A garden column by Green Thumb

Smart plants

Do plants have any innate intelligence? They know to turn toward the sun, and some turn their flowers as well as leaves. They know to grow roots toward dampness, growing shallower roots in wetter soil and deeper roots in drier. But are they smart? One of my friends claims she had the smartest, best educated plants in her garden...

Many of us pattern our gardens on what we have seen our grandparents do. Long rows of corn, straight down the garden, three feet between the rows. And this plan is the most practical if one is working and weeding the ground by machine. Others of us garden in beds with precisely one foot each way between each corn plant, perhaps even in a hexagonal pattern. Some of us are more creative, and each garden bed has mixes of compatible plants, each helping the other grow.

Not too many years ago, a little lady by the name of Ruth spent a lot of time thinking about how nature grows its plants. In the woods or on the prairie, many plants are mixed together, and dead plant material covers the ground in between the plants, conserving water and many times choking out competing vegetation. As the decaying plant material continues to decompose, it fertilizes the soil with nutrients.

Ruth lived in a climate somewhat similar to ours. She had a neighbor that she got hay from on shares, or something like that. Ruth decided to be a lazy gardener. She put old hay between the plants, clearing away just a little so the seeds could sprout.... In other words, she mulched. She mulched here, there and everywhere in her garden. She found she hardly spent any time weeding and her water needs were so much less. And her garden grew more food and flowers than ever before.

Ruth Stout started what could be called a mulching revolution. Gardeners began mulching with hay, pulled weeds, cocoanut hulls, rice hulls, leaves, newspaper, sheet plastic, cardboard. One friend of mine mulches her garden paths with old carpeting. Perhaps her garden is the most elegant, with its “carpeted walkways.” But my most innovative and creative friend claims the smartest garden of all was the year she mulched with old books...