Heirloom Gardeners: October in North Mountain Park’s Heirloom Garden
Pictures by Lynn McDonald, AGC Member
October: N. Mt. Park’s Heirloom Garden
Wildflower Seed balls For Butterflies
What are seed balls?
Introduced in the 70s, seed balls are a form of “guerilla gardening” whereby seeds, soil and clay are mixed together into tidy germination bombs that are said to have an 80% higher success rate than simply broadcasting seeds onto soil. Adding red potters’ clay to the mix protects the seeds from being blown away by wind or consumed by insects or birds. Generally, seed balls don’t require watering and you should NOT bury or plant them. Simply toss them in a vacant lot, your front yard, or a wildscape situation like a ranch or roadside. Wait for the rain to melt away the clay casing, and nature will do the rest.
Texas Butterfly Ranch Seed ball Recipe
3 parts local soil or potting soil
1 – 2 parts red potter’s clay powder, also known as “terracotta powder” at pottery supply stores
1 part native wildflower seeds
Water, as needed.
Newspaper and cookie sheets for drying seed balls
Stainless steel bowls or pots for mixing
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1. Assemble ingredients.
2. Mix soil, clay and wildflower seeds together in bowl. Mix well.
3. Add water to attain dough-like consistency, much like tart or pie dough
4. Pinch off or use spoon to grab gumball-sized amounts of the mix. Roll between your palms to get round form. Drop onto newspaper covered cookie sheet to dry.
5. Sprinkle generously with red chili pepper. Let set for 24 hours.
6. Once the seed balls set up, usually after 24 hours, store them in paper bags for later use or toss them right away. Remember to use only native seeds for wildscaping situations.
SOURCE
‘Lasagna’ Sheet Mulching
Here’s how to create a lasagna bed, also called sheet mulching:
- Start in fall so the bed has all winter to start decomposing.
- Cut grass as low as possible. Or start a lasagna garden on top of an old planting bed.
- Loosen soil with a digging fork to increase aeration. Even punching holes in the ground will work.
- Remove weeds.
- Build a raised bed frame or just mound up the layers of organic material into an unframed bed.
- Put a layer of cardboard overlapped an inch or two and water it.
- Cover with 2-inch layers of green organic material like grass clippings, fresh plant debris, fresh animal manure and food scraps that provide nitrogen and brown materials like dry leaves, wood chips, straw and shredded newspaper that are carbon sources. Repeat layers until the bed is about 18 inches.
- Top off with a 2- to 6-inch brown layer; thicker if you want to plant right away.
- Create beds only wide enough to reach into the middle and create paths lined with straw to walk on so soil doesn’t get compacted.
- Lasagna beds will shrink as materials decompose and may need refreshed layers each year.
- Using transplants is easier in no-till gardening systems; the mulch layer is easier to transplant directly into rather than direct seeding, especially for small-seeded crops like lettuce and broccoli. To transplant, use a trowel or other tool to make holes large enough to plant into. If directly seeding into the bed, pull back the mulch layer and smooth over the surface layer with a rake before seeding.
Instructions from OSU Extension website https://extension.oregonstate.edu/news/no-till-garden
The term “Lasagna Gardening” was coined by Patricia Lanza, who wrote a book on the subject in 1998. The illustration above is from her book.
Garden of the Month: September 2023
623 Prim Street
Elysian Graham and Lou Martinez bought the handsome house at 623 Prim Street in 2020 and promptly set about re-imagining the front landscape. This is the Ashland Garden Club’s Garden of the month for September 2023.
They hired Banyan Tree Landscaping and landscape architect Lucretia Weems to do the job. Among their primary goals were to achieve easy maintenance for their steep yard, conserve water, and be deer resistant. They also wanted a subtle color palette, but color and interest all year, and to be pollinator-friendly. They have achieved all this and more.
Only the large sweet gum tree on the left side of the garden and the thicket on the far right side, which is seasonally favored by deer, remain from the original yard. Overhead sprinklers were replaced by a drip irrigation system. The rock retaining walls and graceful stairs were added.
Ornamental grasses are highlights at this time of year and on through the winter. As the homeowners and designers of this garden have done, the Ashland Garden Club urges gardeners to take care in choosing ornamental grasses that are not fire-prone, and to remove dead and dry growth.
The couple handle all the maintenance themselves and, as busy professionals, they are grateful that their yard is so easy-care. Elysian particularly likes the guara and Lou likes the Japanese maple.
Photos by Lou Martinez
Article by: Ruth Sloan, AGC GOM Committee Chair
Garden of the Month: August 2023
Alicia and Jeffrey Welder had their welcoming house at 98 Westwood Street built in 2015. The lovely garden that surrounds it was initiated in stages on the bare earth after that, and is now the Ashland Garden Club’s Garden of the Month for August 2023. Working with Regenesis Ecological Design and designer Jane Alexanderr, the Welders created a space ideal for their two children and animals including two dogs, two cats and four rabbits, as well themselves and visitors.
The entry garden was designed to include a water feature that is audible from inside the house on days when the windows are left open, a graceful curved bench, and one of Alicia’s favorite plants, a weeping dwarf dawn redwood. The front garden space is meant to resemble a small meadow teeming with life as pollinators enjoy the catmint and salvia while the children are able to spend time playing and observing nature with the many life forms in and around the water. The front grass areas are seeded with Pro Time’s Fleur de Lawn, which is an eco-lawn designed with OSU for low water requirements.
The backyard is a child’s delight with a large grass area for play planted with JB kevlar tall fescue, grown in Oregon, which tolerates the high traffic of children and pets and is drought tolerant with lower water requirements than traditional lawns. A small orchard is planted with a variety of apple, pear and peach fruit trees and seeded with the same Fleur de Lawn as the front meadow. The eco lawn offers additional pollinator support with pink English daisies, Baby Blue Eyes, and sweet alyssum sprouting in the spring. Alicia and the children love picking the wild flowers from the meadow for May Day crowns and small bouquets. Tall grasses and wildflowers surround the childrens’ play structure for nature based play with a slackline for added fun. A gazebo for shade rounds out the backyard space for use year round by the family. A very large rabbit hutch gives shelter to the children’s rabbits who enjoy the cut grasses and trimmings from the garden and in turn, support the garden growth with plenty of bunny manure. A large deck graces the back of the house.
There are many flowers throughout the year, including peonies, euphorbias, daisies, iris, germanders, hydrangeas, and hellebores. The Welders love to watch pollinators hard at work in their garden. Among the many trees are Seiryu and sugar maples that add vibrant colors in the Fall.
For fire prevention, the Garden Club urges homeowners to check lists of firewise plants to make sure that, like the Welders, they have chosen ornamental grasses that are not especially fire-prone and maintained so that there is not a lot of dry grass at any time.
Taproot Landscaping provides routine maintenance for the Welders and Alicia averages one to two hours per week doing the fine-tuning of the garden.
Flower Poster
Poster By: Goly Osotvar, AGC Member