Garden Support Systems
Tracing invisible synergy in the garden
I’m writing this to praise the workings of nature and present gardening in partnership with all life. I’m not bragging, but my first garden at this new site has amazed me. There may even be angels helping, and I see help from the larger ecosystem of the surrounding life.
A family of wild turkeys scratches under the two bird feeders. There are spilled seeds just for them. I rake up the remains of dead plant material that has been put here months ago. The turkey scratching has turned it into small pieces. I soak it overnight and then layer it in a compost pile. Turkey droppings are part of this mixture. I call this area the turkey composter.
Lady Eve Balfour used chickens in a fixed pen where they were given kitchen scraps and old plants. The turkey composter uses wild birds for a similar function. The turkeys come running every morning and evening for any spilled seed or plant materials that may be available. They have learned to stand up on the birdbath for a drink.
The compost made here is now being dug into the beds as I plant flowers and veggies for next spring. The whole garden was started with three inches of compost on top of the cover crops in late February and March and with wood chips in the pathways. I have been amazed at the production this first year.
The garden site was compacted by machinery that built the rock wall. The rocks were everywhere. The wall is rock from digging an 18-inch foundation for our house. Just to drive the machine to the wall required moving more rock out of the way. Sometimes the machine was surrounded with rocks, while Tom, the wall maker, moved them onto the wall. I wondered if he dug up just as many from the wall area as he took from the foundation pile. Somehow he found spaces in the wall for the rocks. I started the garden in a flat compacted space. Yes, I often remove rocks when I dig in the beds, and there are three spots I can think of where the rock is too big to move. All the rest of the beds are productive.
I ask myself what magic is going on here. The pests don’t eat much and come into an equilibrium with their predators. Even the leaf miners in the chard disappeared. The hornworms on the tomatoes seem to have finished their gorging. I fed four of them to the wild birds. A jay came to get them shortly after I put three out on a rock away from the garden. There are a few aphids now on old broccoli plants that are finished. Goldfinches have eaten some patches out of the sunflower leaves. We are sharing. There is a system here.
The word synergy describes an interaction of two or more agents to produce a combined effect greater than the sum of their separate effects. This is the magic. For example, hidden under the upturned plastic garbage can are two frogs or toads. Imagine how many insects they eat. Probably some of those insects are pests.
Much of the magic in the garden is unseen. I don’t see what the frogs do at night. I don’t know if the ensatina salamanders come out of their tunnels at night to eat insects. I see evidence of a mole now, the low round mound. They eat earthworms and till soil. They add their droppings to the soil in their underground passageways. I am glad to have them. Snapdragons get a type of rust disease, but mine got the disease as the plants became spent and ready to compost. A disease when a plant is finishing its cycle is a way to begin the plant’s disintegration. This is a natural cycle, like when sunflower plants get aphids and ants to milk them. That happens as the growing season ends. I don’t know what insect ate the leaf miners in the chard leaves. I tried to remove some, but could not keep up with all of the damaged leaves. There are plants with small flowers for the tiny parasitic wasps to feed on, plants like alyssum and the wild carrot relatives. Perhaps it was the parasitic wasps that got the leaf miners.
“Feed the soil, the soil feeds the plants, and the plants feed you.” -Alan Chadwick. Alan transformed a hillside at the University of California at Santa Cruz campus in 1967 when I was there. I was inspired by his garden. I focus on building healthy soil. That takes years, I thought. Last winter, I did everything I could to bring the compacted soil to life. I even made a tea of worm castings from my worm bin to spray on the beds. The Johnson-Su studies are showing an increase in productivity with an increase in soil microorganisms, so the tea added different microorganisms. I didn’t double-dig the garden beds like Alan did. That was beyond my capacity. This is a 40-foot square garden and there is another 20-foot square garden all fenced from the deer. These gardens are producing well with the layering of compost over cover crops on the beds and wood chip mulch on the paths.
I don’t add liquid fertilizers. I sometimes add a feather-meal-based organic fertilizer. That takes time to break down. The plant nutrients are probably balanced; there is not a sudden burst of nitrogen fertilizer to cause fast growth and attract aphids. Maybe the magic is in the fungal strands in the layer of compost. The fungal mycelium can mine nutrients off of tiny particles of soil. The soil life has had since late February to develop.
I am reminded of the practice of reviewing your goals in regenerative farming. This method puts the farmer in the equation. For example, I need to have beauty in my surroundings that enhances the natural environment, so I grow other landscaping plants besides native plants. I have water bowls for the songbirds and the deer because I love to watch them. I grow plants my grandmother grew because that makes me happy.
I hear and read reasons not to attract deer and turkeys to your landscaping. The deer do eat what fruit tree leaves and branches that they can reach and eat the flowers off the geraniums. It seems to me they come eagerly to the water bowl and leave quickly. Because they are always watching for predators, they don’t stay in one place for long. I am glad they get water here. I heard someone say that turkeys attract predators like coyotes. I am glad to have predators around eating gophers, voles, and mice that cause problems in the garden like a few eaten dahlia tubers. (There are many more dahlias doing well.)
My pets are two cats with habits that keep them safe from predators. They come in every night. They rarely eat birds, because they will face my wrath if caught. They spend lots of time in trees or under the storage shed. They eat rodents occasionally.
Pollinators have all types of blooms that grow throughout the seasons. I see many types of native bees, wasps, and honeybees all pollinating the flowers. I made swarm buckets for the honey bees in case they need them. I will leave some uncut stems for the overwintering of some of these insects.
I bring appreciation and gratitude with me into the garden. I am grateful to have this opportunity to garden here and hope that my work intertwines with the plants that are already here. I try to position new plants so they complement the existing trees and shrubs. These unseen sentiments may play a part in the garden.
I wish I knew more about the unseen forces that keep this garden in balance. When I study about a new animal in the garden, I learn of new connections that make a balanced ecosystem. I know that being considerate of all types of life makes a difference. It seems to me that recognizing kinship with living things leads to bountiful gardens. The living things range from tiny invisible soil life to predators like coyotes and owls.
