Thoughts From The Belly

copyright March 2008

By: Dan Mays Ironbelly1@aol.com

I am left puzzled by so many of the typical gardening articles printed at this time of year. "Putting your garden to bed for the winter" is a common theme  as if there was nothing gardenÂrelated to do from November through April. If you take those articles to heart, it seems that browsing tattered seed catalogs and sipping hot cocoa is all that a gardener can do during those chilly months. Piffle!!!

I will admit that IÂm not currently out planting tomatoes. However, this time of the gardening year is anything but slow. I find that I will have to really discipline myself over the next few months to get it all done. Soon enough it will again be time to plant those tasty Âmaters.

I have a number of books that need to be read and several that need to be ordered. Botanical research is definitely kicked up a notch. A plethora of photos need to be sorted and perhaps cropped and identified. There are far too many plant photos of "WhatÂs that?" Particularly with photos of unfamiliar native plants and/or insects, I know that I took them for a reason.

Now, I turn from digging in the dirt to digging into reference books and websites for answers. On the other hand, I just canÂt help occasionally savoring a distinctive waft of potting soil as I harvest some of the leaf lettuce and salad greens that I have growing in a large bowl. There is something about enjoying a fresh, homegrown salad while looking out the window with snow on the ground. As I peer out the window, I sometimes (actually, too often.) float off into the twilight zone as I marvel at the birds hardy enough to brave our winters. My feathered friends find both seed and shelter in the native plant areas that I leave standing. Although I have nothing against bird feeders, the show is much more richly animated when birds feed on the actual plants. Observing a bird land at a feeder is one thing. Watching a bird adroitly clinging to, and feeding upon, a Liatris stalk bobbing in the wind is like watching a circus act.

On calm winter days, I will often go outside to winter sow some native seeds that I collected on one of my nature hikes. Unlike many of the typical garden seeds, many, if not most, of the native plant seeds require stratification (an extended moist, cold period) for the seeds to germinate. It is an ingenious way that Mother Nature insures her native seeds sprout at the proper time.

I sow these native seeds into one of several 4 X 12Â, raised propagation beds constructed out of treated 2 X 12Âs. I carefully label the area so I can remember what was sown. Especially with plants I have never grown before, memory is just not good enough. A bed full of various new seedlings has a tendency to all look the same. However, the birds (Remember those feeding birds I like to watch?) have no problem recognizing sown native seeds. The first year that I did winter sowing, the birds spent much time and took great delight in their new 4 X 12 "bird feeder". They knew exactly what they were doing  I had yet to learn!

The second year, I tried to prevent the native seeds from being eaten by covering with a fine granite chicken grit. Duh!  My feathered friends now seemed to really enjoy their "feeder". They were able to eat seed AND grit at the same location. Grrrr The third year, I tried an elevated chicken wire system. It worked well but was a pain to always deal with. I have since gone to a mulch of really large, #3-sized, granite chicken grit and it seems to be working quite well. It provides a nice, weed-free much that allows the seedlings to poke through but yet make seedling transplanting easy. However, the biggest benefit is that the grit (about the size of the gravel chips they use on black top roads) is too large for the song birds to ingest. Once I started using the #3 grit, the song birds seemed to lose all interest in that area. Now  I just hope I donÂt find a flock of wild turkeys showing up!

I would really like to tell more about my busy winter schedule. However, IÂve got too many other things to do!
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