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Weeds: Queen Anne’s Lace

February 20, 2019 by Melissa Smith Leave a Comment

This is the second in a series of blogs, shared with permission, about weeds in the garden. Each blog will discuss a common and specific weed found in Maine, its history, uses, what story it tells about the soil it grows in, and how to get rid of it. The original blogs, along with other gardening related blogs, can be found here.

Queen Anne’s Lace, daucus carota, is the ancestor of cultivated carrots. Tall and airy in appearance, it’s beautiful flowers are a haven for pollinators on the sides of roads or abandoned city plots. It can be distinguished from poison hemlock through its hairy stems and distinct, closely-bunched, flat-topped flower head. I was always told it was poisonous (not unlike Henry Holly), but have since learned that isn’t accurate.

It is generally edible. The seeds are good in soups and stews, the flower head can be battered and fried. The root is good grated, and tastes like carrots, but can become woody (like any plant in the family that has gone to seed). It contains vitamins A, B and C, biotin and also pectin.

Pliny and Dioscorides thought it had aphrodisiac properties, which may be because carrot leaves contain porphyrins which lead to the release of increased sex hormones. Chinese medicine also considers the plant useful for use as a treatment for parasites, diuretic and a bactericidal. Its thick sap has been used for cough and congestion.

Despite all of these positive qualities – there is a significant reason why women should be careful when consuming it. The plant, since Hippocrates, was prescribed as a contraceptive and abortifacient. Scribonius used it in a concoction for sterility. Pliny discusses the use of seeds for this purpose. Much later, Culpeper does as well, also preferring the seeds to the roots. Even today, some women use the seeds as a contraceptive – chewing the seeds daily during the period prior to ovulation and for a week after ovulation. There is a theory, based on Chinese research, that the seeds block progesterone synthesis.

What does it mean?

Soil where Queen Anne’s Lace thrives is typically along roadsides, pastures, building lots or really anyplace humans have disturbed the soil. McCaman suggests it’s deep taproots indicate deep soil that could be used for growing things.

The soil typically has very low amounts of phosphate, low amounts of calcium and potash, and high amounts of iron, boron, chlorine and selenium. All four of these should only be trace minerals. Pfeiffer suggests the soil itself may have good drainage and a good ability to break down dead plants in it, but may lack adequate moisture, decaying plant matter or bacteria. McCaman agrees, there is a positive correlation between the number of plants in an area and its soil fertility.

To stop it’s growth and spread, apply well-rotted humus over manure in areas when you fertilize.  The plant primarily spreads through seeds, so another good way to halt it’s growth is by cutting off the plant close to the ground after it start to go to seed. Do not cut it before the flowers start to die though, or like any carrot, it will spread from the root instead.

Want to learn more?

If you would like to learn more about weeds, why they grow, and what that means about your garden, consider the following texts:

Weeds and Why they Grow, by Jay L. McCaman

Weeds and What They Tell Us, by Ehrenfried E. Pfeiffer

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: gardening, weeds

2019 Permablitz Work Parties – Call For Hosts

February 15, 2019 by Kate Wallace Leave a Comment

It’s permablitz planning season and you’re invited!

•Are you part of a community group that could benefit from increased access to your own fruits and vegetables? From reduced water or electricity bills?

•Are you an organization doing community organizing or direct support work that has an idea for the way that small-scale energy or food/medicine production could support your work?

•Are you a tenant or a renter in an urban area wanting to increase your access to fruits and vegetables, decrease water or electric bills, and learn about and demonstrate urban gardening techniques?

•Are you a property owner in a rural, urban, or suburban area looking to build your household’s resilience and also committed to building equity in your community by leveraging your property towards community benefit? (This could look like land sharing agreements, building a community gathering space, creating a neighborhood food distribution network with surplus, running a community research project on soil remediation, etc.)

The Resilience Hub is seeking proposals for projects to build community-scale resilience for this year’s season of permablitz work parties! To apply with your idea for hosting, fill out this form!

The Portland Permablitz Network organizes work parties to build projects that increase resilience through backyard or neighborhood food production, energy generation, water catchment, and community-building. We take a permaculture approach – a way of designing that mimics nature’s patterns. Together, we can accomplish in a day what it might take an individual or small group a whole season to complete. We will convene 5-6 permablitz work parties from May through November this year.

Do you know groups or individuals that might be interested? No permaculture experience necessary! Can you pass the word along?

To apply with a proposal for hosting, fill out this form by April 1!
Please contact Kate at kate@resiliencehub.org if you have any questions. Thanks so much!

Filed Under: Uncategorized

Weeds: Creeping Charlie

January 25, 2019 by Melissa Smith Leave a Comment

This is the first in a series of blogs, shared with permission, about weeds in the garden. Each blog will discuss a common and specific weed found in Maine, its history, uses, what story it tells about the soil it grows in, and how to get rid of it. The original blogs, along with other gardening related blogs, can be found here.

Creeping charlie, Glechoma hederacea, is a fast growing ground cover and is actually a member of the mint family. It is also known as ground ivy, gill-over-the-ground, runaway robin, lizzie-run-up-the-hedge, alehoof, tunhoof, catsfoot and field-balm. Like many of our modern “weeds” the plant has a long and varied history of use. It was brought to North America by European settlers who ate it and used it as a ground cover. If it is especially healthy, the plant can reach 8 or 10″ tall, but typically it simply grows out, spreading rapidly once it finishes flowering in early spring.

The plant is edible. Leaves can be used in soups, salads or stews, or eaten cooked or raw like spinach or cress. It can be used in beer or cheese-making, where it is used in place of animal rennet. Both McLean and Breverton document its use in gruit for beer brewing back to the Saxons. The leaves are considered high in iron and vitamin C. Medicinally it was used to treat sciatica, indigestion and kidney disorders. It is considered useful for preventing scurvy, and for brusing or black eyes. One study showed it can help reduce tumor growth as well.

What does it mean?

In general, creeping charlie can be found growing anywhere the soils are moist and shady, and are easily able to overtake areas where the other plants are not healthy and thriving.  According to Jay L. McCaman , it’s appearance also means that the soil is likely low in calcium, potash and hummus and very low in phosphate. It may not drain well, and when it is dry for too long will develop a type of crust.  Finally there are probably not enough healthy aerobic bacteria in the soil.

The best way to deal with creeping charlie is to improve your general soil quality, decrease soil moisture and to provide more sun for the space.  Consider trimming back treas, top-dressing the soil, adding a heavy layer of mulch and watering less frequently. If the plant is not firmly established in a space consider adding other ground covers to compete with it.  The USDA states livestock tend to avoid the plant because older leaves have a bitter taste.

Borax is not considered an effective treatment for creeping charlie, despite numerous rumors online.  If the above methods are unsuccessful at removing the plant, consider burning off the weed, pulling it by hand, or by covering the space with a heavy suppression system that will kill it.

Want to learn more?

If you would like to learn more about weeds, why they grow, and what that means about your garden, consider the following texts:

Weeds and Why they Grow, by Jay L. McCaman

Weeds and What They Tell Us, by Ehrenfried E. Pfeiffer

Photo from Wikimedia Commons, by Jay Sturner.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: gardening, weeds

Hail to the 1 Percent

January 15, 2019 by Matt Power Leave a Comment

Are we Sheeple, or people?

You may not know that the Resilience Hub (aka Portland Permaculture Group) is one of the largest meetup organizations in Maine. With 2,933 members, the only group I could find that’s larger is an “outdoor adventures” group.

Which brings me to our current effort to raise money to keep the Resilience Hub alive. So far, 34 members have donated. That’s 1.15 percent of our membership. We’re extremely grateful to have this tiny, but loyal group willing to show their support in a real way, but it’s a pretty shocking statistic.

Think about some non-necessity you spent $5 bucks on this week (I know, it’s hard to think of anything that inexpensive). Perhaps a mocha latte, or a bottle of wine, or a pint of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream. Now imagine instead that you had taken 5 minutes to send that $5 to the Resilience Hub online.

It 2,933 members did this, we would raise almost the entire $15,000 fundraising goal set by the Hub!

And instead of empty calories, what would you get for your money?

How about hundreds of like-minded friends, access to instant garden and herb expertise, kombucha-making workshops, pruning workshops, grafting workshops, mushroom-growing workshops, permaculture design courses, and a path that puts people first, not corporations.

The billionaire Koch brothers—the other 1 percent, spend hundreds of millions of dollars underwriting their bleak vision of our future: exploitation of ecosystems, dismantling what little affordable healthcare we still have, and tearing up protections for women, labor, civil rights groups and retirees. No wonder they often seem to be winning.

Isn’t it worth just a few bucks to make sure The Resilience Hub is here tomorrow, bringing skills, food and real “resilience” to our lives?

Please DONATE now.

Let’s show the 1 percent that we believe in an abundant future.

Filed Under: Permaculture, Resilience Hub News, Uncategorized

Urban Leaves: Free, Plentiful, and Laced with Lead

December 12, 2018 by Matt Power Leave a Comment

City leaves often contain heavy metals, so compost with care.

A few years ago, I heard Maine farmer Will Bonsall “go off” in praise of leaves as a natural and free form of compost, better, he claims, than almost anything else you can buy in a bag. But he was talking about leaves acquired on or near his rural farm, not the ones raked off of city lawns.

Mixed Blessing. Although rich with nutrients, urban leaves can also be high in lead and aluminum. Source: Chemical Composition of Municipal Leaf Waste and Hand-Collected Urban Leaf Litter

I’ve been using about 100 bags of leaves as compost every season, collected from curbsides around Portland, where the locals conveniently rake it up and stuff it into paper, biodegradable bags.

What could be wrong with free, easy to access (often pre-shredded) leaves? Unfortunately, there’s a catch. (Isn’t there always?)

While reading an obscure book written in 1870 praising the use of “muck” by southern farmers (their term for half-rotted leaf mold), it ocurred to me that use of leaves in rural and urban settings shouldn’t be assumed to be equally virtuous.

The Lead Problem

In many areas of Portland, for example lead levels in soils are hundreds of times higher than “safe” levels, as determined by the EPA. I know this from samples I have had tested. Certain areas are worse than others, of course. Prior to 1978, most homes were painted repeatedly with lead-based coatings. Any house in Portland older than that likely STILL has lead content in the paint, the plumbing or elsewhere.

Lead doesn’t dissipate much on its own, so our soils are heavily afflicted with it. The older and denser the region of town, the higher the likely lead (Pb) content.

Back to my point about using leaves as mulch. Are they safe? Do they pick up heavy metals such as lead?

The answer, according to a study done in New Jersey on municipal leaf mulch, is yes, (unfortunately).

Researchers  found numerous metals in curbside leaves, including lead,  iron and aluminum. They suggest that this occurs because the fallen leaves “become contaminated with urban soil and dust from the road surface through various processes (raking, lawnmower pickup and vacuum) used for litter collection in the yard and at curbside.”

Of the various contaminants, lead is arguably the most concerning. How bad is the potential pollution in city leaves? They apply a standard of 45 Mg/ha, based on tests of sewage sludge–which equates–by my calculation, to about 45 tons of leaf matter spread on 2.5 acres of land.

Break that down to the garden plot level.  An acre is 43,560 sq. ft. If you were only adding this much material to your beds, you would add about 1.21 lbs/sq. ft  of leaf compost per year (108,900 sq. ft, divided by 45 tons/90,000 lbs.=1.21 lbs. per square foot).

Given this level of application, lead levels in your garden would not exceed the EPA rules for “annual pollutant loading rate”–at least for a few years.  In the worst case scenario, with the highest level of lead contamination the researchers found in leaves, an application of this much leaf matter would take 16 years of repeated use to exceed EPA levels.

Don’t get too relaxed, however. If you’re like me, you add significantly more leaf mulch than that to your beds.

Let’s say you have a 4 ft. x 20 ft. garden bed. At the intensity of leaf mulching suggested by the researchers, you would only add 96.8 lbs. of material to the bed (80 ft. x 1.21 lbs/sq. ft.). But I’ve often added many times that much free leaf mulch to my beds at the end of a season, haven’t you? A yard of compost weighs between 1,000 and 1,600 lbs., depending on water content. That means that if I happen to apply what amounts to a yard of highly contaminated (at the worse end of the scale) curbside leaves to my annual beds, I could exceed EPA safety levels for lead in my garden in less than two years. And this assumes that we can trust the EPA guidelines are strict enough, which is a matter of some debate.

What to Do Now?

All of this is incredibly frustrating of course. Human beings somehow seem to turn the most benign sources of natural abundance into new forms of poison. We’re encouraged to buy our way out of the problem, paying exhorbitant amounts for “clean” compost products in 80 lb. bags. What a racket! It’s not unlike what’s happening with our water supplies. We’re forced to either buy bottled water or install an expensive filter if we want to drink clean water.

So let’s not give up on urban leaf compost. We just have to be more strategic in where we obtain it. And also, here’s one caveat: If the leaves will be used in a garden that is strictly ornamental, you’re probably safe to use as much urban leaf material as you like. The lead levels are probably too low to be of concern for pets or casual contact. I would mainly be concerned with gardens used for food production. The details matter. Certain plants, such as berries and fruit trees, for example, are unlikely to draw lead contamination into the fruit. But other plants absorb lead like crazy, especially in their roots. Brassica nigra, or Black Mustard, is a good example. Mustards seem especially good at extracting lead from soils. So are sunflowers.

Where I would take special precautions, however, is with the introduction of urban leaves to  annual gardens where cabbages and leafy greens are grown for consumption.

Here are my suggestions for reducing the risk to your health and your soils, while still using urban leaf compost:

  • Avoid gleaning from the old City. In Portland, for example, I would not use leaves gathered on the West End or Munjoy Hill, nor in Bayside, for that matter. A lot of the debris from the great fire of 1866, for example is buried in Bayside, and these “historic” areas are often toxic wastelands in terms of the lead contamination of the soils.
  • Look for natural lawns. Much as we’d like to see all lawns replaced with permaculture gardens, that’s a long way off. In the meantime, gather leaves from homes with heavy grass cover that doesn’t look like herbicides have been applied. The grass reduces direct contact between leaves and soil.
  • Favor new developments. Scout out new developments  on the urban fringe, where homes were built after 1978. I suspect someone has a map of Portland with an overlay based on the age of the neighborhood. If so, post it here in the comments please.

Sorry to be the bearer of bad tidings about urban leaves. I wouldn’t take them off your list of permaculture resources. Simply be more selective in where you acquire them. Head for the outer suburbs, and be careful about buying your mulch from organizations that use urban leaf compost as a major component of their mix.

Matt Power is a West End resident and board member of The Resilience Hub (resiliencehub.org), a Portland-based organization that brings permaculture and community together. He is also the author of “The Tiny House Tactical Guide,” and Editor-In-Chief of Green Builder Magazine.

Filed Under: Uncategorized

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Recent Blog Posts

Weeds: Queen Anne’s Lace

This is the second in a series of blogs, shared with permission, about weeds in the garden. Each … [Read More...]

2019 Permablitz Work Parties – Call For Hosts

It’s permablitz planning season and you’re invited! •Are you part of a community group that could … [Read More...]

Weeds: Creeping Charlie

This is the first in a series of blogs, shared with permission, about weeds in the garden. Each blog … [Read More...]

Hail to the 1 Percent

Are we Sheeple, or people? You may not know that the Resilience Hub (aka Portland … [Read More...]

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