In Coyote's Garden — Coyote Now

European Honey bee dusting up an Iceland poppy. Erin Hauge

Urban gardening is full of beauty and surprising rewards. One would think that there’s not much to see other than some dirt in containers with a few stunted radishes and a bunch or two of unenthusiastic spinach. But just like gardening on an acre in the country, if the urban gardener has the will to grow and creates the right conditions in the space available, learning from successes and failures turns into a fun adventure that brings rewards and unexpected awarenesses.

Coyote IS the unexpected - the stuff you weren’t necessarily trying to do but that happens anyway - the overwatering, the aphids, the wasps that eat the praying mantis babies, the neighbor’s free-roaming cat come to hunt birds, the squash blossoms that drop off before a zucchini can form. But Coyote is also the flowers that bloomed overnight, the beans that are sprouting up in the morning that weren’t there yesterday, the hummingbirds that come to drink from the salvia, the scrub jay fledgling taking a messy and noisy bath in the bird bath, the bees that bump into each other mid-flight as they buzz from flower to flower, the ladybug resting underneath a sunflower leaf.

This is my second year of backyard gardening and I can already tell that employing lessons gleaned from last year’s adventures is producing better results. There are three small raised beds on legs that stand about 35 inches high, one 2x4 raised bed that sits on the ground, and several large containers, in addition to one small ground patch that has had some conditioned soil added to supplement its hard-packed, nutrient-depleted composition. Not a lot to work with one might think. Even I was surprised to discover that it’s been possible to plant a variety of vegetables in this piece-meal garden space, including a diversity of salad greens, spinach, kale, chard, tomatoes, zucchini, bush beans, artichokes, onions, radishes and possibly potatoes, we will see.

Some vegetable lessons learned so far:

· Fertilizer is essential. (Maybe a no-brainer but I had resisted!)

· Planting more seeds than the packet instructs does not create a higher yield – more is not better.

· Moving containers around a lot through the Spring displaces a lot of beneficial insects that live under and around the containers so committing to container locations early on is better if possible.

· Things like lettuce and spinach tend to bolt, or go to seed, pretty quickly if not regularly harvested, and they don’t like too much sun.

· Pay attention to when the sun touches each garden area and for how long throughout the day as it moves across the yard so vegetables can be planted with more awareness according to their sun needs.

In addition to the vegetables, there’s a pretty hearty pollinator garden abounding as well. The small backyard seems to be most hospitable to Borage (Borago officinalis), California poppies (Eschscholzia californica) and Catnip (Nepeta cataria). These three species thrive there and love to self-seed and sprout up in the most unlikely places. Other flowers that are growing, mostly natives but a few non-natives, are:

• Iceland poppies (Papaver nudicaule)

• Common madia (Madia elegans)

• Clevland sage (Salvia clevelandii)

• Bachelor’s buttons (Centaurea cyanus)

• Butterfly Blue Pincushion flower (Scabiosa columbaria)

• Baby blue eyes (Nemophila menziesii)

• Tidy tips (Layia platyglossa)

• Santa Barbara daisy (Erigeron karvinskianus)

• Bee balm (Monarda lambata)

• Delta sunflower (Helianthus annuus)

• Red buckwheat (Eriogonum grande rubescens)

• California wild lilac (Ceanothus spp.)

• Yellow yarrow (Eriophyllum confertiflorum)

• Red Autumn sage (Salvia greggii)

• California fuschia (Epilobium canum)

• French Lavender (Lavandula stoechas)

• Narrow leaf milkweed (Asclepias fascicularis)

• Bird’s-eye gilia (Gilia tricolor)

• Wild strawberry (Fragaria vesca)

• Sweet alyssum (Lobularia maritima)

This yard contains an amazing amount of plant and insect life for its size. A testament to the fact that urban gardeners have much more potential than they might think with a small space. It’s about creative thinking and learning by doing as the seasons pass.

Erin Hauge is an Ecologist, Certified California naturalist and wildlife tracker. She is currently earning an A.S. in Biology and writes periodic nature and wildlife blogs.

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