Took this yankee years to realize peppers are perennials! Couldn't let old man winter kill this ornamental Black Pearl (grown from seed by yours truly). Kept a few Pablano plants for the hubby.
Posted on 02/22/2009 12:44:31 PM PST by Diana in Wisconsin
Why is America so in love with pristine, empty front lawns that isolate neighbor from neighbor, require dirty fuels to mow, harsh chemicals to prevent weeds and loads of water to keep green? What happens when those lawns are ripped out and replaced with an edible landscape?
Those controversial questions are at the heart of internationally acclaimed architect/artist Fritz Haeg's work over the last five years, and were the subject of a talk he presented Thursday as part of Olbrich Garden's Midwest Gardening Symposium.
The symposium, attended by over 160 gardeners, included four other speakers who were part of a day-long program touting the benefits and pleasures of edible gardens, a subject made more urgent by the current economy and issues surrounding food costs and safety.
The symposium was a collaborative effort between Olbrich and the University of Wisconsin's Allen Centennial Gardens.
An increasingly influential young artist whose work is supported by major institutions like the Whitney in New York, and the Tate Modern in London, Haeg is a harsh critic of the expansive and perfectly manicured lawn. He sees it as a symbol of an idealized elitism that has encouraged Americans to separate themselves from each other, and from the natural world.
Projects like his Edible Estates and Animal Estates have been featured in the New York Times, major design publications and on National Public Rado.
In communities from Salina, Kansas to Los Angeles, and Maplewood, New Jersey to London, Haeg has helped individuals tear up their front lawns and replace them with edible yards.
He has chosen communities where making a garden front yard out of lawn creates some tension and controversy, issuing a deliberate challenge to the notion that our idealized home should be viewed in an empty, park-like setting. Those conformist ideas are reinforced in many places by long-ingrained habits, or even by community covenants or ordinances.
His work includes extensive documentation of the process and reaction to the edible yards over time. Haeg's book describing the project, "Edible Estates: Attack on the Front Lawn" was offered for sale at the talk. Shortly after the artist's appearance, all 50 copies ($24.95) sold out.
Haeg -- lanky, soft-spoken and amusing -- wore a knit hat throughout his Madison appearance, but assured the audience he was not put off by Thursday's deep cold and bitter wind, even though he had just flown in from his home and studio in Los Angeles.
"I'm a 4th, maybe 5th, generation Minnesotan," he said. "I was born and raised under these conditions."
Haeg, a gardener himself, made a strong case for lawns as an environmental and social disaster. But even some of those in the Olbrich audience who identified themselves as unabashed lawn mowers said they appreciated what he had to say.
"I mean, what kind of company makes a sign with little cartoon kids and dogs crossed out?" Haeg asked to ripples of laughter as he showed his audience a slide of the kind of warning signs chemical lawn care companies post after applying pesticides to a yard.
The rest of the day's speakers also encouraged home gardeners to think about adding more food to their gardening practices.
Jennifer Bartley, a landscape architect and author of the book "Designing the New Kitchen Garden: An American Potager," showed how gardens kept in close proximity to our homes and filled with herbs, fruits and vegetables have nourished the human spirit and stomach from the beginning of time. She advocates bringing such gardens back into the residential landscape, for aesthetic reasons as well as practical ones.
Mark Dwyer, director of horticulture for Janesville's Rotary Botanical Gardens, is an expert on combining garden-fresh vegetables and herbs as an edible part of spectacular landscaping. In his talk, he showed how perennial flower beds can share space with edible annuals, and how it's possible to make a garden as nutritious as it is beautiful.
Other speakers included Janet Macunovich from Pennenial Favorites in Michigan who is an expert on using color in the garden, and David Cavagnaro, a professional photographer and manager of the genetic preservation gardens for Seed Savers Exchange in Iowa, discussing the use of heirloom vegetables in contemporary gardens.
Neefer,
Are you winter sowing green peppers? You must be in a fairly warm climate. I’m jealous. :)
I have to start my ‘maters and peppers indoors here in MN. I’m eyeballing all of the perennial seed I collected last year though. I think most of them would be great candidates for the WS route.
What I would like to see is an intelligent hydroponic system that is optimized for food production, not marijuana. The technology just kind of halted at marijuana, and all the promised vegetable goodness never materialized in a big sort of way.
That being said, a practical vegetable garden should grow staple foods, like potatoes, beans, carrots and onions, not “accessory vegetables”, with limited nutritional value.
Just because you replace your grass with a garden doesn’t mean you grow vegetables in the soil. A greenhouse with several tiers of plants saves a great deal of aggravation from insects and birds.
If someone could invent a standard system, optimized for a suburban back yard in a given climate, it would put the old victory gardens to shame.
MOther Nature is mocking us, toying with our minds.
I did winter sow some tomato seeds. Folks on GW swear they catch up and then surpass indoor transplants. But I'm not willing to try all of my tomatoes that way. I participated in a tomato seed exchange with Canadians and have used many of those seeds for a winter sowing experiment since many are early, cold tolerant varieties. Most of the winter sown stuff are annual flowers.
I have plenty of tomato seeds left. If you want to try winter sowing tomatoes, email me your address and I can send you some seeds.
That pic of your flower bed is lovely. My flower beds get less attention now that I'm growing more veggies.
Wow! I didn’t know peppers could be overwintered. You just gave me another “pampering” project for next year. It makes sense as I know people that grow those ornamental type peppers year round.
Thanks for your kind offer of tomato seeds. I’m enlisting one of my friend’s husband who has a great growing set-up to start the tomatoes this year. He’s stocked up with Brandywine seed and some other heirlooms. I’ll probably pick up a couple of hybrids as seedlings. Like you, our warm season crops can’t go in until June 1st.
Thanks for the nice compliment on the flowers. They do have to kind of duke it out themselves because I’m also growing a lot more veggies than I used to. I tried sweet corn last year (Kandy Korn) and what a big disappointment that was. Then I slapped myself in the forehead and went ‘D’oh.’ Our backyard abuts a cornfield and I think my sweet corn cross-pollinated with the field corn. Live and learn. *Sigh*
I’m getting ready to put in raspberry and blackberry bushes soon. I find myself looking out the window to the spot where they’ll be planted with longing many times throughout the day! :-)
Tomatoes and other veggies go in this spring. The fence to keep the animals out goes up next month!
The Madison area has a ton of community gardens with waiting lists years long to get a plot. I have a lot of Mung and Peruvian customers; it’s a little hard to communicate, and everyone seems to have the SAME last name, but we manage. ;)
I have a small farm and am always looking for ways to make extra cash from it. So far I have laying hens for egg sales, but I am considering raising hens to sell because that’s ‘all the rage’ these days; to have a few hens in town. A family can have 4 of them, no roosters.
In some years I’ve done a small market stand at the end of the driveway and it’s been quite successful. In past years I’ve worked on my in-laws farm selling potted trees, picking raspberries...just about anything else that needed doing.
One year I sold cut flowers; gladiolus. It was a HUGE success.
Right now I’m working full time, but as soon as we can afford for me to be home again, I’ll get right on all the ideas I have for making money right at home, here on the farm. :)
Check these out. Lots of ideas here for efficient urban gardening:
‘The Square Foot Garden’ - Mel Bartholomew
‘How to Grow More Food on Less Land...’ - John Jeavons
‘Lasagna Gardening’ - Patricia Lanza
And if you’ve never met THESE people, you’re in for a treat. They do it all on a 1/4 acre lot in suburban CA:
Mmmmm, fresh raspberries. I love them, especially in dark chocolate brownies! Our plants are getting so overgrown I’m going to have to get in there and cut out the old canes. Scratchy, scratchy job - ouch!
I daydream out the window too. It’s an interesting time of year. So close to spring, yet so far.
That is one gorgeous plant! I love plants with unusual leaves. What are the peppers themselves like?
Whew. Sounds like it’s hotter than an habanero.
I really like spicy food, but this pepper sounds almost dangerous. Now, I wear contact lenses and I could sure tell some stories from my less-informed days. Wowza!
Yep, that’s it! Unfortunately, I don’t have any pics to post right now. I just started my garden a couple years ago when we moved into our new home. It is a work in progress! I like using low, maintenance perennials and reseeding annuals—prairie. One of my favorite reseeding annuals is verbena bonarienis. It is a tall, leggy, lavender verbena.
Any suggestions? That purple flower is gorgeous!
Wow. That Path to Freedom site is inspiring. Thanks for sharing.
Grow them in containers, and bring them in when the weather turns cold...habaneros and scotch bonnets in January...yum!
Believe it or not, when I took those pics our garden was only three years old. I’m a crazy garden nut and when we moved it took two truckloads to just bring the perennials. Then we discovered our soil was hard clay and had to dig them all up three times to amend the soil so they weren’t drowning. Yes - I am crazy when it comes to gardens. :>/
I’ve heard great things about verbena bonariensis. It’s marginally hardy here in zone 4 but I think I’ll have to give it a try this year.
I love the purples too. The delphiniums came from gracefulgardens.com as live plants. I was highly skeptical of ordering live plants online but they arrived perfectly and came back the past two years very strong. Color me impressed.
I sell a ton of those at my garden center each season. Hot little buggers, but really pretty when mixed in with blue and white annuals in a porch pot. :)
I think a habanero plant is one of the prettiest peppers around. We never use THAT many of them, but even one plant is so prolific that we take a bagful to our local Mexican restaurant each summer.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.