Geoff Colpitts

First, I write the essay... then I see it's "Gardening for Beginners".  Perhaps not beginning readers and beginning critical thinkers?

I'm not sure growing in rows is very beginner friendly (or very soil friendly, for that matter)  Germination for small seeds, which will easily dry out or rot, will always be bad on exposed, tilled earth, or at least they'll be high maintenance.  I have at times done so anyways, and committed to watching the weather like a criminal watching the hand writing out a presidential pardon, but... where was I?... but ultimately the most common method I use for carrots and parsnips is to throw a few in near other established plants.  You can't always maintain perfect moisture, but the presence of a root system will prevent some flooding, and the shade provided by the other plant prevents some drying out from wind and sun.  Unless you plan on standing there with a tiny watering spout, and if it gets too hot, with a big sheet of cardboard to shade them... so maybe plant them in specific places?

There are certainly things I grow in straight rows, like peas and beans, but for other reasons, and not always.  There was even evidence I believe (it's been 20 years at least since I read this) that aphids and ants preferred straight rows to curved ones.  One other reason I plant them in specific places is because carrot fly doesn't have such an easy time finding them and devastating the whole group at once.

If you live near a place that does seeds for farmers, they likely have a "B sized" (or bigger) pack available.  You can often get 100 seeds for 6 bucks, or... 1000 seeds for 10 bucks.  Spend the 10 bucks if you're that concerned, and experiment.  (Though you do need to buy enough to justify shipping).  It's what people do with wild seeds - I don't need all 100 lupines I gather to germinate, and neither does nature - it's not in either one's plan.  Ultimately finding one bolted lettuce that produces 700 seeds allows you a lot of leeway for experimentation the next year.  (I'd say 'bolted carrot', but I've never actually had one get to seed - they either die when young, or I pick them because they survived.)

Yes to what the other poster said about fall carrots - better to have/grow them in the fall anyways, and again, if they are exposed to intense sun at all, there's a good chance the growth will be stunted when they're an inch tall, much like children.  Human children that is, not snake children.  Was that too obvious?  I never know.  It's 'gardening for beginners', so....

That being said, carrots shouldn't be growing alone and isolated for most, if not all their lifespan - they can survive some trickier conditions because of their taproot, and others because the foliage is able to poke up above other plants', and also because it tends to push apart other plants' leaves, but ultimately if it's on its own, it looks pretty foolish to me.

The most important thing of all though is being very aware of what the weather is, and what you think it will be.  Though I water in tiny seeds, I often simply aim for the next rain to do it for me, keep an eye on them, *plant multiple seed types together*, and keep an eye on moisture already in the soil from the last rain (or whatever).  I'm rather hard on the national seed supply...  but ultimately I get a polyculture that doesn't result in rows of bad germination or empty space, leading to terrible soil health and the soil losing nutrition every time it rains heavily.  Many people in the city especially use pre-bought soil, which is also generally dead soil, and playing guessing games as to what that's going to do to seed germination is not 'fun'.  Better to spend a little more, hedge one's bets, and not tend barren soil for no reason.

You'll need to keep an eye on these things anyways, to the point of hyper-vigilance, as global climates collapse, so you might as well start planning out how to do it now.

Lastly, do remember that carrots grow in fields, wild - they aren't even mildly used to taking up a bunch of space for themselves.  Deep roots use a very different part of the soil for nutrition and water.  I grew mine this year in a row, but also with a bunch of weeds growing in between them and shading them at times.  I watered them once, probably ought to have been thrice.  Ended up split carrots of course, perhaps 1 of out every 6, which for xeriscaping isn't that bad... but the issue is also that it was zero effort, and while there were certainly a few too many weeds interspersed that I didn't get rid of, that's a skill issue.

Think about how it would grow in the wild, and how it would manage to germinate in the wild where it has competition, even if it's an entirely 'bred' plant.  That goes for all plants.  Our job is to steward it - give it preferential treatment without disrupting the ecosystem - you can either do that by standing next to the barely-covered seed and mist it every 10 minutes, or you can stop planting things like a 13th century farmer, in exposed rows because you ploughed the soil in order to scrape enough nutrition out of it to pay for the King's next war.

Of course, the easy answer to all this was "bad soil, bad moisture levels, maybe bad temperature", like 99% of everything else.

James Bridger wrote:I've got 4 bottles of dandelion wine ageing in the basement, from last spring. I know dandelion wine is supposed to be good, and I followed a proven recipe, but it was pretty nasty right after fermentation. Supposedly dandelion wine needs time to age, though, so i;; crack open a bottle this spring, once new dandelions start coming up, and see if it's transformed into something good.

99% of the time that means you let some of the green base of the flower petals get in the mix, or god help you, part of the stem.  Dandelion wine should be very light in flavour.

Scissors or a knife are useful for separating petals from their base, but ultimately, if your fingers are dextrose enough (wine making pun!... oh... now I hate myself...) you can just develop a very quick "grab and twist" method that will separate the petals without losing much of the pollen.

Ray Sauder wrote:I firmly straddle the fence on this topic.  I have a very large boulevard with 42 different flowering weeds growing along with grass.  (I have larger wheels and lowered wheel mounts to get a 1 foot high cut to showcase the flowers.)  The dandelions are awesome - beautiful yellow flowers, dynamic accumulators, shelter for little grass seedlings under their leaves,  dew collectors, survive the summer drought, etc.  They help other plants right up to the time when THEY KILL THEM DEAD and take over the kingdom!

So I compromise and let them live 1 full year.  Each spring before the flowers turn to seed, I dig up ALL dandelions, getting the whole root, and chopping the plants fine for fertilizer.  At the same time I plant a spring bulb into the hole left by the tap root and pay attention to everything else growing in my wildflower lawn.  I have thousands and thousands of scilla, siberian squill, snow drops, grape hyacinths, crocus, star of bethlehem, etc. etc. finished blooming and some needing to be transplanted, having roamed too far from home.   The other plants blooming along with the dandelions are thousands and thousands of violets, and dandelions are one of only a few seeds that can successfully take root among the violets.  I have other plants among the violets but they need my assistance to grow there.  Did I mention dandelions are low maintenance?  They need no help arriving; only help to keep moving along and leave....

This might seem like a lot of work but there is a surprising thing about dandelion seeds.  Unlike other nasties that can survive 50 years to plague future owners, dandelion seeds last only a year or two.  So keeping a sort of dandelion-free lawn is pretty easy.  

I'll give you another bit of information you will never see anywhere else.  It would be nice to have a plant which is allopathic to dandelions, meaning it will kill them or at least not allow new seedlings to sprout.  There is one! - autumn hawkbit.  O.K. it looks like a dandelion so average observers might think I actually do have dandelions.  But the hawkbits are a kinder, gentler version.  The flowers are smaller, with many on one stalk.  They prevent even their own seed from sprouting so they spread out nicely rather than hogging all the space in one spot.  And they bloom in the heat of late summer when not much else is trying very hard.  If there is one drawback its that the flower stalks are pretty tall and leggy.  Now that my wanted weeds are well established, it is time to shorten the lawn height and with that I will encourage my hawkbits to evolve locally to bloom on shorter stalks.

Ray Sauder

First: on fence straddling, I used to do that, but I've recently been told by my doctor that it's a bad idea and now I need an ultrasound.

Second:  The big disadvantage of dandelions is their simple pollen - not nutritious for bees, though many will assume that 'the big field of dandelions has got to be great for them'.  Like many plants, it thrives in destroyed ecosystems, and urban and rural areas alike are likely to be destroyed ecosystems at present (and I think that while this comment can be read, it will likely continue to be the case, so... great?)  "Naturally" they should have a place - in terms of natural cycles, they make sure fall rains don't destroy soil nutrition, like every pioneer.  The issue is that you mentioned 'dandelion free lawns' really.

The reason they'd be so good at transporting seeds is largely that - they have a niche, but are probably very 'confused' as to why their niche seems to be 'everywhere'.  There's no need for them to actually be so good at seeding when we wreck everything that might compete with them.

Hawkbits, Cat's Ear, Chicory - they all have the same qualities as dandelions do, breaking up soil and reducing the impact of rain.  I think that ultimately the should coexist quite well with grasses geometrically.  If they take over though, I think that's a sign the ecosystem needs to move on, or that the ecosystem is too much under stress.  Everything you mentioned was a small, short flowering plant - that's pretty one dimensional to me.  The dandelions are likely going to thrive mainly because they are needed to keep the place from loosing too much soil nutrition, as nothing else is likely to hold much in.

Ultimately I think that unless the soil depth is naturally very shallow then it's simply a matter that only the dandelions have any significant root depth.  In a lawn they can certainly help the natural cycle progress, as can any kind of long root (Fukuoka recommended planting daikon and then just letting it rot in the ground to create better soil.)  That does beggar the question though - does the soil really benefit from it?

One last thing - dandelion roots for roasting apparently taste better in year 2.  Also I have seen mention of 'dandelion crowns barbequed', though it does require very clean crowns.  They would blanch themselves naturally, so I imagine after a quick parboil they'd be excellent.  Upright specimens would work well - something that had to compete, but had decent soil nutrition in the first place I imagine.

The other reason for spreading well is that if there aren't enough pollinators, they actually clone themselves.  It does mean that they will act oddly, adapting inconsistently to their surroundings.

I've seen many people advise/note the use of horsetail fibres because they're rich in silica, though I've not used them myself.  Useful for those who find that horsetail is coming up everywhere and they can't be eaten because of the sketchy soil.

I find that long handled brushes beat out dishcloths by a large factor.  Lever/place to stand/move the world etc.  

I use a "bottle cleaning brush" made with tampico fibre (agave I think).  The top portion flattens out and looks like it's going to fall apart after a few days, but it's been fine for 6 months now.  Might be a little precious as a solution, but honestly I wonder if the skills required to make them are that unreasonable.  Wood carving, source of hard fibre, glue....  we do far less practical things.  10$ and it'll last me a year, and it's very easy on the wrists.

Read James C Scott's book "Against the Grain".  Or at least the portion on wetlands.  It's very accessible.

More than just being the lungs of the planet, wetlands outproduce every other ecosystem for materials and food.  The whole reason that nations hate them is historically simply because the wetlanders didn't need the roman road, the roman patrol, or the roman administration, so every single nation gets rid of wetlands because ultimately they are deemed "untaxable".

And now we preserve them... except that we don't, because city planners think that you can just put a hard line around them.  If you build houses around a wetland, it compacts the soil around the edge, and the wetland shrinks.  The only downside to "owning" a functioning (crucial word there of course) wetland should really be the envy of your neighbors.

Geoff Colpitts wrote:
You're not, I assume, creating a time capsule or a bomb shelter, I assume.

I'm never going to live down my shameful treatment of the I assume twins.

I liked this video, and for me that's saying a lot.



Time:  Depends on the length of stratification you need.  Depending on where you are, you probably have time for artificial strat. if you only need 30-45 days.  Some need 60-90, some need alternating heat and cold.

I wouldn't recommend it though - plant an annual mix this year, or just keep one in arrears in case seeds don't sprout, and plan stratification more carefully for next year.  Or stratify a few in soil mixtures in various ways, see what works with this very limited study, and transplant next year.  Depending on how young the orchard is, you may not really want too much fruit anyways, and could perhaps just protect some few fruits individually.

You can also transplant nettle roots fairly easily.  There are plenty of other plants that are deer resistant - https://satinflower.ca/ can search for 'deer' if you're in the PNW.  For repelling deer, lavender aren't going to grow enough this year anyways.

Cook your young hostas btw.

Seeds keep better in paper than in plastic.  This according to Territorial Seeds founder Steve Solomon.  You're not, I assume, creating a time capsule or a bomb shelter, I assume.

If you need seeds to last longer than they will in paper, that's a skill issue about your gardening, not a need to save seeds forever.

As for larger seeds, if you really have no place in your home that has the ability to dry large seeds when they're still in the pods, just keep them away from the kitchen and near the floor, since humidity rises.

If you really can't save large seeds even after all that, you've likely got the wrong plant or variety for your area in the first place.

According to Pascal Badaur, their position in the ecology is "meal".
Though I believe his book and others disagree about which variety - pill, or non pill - are edible.  One variety is a millipede, which is inedible... you'll look it up anyways.

As for eating seedlings, the contest seems silly to me:  if they prefer leaf litter, then likely it's just our all too natural tendency to clean up our gardens - cleanliness is only next to godliness in medicine and... something witty.  Give them leaf litter to eat and they may not bother with your seedlings to any large degree.  If the population explodes, you probably just killed all your centipedes and ground beetles etc. etc.