Rules of Thumb, 30x30, and the Laws of Nature

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Spring Landscape (Rain), A. Krehbiel My mother had a commonplace book in which she recorded, by hand, in beautiful cursive, proverbs, sayings, and quotes that struck her as interesting, thought provoking, or wise. I also love sayings, and quotes, and mantras, but mostly I’ve collected rules of thumb, those short pithy statements that condense ways of dealing with life on earth in the same way that proverbs give advice on how to behave in prudent, trouble-avoiding ways.  Rules of thumb exist for every field of human endeavor. There are the general ones, such as the 80% rule, or Pareto Principle, that gets applied in sometimes surprising ways—"eighty percent of every thing is trash,” someone will say, or another will say that “80% of your output comes from 20% of your efforts,” for example. The 80/20 ratio is useful in all sorts of contexts. For example, in a perennial garden, the general rule (backed up by scientific evidence) is that about 75-80% of the plants should be native (lo
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Soil Health

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Successful ecological gardening depends on healthy, living soil. Good practice also helps turn your garden into a carbon sink. I have posted about this before and will again, but here is a cheat sheet of tried and true suggestions that give good results.

Good Gardening Practices that Will Build Soil Health and Store Carbon
• Don’t use synthetic fertilizer (or herbicides or pesticides).
• Use organic fertilizer very carefully.
• Make compost and use it.
• Let fallen leaves decompose naturally under bushes and trees.
• Let pruned branches decompose naturally under trees and bushes.
• Allow duff to build naturally around bushes and trees.
• Put raked leaves in compost or start a separate leaf-mold pile.
• Don’t cultivate or till established beds if at all possible.
• Put down an inch of compost on beds in spring.
• Use organic mulches such as wood chips judiciously (I usually put down a thinnish layer over compost).
 • Grow native plants and wait until spring to cut down (or burn, if feasible): many have seeds birds love, and many will reseed themselves in fall and winter).
• Put cut-down stalks in compost or chop and leave in beds around plants.
• Reduce lawn to necessary areas (such as the croquet green, soccer pitch or picnic area).
• Top dress your small-as-possible, polyculture lawn with finely sifted compost in fall.
• Make new beds in summer or fall by mowing grass, putting down six layers of newspaper, wetting it, and topping with two to four inches of wood chips. Ready to plant in spring.
• Add compost to planting holes when putting in new plants.
• Reduce your power tool use.
•Make well-defined paths and use stepping stones to reduce soil compaction.