Traditional gardening is quite militant: everything in its place and time, inserted on schedule and eradicated when it falls out of step or season. Permaculture philosophies and methods examine the inefficiencies of that practice and offer sustainable alternatives and solutions to the inheritance of impoverishment that is our land relationship. What is particularly wonderful about these options and solutions is that they are large both large-sale projects and small-scale adjustments. And little things mean a lot! One important small-scale practice is to let a few of your garden veggies and flowers go to seed. Not only is it great to harvest your own seeds as they are free and over time your plants will adapt to your gardens microclimate. Also, though, is the enormous benefits of supplying more flowers for our pollinators. Most of our favorite herbs and some veg, for instance, have many tiny flowers in umbellate form -- perfect for our hundreds and hundreds of little native pollinators! We even have an entire taxonomic grouping of wasps that are known as carrot wasps (Family Gasteruptiidae) because they use the small-flowered umbellates of plants in the carrot family (you can see a particularly amazing-looking member of the group on a dill flower in the Faunalog -- Arthropods: Hymenoptera > Wasps). By letting at a few plants from your crop flower and go to seed, youre getting so much more out of them. You provide food and habitat to important native insects, produce your own seeds, and if you let the stalks dry in the field, you have excellent on-site mulch and self-seeding without disturbing the soil by yanking out the plant. Plus much more if you think about it from all the angles. Dont be frightened of things looking a little seedy -- its what theyre designed to do! And so many benefits, not least of which is adding another flower to your garden. :) This is a little video of the traffic on a border of garlic chives that have flowered along the bottom of one of our squash trellises. You mostly see European Honey Bees (Apis mellifera), but if you look very closely, you can see some much smaller, faster little native pollinators zooming through. Good chirping to you! MCK
Posted on: Sat, 02 Aug 2014 14:30:00 +0000
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