An Organic Urban Yard in Less Time Than a Sit-Com

Have you ever thought of growing your own chair?

The idea hadn’t crossed my mind, but someone else thought of it. Read about his idea and process here.

Yes… but…

There are some limits.
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I’m a big fan of mulching with straw. It’s relatively cheap, especially if you shop around at general stores and grain elevators, rather than specialty garden shops. And the number of casual horse owners around where we live make sure that straw is always available since it’s a great bedding material. Note well, I’m not talking about hay which is a feed and which ideally comes with a fair amount of seeds. Straw, at least ideally, has most of the seeds removed since it’s a by-product of growing grain.

But even if most of the seeds are removed, some remain which means that as you spread your mulch, you’re also sowing “weeds.” My utterly pragmatist definition of a weed is any plant growing where you don’t want it. Sometimes you can can get rid of a weed by transplanting it to a more desirable location. For instance, I am notoriously soft-hearted when it comes to “volunteer” tomato plants, even though I can’t vouch for their variety and I’ll usually find somewhere to tuck them in. However with the grain seed sprouted from straw the best thing I’ve found is to yank it up gently by its roots, leave it in the sun for a couple hours then use the stalks elsewhere as more mulch. I find that for the most part, the straw seeds germinate within the layer of straw itself so I can pull them out much easier than if the same plants had rooted in soil.

I’m mentioning all this because today’s twenty-minutes were spent weeding out the asparagus bed. It was a dangerously beautiful day, dangerous because I would have been tempted to spend all day out side and thus end up burned to to a lobster red. With a nicely defined task, however, I was able to get outside, do some meaningful work and get inside again before I incinerated.

Our spirea bushes were absolutely beautiful this year. Their long arched branches were loaded with thousands of small white blossoms spilling down like veils. When we worked in the garden last weekend, Jim weeded along the south side of the house; after he worked under the bushes, he emerged with dozens of tiny, white petals covering his hair and his shoulders, looking ever so much like snowflakes.

It was a banner year for spirea, but you’ll have to take my word for that.
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We covered our tender plants when we heard the frost warning on Sunday night, but in spite of our efforts, some seedlings still got a little nipped by the frost.

Tomato plant with a little frost damage

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