Diversity Workshop

We can fight the weeds and insects, or we can offer them a modest share of our gardens. Yesterday I harvested some six-foot-tall giant milk thistles with their mottled leaves and their red-pink flower buds just opening. It was a shorts and t-shirt day, and I was uncomfortably warm in a jacket and gloves.
I have pokey holes all over where the thorns penetrated through my layers of clothes and gloves, like little thistle love bites.
Making compost changes your relationship with weeds. I could have got grouchy, cursing and gnashing my teeth, but I was grateful for so much fresh greens for my compost heap.
Milk thistle is a gift of the garden. It neither weeps nor toils. We eat the milky leaves, taking scissors to cut away the thorns. The seeds are favored by finches and used herbally as a liver-cleanser.

Even though it's a weed I introduced into my garden, I'm taking out this patch of milk thistle before it goes to seed - to avoid too much of a good thing.
Diversity in the garden begins with an attitude of accommodation. Milk thistle works in out-of-the-way places where it won't poke people walking by, or close in where you don't want people poking around. There's always a place or two for it in my garden.
I could have weeded it out a long time ago, but I wasn't ready to plant that bed. Milk thistle made a beautiful cover crop that kept down other less desirable weeds. The secret of weeds is knowing when to take them out - before they go to seed or start competing with your crops. Otherwise your weeds are a cover crop.


Workshop Themes
The Other Greenhouse Effect

In a greenhouse, or a tropical rainforest the air is warm and moist - creating ideal growing conditions. The relative humidity increases as plants exhale warm moisture from their leaves. We can mimic this greenhouse effect by growing plants close together in our gardens. 

Shelter
Windbreaks conserve moisture in the garden, create habitat for critters and can include fruits, nuts and herbs.

Attracting Pollinators
Flowering plants provide food, pollen and shelter for beneficial insects that limit outbreaks of garden pest populations.

Stocking the Weed Bank
The agonies and ecstasies of creating your own garden weeds from your favorite plants.

Companion Planting
Mixed plantings for healthier plants and more vegetables