Propane Tank in the Garden, Revisited

My karate teacher was fond of saying, “When you think you know, you don’t know.” Add in the old saws about not believing everything you hear and looks being deceiving, and you’ll understand why we changed our minds about moving our propane tank. (See original post at http://loisdevries.blogspot.com/2008/08/eyesores-in-garden.html).

It turned out not to be all that expensive: $50 for a permit; $40 for two trenching tools; and $106 for the propane company to send two installers and a boom truck to swap out the old tank for a new one.

And we lucked out with the ledge --- we were able to dig down nearly a foot to create a new landing pad for the tank without hitting rock, even though the ledge juts out on either side of this spot. We dug and refilled the trench for the line to the house ourselves.

There was one moment of trepidation when the installers told me that the boom wouldn’t reach the new site unless I let them drive their monstrous truck into my lavender garden. I hesitated for a minute, but recognized that I hadn’t had them get this far just to scrap the whole idea. Besides, they had already removed the old tank!

So, nerves on edge, I watched as they set aside my flagstone edging and skillfully maneuvered the boom truck between my lavender plants. As it turned out, the bottom of the truck was so high off the ground that it didn’t even touch the tops of the plants. Good job, guys. I don’t have to replace a single plant.

The new tank is not without it’s own problems. Now, instead of the yellow submarine, I’ve got Moby Dick out front. And he’s got a big red logo and cap. There’s also a clear view of the narrow end of the tank from the back yard, so we still have design issues to overcome. BUT. We accomplished several of our goals.

First, by moving the tank, we don’t have to solve the problem of how to disguise the tank from above, since we can no longer see the top of it from the windows.

Second, even though the propane company felt it necessary to raise the tank higher than we would have liked, its profile is still lower than what the old one was, so we won’t see as much of it, even in the winter.

Third, we freed up a portion of the front yard that will increase the size of the lavender garden by about 40%. Since that section is not underlain by drainage material, we’ll be able to plant anything we want.

Fourth, the profile of the tank is now narrow enough that a low rock wall fronted by nearly any plant three feet or taller will hide it from view.

Remember, when you think you know, you don’t know. I have lived on this spot on and off for my entire life, and was absolutely certain that it was impossible to dig out a flat space of the size we needed without using dynamite. But once I became motivated enough to ask Dan to poke around with the crowbar and see what might be possible, we found that the perfect solution had been there all along.

Edible Plants in the Landscape

This month’s Garden Design Workshop is on edible plants http://www.gardeninggonewild.com/?p=2213#more-2213. I doubt that there are many of us who don’t at least have a potted patio tomato every summer, if only in self-defense against those red tennis balls they sell in the supermarkets. This year, I added some type of super-100 hybrid cherry tomato that I grew from seed, and seedlings of Cherokee Purple, one of the best-tasting beefsteak-style tomatoes ever.

If you’re a perfectionist, Cherokee Purple is not for you. The fruits grow into strange shapes, have a peculiar color that is neither green, nor purple, nor red, crack, and do not reveal when they’re ripe. Mine were clinging to their vines with an unbelievable tenacity way past the time they should have been picked, until I figured them out. Their thick skin doesn’t soften, either. I learned to bounce them around in my hand and try to “weigh” whether they were “done.” They were worth every bit of effort.

The cherry tomatoes fruited profusely and my patio tomato was its usual, reliable insurance policy. Tomato towers from Gardeners Supply Company http://www.gardeners.com/Tomato-Towers/35-780,default,pd.html made the job of keeping the plants under control and the fruit off the ground much easier.

Seeds from last fall’s centerpiece, a warty, pink, Galeux d’Eysines squash were planted next to the tomatoes. I got only one pink and green striped fruit; no warts, but a new batch of cheery flowers every morning, which I admired, but didn’t eat. The squash will go into next week’s soup.

I also tried a few greens --- spinach, Swiss chard, lettuce, and arugula, which I put out in their pots as an experiment. All but the arugula became rabbit chow in no time.

My food plants all grow on a sunny berm, in amongst the roses, ironweed, beauty berry, and lilac --- the sunniest space in the back yard. I moved a bunch of strawberry plants there as well, not so much for the berries, since chipmunks don’t wait for them to ripen, but rather in an attempt to crowd out the crown vetch that was trucked in with some topsoil.

Out front is the lavender garden, which I never thought of as food until I tried some lavender cookies on a recent garden tour. A single chive plant keeps company with perennials in another bed. Cuban sage, regular sage, lemon verbena, parsley, marjoram, thyme, and basil spent the summer in galvanized window boxes placed at the base of our porch columns.

Next year, I plan to add some cucumbers and figure out how to grow greens that we actually get to eat ourselves.

CowPots™: Molded Manure

If you haven’t yet heard of them, CowPots™ are made from 100% Cow-Poo that is molded into plant pots for seedlings. They are about as organic as one can get and, unlike peat pots, completely renewable. (Insert feed into front of cow, raw material for pots exits at rear end.)

When I spoke to inventor/dairy farmer Matt Freund at the Garden Writers symposium, I was beside myself with excitement as I listened to his story, because our little corner of New Jersey has lost nearly all of its dairy farms to housing developments.

My passion for this product is on three levels. The first is that I love cows and Matt and his brother Ben have found a way to generate another income stream that can keep their small farm profitable. I still mourn the loss of the farm next door to me to a housing development in the 1980s. I had lived on that farm for a while as a child and, even after mom bought her own lot and built a small house with the help of Grandpa and my uncles, I still went down to help herd the cows into the barn. When they dynamited the barn and moved in the bulldozers I cried for days.

Second, the Freunds have managed to produce a closed, self-sustaining system in which the methane produced by the manure is collected and used to heat the farmhouse and some farm buildings, as well as to "cook" the manure. (To read the whole story, click http://www.cowpots.com/history.html). The heating process separates it into solids and liquid. The liquid is returned to the fields to fertilize forage for the cows, and the fibrous composted solids are used to manufacture the plant pots. At the same time they are making something that’s good for your garden, they are reducing the nutrient load on their farm --- important for maintaining a healthy farm and clean water --- and lowering their dependence on fossil fuels.

And third, because CowPots™ break down quickly once they are planted in the garden (3 – 4 weeks), there’s nothing for us to recycle. Yet, they are sturdy enough to last up to 12 weeks before they go into the ground. Once the manure pot gets wet, it naturally fertilizes the seedlings, although it may be necessary to supplement as you would with any pot. CowPots™ come in 3” and 4” sizes, so seedlings can stay in the same pot until they are ready to be set out.

My overly sensitive nose detected absolutely no odor to my samples, but my cat and dogs seemed exceptionally interested in them for a short time. However, the novelty quickly passed.

Unfortunately, I’ll have to wait until spring to try them out, but I have the perfect candidates: Cherokee Purple tomato and Galeux d’Eysines squash.

The Freunds recently struck a deal with The Liquid Fence Company® to market and distribute their product so that they could get back to doing what they do best. There are many of us who still appreciate small farmers. May they live long and prosper.

Integrating Stormwater Management One House at a Time

One of the most exciting gardens we visited on the GWA after-tour to Eugene, Oregon was Debbie Olsen’s Stormwater Management Demonstration Home. Tucked away in a development of otherwise ordinary houses, Debbie’s home and garden is a fully-integrated stormwater management system consisting of a 1,000-square foot vegetated roof garden filled with succulents, a 600-gallon cistern that captures and regulates the runoff, a vegetated flow path that carries the cistern’s overflow to a storm pond, and a series of swales that directs the water through the garden and into to a drywell, where it seeps back into the soil. The entire, self-contained system is compatible with its natural surroundings and the rest of the neighborhood.

This is a great example of a co-operative public/private partnership that includes watershed groups, water and stream monitoring groups, engineering, design and construction firms, landscape material suppliers and, of course, the homeowner who paid for all of it.

This type of forward-thinking sustainable environmental design is something that needs to move from grant-funded, subsidized, or donated demonstration projects into the mainstream of the building and construction industry. In New Jersey, stormwater management regulations require that all stormwater remain on-site. But developers are still using the tired old remedies of vast acres of nearly-impermeable turf punctuated by engineered holes in the ground (read detention basins), that are neither practical nor pretty.

This demonstration house and garden does away with any pretense of a traditional front yard with lawn. Handling the rainwater requires sharp drainage and plants that can handle both drought and occasional inundation. The result is not-quite-a-cottage garden that retains the cottagey feel.

The house itself is small by current standards (2,800 square feet), but emphasizes quality rather than quantity, along the lines of “not-so-big” homes. It incorporates a range of design features that includes passive solar design, a solar water heater, non-toxic materials and Forest Stewardship Council certified structural beams and decking, super-insulated offset stud framing in the north and east walls, and sustainably-harvested local wood products in the finishes.

The irony of sustainable environments, both interior and exterior, is that they generally cost more. Reinforced beams, special roofing membranes, and specialized maintenance to hold and tend the roof soil and succulents; the cistern, and the engineering and materials for the drainage system, all have to be factored in at the beginning.

But it’s a start. If more homeowners and developers would begin thinking about how these types of designs, engineering, and materials can be integrated into the building industry, we wouldn’t have to look any further for solutions than our own back yard.

This stormwater management demonstration home and garden was designed and constructed by HABITATS, http://www.habitatsinc.com.