Non-Toxic Solutions: Copper Kitchen Scrubbers

Here's Hugh, unravelling a common copper kitchen scrubber, and cutting it into loops for a non-toxic slug-deterrent. Slugs won't cross copper--the copper reacts with slugslime and delivers a little slug-sized shock. You don't want to use commercial edible slug baits, which also attract four-legged friends like Dora here.

While I'm off getting acquainted with the perennials in this new-to-me garden, Hugh is busy constructing his extraordinary Squash-Mobilization System:

First, he constructed a pile of sod, compost, and manure and covered it with black plastic to retain heat and accelerate the composting process.

Then he cut holes in the top and planted squash starters, fitting them with their "slug-collars." By the time the leaves span the collars, the plants will be robust enough to survive slug attacks. Squash love warm growing conditions, so the heat generated by the pile and the black plastic in hot sun will amplify our North Shore summer.

In the meantime, take a moment to consider this rose...

There goes Nelly Moser...

Ain't she sweet?

A little loaded, Nelly's hangin' on the fence again.

Celebrating this year's bucket of blooms. Have we seen the like? Some plants started growing in February, so they think it's July. The hydrangeas are budding!! This clematis (in Dan and Deb's garden) isn't off-schedule, but it certainly is going nuts in a good way.

I predict a double-blooming year. Feed your plants well with compost and manure, fish fertilizer and seaweed spray... They're delirious and must be sustained.

Garden Swale

Bog-gardening, and related wetland enhancement seems to be my theme of the week (or two). A swale is technically a "low-lying stretch of land" or a "marshy heavily vegetated depression." Swale gardens are becoming a bit of a trend--in my world anyways!

The City of North Van has started recreating or enhancing swales in parks around town, where groundwater naturally surfaces and defies our attempts to grow green lawns everywhere.

This swale on Grand Boulevard was enhanced a few years ago. Crews laid stone, starting here in a catchment pond, and following the bottom of the swale to facilitate water flow and drainage. The banks were planted with indigenous plants, which have filled out very well. Up close, wild roses and rushes, oceanspray and snowberry are naturally beautiful and a sanctuary for wildlife.

Local Homo sapien friends, Liz n' Len, decided they needed a Garden Swale in their back garden when their former lawn turned into a bog every spring. Here's Len (below), with one foot in the swale and one on the bank, to show how deep it is. Very well demonstrated, Len. They basically dug a trench and lined it with drainage material to contain and direct the water that otherwise drooled randomly around the garden. (Same concept as the Boulevard swale, right.)








Then Liz n' Len planted the banks with a selection of indigenous and garden plants, including moisture-loving blueberries. The enormous plant to Len's right is the native Goat'sbeard (Aruncus dioicus) which also obviously likes wet feet.

And they built a little bridge, which is a little bit like having a theme park in your back yard. Too much fun. Thanks for participating Len. Now get back to work.

So this brings me to Sheena and Terry's garden, where a Garden Swale is just waiting to happen.
Here is Phase One--two new garden beds installed last year, in a boggy corner formerly inhabited by a crop of horsetail (Equisetum):






Years ago, Sheena and Terry discovered that a sub-surface creek runs across this section of their property--just close enough to the surface to make a lawn impossible. At the time, a black plastic liner and gravel was the solution--we will forgive them for this, because a lot of things like that happened in the 1970s...

I can't tell you how happy I am that we have, in recent years, begun to reclaim what I call the "gravel pit." When we installed these two beds, the soil soaked up water like a sponge--perfect for the clumps of yellow flag iris, white Japanese iris, indigenous rushes (collected onsite) and various other grasses planted so far. The beds were also perfect for the horsetail, which promptly abandoned all gravel surfaces and came up only in the nice new soil. (Horsetail is intelligent flora--a sometimes frightening thing to witness.)

But, since you can't get rid of horsetail (it's been around since the days of the dinosaurs) my original thought was to work it into the design [insane laughter]--and the fact that it decided to relocate itself to the beds made it look more...intentional. I figure, the rest of the plants in the design just have to be taller than the horsetail, and we could learn to appreciate its soft verdant green as a groundcover.

Here's a picture of another garden's boggy area, where horsetail is allowed to grow (because no one goes there anyways).



One day, the Gunnera, which looks like a rhubarb at the moment, will be huge. Same concept: the horsetail could be considered a feathery green groundcover. Why not?

Nevertheless, Terry has an ongoing (primordial) and personal vendetta against horsetail and insists on weeding it from the beds, even though I'm insisting that it is integral to the design. Even though it re-emerges two hours later. Terry isn't here to defend himself, so this is really fun.

Meanwhile, the corridor between the two new beds still holds standing water so we are planning to dig a shallow trench, just deep enough to direct the water along its way...









...and fill the trench with a stream-like assemblage of river-rock, similar to the picture below...





I built this faux-stream-bed elsewhere about nine years ago (!) with three sizes of river rock, laying the largest stones first, then the medium stones, and finally packing small stones in the "eddies." (One must think like water, sensei.) This is fussy, because the creek bed is a garden feature. If you are just throwing rubble in a trench for drainage, so be it. But I have seen "dry creek beds" that look, unfortunately, like someone threw rubble in a trench.

So, for the next phases of Sheena and Terry's Garden Swale, we will be creating both a garden feature and a functioning swale that helps collect and drain groundwater. It will follow the water's path that-away across the gravel pit, connecting the space with other garden beds we've created along the way. The plants seem to really like the combination of the moisture and the retained heat in the gravel. So even I can learn to like gravel...in moderation.


















Learning to love it. Equisetum.
"Equisetum species have an affinity for gold in solution, and they concentrate it more than most plants, so they have been used in bioassays for the metal." Pojar and MacKinnon, Plants of Coastal British Columbia

The Moss

There is something perfect about this scene...

...and the moss has something to do with it.

(Another lovely moment brought to you by Pierre and Patti's Japanese maple.)

Lost: One Fabulous Gardening Hat

Ironically, sadly, mere days after the photo-shoot for Weed & Fertilizer Magazine, I lost my hat. I was riding my bicycle that day in fact--I tucked it in my side pannier and it must have flown off... (Because of course I wear a helmet on The Scoot.)

A Good Hat is hard to come by, so I spent a day hatless and paid for it with a mild case of sunstroke today. You know you have sunstroke when you see sunshine and want to crawl into a dark cave--which I did, after a half-day creeping around in the shade like a vampire, pretending I was fine.

This is a great pain at this time of year, when 25 people are waiting for you to come and garden. So if you see someone wearing my hat, tell them to leave it at Beans on Marine Dr. West Van and there'll be no questions asked. Meantime, I think I have a baseball cap somewhere (horrors).

The strange green object secured behind The Scoot is a bendy-bucket--my new favourite gardening tool, which doubles as a on-the-spot watering can and is much easier to maneuver through garden beds than large bins/canvas bags. Now that I've mentioned it, I hope it doesn't pop off and disappear on my way home.

Further to popping off scooters, I'm trying to resolve my dilemma of What To Wear on the scoot during the heat of summer. Despite reports that Italians everywhere are known to wear dresses and high heels on scooters (the women only, presumably) I am appalled at the thought. High heels are great for aerating lawns, but dresses get caught when you have to climb trees to prune. Anyways, the bare leg thing doesn't fly.

I'm not sure why. Maybe because scooting past outdoor cafes on cobblestone streets is a very different thing from jostling in double-lanes with SUVs. Maybe because I've witnessed road-rash, and I don't do well around blood. I truly envy the Italians their carpe diem fashion-flare, but...what is it? Are Canadians waaaay too safety-obsessed?

"Carpe Diem!"

--an Italian gnomette