Guiding principles for spring gardening

Caution in early spring to minimize footfall will preserve the early emergence of plants.Here,the flowers of the skunk cabbage dot the marsh.
Dee Salomon
Caution in early spring to minimize footfall will preserve the early emergence of plants.Here,the flowers of the skunk cabbage dot the marsh.
It’s safe to say we deserve a dose of optimism now and spring delivers it to us in the form of nature’s gifts.I have been away for two weeks and am excited to be back among the wildness of the Northwest Corner, to watch life begin to stir above ground and to sense it stirring beneath.This installment of The Ungardener, written on a plane returning from London where spring has gloriously sprung, delivers a short set of guiding principles to keep in mind as you make your gardening choices this spring.Admittedly, they might induce some guilt if they were not followed in the past but, if heeded, I promise they will lead to outcomes of profound optimism.
1. Select plants for their ecosystem purposes, not only for their aesthetic merit
Many, if not most, native insects — such as caterpillars/butterflies — are only able to eat one or a few kinds of plants; they are not able to quickly adapt their diet to other plants and will die if they don’t have them available in quantity. Similarly, newborn and fledgling birds require being fed a diet of caterpillars to survive, and, as just relayed, many caterpillars can only feed on very particular native plants. When we don’t cultivate these native plants in our gardens, we are effectively depriving baby birds of their nutritional requirements for survival. If you remove the food sources for critical species they cannot survive, and the animals that depend on them cannot survive.You end up breaking a link that can have dire circumstances further up the food chain; biodiversity is reduced, creating vulnerabilities for other animals including humans. The Xerces Society has a list of Northeastern native plants that are key for this purpose: https://xerces.org/sites/default/files/publications/22-026_01_NPPBI%E2%80%94Northeast_web.pdfHighlights include:Butterfly milkweed (Asclepias tuberosa), Lanceleaf coreopsis (Coreopsis lancelota), Boneset (Eupatorium perfoliatum), Purple coneflower (Echinacea purpurea), Bergamot (Monarda fistulosa), Virginia mountain mint (Pycnanthemum virginianum).
2. Don’t spray for ticks
When you have your yard professionally sprayed for ticks, it’s the yard perimeter that is sprayed. This is where leaf litter houses overwintering caterpillars and other beneficial insects. The spray used is a synthetic and concentrated form of permethrin, a nerve agent, that will kill fireflies, butterflies, many species of bees, beetles and insects including ticks that overwinter in the leaves.That’s a lot of collateral damage, especially as ticks mostly stay away from cut lawns anyway.If you want to minimize tick populations on your property, the safest, most effective and scientifically proven way is to cut back barberry on your property as ticks proliferate on mice that use the spiny barberry shrubs as safe houses from predators.
3. Remove invasive plants
The invasive plants growing in your gardens and in backyards are decimating native ecosystems.Now is a good time to make a plan to get rid of them, but not necessarily to do the work.Larger, woody invasives such as bittersweet, burning bush, honeysuckle, barberry and multiflora rose should wait until about June for removal.Also wait for late summer to tackle Japanese knotweed.Early spring, however, is an excellent time to pull out young, woody invasives and invasive weeds such as narrowleaf bittercress (Cardamine impatiens), and garlic mustard (Alliaria petiolate),as well as creeping plants such vinca major and ground ivy (Glechoma hederacea), as their roots are loosened from the soil just after the thaw.Consider substituting the native species of pachysandra, heuchera, tiarella, violet and/or strawberry.
4. Don’t ignore your soil
While you work outdoors, be careful where you tread.You don’t want to compact the soft and wet soil by walking on it heavily.This is not an easy thing to do if, for example, you are removing vinca, as you really must get into the soil to get the roots.But keep it in mind.Step gingerly to pluck out the offending weeds and then stay off while tender spring plants start to poke through.Now is a good time to get a soil test, especially around areas where you have seen unusual leaf yellowing.At home, our native hollies seem to be struggling and I have a feeling the heavy rains have washed out some critical minerals.As with a blood test for humans, supplementation of the soil starts by testing to finding out what is needed for healthy nutrition.If you have beech trees, you will want to investigate adding phosphite (not phosphate) to the soil.Speak with an arborist who can assist you.Beech Leaf Disease is real and is leading to the death of these important native trees.
5. Soft Landings
Writing about soft landings seems appropriate given my current airborne state, although I am referring to the practice of planting native plants under trees, creating a soft landing area for caterpillars as they descend from the branches where they hatched and begin climbing up plants to feed and to pupate into moths and butterflies.
This will be the focus of my own spring planting efforts this year.I will be mixing ferns with the before mentioned tiarella, violet and strawberry, to plant around the apples, linden, yellow wood and redbud trees that dot our lawn.I expect the effort will reduce our lawn area by 10 percent, a small but not insignificant win for the environment.
Dee Salomon ‘ungardens’ in Litchfield County.
Join The Lakeville Journal for a community celebration, featuring local nonprofits and businesses, festive family fun, great food, and engaging activities.
What to Expect:
See you at the Lakeville Journal Street Fair!
If you have any questions, please email streetfair@lakevillejournal.com
Cobbler n’ Cream
5 to 7 p.m.
Freund’s Farm Market & Bakery | 324 Norfolk Rd.
Canaan Carnival
6 to 10 p.m.
Bunny McGuire Park
Canaan Carnival
6 to 10 p.m.
Bunny McGuire Park
Cocktail Party
5 to 7 p.m.
Douglas Library | 108 Main St.
Canaan Carnival
6 to 10 p.m.
Bunny McGuire Park
Boot Drive
8 a.m. to 2 p.m.
North Canaan Fire Co. | 4 E. Main St.
3rd Annual Fly-In
8 a.m. to 3 p.m.
Triumph Airfield | 547 W. Main St.
Canaan Railroad Station Museum
10 a.m. to 6 p.m.
Canaan Union Station
New England Accordion Connection
9 a.m. to 8 p.m.
Canaan Union Station
Canaan Carnival
3 to 10 p.m.
Bunny McGuire Park
Berkshire Resilience Brass Band
5 to 8 p.m.
Canaan Union Station
Barbecued Chicken Dinner
5 to 7 p.m.
St. Martin of Tours | 4 Main St.
Canaan Fireman’s parade
6 p.m.
Foxtrot Farm & Flowers’ historic barn space during UAW’s 2024 exhibition entitled “Unruly Edges.”
Art lovers, mark your calendars. The sixth edition of Upstate Art Weekend (UAW) returns July 17 to 21, with an exciting lineup of exhibitions and events celebrating the cultural vibrancy of the region. Spanning eight counties and over 130 venues, UAW invites residents and visitors alike to explore the Hudson Valley’s thriving creative communities.
Here’s a preview of four must-see exhibitions in the area:
1. Wassaic Project (37 Furnace Bank Road, Wassaic)
“So It Goes” is a powerful group exhibition curated by Eve Biddle, Bowie Zunino, Jeff Barnett-Winsby, and Will Hutnick. The title, drawn from Kurt Vonnegut’s “Slaughterhouse-Five,” signals a reckoning with how we process the horrors of the world. Through play, reflection, and immersive scale, 43 artists respond with urgency and imagination. Installations can be seen throughout the town of Wassaic at Maxon Mills, Gridley Chapel, and Luther Barn, each space transformed by this deeply thoughtful show.
2. Foxtrot Farm & Flowers (6862 Route 82, Stanfordville)
“Queer Bestiary,” a group show curated by Charlotte Woolf, is inspired by Patricia Ononiwu Kaishian’s book “Forest Euphoria.” The exhibition investigates queer ecology and human relationship to land through the work of 10 artists using painting, sculpture, textiles, and photography. The exhibit is accompanied by a variety of interactive experiences including tattoo pop-ups, karaoke, book readings, and pick-your-own flowers.
3. ChaShaMa North/ChaNorth (2600 Route 199, Pine Plains)
ChaShaMa North (ChaNorth) will have open studios all weekend and has partnered with Paradice Palase, a platform for emerging artists, to mount a site-specific sculpture exhibition featuring 20 artists entitled “Alone, You Are Heard.” On Saturday evening, July 19, stop by for Weird Music Night for an audio-visual synthesis of experimental music, performance art, and unexpected happenings. Don’t miss this opportunity to experience an eclectic lineup of acts that redefine the boundaries of performance.
4. Millbrook Arts Project(3 Friendly Lane, Millbrook)
The Millbrook Arts Project is hosting a curated exhibit entitled “Generated Utility” at the newly renovated gallery at the village library. The exhibit will feature the work of artists Natalie Beall and Kathy Greenwood. Additionally, visitors will have access to 12 open artists studios across town. The weekend culminates in a free outdoor concert on Saturday evening at 6 p.m. at the Millbrook Bandshell. Enjoy the Indie-Folk sounds of Strawberry Runners and She Keeps Bees.
For more information and a complete list of participating artists and locations, visit: upstateartweekend.org
The late Glenn May on one of his favorite rivers, the San Juan in New Mexico, circa 2010.
My nomadic attorney Thos is planning a fishing and camping trip of major proportions later this summer, starting in New Mexico and working his way north through the Rockies into Canada.
So I wanted to reconnect with a fellow named Glenn May, who was my main fishing buddy for several years in the 1990s when we both lived in Albuquerque and worked at the same bookstore. Last I heard he was living in Colorado, which is on the itinerary, more or less.
An email bounced back so I tried Facebook, only to learn he died in his sleep in February.
He was a little younger than me, about 60 I guess.
This was disconcerting.
I was already working at the bookstore when he came on board, and we recognized our mutual interest when I found him trying to carve out a shelf or two for fly-fishing titles amid the general chaos of the sports section.
I had a Ford Escort, which was good on gas but didn’t hold much gear, especially when you factored in critical supplies such as beer.
He had a gigantic and battered Ford F350 which was terrible on gas but would go anywhere and could hold everything. It also had a long-expired Delaware license plate, which made for some tense moments.
We managed to wangle the same two days off, Sunday and Monday, and we’d often bug out after our Saturday second shift and fetch up somewhere around 1 a.m., pitch a tent and be on the water at dawn.
The bookstore did not pay much, and out West the distances (and gas consumption) are exponentially greater than in the relatively compact East.
If it was near the first of the month, we took the Escort. Mid-month when we were feeling bucks up, we’d go with the truck.
Glenn was a dry fly guy to his core. I had been trained in similar fashion but was dabbling in the dark arts of subsurface fishing, so when one of us was catching the other was often fishing.
He was also a Dallas Cowboys fan. They were suffering through a particularly bad season one year in the mid-90s, and as we drove from river to river we listened to the games on the radio. He lamented, and I privately gloated.
I wandered back east but Glenn stayed put, eventually becoming a fairly big name in the New Mexico newspaper world. He wrote about fly-fishing for the Albuquerque Tribune and about everything for the Santa Fe New Mexican, and that’s not a complete list.
Then he was off to Cameroon with the Peace Corps. And then Turkey, not in the Peace Corps. He did a stint teaching English in South Korea.
I occasionally got cryptic emails describing the fishing in places like Bulgaria, and he kept up a Facebook presence, so I had some idea of what he was doing.
More recently he was back in the Four Corners, working for the Ute tribal nation in some capacity. I think there was a wife in there too.
I’m struck — again — by how, over the years,I have spent a lot of time with fishing friends and I know next to nothing about them except they dislike fishing with dropper rigs and have a weakness for hazelnut coffee.
The other thing that stands out about Glenn was that he was the best trout spotter I have ever fished with. No scouting flies for this guy. He was almost always aiming at specific fish, where I was working specific spots. To use a sports analogy, he played man-to-man while I played zone.
I spoke to him on the phone in 2004. We reminisced about the time we were edging around a canyon pool and when he looked back all he saw was my ballcap floating on the surface. (I was underneath temporarily.)
Or the time the drunk idiots chucked rocks into the pools we were working. They were poor shots so the rocks came very close to hitting us. They also called our fly rods “fairy sticks.”
We snuck up on them later when they were cavorting in a hot spring and let the air out one of their tires. Only one. We wanted the punishment to fit the crime.
They recovered enough that we encountered them later at a rustic saloon that sold flies and had a collection of brassieres attached to the ceiling. Luckily they didn’t put two and two together, probably because they were engrossed by the decor. We prudently oiled out and made our escape.
I’ll wrap this with a story about the famous New Mexico tailwater, the San Juan River.
The first time we tried it together he was doing well with miniscule dry flies, size 24 callibaetis, and long leaders tapered to 7X.
I think this was when my antipathy for what I call “specks” started. No matter what, I could not lay out my speck the way he could.
So while he was horsing big fat rainbows into the net, I was fumbling with tackle and cussing.
Finally, I tied on a big gaudy Royal Coachman fly with a pink post and about twice the normal amount of hackle. I think I bought it at the brassiere bar.
Shortening my leader to something around seven feet and 3X, I heaved it near the streamside vegetation while Glenn watched. He may have smirked a bit.
A nice rainbow, probably rejoicing at the prospect of a square meal instead of nibbling on specks, smacked the ridiculous fly and we were off.
It was big enough, and I had consumed enough beer, that Glenn kindly assisted in netting the beast. He looked at it, the fly and at me, shook his head, and said “Now that is some raggedy fly-fishing.”