Cleaning Up the Garden Beds for Winter-- Don't!

I saw a junco eating liatris seeds just this morning in this border along my kitchen window.

Before my accident, I was obsessively tidy with my garden beds.  I would "put my garden to bed" with a fanaticism due the reading of scripture.  My accident resulted in a garden going into winter with a too long lawn, standing herbaceous perennials and non-herbaceous perennials,

My garden looked great last year.

It especially was great when you consider the amount of work it took to get it there.  Sure, in the spring, I lopped any remaining dead tops of perennials to the ground, and raked out the beds, but I found the standing dead material had protected my garden during the most brutal winter in nearly everyone's memory.

There was also no denying that last year was a hard year in the garden for many.  It was not without the benefit of seed heads left for birds and shelter for smaller animals.  All the way up the food chain, more coyotes were seen closer to town.  A friend spotted a wolf running through their yard just south of the village.  Bear have been frequently spotted.  There have been rumors of mountain lions.

A number of times during a couple days of near freezing temperatures without a wind, I have considered cutting back some of the taller plants.  We have had less snow cover than I remember in many years and my mobility has improved.  The urge to get out into the garden has been strong.  Then, however, I will spot a cluster of birds working over my plants, scavenging for food.  The impulse goes away.

I have to face it.  I have a lot of critters in my garden.

Note the trail between the bridal wreath spirea and the plum?  Here's hoping it is feral cats hunting small gnawing creatures like rabbits and mice, rather than a rabbit.  My neighbor across the way says he sees a regular rabbit visitor hopping along this route through my yard.  Some of the track do unmistakably look rabbit-like, but enough to delineate a trail?  I'm not sure.

If we are to be sustainable, it is only reasonable to acknowledge wildlife will also recognize us as such.  There will be more birds.  I will see more damage to strawberries.  I will be competing with squirrels on a regular basis for every last hazelnut.  Small rodent with their need to gnaw may view my prunus, malas, and rosas differently than I do.

We will all need to learn to get along.

Which critters will you allow to coexist?  Like insects, which will be deemed beneficial and which will be seen as pests?

Are feral cats bad if they are hunting small mice and rabbits?  What of the Cooper's hawk if it snags the occasional songbird?  What of coyotes, if they hunt feral cats?

We can't have our cake and eat it, too.

BASF Will Depart from Europe, Moves Research Facilities, Potatoes

One-time potato farmer and his daughter (age 2), future potato picker. The baby there will be picking potatoes, too, in about six years.

I read this article bemoaning BASF's withdrawal from Europe. It seems they have been busy doing GMO-research on the lowly spud. Europeans (population and their politicians and law makers) want nothing to do with this GMO-potato which BASF would like to see grown for "industrial purposes".

So where are they going? Oh yes, you've probably guessed it. They are moving their research to a country that is open to the use of GMO-crops and research on developing those crops. They are moving all their research to the USA.

I'm not a potato expert, not of the chemistry of them, not of the mapping of the potato genome, not of where what proteins and starches lie on the structure of the recombinant DNA.

I grow them. I eat them. That's about the extent of my knowledge. I have to admit, there is not a time I can remember that I haven't known how to chit potatoes, or knew how they grew in the ground, or what the taste of newly dug potatoes actually tasted like. It is like I was born knowing these things as my dad grew them as a cash crop before everything became so mechanized.

I can remember my dad digging them up using a one row potato digger that laid them out on the ground. Someone would ride the digger to make sure the weeds and the vines didn't snarl up the two-foot wide chain.

My dad would sell them to Frito-Lay for chipping potatoes. The local Frito-Lay manufacturer would chip up a hundred pound burlap bag and the aroma of fresh chips would waft out to the car where my sisters and I waited. If the company was happy and would buy 300 hundred pound bags, we would have our work cut out for us scooping up the potatoes into wire potato baskets after school for the next week. But before then, we would get to partake of the freshly chipped potatoes grown in our own soil.

I was probably about eight.

The local manufacturer is gone. My dad no longer grows ten to twenty acres of potatoes as a cash crop. My mother worked as a potato inspector for over a decade for the State of Wisconsin. I think she might know more about potatoes than my dad.

As an adult, it doesn't surprise me that potatoes are the world's fourth most important food crop behind rice, corn, and wheat. What did set me to thinking though is what were the industrial uses which are behind mapping a potato's genome and developing genetically modified potatoes?

The only answer I could come up with was starches.

Potatoes are all about starches. They are the the leading source of starch per acre world-wide, nearly one-third higher than corn. Bayer is one of the companies that are all over this. Potatoes are a sustainable source of starch, they tout.

So you can probably figure out why BASF feels that if there is a significant amount of push-back from Europe, they'll just pick up and go elsewhere with their research and why some might be bemoaning this decision.

Doing a bit of research into what are considered "industrial uses" of these GMO-potatoes, I surprisingly also came up with the manufacture of seed potato as an industrial use, along with animal feed. This is where it starts to get really sticky for me. Potato starches from these GMO-potatoes could be used in compostable plates, carrier bags, biodegradable plant pots, cutlery, wall paper paste, adhesives, in addition to biosurfactants currently being made from petroleum that appear in soap, detergents, and shampoos. The uses appear nearly limitless.

Potatoes can replace oil.

And, it's hard for me to wrap my mind around the science of it.

It also turns out they have been tinkering around with the potato for awhile. In the 1990s, they released a potato resistant at a genetic level to Colorado potato beetle.

My son wants to major in chemistry at college this fall. Maybe, I'll wait for him to finish his degree and he can explain the sciencey part of whether this is good or bad for us. I have a feeling what some of the jobs for our brightest young people may be. It probably won't be potato inspector nor grower.

Order Among Chaos

Living in Wisconsin amid all the heated debate and protests over budgets and union issues, it is easy to see the world as possibly spinning out of control. Libya, Iraq, Bahrain, all seem distant. Their woes, though, seem capable of directly influencing lives here on a very local level. When I see the price of gas at the pump spike 16 cents in two days, I have to wonder where this is all going.

The answer is control what you can. So, plant a garden, or plant several!

Planting a garden to ensure a source of those perennial fruits and berries that might become expensively dear in the coming months and years just seems to make good sense. Good gardens all start with a plan. Start first with your goals for your garden. Make a list of those foods you really enjoy. Get real and include only those that grow well in your zone. Consider those that grow well for you and could make up a large part of your diet. Consider how many people you intend to feed.

Good gardens also include a plan. There are excellent planning tools available at www.Jungseed.com.

I already have included several perennial edibles into my yard landscaping. I have a Honeycrisp apple, a Moorpark apricot, a Seckl pear, blackberry canes, rhubarb, and blueberries. I have chives growing everywhere, and a number of other herbs including lavender as well. I bedded our two types of garlic last fall. I picked 20 quarts of strawberries off a 5' x 8' bed growing around my grape fencing which yielded approximately 20 pounds of grapes last fall.

This year, I am starting a co-op garden with my brother and sister-in-law. I think we all have the same goals. We want to control our food sources, what goes on those foods during the growing cycle, and possibly save some money in the process. We are dividing out the work and cost depending on what each of us can bring to the project. Having the knowledge and two 5-foot tall light racks, which I built myself, I am starting the seed for our transplants. They are supplying the garden space, because I have a tiny yard. My brother, being the "chain-saw carpenter" will, with my son's assistance, build some raised beds and enclosed garden areas to defend our labors from critters.

I have already planted seeds for many of our cool season transplants. They are up and growing. We are big on tomatoes, so they are next to be planted.

Seeing those tiny plant babies has given me a sense of some sort of control over some of the bigger issues facing our world. It starts on a very local level.

Plant a seed.