Jul. 17, 1998
Renegade gardener: In one man's wild ecosystem, every plant is welcome
By Dru Wilson
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. -- In Bob Freeman's back yard, it's hard to tell where the weeds and grass end and the garden begins.
Freeman doesn't believe in boundaries. His gardening methods break traditional garden commandments: Plow, till and spend back-breaking hours weeding; never let a stray plant or blade of grass take root among the vegetables and flowers.
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Here, in Freeman's back yard, dandelions, grasses and garden vegetables intermingle freely. He never kills or removes any plant that chooses to grow here.
"I just let it do what it wants," he says. "The more plant varieties, the merrier."
The result is a hodgepodge of plants that form a unique organic-garden ecosystem.
"Neatnik gardeners would hate this," Freeman says with a chuckle as he surveys his creation. Indeed, Martha Stewart might lose her impeccable composure if she saw this seemingly unkempt tangle of vegetation.
But there's method to Freeman's madness. First and foremost, he has found it's much easier to work with Mother Nature than against her.
A native of suburban Los Angeles, Freeman always was drawn to open spaces where green things grew. His yearning to be a farmer finally took root, so to speak, after he purchased a small farm in West Virginia in 1972.
After years as a teacher, he was determined to be a subsistence farmer living off the land, but his field of dreams was tough to cultivate. "It became a matter of survival. I worked sunup to sundown just to grow enough to feed my family of three," he says.
Then he read a book by Japanese farmer Masanobu Fukuoka titled `The One Straw Revolution.' In it, Fukuoka questioned traditional farm practices.
"He said nature doesn't clear the ground or till it or plow, yet things grow in abundance," Freeman says.
So Freeman decided to experiment by letting things happen naturally. He found he could produce the same amount of food with considerably less work, since he didn't need to plow, till or weed.
Freeman and his wife, Helen Harris, moved from West Virginia to Pueblo in 1987 and then to Colorado Springs in 1993. They bought their home on Monument Street in August 1996 so he could "farm" once more.
"The Downtown Farmer; that's me," he says.
He also refers to himself as an "avant-gardener" in his E-mail address. And, given the unconventional, cutting-edge nature of his urban agricultural techniques, it fits.
Nature is not a neat freak and other tips from the `avant-gardener'
Tips from an `avant-gardener'
Bob Freeman offers these tips to the novice hodgepodge gardener:
* Weeds. "Nature is not fastidious," Freeman says. Plants of all kinds can live together in harmony, benefiting from each other without competition, he says.
"Weeds are just plants whose beneficial properties we don't yet understand," Freeman says.
Clover, for instance, adds nitrogen to the soil.
Many wild plants are more attractive to insects than garden vegetables, so they serve as a kind of natural pest control. A good mixture of plants and a minimum of exposed soil encourages the proliferation of earthworms, as well.
Some weeds do need a bit of training before they become good inhabitants of the yard/garden, he says.
"If they get too tall, I step on them," he said. "They eventually learn to grow along the ground to survive."
He plants vegetables far enough apart that he is able to cut weeds and grasses back with a weed whacker. The trimmings fall to the ground and become additional fodder for the worms. Eventually, the vegetables grow tall and dense enough to control most of the weed and grass growth on their own. And because he devotes his entire back yard to this mix of veggies, grasses and weeds, he never needs to mow.
* Earthworms. "The beginning of good agriculture is earthworms," Freeman says.
The burrowing worms keep the soil loose, which helps the soil absorb and retain moisture. That's a key benefit in this semiarid climate. In addition, earthworms convert decaying plant material into soil nutrients.
"What comes out the back of a worm is five times as rich in nitrogen as what goes in the front," says Freeman.
* Fertilizer. But even this garden needs additional organic fertilizing.
The first thing Freeman did to prepare his back yard was order a dump truck load of organic steer manure, spread it and till it under. Then he seeded the ground with a mix of perennial pasture grasses and clover, which contribute additional nutrients to the soil.
He also keeps a large compost heap, consisting of steer manure, shredded yard and garden materials such as grass and cornstalks and kitchen scraps. He treats it with a bacterial enhancer such as Rid-X -- commonly added to septic systems -- to speed organic breakdown. This is covered in black plastic and left to molder all winter.
He has also sunk a 30-gallon plastic garbage can into the ground, leaving about 5 or 6 inches exposed. Over the winter, he ferments a liquid fertilizer out of water, kitchen scraps and Rid-X in this tightly closed container. Freeman calls it "compost tea." He can scoop out a pailful whenever some of his garden plants need a boost.
* Planting. To get a jump on Colorado Springs' short growing season, Freeman created his own greenhouse by converting his south-facing front porch into a glassed-in solarium. Sprouting vegetable plants thrive here in peat pots.
"It can be 75 degrees in here when it's 10 degrees outside," Freeman says.
When the time is right, Freeman transfers what he calls the "summer tourist" plants to the back yard. He uses a post-hole digger to carve out circular holes among the grass, weeds and other plants. He fills the holes with a mixture of soil and compost, then plants a seedling in each one. His wife calls them "earth pots."
Some vegetables -- like potatoes, asparagus and Egyptian onions -- are planted directly into the garden under a protective layer of straw, which keeps the planting bed warm and moist.
"I planted the potatoes on Good Friday and [May 15] was the first time I watered them," he says.
In spring, the newly planted vegetables appear lost among the rest of the vegetation, but by late summer they will dwarf the grass and weeds that surround them.
* Watering. Freeman's method of allowing weeds and grasses to cover all the ground between vegetable plants helps his garden retain and conserve water. Moisture evaporates much more quickly out of tilled, uncovered ground.
But Freeman still needs to water.
He uses a drip irrigation system divided into interconnecting sections so that he can direct the flow to different parts of the garden without watering it all at once. Fine-spray, low-pressure sprinkler heads attached to thin tubes running from the larger ground tubes are attached to the top of 3-foot high wooden stakes so the water falls gently over the garden like rain.
It is a relatively inexpensive irrigation system to put together and is more efficient than lawn sprinklers, says Freeman.
* Insects. When insects invade, Freeman checks each plant and removes any larvae he finds by hand, but he also has help from his feathered friends. Birds that visit his feeders are not only fun to watch, they also help keep insects at bay, Freeman says. Occasionally a sunflower will sprout from a seed dropped by birds, adding yet another plant to the mixture. And bird songs make for a happier garden, he says.