Farm News 11-12-06

Sunday evening, after returning from the Ranch

Farm News is late because I left for the Ranch immediately after chores. More about the trip next week.

Dr. M Reports on the War from New Jersey

Dispatches from the home front

Well, fall is dwindling in New Jersey. The election is over and the yard signs are coming down and we are breathing a sigh of relief and cringing about what could happen in 2008. In more mundane matters, however, I am dealing with mediocre mums.

If fall in New Jersey is defined by anything, it is the brightly colored mums in everyone’s yard. Thus, wanting the yard to be pretty and blend we went to the local garden store and bought mums. Well, it was a disaster. They drooped, they broke, and they were pot bound. And then three weeks later, some of them up and died. A disappointing end to all the effort of planting and caring for them.

So, we come upon the holiday season, and it isn’t going to snow for a while. The mums need to come up because now they are just an eyesore. But what can I put in their place? They’ve stopped manufacturing pink plastic flamingos, so those are out. I just can not bring myself to put a giant blow up Santa snowball type thing in my yard. So what do we do with the yard?

I think I am going to submit to climate and timeframe and simply put some mulch down. The soil will rest over the winter, and in the spring we will see what I can do with the land. Other suggestions will be entertained though!

Dr. M.

Dear Dr. M.,

Seed Johnny-Jump-Ups, Viola tricolor, into the mulch here and there. I did a quick Google with 'viola tricolor'. You can purchase a packet of seeds from Thompson-Morgan, or an ounce from American Meadows. If you want the variety 'Bowles Black', which I highly recommend, you can buy seeds by the gram from Territorial Seed Co. Around here they reseed themselves and last for several years, then something kills them all off and we have to reseed. In late winter, in sheltered corners, little black violets will appear while there is snow all around them.

At this time of the year you can throw seeds around with gay abandon, so to speak, and replace weeds with semi-wild flowers. On the web is a place called Toadshade Wildflower Farm located in New Jersey. Contact them and ask what to plant in your part of New Jersey.

Sow only two or three species, and sow lots of them. In the spring, when the weeds come up, you won't have a dozen different kinds of flower seedlings to recognize among the weeds, just two or three. Weeding is a skill most easily learned when there is only one kind of plant that isn't a weed. Weeding a bean field requires no skill in recognizing weeds, only the skill of recognizing bean plants. Weeding a wildflower bed requires the ability to quickly recognize many different species of desirable plants.

Lloyd Craig, who was my gardening mentor, used to say that if there were weeds blooming in your crop, and you didn't have time to weed it, then it was best to till it under immediately. Weeds become weeds by spreading lots of offspring, and every weed that goes to seed can quickly repopulate a sizable area in which all other weeds of that species were killed. Lloyd didn't always practice what he preached and his garden was about as weedy as most other gardens.

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