Bedford Audubon Society

Bylane Bird-Friendly Vegetable Garden
For People, Birds & A Sustainable Environment
A Project of the Master Gardeners of Westchester, Cornell Cooperative Extension

April 18, 2009

Hi All,

What does a Green Fairy have to do with gardening? I’ll get to that later, but first…

...if you were at the garden at 9 a.m. Thursday you saw our brand new deer fence; the chicken wire in the ground, you didn’t see. Also there were strings and posts indicating a beds plan. Off to a great start! By 1 p.m. we’d made ten beds, most of them filled with compost-enriched soil. By 11:30 a.m. Friday we had transplanted rows of early spring seedlings into beds, including: Oregon Sugar Pod snow peas, Butterhead Buttercrunch lettuce, Japanese Oriental Giant spinach, California Spicy Greens and chives.

In addition, we’d sowed Italian arugula, Long Harvest broccoli and Cherry Belle radish seeds. They’re cold-tolerant and should all do fine. We perhaps went out on a limb by seeding (Babette French Baby) carrots in mid-April; but if they don’t come up we’ll simply reseed a few weeks down the road—and learn something for next year.

March 25, 2009–Preparing the garden

We began applying companion planting principles: For instance, many plants “love” onions, meaning their odor repels various harmful insects, so we have rows of chives next to carrots, radishes, lettuce. (But we kept onions at a distance from peas because for some reason peas don’t like them.) Radishes and carrots are good companions because the radish matures quickly while the carrot does so slowly; by the time the carrots need extra shoulder-room the radishes are outta there.

Here’s a nifty idea: set aside an area for plants that hate each other. Sounds like a fun way to test companion planting claims. We might call it the “Everything Hates Fennel Bed”; fennel is unwelcome to many different garden varieties. (Thanks, Julie, for the suggestion.)

And now, for the curious case of the Green Fairy. Also known as absinthe, it is the famous licorice-flavored liqueur.

I remember studying Manet’s painting, The Absinthe Drinkers, in college and learning that absinthe was popular in that time and place—and notorious. This week I learned some additional tidbits of its history from an article in the current edition of the Westchester Express:

“… a muse for artists (Vincent van Gogh) and writers (Oscar Wilde.)…a boozy drink—sometimes up to 150 proof…too much can get you very, very drunk.”

Outlawed in the United States for almost a century, since absinthe became legal once again in 2007, it has apparently been making a comeback. It’s being served at restaurants such as Harvest on Hudson in Hastings.

Absinthe contains three plants that happen to also be included in our B-F Veg Garden plan, namely wormwood, hyssop, and fennel. But be assured, we will not be using these plants to produce absinthe! Rather, I simply wonder if any of the same active ingredients they contain might be off-putting to insects and other animals at the same time that they are appealing to humans.

Wormwood, especially Artemesia cineria, is said to repel herbivorous animals and insects when used as a border, but is not to be grown directly on food crops as it produces a harsh substance. (It will be placed in the border outside the fence.)

According to organicgardening.com:

Anise hyssop (Agastache rugosa, aka Korean mint) is a perennial with fuzzy purple or violet flower spikes on 2 to 3 foot high plants with licorice-scented leaves. The nectar-rich flowers are very attractive to both butterflies and pest-eating beneficial insects.

Fennel (Foeniculum vulgare) is a hardy perennial umbelliferous herb, with yellow flowers and feathery leaves. Umbelliferous refers to its flat-topped, umbrella-like flower cluster. Fennel is used as a food plant by the larvae of some lepidoptera species, including the mouse moth. This moth has a broad range and, as far as I can tell, could show up at Bylane.

Regards,
Cathy Clare
catmint@optonline.net  (914) 874-4519 (cell)

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