The good ol' Chop and Drop

October 19th, 2021

Once upon a time, I subscribed to the tidy garden theory. A plant here, and another there, and nice clear black soil space in between (that had to be weeded regularly). 

That's changed over time. I took the Master Composter/Recycler course from the city of Edmonton 15 years ago, and learned many things. Through it, I rediscovered a friend/university buddy I hadn't seen in years. Mark had become an MCR educator who eventually became a Master Gardener/soil science fanatic too, and who tells me that bare soil is dying soil. 

Basically, bare soil is unprotected so it's getting baked and dried out, losing nutrients and moisture, and more susceptible to weeds. Mark taught me about using compost as mulch, and more recently, another MCR friend, Mildred, introduced me to her way of allowing plants to drop their foliage on the soil as natural fertilizer and protection.

Chop and Drop, she calls it, and I'm a convert. Rather than buying large quantities of garden centre mulch to cover soil and keep it moist, I use autumn leaves and leave my perennials to die back naturally in the fall. In the spring, I simply chop and drop anything that's left standing to tidy up my yard. 

Of course, chopped stems and stalks don't look quite as neat as bare soil or as uniform as wood chips, but they compost more quickly and actually started to feed the soil last fall as their nutrients leached into the ground during freeze-thaw cycles. Their stems are lighter and allow for some aeration as they decompose, even as they hold moisture in the soil.

In a world where we are facing so many environmental issues, Chop and Drop means that no garbage trucks are hauling my yard waste 85 km to the Ryley landfill, because it's being used to rejuvenate my soil. By reusing natural debris from plants to hold in moisture and enrich my garden, I'm not contributing to the destruction of trees for wood chips, I need no chemical fertilizers, and I've got my very own carbon capture and storage program!

April 29th, 2022

On April 29th, I chopped and dropped last fall's leftover stems and stalks in my perennial beds. It looks a bit messy at the moment, but once things get growing, it's barely noticeable -- except that it means I rarely have to water in the summer, and when I do, the moistened soil is protected by a layer of naturally composting leaves, stems and other plant debris.

The good ol' Chop and Drop is basically how God keeps things green and growing (the wind, birds, storms, and other natural things are the choppers and droppers). I highly recommend it. It can work in vegetable gardens too (but do it in the fall and dig the plant leftovers into the soil so they're absorbed/composted by spring). Your soil will thank you by being light and rich and full of life!

Give my front yard garden about a month and a half, and you won't even notice my chop and drop mulch...

Last June

Simple Suggestion #122 revisited... Learn to like dandelions

When I first wrote this moodling about dandelions in 2012, I had a much different attitude toward them than I do today. I spent hours and hours with my "weed hound," digging them out of our lawn in the company of my neighbour, Olga, who was doing the same in her yard. We were in solidarity, complaining about how the seeds from the little area park across the street blew into our yards and messed up our turf.

Since then, Olga has moved into senior's housing, we've used lasagna gardening to replace our front lawn with a big perennial bed, and my view of dandelions has changed. I've come to see them as a valuable part of our Edmonton ecosystems, providing the earliest food source for our bee populations.

Bees, both wild and domestic, aren't as plentiful as they used to be, thanks to climate change, pesticides and herbicides. Every year I seem to run across bees that aren't doing well, that seem to be reeling from illness (pesticide use?) or maybe it's just exhaustion because they work so hard. Regardless, the bee deaths I keep witnessing have distressed me to the point that it's a lot harder to pull up all the yellow flowers that so many of us view as the scourge of the green rectangles we cultivate in front of our homes.

So I've come up with something of a compromise. I let the yellow flowers bloom, and when they turn white, I pick and toss them if I have time. White seed heads aren't much use to bees anyway, and using so many hours of my life digging weeds isn't a great way to spend energy when I could be planting more flowers.

I've come to a place where I can live with imperfection in my yard, especially if it means more food for our bumbling friends. So rather than digging up all those dandies, I keep them down to a dull roar by pulling them when I can. Sometimes after a good rain I am lucky and get them out right to the end of their roots, but most times, they have a chance to bloom again later in the season. More bee food.

And it's okay, because perfect green rectangles are highly overrated, and our pollinators can't be! Our planet's food chain would be much more secure if we could garden like God does, playing no favourites -- and just learn to like dandelions, or at least put up with a few here and there!

P.S. Looking for more Simple Suggestions? Click here.

A Sunday lesson from the garden

With the early spring we're having here, I've already turned my winter compost pile and started cleaning up some of last fall's leftover detritus. And I've been moodling about the spiritual lessons my garden gives me...

I've never considered myself to be a particularly great gardener. For one thing, I'm kinda lazy. For another, I'm not terribly persistent. As a result, weeds and grass find their way in among the plants that I'm trying to cultivate, and I often find myself overwhelmed by dandelions or chickweed, especially when I think of the perfection of some peoples' gardens, or of my favourite Butchart Gardens near Victoria, BC.

On Thursday morning, I looked at my front perennial garden and was very tempted to clear away all the organic matter from last fall, leaving only black soil and green shoots. After all, it would look a lot tidier, more Butchart-ish, more like someone actually cared about the yard.

But then, for some unknown reason, Jesus' words came into my head -- "Be perfect as your heavenly father/mother is perfect."

Ha! Like my yard could ever be perfect; like I could ever be perfect. Perfection in this world is a rare thing. Even the things we humans call perfect often aren't, or are only fleetingly so. The perfect rose withers after a few days. The perfect models in magazines are often airbrushed and photoshopped. The perfect piece of fruit has a hidden bruise or a rotten core. The perfect actor might have an over-inflated ego...

As I wondered about how God sees the perfection Jesus was talking about, I started cutting down the dead stalks of my taller plants in my messy yard. And I came upon a lupin growing right in the middle of a patch of bee balm. How did that get there? The wind must have planted it, or maybe the birds. And next to it, there was an echinacea among the golden rudbeckia. And that wasn't all. Everywhere I worked, I found odd combinations of plants growing together, chives and tulips, spurge and sandcherry, all anything but orderly, organized, or perfectly arranged.

That's when it dawned on me that God's idea of perfection is probably wider and wilder than anything we can begin to imagine. Purple lupins among red bergamot. Pink cone flowers mixed in with bright yellow brown-eyed susans. And soil covered with old leaves and sticks and last year's foliage to hold in the moisture so that everything grows better.

And so it is with our lives. Our idea of perfection is too often tied to the orderly, law-abiding, eye-catching, and ego-driven. But God often surprises us: "Why can't I plant yellow and pink together? Why can't I make people straight and gay? Why can't I forgive even those who seem unforgivable? Why can't I love everyone as much as I love you? And what's with this fixation on perfection? Don't you know that you learn and grow the most because of your imperfections? And why can't you see that perfection is defined by loving as I love, forgiving as I forgive, and accepting yourself and others as I accept you?"

I knocked down the dead stalks, left the soil covered with last fall's organic matter, and smiled to myself. The yard doesn't look "perfect" by any means, and never will, but I'm thinking of it as my collaboration with a God whose ways are not human ways and whose thoughts are not human thoughts. Who sees my imperfections as my points of growth. Whose perfection isn't even imaginable. And whose garden colour schemes and other plans are definitely wilder and more imaginative than my own could ever be.

Simple Suggestion # 219... Let sleeping plants lie

Every fall I see them, neighbours out hacking down their perennials before the snow flies, stuffing the dead leaves and stalks into garbage bags for the city to haul to its composting facilities. Those same neighbours probably look at my messy, un-hacked yard and think, what a lazy gardener she is!

Well, yes and no. Yes, in that I refuse to cut my plants down to the ground in the autumn -- but that's because I know that perennials fare better through the year's cold seasons if they are protected by last summer's decomposing growth. No, in that it all gets cleaned up in the spring when it's not so necessary for protecting my bushes and bulbs through the winter.

Raking autumn leaves out of my flower beds is also something I won't do because they are free, natural mulch. The layer of detritus that so many people pack up and toss makes a good winter home for numerous beneficial insects like ground beetles and the cheery little lady bugs that get rid of nasty, plant eating aphids and others of their ilk. Until heavy snow cover arrives, birds are always poking around in the mulch looking for a bite, and our local jack rabbits often nibble their way through. The chickadees, grosbeaks and nuthatches pick grains from the seed heads that they like, and play hide and seek in the stuff that's still standing. Of course, if you don't like nature paying you visits, it's best to get rid of all those plant leftovers. (Don't forget the benefits of winter composting, though!)

I know, leaving those plants sticking up all over the place makes a yard look messy -- but once there's a snowfall, the bumps and branches are a lot more interesting to look at than flat snowdrifts. And who really cares what the neighbours think? Once spring rolls around, cabin fever and the excess energy all gardeners get from garden hibernation will make it easy to get out and clear space for new growth. Plus, fall's already full compost bins will have shrunk through the winter to make space for a few more stalks and leaves that can later find their composted way into the summer garden, or be made into compost tea-fertilizer. The yard will look happier than ever come summer, and if the neighbours happen to wonder why, well, that's a perfect chance to educate them!

So if you didn't get your yard cleaned up before the first snowfall, fret not. You're only gardening like God does (going back to #3 of these Simple Suggestions), and actually doing your garden and its creatures a favour!

Looking for more Simple Suggestions? Click here.

Gardening like God does, Part IV

I love rainy days, though they're not the best for running around my yard taking pictures. I'm pretty wet at the moment... but I wanted to show you all the lovely things happening outside.

If you've been following my moodlings for a while, you'll know that I've moved from being a wanna-be tidy gardener with things planted in orderly rows and beds, to gardening like God does. In other words, I've turned too much of my yard into garden and I don't have enough time to whip it all into perfect organization... nor do I feel that neatness is necessary any more. What I have realized is that God doesn't plant things in tidy rows and beds, or grow perfect green rectangles of lawn without weeds, or worry about last year's left-over organic materials (read: natural mulch) strewn around plants and under bushes. She and He just lets the seeds fall where they may, and rejoices when they bloom. So that's what I'm doing, and I must admit that it makes me happier than worrying when something isn't planted in the right place. Since I was small, I was told to bloom where I'm planted, and I'm adopting the same principle for my garden.

Oh, I pull weeds, alright. I have TONS of little elm seeds, dandelions, and creeping charlies, plus I've noticed that clover, daisies, delphiniums and other things need to be pulled up all the time to make space for the stuff that wouldn't otherwise have a chance against the "I-can-grow-anywhere-anytime" bullies (though I must admit I'm having a change of heart about clover on my lawn -- it's green and kinda pretty, Shadow the puppy loves to roll in it, and it fixes nitrogen in the soil, so I think I'll let it stay put). Between maintaining our vegetable garden and weeding everywhere else too, I have plenty to keep me busy. So letting things grow where God plants them only makes sense (if they're not bully plants that want to take over the entire place) -- and I've never had happier bees or birds! They seem to love all the layers in the landscape, tall and short stuff mixed together in one glorious mess, where it's fun to hide and feed.

What makes me happiest is that my daughter has stopped saying, "Mom, don't you think we should clean up the yard?" In early spring, before everything grows, it's hard not to feel that way, except that I know there are plenty of plants under last year's detritus that will grow and hide the leaves and dead-looking stuff. And that dead-looking stuff is actually improving soil conditions by holding in moisture and feeding microorganisms that in turn, will feed the plants.

But what I love most of all are the surprises God gives me. This year, it's flame-like gaillardia, or blanket flowers, that have popped up in several places. The phlox that a friend gave me three years ago has finally decided to bloom. The rhubarb was looking sickly last year, but it's going gangbusters now, and there are purple headed chives and multi-coloured columbine all over the place. My lupins are all purple this year too (where did the pink ones go? or are they still planning to bloom?) and I've never had a lot of luck with growing echinacea, but one has appeared out of nowhere near some daisies. Best of all, there are lots of lilies, rudbeckia,  bergamot, nasturtiums, asters and poppies still to come.

Don't get me wrong -- I love gardens of all kinds, and am very impressed by neatly manicured yards and the huge amount of work that goes into keeping them so perfectly tidy. I have a few friends and relatives whose well-kept yards put mine to shame. But I'm also grateful that I have so many flowers to enjoy, growing right where they've reseeded themselves, right where God and the birds and the wind planted them.