Planting a Spring Garden
Even though I live in the Bay Area, where you can grow tons of plants and veggies year round, it's still that time of year, when folks are cleaning out old garden beds and dreaming up ideas for spring gardens. When deciding what to plant, I usually start from a basic question, like, "What do I like to eat?", or "Which plant would grow best in that shady area?", or "What would look nice over there by the fence?". These are important things to consider, but they overlook the idea that one plant can often serve many functions, beyond just food or aesthetic.
One of the approaches repeatedly emphasized in permaculture is "stacking functions," or getting the most yield out of each element in a given system. In other words, getting the most bang for your buck, in this case, out of each plant. It makes a lot of sense.
Why not plant your shrub so that it provides a wind block, builds your soil, and also attracts insects that benefit your neighboring vegetable plot? And maybe you can even drink it in your tea, too?
As I'm now learning, one of the ways gardeners of any scale project (from backyard to farm) can accomplish this is by creating plant guilds.
This is an easy approach that involves grouping plants together so that they cooperate instead of compete. This is also called companion planting or creating a polyculture, and there are a few guidelines for how these types of groupings can be organized, based on the following four categories:
1. Nutrient Accumulators. These are plants that grow deep roots and "mine" various nutrients from the depths of your soil, pulling them up and making them available to the plants around it. (Here's a link to a useful list of these and the specific nutrients that they accumulate.)
2. Nitrogen Fixers. These plants gather nitrogen from the air and make it available to surrounding plants as food. (It's actually the bacteria and fungi around the roots of the plants that carry out this conversion, so while these plants seems somewhat mind-blowing, it's the microscopic critters that are doing most of the work here.)
3. Insectaries. These plants attract pollinators and other bugs you might want to have in your soil and neighboring plants.
4. Living Mulches. These plants are low-lying and cover the first several inches of your soil in order to retain moisture, suppress weeds, and build fertility as the leaves decompose.
The classic example of this type of planting is called "The Three
Sisters," which includes corn that acts as support for the beans
(nitrogen fixers), and squash (a living mulch).
While these combinations can't be considered native, according to Christopher Shien's book, The Vegetable Grower's Guide to Permaculture, this is a "model from nature that offers more flowers and herbs, more beneficial insects, fewer pests, less maintenance, higher yields in less space, and more resilience to fluctuating temperature and rainfall" (38).
Another example of this type of planting would be the guild that I researched for a recent homework assignment. I chose:
Wisteria (a nitrogen fixer and insectary),
Burdock (a nutrient accumulator of manganese) ,
and Coriander (an insectary).
I wanted to make the whole guild edible but confess I got overly excited when I found out that wisteria is a nitrogen fixer and had to include it. It was also fascinating to research more about each plant.
I learned that:
Other interesting tidbits:
Thinking about individual plants as components of a larger, functioning whole is a fun, practical way to envision any new planting. It takes a little research to determine which combination works best to serve its surroundings, but the investment of time and energy up front pays off later, when each plant is working hard to help its neighbors thrive. Supposedly, then you can stand back and watch nature do the rest!
One of the approaches repeatedly emphasized in permaculture is "stacking functions," or getting the most yield out of each element in a given system. In other words, getting the most bang for your buck, in this case, out of each plant. It makes a lot of sense.
Why not plant your shrub so that it provides a wind block, builds your soil, and also attracts insects that benefit your neighboring vegetable plot? And maybe you can even drink it in your tea, too?
As I'm now learning, one of the ways gardeners of any scale project (from backyard to farm) can accomplish this is by creating plant guilds.
This is an easy approach that involves grouping plants together so that they cooperate instead of compete. This is also called companion planting or creating a polyculture, and there are a few guidelines for how these types of groupings can be organized, based on the following four categories:
1. Nutrient Accumulators. These are plants that grow deep roots and "mine" various nutrients from the depths of your soil, pulling them up and making them available to the plants around it. (Here's a link to a useful list of these and the specific nutrients that they accumulate.)
2. Nitrogen Fixers. These plants gather nitrogen from the air and make it available to surrounding plants as food. (It's actually the bacteria and fungi around the roots of the plants that carry out this conversion, so while these plants seems somewhat mind-blowing, it's the microscopic critters that are doing most of the work here.)
3. Insectaries. These plants attract pollinators and other bugs you might want to have in your soil and neighboring plants.
4. Living Mulches. These plants are low-lying and cover the first several inches of your soil in order to retain moisture, suppress weeds, and build fertility as the leaves decompose.
The classic example of this type of planting is called "The Three
Sisters," which includes corn that acts as support for the beans
(nitrogen fixers), and squash (a living mulch).While these combinations can't be considered native, according to Christopher Shien's book, The Vegetable Grower's Guide to Permaculture, this is a "model from nature that offers more flowers and herbs, more beneficial insects, fewer pests, less maintenance, higher yields in less space, and more resilience to fluctuating temperature and rainfall" (38).
Another example of this type of planting would be the guild that I researched for a recent homework assignment. I chose:
Wisteria (a nitrogen fixer and insectary),
Burdock (a nutrient accumulator of manganese) ,
and Coriander (an insectary).
I wanted to make the whole guild edible but confess I got overly excited when I found out that wisteria is a nitrogen fixer and had to include it. It was also fascinating to research more about each plant.
I learned that:
- Many documented wisteria vines are over one hundred years old.
- Japan's largest wisteria is 1,990 square meters (or half an acre) and dates back to around 1870.
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| Japan's largest wisteria |
- The largest growing wisteria in existence (about 4,000 square meters or 1 acre) is in Sierra Madre, California, where residents have a festival each spring to celebrate it! (They also spell it wistaria, and sometimes people spell it wysteria, too.)
Other interesting tidbits:
- Due to its prickly burrs, burdock was supposedly the inspiration for velcro, and was used in Europe during the Middle Ages to heal anything from Syphilis to rabid dog bites.
- Coriander can be traced back to 5,000 BC, making it one of the world's oldest spices. It was also cultivated in ancient Egypt and given mention in the Old Testament.
- Cilantro describes the first, leafy stage of the plant's life cycle. After the plant flowers and develops seeds, it is referred to as coriander.
Thinking about individual plants as components of a larger, functioning whole is a fun, practical way to envision any new planting. It takes a little research to determine which combination works best to serve its surroundings, but the investment of time and energy up front pays off later, when each plant is working hard to help its neighbors thrive. Supposedly, then you can stand back and watch nature do the rest!
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