It all starts with a seed

Plants present a facade of effortlessness and tranquility, but in many ways the destiny of humanity rests with their success or failure.  These time-tested professionals, well rehearsed by eons of evolution, must seamlessly perform their tasks of metabolism, adaptation, and reproduction for us to survive.

It all starts with a seed.

larkspur, zinnias and snapdragon 

A larkspur seed, for instance, does well when planted in autumn.  By late spring, the seed will produce tall spikes covered with small, open-faced flowers in white, pink, purple or blue.  But first, the seed needs a spell of cold.  Larkspur seeds are very small, very black , and very hard.  Like all seeds, these are vessels of safekeeping which store both genetic messages and a short-term supply of food.

During a long growing season, plants divert large portions of their resources away from themselves and toward production of seed.  Provisioned by summer’s optimal conditions, a plant uses 20-30 percent of its food stores to set seed.  If the weather turns hot and dry, and water is in short supply, the plant will go into overdrive and dedicate 50 percent of its now meager resources to making seed. 

Larkspur seed is released from the shelter of the mother plant in autumn, just as the weather conditions begin to deteriorate. The seed must not respond to brief fall warmths but much sleep instead through winter.  Throughout the harsh New England chills, the larkspur seed show no signs of cellular activity.  Technically, the seed is dead.  But since this inactivity is only a temporary sleep, scientists call the state “dormancy.”

Plants feed us, clothe us, cure us

We vastly under-appreciate this silent and still backdrop of plant life. All plants share two unique abilities. They produce their own food, and they produce oxygen. In other words, plants produce the only food there is to eat and the only air there is to breathe. Plants feed us, clothe us, cure us when we’re ill, process our garbage, and provide a source of heat in the winter and coolness during the summer.  Moreover, plants do all these indispensable tasks while adding to, never depleting, earth’s resources.  Without plants, we mammals cannot survive.

If these services to humanity are not sufficient to inspire awe, here is another fact: Plants use no fossil fuels to run their food factories.  Sunlight is the plant’s sole source of power.  

Dr. Bob Gibbons is a highly regarded British naturalist and author.  Here’s how he describes a plant’s interior process. 

“The most significant process that goes on in plants, and indeed the basis of almost all life on earth, is photosynthesis.  In simple terms, this is a process in which plants absorb carbon dioxide from the air and combine it with water in the presence of sunlight to produce sugar with the release of oxygen.  The site of this remarkable reaction is the green chloroplasts of leaves and stems, acting rather like miniature solar panels capturing and storing the sun’s energy far more efficiently than anything yet devised by man.”

Scientists have been hard at work exploring plants’ “miniature solar panels” since Gibbons published How Flowers Work: A Guide to Plant Biology in 1984. In a world with waning energy resources, photosynthesis is attracting much attention.  Finding ways to mimic the process could give access to an enormous source on non-polluting energy. The new sciences of photochemistry and photobiology both investigate various ways light can produce electricity.  The popularity of roof-top photovoltaic panels attests to the success of one aspect of light-conversion technology. Using silicon as a semi-conductor, these solar collecting panels change light into household electricity. 

Michael Gratzel works at Ecole Polytechnique Federal in Lausanne, Switzerland.  His research concentrates on a biologic conversion of sunlight to electricity.  His speciality: “photoelectricochemical devices that use the same concepts as green plants in order to harvest and convert solar energy.”  In a paper entitled “Molecular Photovoltaics that Mimic Photosynthesis,” published in 200l, Gratzel reports success with “nanocrystaline oxide films” that react in a manner similar to green chloroplasts.  

Graztel’s research may put human beings even more in debt to the Kingdom of Plants.  Besides supplying us with food and oxygen man’s ability to duplicate a plant’s photosynthetic  processes may provide a key to a fossil-fuel-free future. 

 I’ve lived intimately with plants for a long time, and yet I feel I hardly know them! I’m astonished by my own and other people’s lack of curiosity about their complex and productive lives.  Yet there is an explanation.

As mammals, we are wired to respond to movement and sound.  Activity or noise compel us to pay attention.  We do not respond with a casual turn of the head.  Rather, we response with a compulsive need to understand what’s happening.  Sound and motion messages force us to consider primal questions: I hear or see something moving -- can I eat it?  Or will it eat me? Movement and noise thrust our brains into a mode of readiness.  We have no choice.  We respond by instinct.  Shall I fight?  Or should I flee?

Now let’s consider the opposite situation.  How do we react if we hear no sound or see no movement?  What happens when we are confronted with beings that are silent and motionless? Well, since they don’t dart, since they don’t squeal, they exert no pull on our attention.  While our eyes immediately catch and follow the movements of nesting birds, the hedge that shelters the birds’ nest is just background.  Like drapes that frame a window, we see shrubs simply as decoration and unimportant to what takes place.

Michael Pollen, author of several popular books on plants and food, says that vegetables and fruits suffer from “the silence of the yams.”  That is, since vegetables have few sales agents to advertise for them, we easily overlook them.  Moving the story from the grocery store to the natural world, the entire plant kingdom suffer from a similar deficit.  Since plant don’t call out to us, many of us don’t recognize them as important.  

We live in an advertising culture adept at manipulating our mammalian instincts. We are encouraged to track noisy, frantic activity.  Since plants don’t move (and consequently produce no threat response), we can live a lifetime surrounded by the plant kingdom and never really see it. 

Be practical

The first week of June brings intermittent fog and rain.  I weed the brick and stone pathways that weave between my perennial beds until I’m forced into retreat before an onslaught of mosquitoes.

Several years ago, I groused to Liesbeth about the small stones constantly turning up  in my garden.

“Be practical,” she told me.  “If you can’t get rid of something, put it to use.”

I took her advice.  I combined unwelcome garden stones with generous portions of odd-lot bricks from a landscape supply house in Westerly.  Purchased at the end of the landscape season, I negotiated a good price for the summer’s leftovers.  In the spring, I combined the brick with copious amounts of small stones to extend the walkways and the garden.

Unsettled weather continues into the second week of June.  Rain and wind, with gusts higher than 20mph, buffet the coast.  Large white clematis that inter-grows with pink roses is torn apart by the tempest.  The wind lifts a patio umbrella out of its thirty-pound metal base and hurls it into an ancient boxwood.

I rescue a peony bloom from the walkways after the rain.  It’s  snow white with a single layer of petals.  The blossom soon falls apart.  Petals litter the tabletop and pile up around family photos.  Peony scent is subtler than oriental lilies, but even with a breeze dissipating the scent, I can just tolerate it -- barely.

A grackle with iridescent purple-bronze feathers drops into a pathway to pull some grassy weeds.  I watch from behind a window.  He drops his load and snaps at a sixpacks of young pepper seedlings.  I gasp my dismay.  He hears me and drops his stolen leaf.  Back to the path for more grass.  With a shake of his head to remove dirt from the roots, he’s off to his nest with what looks like an impossible load.

The weather turns sunny and gorgeous.  Puffy white clouds scud across the sky, pushed by a light breeze.  I have neglected the horseshoe garden, and it needs weeding.  Planted by a prior owner, the area has gradually become a shaded woodland place as oaks and white pine grow tall. Cimicifuga, whose common name is Fairies’ Candles thrive here and will soon have stalks six feet tall.

June: Gardens are busy at their own work

Since I have arranged most of my small farm for my own benefit and convenience, it is not an entirely natural environment.  Only a small portion remains in a wild state.  Though partially tamed, this plot remains a microcosm of all the activities of five biological kingdoms: bacteria, algae, fungi, animals, and plants.  Here the entire cycle of birth, growth, and death occurs on a daily basis.  Seeds sprout into new plants.  Plants create and store food.  Birds, bees, butterflies, and bacteria, along with trees and flowering plants, reproduce new generations of themselves.

There is as much energy expended here in decomposition as there is in growth.  In early stages, bacteria participate, but fungi lead the decay campaign.  Over a ton of fungi inhabit an acre of good soil.  Other microbes, then worms, continue the break-down process as they return spent bodies to the soil.

 I place a chair in my field of annuals to encourage myself to just sit.  I rarely do.  Instead of stopping to look, listen, and appreciate, I pass through on my way to complete yet another chore.  All my own busyness distracts me from looking and listening more closely.

But even if I don’t take the time to see and hear it, a whole world of passionate activity stretches before me.  An entire theater throbs with life.  A pair of catbirds here enact a romance as tender as that of Romeo and Juliet.  A female mantis enacts a dark and brooding tragedy as she terminates her mate’s life.  He has outlived his usefulness. In the pergola, spiders rule. 

Members of the Plant Kingdom more more subtle, their performance hidden from sight, but I get the impression there is a rock concert occurring at full blast.  Low throbbing notes of base guitars and drums accompany greedy, seeking roots as they plunge deep into the soil, while up top, it’s a different musical style.  Languorous vines, supple and svelt, stretch to tango music as they enjoy the caress of sunlight and rain.  

Music and drama continue day and night. Chirps, hums, whistles, murmurs, cheeps, rustles, tweets.  I wake at 3am because of the ruckus.  The usual mockingbird is yet to start the dawn chorus.  These night noises are different.  There is no single distinct voice but a hundred different tones in a night choir of chirps and hums.  It's more like the purr of a refrigerator or the drone of a distant highway. 

Life and work goes on as I turn back to sleep.  In the morning, I do my usual garden tour with a spray bottle and bug bucket.  It strikes me that, as the racket amps up at night, so do eating activities.  Those pleasant sounds come from hungry mouths that put my flowers in peril. 

Dahlias

I change into fresh garden clothes and head back to the garden.  The cleomes have revived and are ready to plant.  A dozen dahlias are the final addition to the annual garden.  This national flower of Mexico is the stuff of legend. Spanish conquistadors brought botanists with them on their 16th century military expeditions.  Dahlia tubers interested these practical men as a possible source of food.  Aztecs, on the other hand, appreciated the hollow, water-filled stems.  Since wild dahlias often grow to 20 feet, a considerable amount of water is stored in its stems ready for parched travelers.  One cold October day, I forgot this story and drenched my jeans as I cut and cleared the dahlia beds.

In 1872, a box of mexican dahlias arrived in Holland.  Only one tuber survived, but it was a stunner.  The brilliant red bloom intrigued plant breeders.  They took up the challenge to improve on the import and continue their work to this day. 

 The American Dahlia Society now recognizes 15 different colors and color combinations; 18 different forms, from “miniature ball” to “incurved cactus”; and nine different sizes, from two inches to over ten inches in diameter. 

I grow my dahlias in large wire tomato cages.  By late August their bed will be as thick as a hedge and covered with color.  My favorite dahlia is blousy and orange.  As you will hear later, I am not its only admirer.

By evening, my right wrist aches, knees and hips resent being asked to move, my waist has shrunk back into its waistband.  The Velcro strip no longer heaves apart in an angry ode to an overfed winter.  For another year, I have met the planting deadline at the end of May.  After a long, solitary month of work, perennial beds are cleaned and weeded, annual beds prepared for a new season.  Over 400 baby plants, 70 calla roots, and a dozen dahlias are tucked in and ready to grow.  It is time to hand over the real work of summer to the garden itself. 

A two-shower/three-change day

May 31st turns into a two-shower/three-change day.

 The sky is overcast with temperatures in the low 70s. It’s a perfect cay for planting.  Early morning is spent with zinnias.  Hybridizers had a field day with these natives of Mexico.  From a plant with small insignificant flowers, the zinnia has become a vibrant collection of colors -- yellow, purple, orange, brilliant white -- and an amazing shade of lime green.  By selecting and breeding plants that show pleasing qualities, in this case bright-colored flowers, scientists produced the modern zinnia.  Digging small holes on either side of water wands, I plant five flats of these beauties. 

Two flats of cleome are dehydrated.  It’s best to plant only well-soaked root balls, so I place both flats in shallow plastic trays, add water, and set them in the shade to drink.  Cleome’s common hame is “spider flower.”  The name is apt.  Along the stem, just below an airy flower, long, narrow seedpods swollen at the tip bounce like so many spider legs.  Though cleome reseeds easily, I buy new flats each year to ensure a reliable crop.

I shower and change then shop for summer reading.  The steady work of May will soon recede. Fewer hours in the garden means more leisure, especially during sunny midday hours.  

It’s pleasant on the patio when I return around noon.  Borer bees gather along the trim boards this time of year.  The size of a bumblebee, but shiny and black, borer bees nest in soft wood.  Activity in the eaves is tense and industrious as bees come and go from nesting holes.  To find the right opening -- each perfectly round and half and inch wide --a bee starts at the ridge post then hovers beside the face board like a helicopter.  It swivels to inspect each hole.  Sawdust drops to the deck as a females shoves construction debris from her chosen nesting site.  A brief fray occurs when a male bee collides with a wasp looking for her own papery nest. 

The bees snub me.  Their behavior reminds me of a human trait I dislike.  For the most part, we humans behave as thought we inhabit a world where only we matter.  We overlook other beings who share this planet.  But on the patio today, I am no longer the species taking no notice.  Today, another species takes no notice of me. 

Brief holiday from the garden

Memorial Day provides a brief respite from work.  This Monday holiday is summer’s official launch.  The family gathers to feast on lobster and to celebrate two wedding anniversaries.  I pick peonies for each bride and bring a rhubarb crisp for dessert.  The dish is old-fashioned and modern at the same time.  I use a "paleo" version that eliminates gluten by substituting almond flour for wheat flour.  The crisp is sweetened with local honey and enhanced with additions of lemon zest and cardamom.  This intensely aromatic spice smells delicious as it permeates the bubbling pink spears.

The next morning it’s back to work.

I shoo a pair of catbirds from the garden shed.  This is the second year they have returned to investigate the site.  Since I open and close the door many times a day, the shed would be a disastrous location for a nest. 

One bird flies at once to the white pine across the drive.  The other is not so ready to surrender an apparently good possibility.  It perches on a low branch of a nearby cedar.  Catbirds are saucy, active birds, slightly smaller than robins and not as plump.  Dark gray body feathers blend into an almost black head.  Its song will fool you into believing there is a cat mewling in that tree.

I close the shed door and return to the garden to plant calla lilies.  In southern Africa, where callas originate, the plant is considered a roadside weed.  But here, the large showy flower is prized, especially for bridal bouquets.  To my surprise, the plant grows easily in southern New England.  blooms range in color from giant whites and neon yellows to smaller blooms in pastel shades.  As reliable as clockwork, calla rhizomes produce flowers ten weeks after I plant them.  There is only one drawback to this sunning best seller.  Too tender to survive the cold, roots must be pulled and given a frost-free storage place for winter.  

As I move along the shallow trenches to plant callas, holiday visitors are on their way home.  A small plane buzzes overhead on takeoff from the Westerly airport.  A few minutes later, two short and one long blast of a horn announces the New York-Boston train approaching a grade crossing and about to end the nearby Rhode Island station.

Keep the farm operation small

Keep the farm operation small, Logsdon advices.  Virgil sent a similar message fifty years before the Christian era. In Georgics, Book Two, he wrote his warning in verse.

The farmer’s chores come round

in seasons and cycles, as the earth each year retraces its own tracks ....

Time and again, year on year,

vines bow beneath a cloud and sink into the grip of

undergrowth -- ever more to do!

So cast a hungry eye on a big estate if you’re inclined,

but tend a small one.

New gardeners alway violate this rule.  They want it all, now. So beds are too big, crops too diverse.  New gardeners never gauge the time it takes to care for all this bounty.  Things go down hill fast.  Not enough time, too much work, and too many weeds conspire to turn a good idea into a guilt-ridden nightmare.  Start small and build gradually.  Once a small garden becomes easy, add another bed, try a new plant variety.  Branch out from those easy tomatoes to fussier eggplants and peppers.  

Americans are well trained by advertisers to think big.  With farming, however, big is not necessarily better.  A well-organized small garden can support more plants in a hundred square feet than a poorly run garden three times as large.

“In the United Stares,” says Hugh Popenoe at the University of Florida, “we’ve always talked about the fact that, as farms become larger, they become more efficient.  But we’re talking about comparing a fifty-acre farm to a five-thousand acre farm.  We’ve never talked about farms of two, three, or four acres.  As farms become smaller than three acres, yield start increasing dramatically.”

My final rule is the Rule of Small Steps.  Taking care of an acre of land is daunting. Remember that football field.  Even with two-thirds of the plot planted to lawn, and Joe, the lawn guy to mow if for me, I need to break my work into small steps.  The thought of planting 27 annual beds overwhelms me.  But planting two flats of snapdragons is a walk in the park.  Weeding 1000 feet of perennial borders seems impossible but put me the tulip bed for an afternoon and I’m happy.