Subversive Elements

Mowing the lawn is an inescapable part of the American dream, right? We thought so when we diligently cut our half-acre of grass every other week at our first house in Maryland. But Michael Pollan, one of our favorite garden and food writers, takes a different tack. In his book Second Nature, he talks about carrying on his father’s legacy of refusing to care for the lawn in the traditional way.

Pollan posits the lawn as part of the social contract. Pollan is a guy who was nominated only half in jest to be the next Secretary of Agriculture by his peers, so he knows something about something. Every god-fearing, red-blooded American McMansioneer strives endlessly to attain that elusive, glittering grail: the perfect manicured lawn. Or as Pollan puts it, “The front lawn symbolizes the collective face of suburbia.” We strove to participate and failed miserably.

We never felt the need to battle it out with the dandelions and wildflowers, or as Mark puts it, to eradicate all invasive plant species from our property in favor of a single nitrogen-hoarding alien monoculture. We’ll get to that mouthful of 25-cent words another time, but we also started realizing that lawns aren’t very good for the environment, not least because people devote so much water and so many toxic chemicals, as well as the gasoline and exhaust from the lawnmower, to maintain the traditional, neon-green buzzcut.

People who don’t mow their lawns—or heaven forbid, replace them with something else—are breaking the contract. Some people realize this and use it to their advantage; hence the trend of guerrilla gardening. Others try to turn their front yards into gardens and are stymied by local laws that actually mandate a lawn or harassed by horrified neighbors who want everyone to mow in lockstep.

If you learned anything from being forced to read Jack London’s agonizing story “To Build a Fire” in junior high, it’s that humans are ultimately on the losing side when we attempt to enslave nature. A war against unwanted plant intruders is a lot like a certain War on Terror we’ve been hearing a lot about lately. Nature has time on her side, not to mention limitless resources. I dare you to lay down the Roundup and mothball your John Deere tractor for a year, and then see if you can even recognize your own property.

In a sense, we came around to permaculture when we started thinking, If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em. We’re not revolutionaries by any stretch, but every year we turn a little more grass into usable garden space, which gives us more veggies, fruits, herbs, and pretty flowers, and every year we get a little more of our food locally and organically. This year the big change was Genesis Farm, which now provides most of our vegetables, eggs, milk, and a wealth of knowledge.

We’re still novices, but with the enthusiasm of new converts, we think we can actually produce some vegetables by recruiting nature as an ally instead of trying to tame it. (Get it? PRODUCE!)

Permaculture Vulture

Kate took a food politics course at Genesis Farm last fall and really loved it. We consider ourselves pretty savvy consumers and gardeners, but we learned about some new concepts like deep vs. shallow organic farming and permaculture, among other things.

Have you ever been suspicious of a corporate behemoth like Land o Lakes labeling their products “organic?” You may have good reason to be, since some companies use “shallow organic” methods that follow the letter of the law when it comes to organics, but not the spirit. “Deep organic” farmers try to mimic the patterns of nature to control pests, fight disease, and maximize harvests.

Permaculture takes the concept one step further. The word is a mash-up of “permanent agriculture” and “culture,” and the idea is that in order for humans to achieve a fully sustainable existence on this planet, we have to understand our place in nature. At first, this sounds hokey and woefully unscientific, both of which are an anathema to Mark’s finely tuned rational mind. But if you think about it, permaculture is really just the science of ecology applied specifically to humans and what we do.

Okay, now we’re veering dangerously into didactic territory. But there are folks out there doing some creative and controversial things with permaculture, and later this week we're going to let you in on how these practices can be subversive and downright revolutionary.

In case you're interested, we'll point you in the direction we're headed. Right now we’re really into Gaia’s Garden by Toby Hemenway, which is an excellent primer on permaculture, as well as Sally Jean Cunningham’s Great Garden Companions, which uses similar organic gardening solutions that dovetail beautifully with the permaculture philosophy. Be warned that this is the Coltivi’s Playhouse Not-So-Secret Word of the Year.

Fresh Start

Our New Year’s resolution is to make this blog less pedantic and boring. Sure, these notes are mostly for ourselves and not our legions (ha!) of readers. Gardening might not be the most exhilarating topic to some, but it sure gets us fired up. We want to be informative and serve as a record of our trials and errors, but is it too much to ask that the content be readable and ideally spark discussion with our friends and visitors? We think not.

Mark is using terms like “paradigm shift” (*yawn*) to indicate that he’s vowing to be less obsessive and nitpicky about the garden this year. While Kate loves his charts and thirst for information, that approach can be frustrating for all of us. Or, as Mark so cringingly says, “I can’t see the garden for the seedlings.” I can’t believe I just typed that. What he’s trying to say is that we’ll be focusing on the big picture this year.

We also noticed that the number of posts declined as the growing season got busy and we got distracted, which undoubtedly disappointed our ravenous fans. Part of the reason was our disappointment with our mediocre results, especially after the huge success in 2006. But we’re always learning from our mistakes, and last year was the year of too many interventions. We’re starting to think about this gardening as a year-round activity. We’re looking at ways to make our space sustainable using techniques like permaculture and companion planting—two thrilling ideas that you’ll be hearing more about. Basically, our goal this year is to achieve fantastic results with natural ecology rather than trying to control nature with interventions. It’s not easy for a couple of Gen-X instant-gratification junkies (and an engineer, to boot) to embrace holistic methods, but it’s a critical step in our horticultural education.