No doubt everyone is familiar with the basics of vegetable growing—good compost, good soil, good seed, good cultivation and good luck will yield a good harvest. Farmers and apprentices and volunteers all play their part. But recently a new worker has appeared on the farm, barely noticeable at a passing glance. It is the hedgerow. What we are calling a hedgerow is a narrow strip adjoining the growing fields planted with a mixture of flowers and shrubs and small trees. What work does a hedgerow do? The answer is not so simple. Rather, it’s wonderful!
Below ground the hedgerow is the scene of some pretty heavy lifting. As the roots of the new row begin to grow, they add stability to the soil. No plow or disc or harrow or broadfork will ever pierce the precious skin of its topsoil. Therefore, the roots will grow undisturbed. I n the vast ecology of the root zone, hedgerow plants interact with bacteria and fungi and arthropods (bugs!), all busy exchanging sugars and salts and minerals, etc. One root trades some sugars to a passing micro arthropod which then engineers some amino acids and binds a mineral in its digestion and then excretes something edible to another little beastie which may die and dissolve in the water where the root finds just what it’s looking for, and sends that on into the leaf or fruit or taproot. That is how plant nutrition occurs on an organic/biodynamic farm. Life nourishes the living. And that abundance can spread through mycorrhizal fungal networks which extend far into the planted food crops, like conveyors carrying needed nutrition out and about, wherever it is needed.
Above ground, stems and leaves provide landing pads for songbirds preying on insect pests. A butterfly might pause to lay eggs on a leaf. And when the hedgerow flowers, all the pollinators come out. Everything from the tiniest bees to the showy purple predator wasps sip from flower nectaries or gather pollen. These opportunists will also pollinate our warm weather fruit crops—they’re not particular!—and feast on aphids about to devour our food. Mountain mint especially hums with a diversity of winged creatures morning, noon and night. Far more adept than fumbling human fingers, these invisible flying workers pluck individual insect pests from our plants with merciless precision and constant repetition.
Thanks to Paula and volunteers from Bee Inspired www.beehero.org/, the hedgerows are quickly coming into shape with recent transplants already yearning skywards. Thanks, Paula! Beside these hedgerows, imagine the food crops disappearing into the distance in long stripes of green and red. These lettuces and spring mix and spinach and peas and carrots all benefit from the lively care bestowed upon them by hedgerow inhabitants. We know what it is like to try to remove pests from our crops. But the hedgerow’s hidden workers have us beat by a country mile. We honor them and thrill to their presence! And when you taste this week’s food, you will, too!