Returning to Her Roots: An Organic Food and Flower Garden in Minnesota
(Page 2 of 3)
March/April 2009
By Margaret A. Haapoja
Jennifer keeps pests away using companion planting—she tucks scented geraniums between broccoli and cabbage plants and uses aromatic dill and parsley to accompany other vegetables. “The bugs don’t like things that smell,” she says.
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Jennifer also relies on her gardening experience and knowledge of the seasons. For example, she says that if she starts broccoli early enough to set it out by May 1, it has time to mature before many cabbage worms are out. And instead of planting in large lots, she spreads her rutabagas and cole crops (broccoli, brussels sprouts, cabbage, cauliflower, kale, collards and kohlrabi) throughout the garden so pests won’t find them as easily.
Dylan and Emma handpick potato bugs and rose chafers and flick them into bowls of soapy water. “I don’t ever get the urge to kill bugs with chemicals,” Jennifer says. “For me, it’s more important to be kid-friendly.”
Sowing seeds
Last spring, Jennifer started nearly 1,200 seedlings under grow lights. “I’m at the point where I can’t fit any more in the house,” she says. This past summer, she grew 30 heirloom vegetables and 100 heirloom and native flowers. “It was the frugality of gardening with heirlooms that appealed to me initially,” she says, “and I love the stories behind the seeds. ‘Miss Wilmot’s Ghost’ is about an old English woman who loved this flower growing in her garden so much that she carried the seeds with her and sprinkled them wherever she went. When she passed away, they named the flower her ghost because the flowers appeared everywhere.”
Jennifer trades seeds with others through the Internet gardening community iVillage GardenWeb and through the Seed Savers Exchange, a nonprofit organization of gardeners who have shared 1 million seeds since 1975. “Spending money on seeds isn’t necessary,” Jennifer says. “It’s so simple to save seeds from year to year, and then they’re free.”
Native plants can be tricky to start from seed, Jennifer says. From the GardenWeb, she learned to sow native seeds—purple coneflower, blue vervain, partridge pea, lupines, purple prairie clover, nodding onion and Maximillian sunflower—in milk jugs in December, setting them out on the deck until they begin to germinate as early as March. Jennifer sometimes buys seeds from Prairie Moon Nursery and uses the company’s catalog as a technical resource.