The Companion Planting Puzzle

So, call me the sceptical permaculturist if you want, but after my rant about mulch, today I'm going to go after companion planting. Not against the principle itself, which is great, but more on the subject of the over-optimistic and simplistic way with which the concept is sometimes approached. At times, I have myself enthusiastically and at length described the benefits of companion planting and how if you plant this plant with that plant you'll not only have an awesome trouble-free garden but you'll also save the world, and you won't even need a revolution! Hurray!

But then when you get down to it, all these pesky questions come up. How close does the borage need to be to the tomatoes in order to improve their growth and flavor? How far apart can you plant patches of calendula and still get their pest-repelling properties? How much marigolds do you need to make any difference to the nematodes? Basically, once you know what plants go together, the question becomes how do you plant them?

One thing I found really interesting while skimming through one of the myriad organic gardening books in a bookstore was that the effect of companion plants varies greatly depending on the circumstances. In "Jardiner Durablement", Jean-Michel Groult gives the example of sage, a companion to cabbage (it repels cabbage butterflies, supposedly). It grows best in a hot, well drained soil, but will give off almost no volatile chemical compounds in these circumstances, whereas it will do so more readily in moist soil, though it might not grow as well. This was really interesting to me, and it makes a lot of sense. The quality of the soil, air and soil humidity, soil pH, nutrient content and so on will all affect a plant's growth and therefore its quality as a companion.

You can start reading up on this subject and just never get to the end of it. But ultimately, I think the best advice is that of Jon Jeavons in "How To Grow More Vegetables": it's up to each gardener to try out combinations of plants and find out which ones work well in the specific context of each garden. He advises to start with combinations of few plants (only 2 or 3), in order to be able to really figure out what's going on.

I think this kind of experimentation is really very valuable, because you can't really rely on lists of companion planting combinations without testing them (and generally the planting details to make these combinations work are not mentioned). And then again sometimes you'll find that some unusual combinations will work in your particular context. In a broadcast bed we threw some peppergrass seeds and some alfalfa (among other things). The peppergrass started growing in patches where the seeds had fallen, and later the alfalfa started growing through the peppergrass. What I think happened here was that since we gave little care and little watering to this bed, the alfalfa seeds only sprouted successfully under the protective cover of the peppergrass, and the patches of bare ground where no peppergrass seed had fallen remained barren of alfalfa also. Who would have thought? Of course, to replicate this kind of thing with other plants you would really need to know the plants' growing habits well. This is the kind of thing you can only figure out by trying combinations of plants in the garden.

Has anyone out there done any interesting experiments? What combinations of plants have you found to work well in your garden?

"Squat" in Lyon

A few days ago, we went to a "squat" in Lyon for a concert. I put "squat" in quotation marks because I feel like the word doesn't quite do it justice. "Huge Autonomous Bastion of Freedom and Artistic Expression" might be a bit of a better description. It was in an abandoned factory, and has been going for nearly a decade. The walls are all painted, sculptures jostle for attention, busses have been parked inside and made into living quarters alongside yurts and various UFOs built out of recycled materials and cob, there is a large garden, chickens, a seemingly permanent buffet of potluck food, zine library, full scale sound systems, bike workshop, woodworking workshop, compost toilets, two or three hundred resident artists... Schoolchildren even go on tours of the place! So, I guess the world doesn't just fall apart when people are empowered to create their own living spaces outside of governmental or corporate control...

Seedlings

At last we are getting toward the end of seedling season. As the little sweethearts get into the ground once and for all, we can finally sleep more soundly at night. No more rushing out in the evening to cover the coldframe in case it freezes, or in the morning to open them so that the coldframe-turned-solar-cooker doesn't burn our babies to cinders. No more worrying about germination temperatures, damping off, transplanting to bigger pots, etc. Hurray for spring!

Seriously, sometimes I thought our seedlings would be the death of me. For a start, we had to find a location to start them. This eventually was the bathroom, the warmest place in our largely unheated house. To help reach a reasonable temperature for seeds to germinate, we put a heat lamp over them. And this is how we got through the seedling season, doing pretty well for tomatoes, peppers, tomatillos and other nightshades, squashes and cukes.

But some plant were stubborn and simply refused to join the garden team in our amateurish setup. Bitter Gourds (Momordica charantia) and Malabar Spinaches (Basella alba) just wouldn't germinate. We ended up with one Malabar Spinach (nicknamed by Rosemary "Malibu Barbie", which probably accurately reflects the temperature sensitivity of the plant!). Not a Bitter Gourd on the horizon. Well you'll say, the most bitter vegetable in the world and a leaf veggie with mucilaginous leaves, not a huge loss. True. I'm not weeping for our loss. Just like I'm not too sad about the Snake Gourds (Tricosanthes cucumerina), which did germinate, but as soon as the weather got in the slightest chilly, and despite our diligence at covering the cold-frame at night, would drop dead one by one until we had none left. Another marginally edible squash that requires special attention and a 2 meter high trellis that we still had to dream up. Maybe it was being nice and saving us the work!

Then once they had germinated, our dear planties weren't out of the woods yet. This is when the dilemma of leaving them in the warm darkness vs. moving them to a sunny but cold window comes in. Never figured that one out. Imagine: you have a pot where you planted numerous Peruvian Groundcherries (Physalis peruviana). A couple of them start coming up. Do you leave them in the dark under the heat lamp for the other seeds to germinate, but most likely letting the early ones get tall and spindly and die, or do you move them to the window, where the other seeds will undoubtedly not germinate because of the cold?

"Damping off" is what you call it when the seedlings get all tall and spindly and thin near the base, finally collapsing or breaking off. It's caused by micro-organisms, fungi or oomycetes (that are not fungi, bacteria, viruses, plants or animals, which I can grasp, but something else entirely, which leaves me totally puzzled as to how to act toward them!). It happens most in moist, warm conditions with little ventilation. Exactly what our bathroom setup was. Our tomatillos got it pretty bad, but surprisingly they kept going, and even after having collapsed they just grew up straight again and now have nothing but a kink in the lower part of the stem to show for it.

So, I feel like I've learnt a few things and figured out what my ideal seedling setup looks like now: a greenhouse/coldframe with good ventilation, watering the seedlings from the bottom (a tray that can be emptied would be perfect), heating from below to promote root development (possibly using a hotbed with manure). Also, I'd prefer to use my own potting mix, with half garden soil and half sifted compost (as per Jon Jeavons' "How To Grow More Vegetables").

Still, how you accommodate a variety of plants with different favourite germination temperatures, I don't know. I mean, imagine you're growing cucumbers (favourite temperature: 15° to 18°C), tomatoes (favourite temperature: 20°C) , Peruvian Groundcherries (25°C), and snake gourds (25° to 30°C), what do you do? I tried putting the most heat loving ones right under the lamp and the less demanding ones further out, but still it's hard to control. And if you're using a greenhouse and/or a hotbed, then it must be really hard to control temperature. Also, does varying day/night affect germination rate?

Anyway, one thing we did get the hang of this time is to plant masses more than you'll need so you don't get a nasty surprise (which worked except for the plants that just plain refused to germinate -- cowards). Now the trouble is we can't bring ourselves not to plant any of them. I guess it'll take another year or a few to get the hang of thinning and selecting plants. But hey, one thing at a time.

Hugelkultur

As we're all for trying different things, we've set up a test Hugelkultur mound. The idea of Hugelkultur, a German technique, is that you bury woody wastes under your bed for them to rot down and enrich the soil over time. We had a lot of alder roots that were lying around from when an alder was dug up. Alder is a nitrogen fixing tree, so it should bring a good amount of nitrogen to the garden, but it also has a reputation for not rotting, a reason why it is chosen for making posts for use in waterlogged or even submerged areas. So I guess we'll see if it was a good choice or not!

Our method was very basic, as you can see in the pictures. We just piled the roots in a shallow hole, then added manure, earth and compost on it until it was covered. We'll be planting squashes, and possibly beans and corn in this bed.

Trip to the Alps

Earlier this week we went for a quick trip to the Alps, to go to a paraglider repair place. How many of you knew that Chris does paragliding? Well, he did it for a few years before moving to Canada, and his wing has been sitting in its bag for the past 5 years, so its flight-worthiness was in question. Fortunately, it still has some life left in it, so you can expect to hear more on this front when the weather becomes suitable for flying. Anyway, here are a few photos of our little trip. And there's more here!

Mulch

Hello world, this is Chris, here to deliver a daily dose of permaculture existential questions.

There are many things that seem simple on paper in permaculture. Mulching is one of them. The theory goes: you throw a copious layer of dried plant material (straw, shredded bracken, pea straw, grass clippings, alfalfa straw, coconut husks, woodchips, etc.) on your garden bed, and you will have solved many of the most preoccupying problems of the average gardener: you prevent water loss through evaporation, nutrient loss and erosion from rain, wind and heat, inhibit weed growth, and boost microbial and invertebrate life in the soil. And if you want an even longer lasting mulching regime, you can go for sheet mulching and spread a layer of cardboard or newspaper, then a layer of compost or aged manure, and then a layer of brown plant material, and this should be even better at banishing drought and weeds and boosting fertility in your garden.

Wouldn't it be nice if it were that simple! But there are some pitfalls to know about. The first is that a thick layer of mulch means that the soil is going to take longer to warm up in the spring, so you may want to rake your mulch to one side when the sun is shining to help the ground warm up. Of course that's tricky if there are lots of perennials in the bed. This might be a reason why our peas and broad beans didn't come up for the most part. One sunny, circa 15-20 degrees Celsius day, wondering if they were on their way, I stuck a finger in the ground, and sure enough it was really cold right under the sheet mulch (that I had installed when the ground was still cold). I hear that cold ground is a common reason for peas not coming up (these guys have a solution).

Next, I wonder how you can reconcile planting seeds directly in the ground and sheet mulching. Planting perennials in mulch or sheet mulch is fine, but can seeds push through mulch? Probably not, since that would put in question the weed suppressing properties of mulch. So should you wait until your seeds have come up, and then put mulch between the plants? I have tried several different tactics here. I have sheet mulched, then made gaps in the top layer of dry plant material, and planted seeds in the layer of soil+composted horse manure above the cardboard. This has worked for lettuces, I guess their roots made it through the cardboard below. I've also tried planting seeds in bare ground, and then mulching in between. It becomes impossible to sheet mulch in this case, but spreading some brown much material among the plants is easy enough. Is it enough to suppress weeds and do all the other magical things mulch does? We shall see...

One thing I have noticed is that a thin layer of mulch thrown on top of direct sown clover seeds made a huge difference. I just threw the clover seeds on the ground without burying them, which meant that when the sun shone and the earth dried out, the seeds would sit there and refuse obstinately to germinate. Areas on which I had half-heartedly thrown a thin layer of mulch, however, where full of tiny clover seedlings. So, among all my questionings of the value and appropriate use of mulch, this is my one shining success story! In fact, I have taken to throwing a thin layer of mulch material on the seedling beds, and do believe this to be better than bare ground, while not inhibiting seedling growth.

So, mulch can delay soil warming in the spring, and has varying impacts on seedling. But it gets even more technical if you look into it. Some mulches compact down in the rain, forming an impervious mat that prevents water infiltration, while mulches can absorb all the water from light rainfalls, and then evaporate it back into the atmosphere, leaving the ground below dry. This means that mulching is not necessarily a water saver, but can actually be a water waster! I have noticed this when I watered the mulched beds copiously, and then stuck a finger in them only to find that below the soaked, spongy mulch, the ground was bone dry.

In addition, uncomposted, green mulches, especially uncomposted wood chips, contain phytotoxins and hormones that inhibit plant growth. They also tie up nitrogen, and can starve the plants. Doesn't sound too great... Anyone out there going to take a stand for green mulching?

Lastly, there is the question of how deep to plant perennials in mulch, especially sheet mulch. Should the top of the root ball be level with the cardboard, the compost, or the straw/clippings? If the plants are too deep, the mulch around the stem can favour fungal diseases and crown rot, while planting them too high will make their root ball more likely to dry out.

So, I guess this is what happens when you take your head out of your books and try things out for real. You realize things aren't that simple! At least, that's what I'm going through right now, and I often feel confused. What would Bill Mollison do?!

Our mulching has been done with dead bracken we pulled up in fields, and shredded with a weed wacker. Apparently it's high in potassium, making it especially good for things like potatoes. On the other hand, it grinds up pretty fine, which makes it more likely to form a dense mat with less air flow. Maybe we should try mulching with unshredded bracken to see if that would make a more fluffy, porous mulch.

In permaculture, you live and learn. Nothing can replace direct experience and experimentation. Hopefully I can figure out the intricacies of mulching, and I'll be sure to keep you posted if the universe teaches me anything more on the topic.

For an interesting discussion on the impacts of different mulch types, you can read this. Also for another practical account of mulching strategies and lots of great advice, check out this post on Patrick's blog.

PS: So I think I was a bit down on mulch when I wrote this. I must say that we've just had a dry period of a few weeks, which just ended, and I really noticed the difference between sheet mulched beds and bare beds. We barely watered the perennial cabbage/leeks/walking onions bed, which is sheet mulched, whereas the greens and broadcast sown beds, which aren't, required daily watering. Also, I can now vouch for the weed suppressing properties of mulch. So In short, sheet mulching is awesome, especially for planting seedlings later in the spring once the earth is warm. In other cases, you just have to give it some thought. But I like giving thought to what I do in the garden, so that isn't a problem, is it?

Signs of Spring

Last week, the last batch of snow melted and the first yellow crocuses poked out of the ground. On Monday, the sun shone warm on the south side of the house, bringing out at least five lizards crawling all over the stone wall. On Tuesday, we saw a frog hopping into the pond. Pussy willows and primroses abound. New buds are just sprouting out of trees and bushes. The birds are coming to the feeders less now, spending their time finding homes and constructing nests instead of filling up with winter fuel. 

And what are we up to? Not updating our blog enough, that's for sure!

A couple of weeks of snow and particularly cold weather slowed down our plans a bit, and since it warmed up again we've been out doing so much stuff there's been little time for computering. We created some pretty cool water catchment systems, a few pretty simple ones and a more high-tech one, which you can see in our photos. We finally built a compost box (which everyone appreciated since we'd been keeping our compost in plastic bags in the kitchen). We've got lots of seedlings coming up, and a few plants already sprouting outside. The garden planning is coming along, but since the majority of our plants won't actually go out until late April/early May, we're not in too much of a rush to get the beds fixed up. One especially fun project was enlarging the chicken area, to give the chickens fresh grass, and to get them to get rid of it so we can plant in it! They love it, and it's amazing how fast the grass has turned from green to brown, and how it's disappearing (you can see the day-by-day progression starting here). And since they've had more grass and worms, we've had more eggs!

The room we've been working on renovating had some setbacks, mostly in that we realized we wouldn't be able to do cob walls in the cold (cob needs warmth to dry), and as there's no heating, it'll be another month or two until it warms up enough. So, after some research we decided to do a lime-and-hemp layer, which we will follow with a lime-earth-sand-and-pigment finishing layer. The lime-and-hemp is nice to work with, it goes on easily and quickly, it looks awesome, and the ingredients are relatively local (they're from France, at any rate). Still considering our options about the floor. And still hoping to integrate the dog hair and horse manure somehow.

We're going to try to update more... but it's hard to find time to spend on the computer with all these projects! Don't expect to hear from us in the next couple of weeks though, because we're off on a skiing holiday with the family, then up to stay with Chris's sister in the Loire Valley. We're hoping that by the time we get back, the spring showers will have filled our rain barrels, and the sun will be warming up our little corner of the earth a bit more than it has been.