70\u00a0 bar steady 30.01\u00a0 2mph NEE dew-point 47\u00a0 sunrise 6:26\u00a0 sunset 8:05<\/p>\n
Last Quarter of the Corn Moon \u00a0 moonrise 2306 \u00a0 moonset 1138<\/p>\n
While dividing the iris rhizomes this morning, the air was cool and the sun shifted in the sky enough that I can see the change.\u00a0 These are fall moments for me, working on perennials and the garden, either planting or preparing to plant.\u00a0 A couple of years ago in September I planted daffodils on a cool, but bright Saturday afternoon.\u00a0 The pep band from Andover High School practiced for a football game that evening.\u00a0 The marches and rousers drifted over to our back property, the aural equivalent of falling leaves.<\/p>\n
The rhizomes I dug up both in the raised bed out back and in the second tier perennial bed beside our downstairs patio had no soft rot, no sign of iris borer infestation.\u00a0 This means the clean-up in the fall and spring, coupled with the early doses of cygon, have created an ideal environment for them.\u00a0 This makes me feel good, competent.\u00a0\u00a0 In this garden a healthy plant has superiority over a beautiful plant.\u00a0 Of course, both have their place, but a healthy plant means a plant that has found a spot where it feels comfortable, the right amount of sun, the right neighbors, the right soil nutrients.\u00a0 A healthy plant overtime produces more healthy plants, so plant health oriented gardening fills up the landscape with homegrown brothers and sisters, clones.\u00a0 It is also true that to my eye a healthy plant is a beautiful plant, so I do not choose between the two.<\/p>\n
This is not to say we get no disease or infestations.\u00a0 We do.\u00a0 The spaghetti squash had an ugly horde of gray bugs that looked like giant ticks.\u00a0 Yuck.\u00a0 I removed the leaf and stepped on them.\u00a0 In general, I do not kill bugs, even pests, out of respect for life and its varying forms.\u00a0 In the case, though, of insects or diseases that harm plants, I will selectively kill.\u00a0 Most plants, even vegetables, can take an enormous amount of damage and still produce blooms, leaves and fruit, so I do not arbitrarily destroy and I almost never use chemicals.\u00a0 The cygon for iris borers is an exception.<\/p>\n
This also means, by the way, that a healthy plant may have a few holes in its leaves, even attacks of black spot on the leaves, as our Cherokee Purple tomato have right now.\u00a0 If however, the plant has no difficulty growing and fruiting, I may only pluck off leaves, or do nothing.\u00a0 Since a plant can thrive even with substantial leaf damage, doing nothing covers most instances.\u00a0 I prefer doing nothing.<\/p>\n
Gardening by doing nothing.\u00a0 Often, very satisfying results come from doing nothing.\u00a0 When we first moved in there was a single mangy cedar about 20 feet outside our backdoor. \u00a0 Since I cut down many black locust trees around it, I could have cut it down, too, but I chose to build a small garden bed around it and leave it alone.\u00a0 Fourteen years later it is a beautiful signature plant as you look out the back sliding doors.\u00a0 There are three oaks, close neighbors, that I also left alone.\u00a0 They, too, have grown into fine young trees, maybe 30 feet tall.\u00a0 We also have an ash in the park, again, a tree about which I did nothing, except put a garden bed around it.\u00a0 It now has a prominent spot in the park where we have our raised beds.\u00a0 It is the biggest plant.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
70\u00a0 bar steady 30.01\u00a0 2mph NEE dew-point 47\u00a0 sunrise 6:26\u00a0 sunset 8:05 Last Quarter of the Corn Moon \u00a0 moonrise 2306 \u00a0 moonset 1138 While dividing the iris rhizomes this morning, the air was cool and the sun shifted in the sky enough that I can see the change.\u00a0 These are fall moments for me, … Continue reading Gardening By Doing Nothing<\/span>