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Garden Grown Wild

Vegetable Gardening with a Heart and Mind for Nature

Perkins Park Community Garden is a cultivated space. We took a section of town land that had fallen out of human use, cleared the space, and set up 29 plots for gardening. The upside: twenty-nine gardeners every year get a chance to grow food, learn organic principles, and get in touch with nature among a community. Those benefits mean a lot to us gardeners, but there’s a downside as well. In creating our garden, we destroyed a natural ecosystem, from soil microbes to insects, birds, and so on up the food chain. 

Our destructive human footprint is not unlike all of the lawns, parks, backyard gardens, manicured median strips, and other cultivated areas around town, all places that could benefit from rewilding. Even in a space where growing vegetables is the primary goal, there are steps we can take that cause less destruction and help support our local ecosystem.

Soil First. If you take good care of the soil, it will take care of your plants.

  • Stop using synthetic chemical fertilizers such as MiracleGro, which don’t support your soil ecosystem and can run off, causing more widespread damage to the environment.
  • Get your soil tested and opt for organic materials such as plant-based compost, worm castings, and composted animal manure. Organic granular and/or liquid fertilizers can be applied as needed. Many of our gardeners at PPCG use Espoma GardenTone or PlantTone or Neptune’s Harvest.
  • Cover up! Use natural mulches such as straw, chopped leaves, wood chips, grass clippings, or even lawn refuse bags to protect your soil from erosion and add organic matter.
  • Living roots feed your garden soil. Aim for (1) plant diversity and (2) keeping your garden planted for as long as your growing season will allow.
  • Spare yourself back-breaking labor and build your soil by moving to low-till methods.

Share your space by planting for wildlife.

  • Fit a few flowering plants among your vegetables. They’ll add beauty to your plot, plus the pollinators they draw may boost your veggie yield.
  • Choose wisely–not all flowers have the same value, so look to get the most impact, especially if you have limited space. Zinnias are easy and popular with pollinators, but consider some native flowering plants as well, which may have greater ecological importance.
  • The milkweed plant shown here provides complex benefits– from foliage to flowers to seed–for many levels of the food chain. So even though it flowers only a short time in late summer, its benefits are year-round, especially if seed heads are left in place at the end of the season.
  • It can be difficult and a little tricky to know what will provide the most benefit to the local ecosystem. Rely on local nonprofits specializing in native plants (links below). Watch and observe your garden to see what’s popular and don’t be afraid to edit if you can add something of greater value.

Know your pests and tolerate some damage.

  • It sounds obvious, but it’s still worth noting: planting for wildlife means that the plants may get eaten. That’s the point.
  • One year my parsley was disappearing at an alarming rate. The culprit was this beautiful swallowtail caterpillar, which shown here, is feasting on dill. (Both parsley and dill, by the way, are non-native plants, but the swallowtail will eat them because they are close enough relatives of native members of the carrot family.) Plant a little extra and be happy they found a home in your garden.
  • On the other hand, some pests should not be tolerated. The spotted lantern fly, for example, looks beautiful but can cause serious damage.
  • Take time to identify the critters you find in your garden by relying on reputable resources, noted below.
  • Control pests through the least harmful way possible by, for example, handpicking them or using row covers. Even organic pesticides can cause unintended harm to beneficial insects.

Know your weeds and pull them only as necessary.

  • Do not immediately assume that a “weed” is a bad addition to your garden.
  • Plants such as dandelion, purslane, and yellow wood sorrel–common ones at PPCG–can offer benefits. Some are edible for insects birds, and/or humans and protect your soil as well.
  • It’s important to identify the weed and understand its growth pattern and potential benefits or harm. Resources are noted below.
  • Weeds such as garlic mustard are more pernicious and should be given special attention to control them. Every spring we make an effort to pull the garlic mustard from the uncultivated areas around the plots.
  • Weeds in the garden bed can be controlled by using mulch and limiting digging and soil disruption, which brings seeds to the surface where they can germinate and grow.

Include native edible perennials in your garden. These are often low-fuss, high-yielding plants that provide benefit for you as well as the local ecosystem.

Adjust the perceived value of your garden and rethink aesthetics.

  • Broccoli as a beneficial ornamental?! Shown here, wild bees are loving these pretty and heavily-scented flowers from, strangely enough, an Asian variety of broccoli. I planted them last fall with plans to harvest the stalks during the cold months. When an unexpected windy and bitter day blew off their frost protection, I figured they were goners and just left them alone until I could replant. But then they surprised me and produced the prettiest and most beneficial plant of my garden at that moment, when few other plants were in bloom. I suppose I could have pulled them and planted spinach in their place, but their value for the bees far surpassed a spinach harvest for me.
  • Leaving behind leaf litter, stems, and seed heads at the end of the harvest can look messy by traditional standards. I get it. My yard makes me a little twitchy when I compare it with my neighbors’ tidy spaces. Make it a new norm and remember you are fostering life in that “mess,” including habitats for wild bees, overwintering egg cases, and food and nesting materials for wildlife. Clean up only the areas that are necessary, such as removing diseased/pest-harboring plant material and raking where leaves threaten to smother plantings. Your vegetable garden will be a more productive space next season.
  • For example, preying mantises (R) often leave behind egg cases in fall debris that could easily be discarded during a garden clean up. Side note: the preying mantis is an equal opportunity predator, which means she’ll eat the good guys as well as the bad guys.

For More Information

Plant/Seed Sources

  • Holly Hill Farm has been adding more native plants to their vegetable and flower gardening lineup. Sign up for their newsletter and watch for their annual cold and warm weather plant sales. Russ Cohen, local expert on native edibles, often presents as well.
  • The Wild Seed Project, located in Maine, is a great resource for seeds and education on how to grow and care for wild seedlings. I grew these New England Asters from seed purchased through this nonprofit.
  • The Native Plant Trust offers a wealth of information, educational courses, and native plants for purchase.
  • Plant sales from City Natives benefits the community gardens in Boston managed by The Trustees. Educational programs are offered as well.
  • Use Native Plant Trust’s Garden Plant Finder to choose native plants suited for your particular conditions and needs.
  • Tufts Pollinator Initiative is focused on making native plants readily available to local growers at a low cost. Upcoming sale on June 20, 2021.

Insect and Plant Identification

Regenerative Gardening Techniques

Why Grow Native?

Just Links, Mostly: Growing from Seed

Basics

Timing

  • Frost date calculators from Farmer’s Almanac, Dave’s Garden, and The National Gardening Association all use different slightly different weather data and risk levels. Interesting to compare.
  • From our blog, a discussion that gets a bit into the weeds about odds and frost date ranges.
  • Margaret Roach and Johnny’s offer seed-starting calculators. Enter your frost date, and it calculates when seeds should be started indoors, transplanted, or directly sown outdoors. NOTE: Use these calculators as a rough guide. In the spring, I use two sets of frost dates: a riskier one for cold weather crops that can handle a bit of frost and a more conservative one for warm weather crops. Tomatoes, for example, not only can’t handle a frost, but they’re also generally not happy at temperatures under 60 degrees F.
  • Kitchen Garden Seeds offers a very handy list of seed-starting schedules.
  • For a simple chart that will work well in Massachusetts, see this excellent resource from URI.
  • From High Mowing seeds, here’s a resource showing how to get the timing right so that you can sow a succession of crops in your garden.
  • From our blog, starting out the growing season with cold weather crops.

Lighting

Buying Seed

Winter Sowing & Season Extenders

Saving Seed

2020 Letter to Members

Hello Gardeners and Friends of PPCG,

Let’s first acknowledge the challenges we faced at PPCG: 2020 was the growing season none of us signed up for, from seed shortages and store closures to limited gardening supplies and plant stock. We were locked out of our shed with all of its tools and hoses and couldn’t hold our work parties and annual harvest picnic. Our new beekeeper had to cancel his hive. And then there were periods of record heat plus drought conditions.

For some of us it wasn’t worth the risk and hassle, on top of everything else we were coping with in a pandemic year. Five members took the option to keep their plots reserved for 2021. Others couldn’t wait to get started and chafed at the fact that we were cut out of our spring growing season.

We thank all of you, whether you gardened this year or decided to wait for better circumstances. We also thank Director McGrath from the health department, Councilor Donna Connors, and Mayor Kokoros for helping us get our safety rules in place for the summer growing season.

If you held off in 2020, we hope to see you again soon; your gardens were maintained and will be ready for you in 2021. For those of you who were able to make our garden space work, we appreciate all of your careful attention to our rules with regard to wearing face masks, cleaning hose connections, and keeping a safe physical distance from each other. It was good to see you and share garden talk. Thanks to everyone for keeping an eye out on each others’ gardens and helping with watering as needed. It wasn’t a typical year, but all of this is what ‘community’ meant to us in 2020.

And how about all of the good crops that came out of our plots? We had a lot of tomatoes, eggplants, peppers, beans, garlic, kale, and flowers, to name a few. Cucumbers did well in the beginning of the summer, and then many vines collapsed from disease. Some other more unusual crops for PPCG growers included pumpkins and other types of squash, pink celery, corn, winter radish, and asparagus. It’s always great to see how new crops and varieties fare in our space, because even if they don’t quite make it, we always learn more about how to try again in another season. It looked like we were close to getting some corn this year, for example, but then the deer figured out how to bust down fences. They were thirsty beasts this summer.

Speaking of fencing, we’re having ongoing problems with the use of fine mesh netting, which easily gets caught in the mower and isn’t safe for wildlife. Gary rescued a few tangled birds this summer alone. Moving forward, we ask that you avoid using fine netting. We know it’s a big expense and effort to install sturdier barriers, so if you have any challenge getting set up in 2021, let us know. We are allocating some of our extra funds to the cause, and along with the materials we’ve accumulated in previous years, hope to be able to eventually get all of our plots protected with safe fencing (for gardeners who want it).

During the October snowstorm (!) a tree came down on the western side of the garden, near the shed and pergola. Fortunately there was no damage to structures or plots. Thank you to Gary and the Parks Department for managing the clean up.

In addition, Gary trimmed branches along the edges of our gardening space. Since we first started gardening in Perkins Park, the trees are all eleven years taller and starting to make a significant shade impact, especially in the plots along the southern edge in the fall. We will try to figure out how to get some of those trees trimmed (with the town’s approval) so that we can continue to garden without making a negative impact on the wild spaces. Other chores to check off in 2021 include repairs to the compost bins, re-installation of the buried hose from the shed to mid garden, and assessment and care of our herb/flower garden.

Also in 2021, everyone gets a fresh start, so if you were unable to keep your plot going last season and want to give it another try this year, you are welcome to come back.


Because we do not know the restrictions we will be facing in the upcoming growing season, we are waiting to mail our 2021 applications. In the meantime, you can help our planning process by letting us know (1) if you would like to return or (2) if you are a ‘maybe,’ what general circumstances may impact your decision.

Wishing everyone a better 2021,

Suzanne Brothers and Gary Roden, Co-Managers PPCG

What’s Growing On at PPCG? July and August 2020

With meteorological summer already behind us, our warm weather growing season is winding down. In spite of the usual pressures from disease and insects, plus a few weeks of very hot dry weather and some smart deer who’ve figured out how to breach our fences, many of us had good yields of cucumbers, tomatoes, eggplants, peppers, garlic, and flowers this season. If you still have gardening steam, you’ve got time to plant some fall crops. And let’s not forget about the winter squash, corn, and other stragglers pushing for maturity before frost (typically around October 15). See below for more info, and enjoy a look at what we’ve grown!

July and August 2020

For More Information– Gardening into September & October

How to grow garlic— our garlic-growing workshop presented by Jon Belber of Holly Hill Farm

How to get the most from your plants at season’s end— topping off tomatoes, pruning squash vines, and saving seeds.

Planting a fall vegetable garden–how to choose the right crops, get the timing right, and more