Art In The Garden

We had a wonderful time this morning painting gourds to use for toad abodes and birdhouses and planting our toad abode. The tadpoles have been transferred with many cool damp places to hide under logs gourds and stones around their new toad abode,ready for when they hop out. Cattails and horsetail are planted in the garden tote we used for a pond and a water loving canna is planted southwest of the tote for evening shade with a fern to the east. More plants will be added for shade and hiding places for frogs and toads.

We still need more signs painted, we did paint a bright blue chalkboard we can use to announce future events so keep your eyes open and feel free to join us. We also put up our prairie sign so folks will know something grand is coming, I am afraid it won't look like much for a year or two but don't mow it, be patient!

The Tallamy Toad Tote

The Dr. Doug Tallamy Toad Tote

One minute into Dr. Tallamys talk at the Tulsa garden center (Thursday August 19th 2010) and I was picturing our tadpoles, turning into tiny toads or frogs leaping from the wheel barrow and landing… where? And can they jump that far when so tiny?

I know from my own yard that a small body of water can be greatly appreciated by frogs and toads; just an area where I water pots every day is populated with the hoppers. When I placed a plastic garden tote in the ground in my lawn, no plantings, nothing but a bucket of water in the ground I came home the next day to find a frog floating in it! How desperate does an amphibian have to be to move into a bucket or wheel barrow?

Dr Tallamy tells of moving into a new subdivision at age 9 and becoming determined to watch the tadpoles next door turn into toads which he did just minutes before the bulldozer showed up to turn the toad abode into a human home! See the second link below for more of his story.

Of course the home could have been built with a wetland intact (see the first link for why) but even now we just don’t think about giving back some of our yard to those who lived there before we built our home. But my task was clear, give the toads a chance to hop out of a ground level “pond” not a 3 foot high wheelbarrow and leave a little wetland available for them to return to and in exchange they will eat bugs in our vegetable garden.

That’s why I bought the Tallamy Toad Tote! A green plastic 20 gallon garden tote to bury near the wheel barrow and transfer the toads into and why one of our garden art projects (Saturday August 28 2010 8 am to noon) will be to build toad abodes. These can be as simple as a hollow log or a stone with space to creep under or as elaborate as a painted gourd or upside down flower pot with an opening to hop into covering a damp piece of earth. We just water the toads when we water the garden.

Join us Saturday for our art in the garden event and to celebrate our toads with our toad abodes. If you have something we can work into a project (wind chime, mosaic, sign etc.) bring it or just show up we have plenty of projects you can help with.

www.bringingnaturehome.net/native-gardening/gardening-for-life


http://books.google.com/books?id=JA45XbUm48gC&lpg=PP1&dq=douglas+tallamy+bringing+nature+home&pg=PA22#v=onepage&q&f=false

It Really Ought To Rain!

My dog Lizzie was not going to go out this morning no matter how much I insisted. It was going to rain! I haven't checked the weather for predictions of rain since I got my Lizzie, she is much more accurate. So the thunder in the distance was not just taunting me, it would rain. So there I was in a cool breeze listening to louder and louder thunder (did i mention the cool breeze?) planting Kentucky Wonder and Royal Burgandy beans, peas, and cucumbers on our garden playhouse (PHROG). As I was scattering radish seeds around the edge of the planting it started to rain. Perfect timing! Unfortunately by 9:30 Lizzie was happy to go outside. For a moment though, I thought I saw St Fiacre smile.

http://www.pittsburgpostgazette.com/garden/20001223clips4.asp

PHROG

Almost finished with what so far we are calling the Play House Re-creating Our Garden or Play House Re-creating Organic Gardens or People Helping Real Organic Goodies or....Ideas? We started with PHOG Playhouse of Gardening but I just love the PHROG or frog motif!

Now that we have photos those who couldn’t picture one cattle panel standing like an arbor and one lying down as a back wall connected with a ceiling of twine can see what I had in mind. The floor is a layer of newspaper then landscape fabric then cardboard then mulch. The house is great for easy harvesting; you can stand or sit in the shade inside the house for much of your harvesting. It also serves as a magnet for young children so their parents can garden while toddlers are enjoying their house. The front yard of the playhouse is landscaped with 2 blueberry bushes planted in amended soil to accommodate their need for an acid ph. Tomatoes (heat tolerant varieties donated by Duck Creek Farms) have been planted on the front arbor and tomorrow or as soon as I cool off I will plant cucumbers and beans on the back wall. Blackberries are planted on the fence nearby and I hope to add strawberries next spring. The weather is cooling off! I didn’t break a sweat till well after 11am and I was soaked last weekend by 8am!
We will need to replenish the mulch periodically to continue to smother weeds and of course replant our annual vineing food crops but this structure should give our students great gardening opportunities for many years.
I have also installed a soaker hose and am trying to make watering easier.
Don’t forget we will be doing garden art and garden chores on Saturday August 28 from 8-10 am and we need volunteers in many areas, let us know how you want to participate.
I will try to post pictures occasionally so you can see our house walls and roof fill in! Happy gardening everyone.

Welcome to Duck Creek Farms - growing quality tomato and bedding plants for over 30 years.

Every School A Garden, Every Child a Gardener: Come Garden Saturdays Aug. 14 and 28 as we make a Vegetable Garden Playhouse at Cherokee

Saturdays August 14th and 28th from 8-10am I will be in the garden at Cherokee Elementary School (6001 North Peoria) getting it ready for back to school and would welcome your help input curiosity and company as we get ready for the fall semester.

The first Saturday I hope to install a vegetable garden playhouse. It will be made of cattle panels set up as a trellis you can walk into, covered with vining crops. One cattle panel will stand as an arbor we can walk under and one will lay down as a back wall with garden twine making a roof. We can lasagna garden this area as an example of this technique that can turn a weedy turf into a productive garden in one season.

The second Saturday let's do an art in the garden project. Bring broken beautiful things from around the house we can put together into art for our garden, a single earing, left over tile, broken plate or coffee cup, anything weather proof and we will put it into a mosaic, wind chime, or other garden sculpture.

Want to work at other times? Feel free to stop by and pull bermuda grass from the mulch as you enjoy the plants. Also I am still looking for a topiary artist and carpenter! Feel free to call if you have any questions or would like to adopt a bed or take on a special project. With enough volunteers the children can count on finding a mentor in the garden most weekends and evenings. Thanks to all who have and who will help our students and to Ms Tell Ms Gault and all the faculty and staff at Cherokee who have been so encouraging.

Serendipity?

There are many lessons in the garden; one is not to leave the wheelbarrow sitting where it can collect rainwater, you will only harvest mosquitoes! So as I was thinking “I need to bring my wheelbarrow up here” I rounded the storage shed and saw a wheel barrow! “I’ll use that” I thought, then realized it was full of water which made me full of anxiety! Sure I would find mosquito larvae wiggling about I peered in, wondering if I had the strength after a long day of gardening to dump out all that water. “But those are tadpoles!” It looked like 3 different stages of development were represented so more than one frog found our little metal wetland. Now instead of dumping it out I wonder every day “does the wheelbarrow need more water?”

Is this a chance to increase our vocabulary? Serendipity? Flabbergasted? Luck? Or learn about the web of interdependence, isn’t it great the tadpoles eat mosquito larvae? What is a larva (what are larvae) anyway? Sharpen powers of observation drawing the tadpoles? Write a poem? Research beneficials in the garden and decide if we want frogs? Have a philosophical debate about protecting the frogs versus letting nature take its course and if it rains they live if the wheelbarrow dries out they die, versus dumping the whole thing and using the wheelbarrow just because I need a wheel barrow! (eminent domain?)

Or simply take a breath smile and know biophilia is the real reason you garden even if you have never seen the word or heard of E.O. Wilson.

Maybe I’ll dig a little pond some day!

Most children have a bug period, and I never grew out of mine.
Edward O. Wilson, Naturalist

Humanity is exalted not because we are so far above other living creatures, but because knowing them well elevates the very concept of life.
Edward O. Wilson, Biophilia, 1984, p. 22

I have argued in this book that we are human in good part because of the particular way we affiliate with other organisms. They are the matrix in which the human mind originated and is permanently rooted, and they offer the challenge and freedom innately sought. To the extent that each person can feel like a naturalist, the old excitement of the untrammeled world will be regained. I offer this as a formula of reenchantment to invigorate poetry and myth: mysterious and little known organisms live within walking distance of where you sit. Splendor awaits in minute proportions.
Edward O. Wilson, Biophilia, 1984, p. 139

Every year I am determined to start a fall garden, it's just so easy to let all of springs efforts burn to a crisp while sitting under the air conditioner but then as fall cools off and you survey what could have been a great crop of fall veges regret sets in! So get out there in the "cool" of early morning and evening or work in short spurts if you must work in the heat and keep those tomatoes watered and picked and start your fall crops! You should have some sort of watering system that just requires you to turn on the faucet and your drip hoses will do the rest. August will require water and you won't want to stay out in the heat too long so make basic tasks like watering easy with drip hoses and mulch. Newspaper, straw, grass clippings and mulch from the green waste site on 56th street north (east of Mingo west of highway 169) all help keep the soil cool and moist. As fall sets in we will want your bags of leaves for Cherokees vegetable garden. We might also compost right in the beds to some degree, we do need more organic matter to help our soil retain moisture better and increase fertility.

I have cleaned out one bed at Cherokee and planted squash and beans while using the lettuce which had gone to seed as part of the mulch. I would love to have some volunteers to help keep the tomatoes going so the students can come back to school and find a beautiful crop of yellow pear tomatoes, the plants will stop producing if we don't keep them picked and watered. Obviously your reward for weeding and watering can be handful of tomatoes!

OSU extension is a great source of gardening information, they should be on your favorites list!
http://pods.dasnr.okstate.edu/docushare/dsweb/Get/Document-1114/HLA-6009web.pdf