STIRRING MY BLOOD, CLEARING (PARTS OF) THE MEADOW
Nearing Influence
What struck me most about Scott Nearing was his sturdy appearance, arms hanging loosely from broad shoulders, his near perfect teeth, and the deeply creviced wrinkles of his face. He was 91 years old. Looks aside, his influence on me was deep despite the brevity of my visit.
Scott Nearing was a professor of economics, a political activist, a pacifist, a vegetarian and an advocate of simple living. And a gardener. For many of these reasons, he was almost a cult figure back in the 1970s when I, a young man, visited him. He was then known mostly for his book Living the Good Life. I had read the book, and decided to drive 1,000 miles from Madison, Wisconsin to show up on his farm, unannounced, in Harborside, Maine.
I thought of that visit today as I was swinging my scythe. Would I have been out in the field this morning doing so if I hadn’t made that visit? Scott was a big fan of scything, about which, he wrote, “It’s a first class, fresh-air exercise, that stirs the blood and flexes the muscles, while it clears the meadows.” 
For me, working my field in the quiet of early morning, with the sun low in the sky and grasses still moist from morning dew, is sheer pleasure. A morning dance.
From a practical standpoint, no need to worry about waking neighbors with noise of a mower engine, or to worry about getting a mower bogged down in wet spots.
Keeping the Magic
I’ve swung a scythe for many decades. (Not that that makes me an expert in its use; for the first couple of decades I did it wrong. Now, more right.) Two considerations have kept the magic alive.
First, not too much. When I first acquired the acre and a half field to my south, I aimed to keep it a meadow, stemming invasion from woody plants in a natural transition to forest by scything the whole field. Considering the lushness of the vegetation, and how rapidly it grew back, that was a bold undertaking. The result: Something short of sheer pleasure, and tennis elbow.
Salvation came in the form of a small, farm tractor and a brush hog, with which I now mow the bulk of the field once a year.
There’s still plenty to scythe, including areas near my fruit and nut trees, and areas too wet for the tractor. I also scythe selected areas of the field proper, changing yearly to allow scythed sections, whose mowings I gather up, to regenerate. Also important: I limit daily scything to no more than a half hour.
The second consideration is to use the right kind of scythe. The so-called American type scythe, with a curved handle and stamped blade, is put to best use decorating the wall of a barn. I use a so-called Austrian type scythe (purchased from www.scythesupply.com), which usually has a straight handle and is lightweight with a razor sharp, hammered-thin blade. The blade needs periodic hammering (peening) for keeping its taper or for repair, and daily dressing with a whetstone.
Blade length is important. Back when I was working the whole field, the job was made harder because of the 36 inch long blade I was using. Sure, you can cut more with a longer blade, but that was too much lush vegetation to plow through in one swing. Nowadays a 22 inch blade strikes a nice balance, not biting off more than I can “chew.”
No Big Field, No Problem
No need for access to a large field to experience the physical and practical pleasures of scything. For many years, my field was only a portion of my original three-quarter acre property. And no matter how large or small the field, no reason to do as Scott did, to “clear the meadow.” On my small property, I practiced what I called Lawn Nouveau, created, as I detail in my book, The Pruning Book, by sculpting out two tiers of grassy growth. The low grass is maintained just like any other lawn, and kept that way with a lawnmower.
The taller portions need to be scythed but once a year, or more frequently if desired. Raking up mowings from the tall grass portions avoids unsightly clumps or smothering of regrowth. The rakings are good material for mulch or compost. A crisp boundary between tall and low grass keeps everything neat and avoids the appearance of an unmown lawn.
Lawn Nouveau saves me time because the tall grass needs infrequent mowing and there’s no rush to get it done. The tall grass becomes more than just grass as other plant species elbow their way in. Which ones gain foothold depend on the weather, the soil, and frequency of mowing. An attractive mix of Queen Anne’s lace, goldenrod, chicory, and red clover might mingle with the grasses in a dry, sunny area, with ferns, sedges, and buttercups mixing with the grasses in a wetter portion.
Curves at the interface of high and low grass present bold sweeps to carry you along, then pull you forward and push you backward, as you look upon them. Avenues of low grass cut into the tall grass invite exploration — that was the purpose of today’s scything. Thank you Scott.
HOT KNOWLEDGE
Between a Rock and a Hard Place
More knowledge makes for a better gardener. That’s what I had in mind with my most recent book, The Ever Curious Gardener, excerpted here:
With hot weather here today, and soon to be a regular occurance, I pity my plants. While I can jump into some cool water, sit in front of a fan, or at least duck into the shade, my plants are tethered in place no matter what the weather. And don’t think that plants enjoy searing sunlight. High temperatures cause plants to dry out and consume stored energy faster than it can be replenished. Stress begins at about 86 degrees Fahrenheit, with leaves beginning to cook at about 20 degrees above that.
One recourse plants have in hot weather is to cool themselves by transpiring water. Transpiration, which is the loss of water from leaves, can cool a plant by about 5 degrees Fahrenheit. Over ninety percent of the water taken up by plants runs right through them, up into the air, exiting through little holes in the leaves, called stomates. Carbon dioxide and oxygen, the gases plants need to carry on photosynthesis, also pass in and out through the stomates.
All this is fine provided there is enough water in the ground. If not, stomates close, transpiration and photosynthesis stop, and the plant warms. Even if the soil is moist, stomates might close in midsummer around midday if leaves begin to jettison water faster than the roots can drink it in. This situation puts most plants in a bind. Should they open their pores so that photosynthesis can carry on to give them energy, but risk drying out, or should they close up their pores to conserve water, but suffer lack of energy?
CAM at work
Enter cacti and other succulents (all cacti are succulents—that is, plants with especially fleshy leaves or stems—but not all succulents are cacti): their fleshy stems and leaves can store water for long periods. After more than a year without a drop of water, my aloe plant’s leaves still look plump and happy.
Besides being able to store water in their stems and leaves, jade plants, aloes, cacti, purslane, and other succulents have another special trick, Crassulacean Acid Metabolism, for getting out of this conundrum.
Aloe plant, more than a year without water!
They work the night shift, opening their pores only in darkness, when little water is lost, and latching onto carbon dioxide at night by incorporating it into malic acid, which is stored until the next day. Come daylight, the pores close up, conserving water, and the malic acid splits apart to release carbon dioxide within the plant, to be used, with sunlight, to make energy.
I’ve actually tasted the result of this trick in summer by nibbling a leaf of purslane—a common weed, sometimes cultivated—at night and then another one in the afternoon.
Malic acid makes the night-harvested purslane more tart than the one harvested in daylight. Try it.
No CAM? How ‘Bout C4?
Another group of plants, called C4 plants, function efficiently at temperatures that have most other plants gasping for air and water. C4 plants capture carbon dioxide in malate, the ionic form of malic acid, which is a four-carbon molecule, rather than the three-carbon molecule by which most plants—which are “C3”—latch onto carbon.
The enzyme that drives the C4 reaction is so efficient that C4 plants do not have to keep their stomates open as much as do C3 plants. The C4 pathway also does its best work at temperatures that would eventually kill a C3 plant, and cells involved in the various steps are partitioned within the leaf for greatest efficiency.
C4 plants are indigenous to parched climates, but not uncommon visitors in our gardens. Corn is a C4 plant. (Cool climate grains such as wheat, rye, and oats, are C3 plants.)
Looking at my lawn, I see another C4 plant. Hot, dry weather in August drives Kentucky bluegrass, a C3 grass, into dormancy. Not so for crabgrass, a C4 plant, which remains happily green.
I also find some other C4 plants, in addition to corn, in my garden. As many vegetables and flowers flag, all of a sudden lambsquarters and pigweed, both C4 weeds (or vegetables, for those who like to eat them), appear as lush as spinach in spring.
Gardener’s Assistance
Can I do anything to help out my plants in hot weather? Keeping the garden watered helps. (Ways to apply water and how much is needed are all-important, and topics unto themselves.)
Sprinkling or misting plants could keep them cool without their having to pull water up from the soil. But the thirty gallons of water that runs up through a tomato plant in a season, or the fifty gallons that flows through a corn plant, is for more than just cooling these plants. It also carries dissolved minerals from the soil into the plant. So it’s debatable how well a plant would grow with too much misting. And besides, wet plants are predisposed to disease.
A better alternative to sprinkling plants is to grow plants adapted to the climate and the season. My lettuce, spinach, peas, and radishes are doing fine now; despite today’s heat, it’s not really all that hot — yet. And nights are still cool. Mostly, I avoid growing these cool weather plants in summer. Except that I like my lettuce salads, so I extend its season by growing it in the shade beneath trellised cucumbers.
Fortunately, tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, melons, and squashes, although they are neither cacti nor C4 plants, can take quite a bit of heat. They have very deep roots.
LIBERATED, AT LAST
Exposée
My garden was liberated yesterday, the soil freed at last. That’s when I peeled back and folded up the black tarps that had been covering some of the vegetable beds since early April. My beautiful soil finally popped into view.
Covering the ground was for the garden’s own good. “Tarping,” as this technique is called, gets the growing season off to a weed-less start. The black cover warms the ground to awaken weed seeds. They sprout, then die as they use up their energy reserves which, without light, can’t be replenished and built up. (I first learned of this technique in J. M. Fortier’s book The Market Gardener.)
Tarping is very different from the much more common way of growing plants in holes in black plastic film, even if one purpose of the soil covering, in both cases, is to snuff out weeds. Black plastic film is left in place all season long, and then disposed of, usually in a landfill, at season’s end.
Tarping tarps might be silage cover material or — as in my case — recycled, vinyl billboard signs (black on one side). They are left in place for relatively short duration, after which time the ground can be exposed to natural rainfall and air, and is open for blanketing with compost and cover crops. After each use, tarps can be folded up and stored for re-use for many seasons more.
Prescription for Weed-lessness
Tarping is but one part of my multi-pronged approach to weed control, the others of which I detail in my book Weedless Gardening.
My garden is also weed-less because I never, and I do mean never, till the soil, whether with a rototiller, garden fork, or shovel. Preserving the natural horizonation of the soil keeps weed seeds, which are coaxed awake by exposure to light, buried within the ground and dormant. No-till also has side benefits: preserving soil organic matter, maintaining soil capillarity for more efficient water use, and not disrupting soil fungi and other creatures.
Tilling does loosen the soil structure, but I avoid soil compaction by planting everything in 3-foot-wide beds, saving the paths between the beds for foot traffic.
Weed-lessness is also the result of each year covering the ground with a thin layer of a more or less weed-free mulch, just half inch to an inch thick depth. This covering snuffs out small weed seeds that might be present. Other benefits are insulating to modulate wide swings in soil temperature and softening the impact of raindrops so that water percolates into the ground rather than running off.
What I use for this thin layer of mulch depends on what’s available, what I’m mulching, and, sometimes, appearance. Vegetables are hungry plants so their beds get an inch depth of ripe compost, which, besides the other benefits of mulches, also provides all the nutrition the vegetable plants need for a whole season. Paths get wood chips; it’s free, it’s pretty, and it visually sets off paths from beds. Straw, autumn leaves, sawdust, and wood shavings are some other materials that would work as well.
At the end of the season, beds that have been harvested but aren’t needed for autumn cropping, get a cover crop, which is a plant grown specifically for soil improvement.
Cover crops provide all the benefits of mulches, plus looking pretty, sucking up nutrients that might otherwise wash through the soil in winter, and growing miles and miles of roots to give the soil a nice, crumbly structure. I plant oats or barley, because the plants thrive in cool autumn weather and then, here in Zone 5, are killed by winter cold sometime in January. The leaves flop down, dead, to become mulch, which I rake or roll up easily before it’s time for spring planting.
Another ploy for weed-lessness is using drip irrigation. Sure, I could get by without any watering here in the “humid Northeast,” but timely watering gets the most out of the garden. Drip irrigation pinpoints watering to garden plants rather weeds, which would, with a sprinkler, be coaxed to grow, for instance, in paths.
Weed-less but Not Weed-free
With this multi-pronged approach to weed-lessness, isn’t tarping like “taking coals to Newcastle?” No. I found that even after not tilling, mulching, using drip irrigation, and, especially, cover cropping, some weeds do a figurative “end run”and find their way into some beds. Especially, the last few years, red dead-nettle (Lamium purpureum). 
Yes, I know the plant is pretty, provides early nectar for pollinators, and is edible. But its out of place in my vegetable beds. The tarp does it in.
No garden can be weedless. But mine has been weed-less for many, many years.
