have, just ask yourself: does the bigger crop come in summer (floricane), or in fall (primocane)? 

This time of year, a properly managed floricane has one set of tall, leafy canes about to burst into bloom, and one set of shinier, more red-tinged new growth near the foot of the taller canes that will bear NEXT year’s berries. (That red tinge is caused by anthocyanins, which are like built-in chemical sunscreens for tender new leaves.) You tend floricanes with one foot in the present, and one foot in the future. You never trample that tender new growth.

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With canes like raspberries that hold themselves mostly upright, I just corral them with a single waist-high wire on each side of the row. Berry-laden second year canes are heavier, and more likely to bend and nod over the sides of the wire, making for easy picking. First year canes don’t carry the weight of berries, and are likely to grow straight up in the middle, not interfering much with the harvest. At the end of the season it’s easy to see which canes have already fruited– they look more tattered and tired– and remove them from the edges of the row. 

But with trailing or semi-erect canes, you need to plan carefully or you have a tangled mess at the end of the season. The idea is to make the second-year canes accessible for picking, while giving the first-year canes lots of space to do their thing. 

Some people string two horizontal wires to a trellis a few feet apart. They train the second-year canes to one and the first-year canes to another. Each year, they pick from one of the two wires, with the position of the fruiting cane alternating from year to year. A variation on this theme is to use v-shaped posts and train canes to the right one year, and to the left the next year, picking on alternating sides from year to year. 

Because I’m not a commercial grower and don’t mind sharing berries with the birds, I only train second year canes. Here’s my process, from the first year of planting onwards: 

1. New canes are allowed to grow straight up and wander as they will. 

2. Winter comes and growth stops. I detangle the canes and trellis them in arches downhill and to the right: 

 

(That’s a springtime picture, but you get the gist.)

1. Spring comes and the arched second-year canes branch out laterally and blossom. New first-year canes emerge and are allowed to shoot straight up through the tangle. 

2. The month of August is one long blackberry emergency. We eat them, give them away, cook them, preserve them, give up and toss handfuls of them to the chickens, and thank the wild birds for eating the ones we can’t reach. (This coming summer we’ll take some to Transition Fidalgo’s free “Share the Bounty” produce stands!) Meanwhile, the first year canes are looking like a jungle with a bad hair day at fifteen feet tall. They’re out of the way of the harvest. We wave to them from below. 

3. When fall comes, the arched canes are looking pretty worn out. Their stems are rough and woody. Their leaves are tattered, bronzed, and falling. I tell them thank you, and then cut them down, often dividing them into many pieces in order to remove them without damaging the younger canes. 

4. Once last year’s fruiting canes are chopped up in a heap, I can really see the younger canes. They have soft, dark green leaves and smooth stems thicker than a roll of quarters. Some of them are 25 feet long. I detangle them, my whole body becoming a wide-toothed comb. Working from one end to the other, I bend them into a series of arches. Next spring they will become a flower crown around my whole garden. And then in August, a blackberry emergency. And then in December, a stick pile, succeeded by their daughters. And on and on it goes. 

5. ​

Drip Irrigation

by Julia Frisbie

posted June 3, 2021

Every year when my family asks me what I’d like for Mother’s Day, my answer is the same: to finish setting up this year’s drip irrigation system. By mid-May I begin to think ahead to summer drought, and I also get tired of hand watering all the transplants. Finishing the drip irrigation is a big task, but a fun one (we call it the adult equivalent of LEGOs) and it brings me great satisfaction.

By using drip irrigation, we:  

• Waste less water by delivering it only where needed

• Cut down on weed pressure by reducing the surface area that gets wet

• Avoid fungal infections by keeping leaves dry

• Put it on “autopilot” when we travel, get sick, or get busy

If you’re worried you might forget or be unable to water, an automatic timer that can be programmed to run every morning is a good investment. Having your system on autopilot all the time isn’t optimal, but it’s better than NOT watering! 

There are lots of good ways to set a drip irrigation system up. I’m going to explain my process step by step. Please know that it’s not the only “right” way. 

First we bought a hose splitter, a backflow preventer, a pressure regulator, a timer, and a filter, and screwed them all together between the spigot and the adapter that connected it to the ½ distribution tubing: 

 

That’s a lot of stuff! But it’s important for the usability, safety, and longevity of the system. Start up costs (both money and time) probably prevent a lot of people from installing drip irrigation. What’s worse, a lot of the supplies are plastic. In a class I took at Polyface Farms, another student asked Joel Salatin how he justifies the use of materials made from fossil fuels like plastic and gasoline. His answer was that for each situation, he asks himself: is there a less energy-intensive way to do this? That’s why he digs ponds to catch and store rainwater rather than relying on the aquifer, and places his ponds upslope of his fields so that gravity can move the water rather than a pump. But when it comes to actually delivering water to plants, he uses poly tubing, because it allows him to do more with less. He told our class, “there are virtuous and unvirtuous uses for everything. Drip irrigation seems like a virtuous use of plastic because it keeps us from wasting water.” Salatin’s not a perfect person, but I think his reasoning makes sense in this case. 

Following the instructions in Curtis Stone’s The Urban Farmer, we outlined each of our main annual beds with a closed loop of ½ inch distribution tubing:

 

Then we ran two ¼ inch drip lines down the middle of each bed, attaching them on either end to the ½ inch distribution tubing. We inherited our drip lines from my grandfather, and they have an emitter every 12 inches. You can get lines with different spacing, or lines that are spongy like a soaker hose instead. That’s the backbone of the system. If you have a single garden area, it’s all you have to do! The couplers are easier to work if the tubing is warm, so I either do this on a hot sunny day, or I carry a thermos of hot water with me to soak the ends of the drip line in before I try to work with them. 

 

Because our garden tends toward complexity (a polite word for chaos), we also ran ¼ inch tubing from the ½ inch distribution lines to any areas outside the plot that we knew would need extra water. This allows us to place emitters at the base of perennials that are just getting established, and mini-sprinklers in our raised beds. 

 

At the end of each growing season, the ½ inch distribution tubing stays in place, but everything else is subject to change. If I need to temporarily remove ¼ inch tubing to prep a bed, I do so without a second thought, because it’s easy to put back. And on Mother’s Day each year, I double-check to make sure things are as they should be for the coming summer drought. 

If you set a timer to operate your drip irrigation system automatically, I recommend setting it for as early in morning as you can stand to hear the water start running through the pipes. From Chan and Gill’s excellent book Better Vegetable Gardens the Chinese Way, page 67: “For as long as the Chinese vegetable growers can remember, they have always been getting up early in the morning to water their plants. They do not do this just because they like to, but because the way they understand the plants tells them that this is when the water is needed most.” They note that the plants need water to begin their day’s work of photosynthesis, and also that a blast of cold water can wash the leaves clean of bugs, and even of a light frost in early fall. (Your drip lines won’t be blasting any leaves with water, but that’s still good to remember for supplemental hand watering or fertigation.)

The first two years we gardened here, we were working with layers of cardboard, mulch, and arborist chips on top of sod. I knew it would take a lot of water to decompose that cardboard, and I knew that my plants would develop relatively shallow roots, so I set the system to water everything every morning. It allowed us to get good results even in marginal soil. I was thankful to put it on autopilot while we were distracted/exhausted by the birth of our son, and while I was busy nursing him and pulling wood chips out of his mouth.

As our soil has gotten deeper and richer in organic matter, it holds water better. For a few years, while our son toddled behind me and learned the names of our plants, I ran the system every other day or every third day. I supplemented the drip irrigation system by fertigating by hand with a diluted fish/kelp mixture by hand about once a week. I would always skip the drip irrigation for a day or two beforehand so that the plants would be ready to absorb as much as possible on “Stinky Fish Day” and get the maximum benefit. (“Stinky Fish Day” earned its name because I would absolutely reek by the time I came inside for breakfast, and be guaranteed time and space to take a shower by myself– a lovely side effect for any working parent.) 

Last year, most parts of the garden only needed water once a week. After several years of rotational grazing by poultry, our soil’s fertility was through the roof, and I didn’t need to fertigate much other than dumping dirty duck water on my dahlias. So, I replaced “Stinky Fish Day” with “Drip Irrigation Day,” and only ran the system once a week. I did my spot watering by hand. (Spot watering is like spot cleaning for people who would rather do garden work than housework.)

How can I tell when to water? In the spring, when seeds are germinating and transplants are just getting established, I water almost every day that it doesn’t rain. In the summer, I usually garden barefoot, and although the top layer of mulch is dry to the touch, my feet can tell by its temperature and texture whether or not the soil beneath needs water. To double-check, I stick a finger in up to the second knuckle. If it’s dry that far down, I water. Some plants absorb a lot more water than others, so just because one area is dry doesn’t mean the whole garden needs a drink. It pays to walk every path every day and feel around. This year, we’re adding ball valves to our irrigation system so that I can toggle different areas on and off, pleasing both my thirsty cucumbers and my drought-tolerant tomatoes. 

The great thing about a homemade drip irrigation system is that it can grow and change with you over time. When you’re starting out, it can be simple. As your soil (and your relationship with plants) becomes deeper and healthier, you can tweak it. Ecosystems get more complicated as they mature. Drip irrigation can support the emergence of complexity gradually and with grace. 

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Sweet Mother, Corn

by Julia Frisbie

posted May 27, 2021

My partner grew up on sweet corn in southern Idaho. At community potlucks he was famous for being able to eat about nine ears in a row… as a toddler! Everyone would show up to help pick at the Saitos’ garden, shuck it part way and strip the silks off, re-wrap it in its own husk, soak it in water for a few minutes, and then grill it on a Weber. Then his family would drive to Illinois every summer to visit grandparents, where they’d pick more corn from Uncle Rusty’s garden, shuck it, wrap it in wax paper, and microwave it before rolling its pearly surface around and around in the butter dish.

The point is: fresh sweet corn is not just a food for him. It’s a time machine to the happiest summer evenings of his childhood. There are also those for whom corn is a relative, a sacred ceremony, and a carrier of culture… for whom each ear of seed corn is greeted with a kiss and an incantation: “It’s good to see your mouth, good to see your face, Mother,” (The Unlikely Peace at Cuchumaquic by Martín Prechtel).

I think you have to be that kind of person– or love that kind of person– to grow corn here on Fidalgo Island. Most people will tell you our weather’s too cool; the season’s too short; the soil’s got too much clay; and there are no afternoon thunderstorms to drench the shallow, mop-like roots. But love finds a way.

And so does genetic diversity. Corn and people co-evolved in almost every corner of our continent. There are as many types of corn as there are types of families… or at least, there used to be. The mechanization of farming and the ability to put a patent on genes have driven many varieties extinct. But there are pockets of resistance, with indigenous seed keepers leading the way. There are still so many types of corn that you can’t possibly have tried them all. Don’t let the naysayers scare you off. Look for varieties that take about 80 days or fewer to reach maturity. Last year I grew “Tuxana” and “Candy Mountain.” This year I’m trying “Honey and Cream” at Peter’s recommendation.

Sweet corn gets ripe all at once, so I grow two or three successions, depending on the weather. Corn won’t germinate in cool soil.  When you can walk comfortably on the damp earth barefoot, then you can plant corn. Sometimes it’s warm enough at the tail end of April, especially if you use a plastic tarp or a piece of black landscape fabric to help catch and store heat. If not in April, then certainly in May. I plant my last succession in June.

When it’s time to plant, I prepare the soil in a block-shaped bed, rather than a long skinny row, since corn is wind-pollinated. I soak the seeds for a few hours in a nice warm bath to wake them up. Then I poke them pointy-end-down into the soil. Once they’re a few inches high, I plant a half-high pole bean or a bush bean at the base of each one to provide a nitrogen boost:

 

I want the little corn plants sown in May to be knee-high by the 4th of July. After that, they can mostly out-compete the weeds, so I lay down some mulch around the base of each stem and quit weeding.

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My family of origin doesn’t have a strong corn tradition, so I was flabbergasted the first time her lush, tropical-looking leaves waved at me from head height! I couldn’t believe how quickly all that biomass had arrived. Accordingly, corn needs a lot of nitrogen, so I often plant her in places where the chickens have spent time. I spray diluted urine and “Liquid Fish” fertilizer, and dump dirty duck water in the patch. It’s hypothetically possible to over-fertilize corn, but so far I haven’t been able to, and goodness knows I have tried. I didn’t want her to think I was ungrateful for all that beauty.

 

Corn needs water especially during tasseling, but you don’t want to rinse the pollen off the flowers, so I try to water from the bottom with a drip line or a carefully-aimed hose. The corn is counting on a little breeze to knock microscopic pollen grains into the air and let them drift downward at a diagonal onto the waiting silks of neighboring corn plants. (This is why we plant in blocks rather than rows!) A corn silk is actually an elongated style that carries pollen to the waiting ovary. When a pollen grain lands on a corn silk, tiny hairs on the end catch it and move it through the hollow tube of the silk. When it meets the ovary, fertilization is complete, and it swells to become a single kernel on the ear of corn. Every kernel has a silk attached. If you’ve ever opened an ear to reveal shrunken kernels, those are the ones who didn’t get pollinated.

 

The ones who are pollinated will swell with the sweetest milk. When I watch my son tromp out to the corn patch barefoot, shuck an ear, and bite into it raw, I’m flooded with the memory of nursing him. It’s that intimate. He has a need, and she meets it without question. I’m glad he’ll always have a good mother in corn.

 

Befriending Beans

by Julia Frisbie

posted May 20, 2021

How do you know it’s time to plant your beans? As the climate crisis accelerates, historical planting dates will become less and less useful. I use phenological cues: 

• When the dogwood blossom petals are the size of a squirrel’s ear

• When the wild blackberries bloom

• Peter waits for the soil to hit 60 degrees

• When the snow is gone from the face of Cultus Mountain

I grow several different types of beans: 

 

 

But none of them get their own dedicated garden space. Instead, I plant them at the feet of heavy feeders like dahlias, tomatoes, and corn. My primary goal with beans is fertility, not food. The fact that we also get to eat beans is a lovely side effect! 

 

Legumes like peas, beans, and clover have a very cool thing going on underground. All plants need nitrogen, but they can only absorb it from the soil, not from the air where it’s most abundant. Legumes have come up with a creative solution: make homes on the surface of their roots for symbiotic bacteria. These bacteria take the nitrogen in the air pockets of the soil and fix it into a soluble form that plant roots can absorb. These little round nodules are where the magic happens: 

 

All this is to say that beans make very good neighbors, especially for nitrogen-hungry plants. Indigenous farmers have recognized this since time immemorial, growing beans alongside corn and squash in three sisters plots. Lots of people have written about this. The relationships are beautifully traced in Braiding Sweetgrass, and some exact methods are described in Buffalo Bird Woman’s Garden. 

Beans come in all shapes, sizes, colors, and growing habits. Consider the height of each bean variety relative to its neighbors when you plan your garden. Many wonderful combinations are possible. Here’s what I’m growing this season, and where: 

“Rockwell” and “Ireland Creek Annie” bush dry beans under dahlias

• “Provider” and “Empress” bush green beans under tomatoes

• “Withner’s True Cornfield”, a half-high pole bean which makes flat pods, under corn

• “Scarlet Runner” against tall fences and among tall blackberry canes

Beans also make a great beginner seed-saving project. All of the above except the scarlet runner belong to a single species, Phaseolus vulgaris, so it’s possible for them to breed with each other and produce unpredictable offspring. But because the flowers are mostly self-fertile, they rarely do. The Seed Garden (published by Seed Savers Exchange) recommends just 10-20 feet of isolation distance between varieties to keep each true to type. 

Saving the seeds is as simple as allowing the pods to dry in place on the vines. When they’re golden-yellow, crispy, and make a slight rattling noise, they’re ready. You can harvest individual pods as they ripen, or cut the whole bean plant at the soil level. Don’t pull its roots up, or you’ll be robbing its companion of a final nitrogen boost before the end of the season. 

To plant beans, I like to wake them up with a pleasant warm bath for a few hours. (An overnight soak seems to be too long, resulting in wrinkled seed coats and splitting seeds as they begin to decompose.) Then I take them outside and push them into the soil at the base of their companions with their belly-buttons facing down or sideways (never up). I give the companion plants a head start, waiting to plant the beans until they’ve got at least few sets of true leaves. 

 

If you’re only planting a few beans and you can’t afford to lose any to the birds or bugs who are attracted to their fleshy cotyledons, you may want to take extra precautions. In her excellent book Backyard Bounty, Linda Gilkeson recommends pre-sprouting them in trays of vermiculite: “Every seed seems to germinate, and there is little risk of root rot as the vermiculite doesn’t hold excess water. The seedlings can grow for 2-3 weeks (until they are a couple of inches high) on the food stored in the seed, so they don’t need soil.” She recommends poking seeds an inch deep into damp vermiculite inside a plastic container with drainage holes in it, keeping them at room temperature until they germinate, and then giving them strong light in a windowsill or cold frame. When it’s time to plant them, it’s easy to disentangle their roots in the loose vermiculite. 

I used to start my beans that way, but now I direct-sow them because I plant so many that I can afford to share with birds and bugs. Once you befriend beans, there’s no going back. 

I’ll leave you with our family recipe for “Dilly Beans,” i.e. pickled green beans. 

First, load pint jars with the following, in order: 

• One grape leaf to line the bottom (this helps the beans stay crunchy)

• Two small cloves garlic

• One small serrano pepper (we now skip it in deference to our four-year-old, who doesn’t want his beans to be spicy)

• Half a teaspoon mustard seed

• Three or four peppercorns

• A small handful of fresh dill (seeds and leaves)

Then, pack in the beans as far as they’ll go, side by side and pointy-end down, so tightly that they squeak against each other. Cut off the stem end of the beans below the jar neck. 

Last, bring the brine to a boil: 

• Ten parts vinegar (white and brown mixed)

• Ten parts water

• One part canning salt

Ladle the hot brine into the jars on top of the beans. Add lids and rings, and process in a boiling water bath for ten minutes. I make these all summer long, and then we wait until Thanksgiving to pop open the first jar. 

 

Comparisons of Small Livestock

by Julia Frisbie

posted May 13, 2021

True polyculture includes many types of animals in addition to plants. We’ve created forage and shelter for wild critters around our yard, and also introduced several species of small livestock. Since the pandemic is a great time to get more animals (where else you gonna go, what else you gonna do?!) I’m providing a comparison chart of animal co-workers in our garden that you might consider adding to yours. Different species are better at different jobs: 

CHICKENDUCKRABBIT

Light TillageYesNoNo

Food scrap compostingSTAR PERFORMERS (we feed them everything, including meat, bones, and eggshells)Very little (they have trouble breaking big pieces into small ones)Very little (they’re choosy vegans)

FertilizationYes, but their poop is “hot” and needs to age before plantingYes, and their poop is dilute enough to apply directly (plants especially love being ‘fertigated’ by dirty duck water)Yes, and their poop comes in convenient pellets that are “cool” and can be sprinkled directly in the garden

Bug controlYesYesNo

Slug and snail controlA little STAR PERFORMERS, this is their #1 missionNo

EggsYesYes (depending on breed)No

MeatYes, but… old hens are tough, and roosters are illegal within city limits. We raised fast-growing meat birds in a movable pen last year and they were much better. Yes, but… they’re so hard to pluckSTAR PERFORMERS, they’re by far the easiest to butcher, skin, and eviscerate

Self PerpetuationSome broody hens can do a better job raising feed store chicks than you could in a brooderDucks go broody less often, but it’s legal to have both sexes within the city limits, so if you have an incubator… STAR PERFORMERS

FurNoNoTheoretically, but it’s a pain to process

Down FeathersNoTheoretically, but it’s a pain to processNo

Ability to rotate/moveYes, but only with major effort to contain themYes, with little effort. You can herd them like sheep.No

You’ll notice that cuddliness is not on this list. It’s actually a SUPER important consideration for us, because two out of three humans in our family regularly hug the livestock. But we’ve found that cuddliness depends more on each individual’s early and ongoing experience with people (frequent handling makes a calmer critter) and breed (some are more curious and outgoing, while others are more anxious) than it does on the species. If cuddles matter to you, get a friendly breed and handle it a lot. 

Your final consideration is housing. Of course they all make an easy meal for a predator and need secure nighttime housing… but what about letting them out in the day? How easy it is to keep them in one place, and how much damage do they cause if they escape? 

 

Rabbits are nearly impossible to contain. They dig. The only way to prevent them from destroying the garden is to set aside a permanent warren and bury fencing several feet into the ground all the way around it (not feasible in our rotational system) or keep them in small wire cages. I don’t have the stomach for cages, so we gave our rabbits away. If meat is your priority and you either have space for a warren or determination to cage them, then rabbits might work better for you than they did for us. 

 

Chickens are a bit easier to contain than rabbits, but they like to squirm under the bottom edge of fences, and if they get really excited they may fly over the top. They can be rotated in different areas as long as you’re willing to drag around and stake wire fencing that’s at least four feet tall… and even then, you may have escapees. When they get out, they scratch the soil up looking for bugs, leaving craters in the mulch and uprooting tender seedlings. These search-and-destroy missions can cost entire crops. We still keep hens, even though they’re naughty, because their ability to compost food scraps is unmatched. 

 

Ducks like having their bills stroked in cold weather, and they’re the easiest to contain by far. A three-foot fence will do it, and they don’t push out under the bottom. If they do run amok, they tend to do less damage than either rabbits or chickens. The worst they’ll do is trample young plants or take a nibble here or there. They’re also easier to redirect– you can herd them around like sheep. I often release the ducks temporarily so that they can work alongside me in the garden. I pull weeds, and they forage for slugs and snails. The downside of ducks is that they’re the most hydro-intensive, needing a fresh wash tub basin of water daily for the purposes of drinking, frolicking, and making mud. 

Any animal you share your life with will make you laugh. Just wait until you see rabbit binkies, chicken dust baths, or duck yoga. It makes all the fencing worth it. 

What about bees, quail, geese, red wiggler worms, et cetera? We haven’t tried them, but please leave a comment with your experience! What about goats? They’re still illegal to keep within city limits, but it’s high time to change that code (this is actually part of Transition Fidalgo’s Vision 2030). 

Julia Frisbie has been gardening in Coast Salish territory for six growing seasons, and is thankful to learn from plants, animals, and people who have been here much longer. She’s grateful to her mom, Anne Kayser, for cultivating her curiosity, and also to Robin Wall Kimmerer for writing the book Braiding Sweetgrass, which transformed her relationship with the more-than-human world. Follow Julia’s micro-farm on Facebook, Instagram, and/or TikTok.

Monoculture lawns to Polyculture garden beds

By Julia Frisbie

posted May 6, 2021

We buried our lawn five years ago under a layer of cardboard and then compost, planted a living mulch the first season, and have been mulching with arborist chips and rotating poultry through it, and growing a happy riot of annuals and perennials in it ever since. You can see the difference in this picture between our backyard soil (front right) and the soil in the adjacent easement (back left), but now after a soil test we have quantitative data. Using this data to estimate how much carbon we’ve sequestered was the most fun I’ve had with math in months!

 

We sent in two soil tests to the University of Massachusetts, with the city easement functioning as a control because it’s all in grass, and our yard was all in grass before we moved in five years ago. (It would have been better if I’d tested the same spot 5 years ago, but I didn’t, so the easement is our best point of reference for a comparison.) The backyard had 22.4% soil organic matter (measured by LOI, or “lost on incineration”… basically, how much of its mass can burn up) and the easement soil had 10.6%. So the backyard’s soil is 11.8 percentage points higher than our control plot.

I based my calculations on research by R. Lal of Ohio State University’s Carbon Management and Sequestration Center. His article “Abating climate change and feeding the world through soil carbon sequestration” was published 2013 in an anthology called Soil as World Heritage. Lal estimates that 21 tons of carbon are sequestered per additional 1% of soil organic matter per hectare.

Our backyard measures 74 feet x 40 feet, which is 2,960 square feet. There are 107,639 square feet in one hectare, so our backyard = 0.0275 hectares. Multiply 21 tons by 0.0275 = 0.5775 tons of carbon sequestered in our yard per added 1% of organic matter. Multiply that by our 11.8, and we get 6.8145 tons (x 2,000 = 13,629 pounds) of carbon sequestered within our backyard in the past 5 years.

For reference, a mature tree absorbs about 48 pounds of carbon per year (Source: European Environment Agency), so our backyard activity has sequestered about 284 tree-years of carbon. Also for reference, nearly 20 pounds of carbon dioxide are produced from burning one gallon of non-ethanol gasoline (source: US Energy Information Administration), so our backyard activity has offset about 681.45 gallons of gasoline. (With a 12 gallon tank, that’s 57 fill-ups.)

On the one hand, it’s a drop in the bucket. On the other… in this little place… it makes a world of difference. And it’s profoundly do-able for anyone who wants to sequester carbon in their yard. A movement for “Climate Victory Gardens” has published some helpful ideas for backyard-scale carbon sequestration.

Gabe Brown is a second-generation rancher in North Dakota, and since 1991, he’s seen an increase in soil organic matter from 1.9% to 6.1%. In his excellent book Dirt to Soil, he identifies five principles for soil health that he uses to manage his 5,000 acres:

1. Limit disturbance. Tillage releases soil carbon into the atmosphere and causes topsoil to erode away. Don’t do it. Chemical disturbances such as synthetic fertilizer, herbicides, pesticides, and fungicides also qualify as a type of disturbance.

2. Keep the soil covered. Bare soil is an emergency. Covering your soil prevents erosion and provides habitat for microorganisms.

3. Diversity. Grow as many different types of plants (and host as many different types of animals!) as you possibly can. Brown sows cover crop mixes with up to 70 different species!

4. Living Roots. Include perennials and cover crops in your garden plans so that there are living roots in the soil for as much of the year as possible.

5. Integrated animals. Intermittent predation by animals stimulates flushes of plant growth which pulse more carbon into the soil. Gabe uses cattle to rotationally graze his cover-cropped acres.

In conversation with these principles is emerging research from ecologists on the Intermittent Disturbance Hypothesis. Robin Wall Kimmerer, in her less-well-known book Gathering Moss, explains “diversity of species is highest when the disturbance occurs at an interval between the extremes. Ecologists have shown that in the complete absence of disturbance, superior competitors… slowly encroach upon other species and eliminate them by competitive dominance. Where disturbance is very frequent, only the very hardiest species can survive the tumult. But in between, at intermediate frequency, there seems to be a balance that permits a great variety of species to flourish.” As more research is published on regenerative agriculture practices, I bet we’ll learn that the disturbance caused by Gabe Brown’s cattle herd moving across the landscape actually supports the increased diversity of each acre they graze.

What I like about Brown is that he comes from a pretty standard (extractive, damaging) American farming perspective, and ends up becoming a champion of regenerative agriculture. We can do the same in our yards. We can convert monoculture lawns to polyculture garden beds, keep soil covered, plan for living roots in the soil year-round, provide gentle intermittent disturbance with animals, and cultivate maximum diversity.

Below, you can see many of these principles at work in my backyard: I’ve got plastic mulch I scavenged at The Predecessors under my zucchinis. I’ve removed the mulch from under my cabbages, kale, and tomatoes, and undersown a diverse cover crop mix, which is just beginning to germinate. Nearby in a temporary enclosure, the chickens are busy making compost and appropriate-scale disturbance in a bed that’s about ready to turn over to the next crop. Flowers peek out around the edges. Carbon sequestration is a joy!

Julia Frisbie has been gardening in Coast Salish territory for six growing seasons, and is thankful to learn from plants, animals, and people who have been here much longer. She’s grateful to her mom, Anne Kayser, for cultivating her curiosity, and also to Robin Wall Kimmerer for writing the book Braiding Sweetgrass, which transformed her relationship with the more-than-human world. Follow Julia’s micro-farm on Facebook, Instagram, and/or TikTok.

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Listening to My Weeds – Julia’s Garden

By Julia Frisbie

Posted April 30, 2021

Weeds are inevitable. When you notice them, you can choose to get grouchy or get curious. I do some of each. When I pay attention to my weeds, I learn a lot about my soil. What follows is a “who’s who” of common weeds in my garden, categorized by what I think they’re trying to tell me. 

I’m sure there are other weeds in your garden (and in mine) who didn’t make the list. Grab a field guide and try to identify them and learn about their preferred habitats. Sometimes if you have a great diversity of weeds in a single area, they may send you mixed messages, so you’ve got to interpret them loosely. There’s not a perfect 1:1 ratio between weeds and the clues they give us about soil health. Plant communities are incredibly complex. But I hope that the things I’m learning from my weeds will spark your own curiosity about the weeds you live with! 

 

Weeds that say, “PLEASE MOVE THE CHICKENS AWAY”

Dock (genus Rumex) thrives with low calcium and extremely high magnesium, phosphorus and potassium. A big patch of dock tells me that the area is over-fertilized and I need to give it a rest from chickens. Dock loves heavy soils, and tries to be a good neighbor by breaking up compacted soil via a long taproot. If you want to address compaction, tillage is only a temporary fix– and in the long run, it compacts the subsoil even worse. A gentle broad-forking or a rotation of long-rooted daikons left to decompose in place is a better solution. Or, if you’re a laissez-faire gardener like me, just keep cutting down the dock greens and leave the roots in place. I’ve read that dock is edible and medicinal, but it’s high in oxalic acid and quite bitter, so I tend to chop-and-drop it (like many permaculturists do with comfrey) instead of eating it. The leaves and stems make great mulch.

Cleavers (Galium aparine) give me a rash, so I’m pretty vigilant about pulling them out. They flourish in high-nitrogen soils, so they tell me to give that spot a rest from the chickens. This herb has a long history of use in folk medicine, but I have not experimented with it. Too itchy. I have no pictures to share, because it’s out of season right now. 

 

Weeds that say, “PLEASE BRING THE CHICKENS OVER”

Vetch (genus Vicia) tells me that the soil has low fertility, and vetch is here to help. It’s a legume, a relative of beans and peas, and a symbiotic relationship with bacteria on its roots allows it to fix nitrogen from the air pockets of the soil. If I see vetch, I add chickens. I think it’s pretty, and don’t usually bother to pull it out. Again, no pictures because it’s out of season, but I look forward to its return in June. 

 

Weeds that say, “PLEASE IMPROVE DRAINAGE” 

 

Buttercups (genus Ranunculus) love wet feet, and show me exactly where my drainage issues are. Thanks to the relentless feedback of buttercups, I’m slowly terracing a soggy slope. Buttercups also prefer acidic soil, so I like to see them at the feet of my blueberries and azaleas, but if I want to grow annual veggies in their spot I may need to add lime. Buttercups tend to form a solid mat of greenery that can choke out other plants, so I try to remove them. On the plus side, their flowers are beautiful, and they always make me sing “Build me Up Buttercup.” 

 

Weeds that say, “PLEASE ADD MORE MULCH”

 

Quackgrass (Elytrigia repens) thrives in heavy clay soil, and tells me that I need to add more layers of organic material. The more organic material I add, the easier it gets to remove its spaghetti-like rhizomes.

Hairy Bittercress (Cardamine hirsuta) specializes in disturbed soil. It’s a relative of radishes, broccoli, and kale, but unlike its domestic kin, it has an incredibly fast seed-to-seed cycle. By the time other annuals are getting started in the spring, it’s already fully grown and flinging its progeny into the world (which explains the common name “shotweed”). For this reason, it’s one of my son’s favorite early greens to forage. It tastes better than the name suggests! A plant growing here and there is normal, but when I see a big patch of hairy bittercress, it tells me that the soil has been disturbed too often. (Disturbance in my yard is usually caused by chickens or toy tractors, but in other places it can be caused by tillage or by repeated herbicide application.) This place needs a deep blanket of mulch and a long rest.

 

Weeds that say, “PLEASE KEEP DOING WHAT YOU’RE DOING”

 

Purple deadnettle (Lamium purpureum) tells me that I have a neutral pH and relatively fertile soil. Hooray! They’re another favorite for spring foraging, for us and for the bees, with their fuzzy, mild-flavored leaves and their tubular purple flowers. They’re actually more closely related to mint than nettle (the square stems are a dead giveaway), and I control them similarly to mint, by simply pulling or cutting them wherever they look like they’re about to swallow up their neighbors. 

 

Dandelion (genus Taraxacum): Dandelions aren’t picky; they’ll live just about anywhere. They’re edible and medicinal, and important for the bees. I tend to let them be. I think their flowers are beautiful, ESPECIALLY UNDER A MICROSCOPE!

 

Look at all those pollen grains, sparkling like geometric love notes to an unknowable future.