Ground Nut - Apios Americana

One thing to consider when planning a garden for ground nuts or anything else is whether or not you want to have your plants in the ground or in a raised bed.

In Ground Gardens - The advantage of this type of garden is that assuming you have enough soil area to plant a garden in, you can just use the soil you have as it currently exists, till it ( turn it over and loosen it up, breaking up the tangles of roots, rocks and other things that could inhibit the growth of your plants ) and either plant the seeds or add the plants you want to grow. Watering is a little less critical as your earth bound garden is slower to dry up during periods with out rain. You can also use this method as a way of landscaping your property, creating various beds of flowering plants and or vegetables.

The drawbacks to this approach have to do with the normal maintainance required by these gardens such as tilling, weeding and thinning and mulching. It also generally requires some one who doesn't mind getting on their hands and knees for an extended period. Working in a garden such as this can a real chore and even impossible for those with knee problems or back problems or if you have difficulty going from a standing to a kneeling position or visa versa.

If you plant ground nuts in the earth, then under the ground there will be roots going off in all directions. Unless you are only concerned about having a nice climbing vine and a late August flower display then all you have to worry about is whether or not the plants have sufficient sun, and water to grow and are free from most weeds that might try to crowd them out of the sunlight. If on the other hand you want to be able to harvest your ground nuts either in the fall for eating or the spring for propagation you will have a difficult time locating all the ground nuts you have produced. The vines are slender and even though the ground nut only grows less than a foot underground it can leave your garden and wander into areas where it will be difficult to access them such as under a driveway or amongst the roots of other growing plants, bushes and trees. Roots you might not want to disturb.

Also you may not have the ideal soil for the type of plants you wish to grow. Before starting a garden you should do some research on the plants you want to work with: are they cold weather plants, warm weather plants, how long a growing season do they require, how much sun do they like, what type of soil ph (acidic or alkaline) is needed, can they be transplanted safely without causing problems, when will they be ready for harvest, are there any special methods required as to how to plant them, etc. As you probably already know search engines such as Google are great at finding all sorts of this kind of information.

For ground nuts, the longer the growing season the better, as long as there is no frost. They like full sun but will also grow in partial shade. If they get sunlight that is too strong for them they will fold up their leaves so the tops face each other. In a very heavy rain they will do the opposite and let their leaves droop straight down so as to offer virtually no resistance to the downpour. Ground nuts generally like an acidic soil with a ph between 5.6 and 7.5 ( you can get a soil ph tester at most garden supply stores ). The other thing to know about ground nuts is that the nuts start to sprout once they reach a temperture of 55 degrees Fahrenheit. You can also grow ground nuts from seed but most northern plants will not produce seeds. (In Connecticut, recent research found that only four percent of the wild ground nut plants produced seed pods, further north the percent is virtually zero.) In northern climes they propagate soley via the "nuts". Each nut will produce a new plant if planted separately. It can take anywhere from two weeks to a month for a nut to sprout. In a batch of nuts all planted at the same time in the same soil and temperature conditions, some will sprout much earlier that others.

We don't usually know what type of soil lies beneath our feet. Remember, it's been there a long time and who knows what occured before we came on the scene. In one house I lived in, it turned out that the place had been a blacksmith shop about 100 years before and what was now the back yard with a nice lawn had been a pit of sorts that had been filled in with coal ashes, then covered over with a thin layer of topsoil to grow the grass. In many places new septic systems lie just under the ground but someplaces there can be old unknown ones lurking to catch the unsuspecting. Not long ago, a man walking in the backyard of his newly purchased older home on Long Island suddenly disappeared down into the ground where he drowned in an old septic system. It turned out I had one just like that on my property. Fortunately I discovered it and had it removed just before I moved in. When ground nuts grow in the earth you never know where the roots will go.

If you want to have nice healthy organic soil to grow your vegetables in, you might just want to create it from scratch. It's not as hard as you might think. It's relatively inexpensive and it works great. I know, I tried it last year.

Lasagna Gardening -

A year or two ago I read a book called Lasagna Gardening by Patricia Lanza. In it she describes how to create an organic garden, including the soil, from scratch. You don't have to do any rototilling, you don't have to do any digging. You can create your garden anywhere, even on concrete, if you want to. (For those who dwell in cities, it would probably even work on roof tops.) You first create a barrier to the soil below using thick wet newspapers or cardboard. This also prevents weeds and other unwanted plants from entering your garden space. Then you add various layers of nutrient building soil components until you have a thick enough soil to start a garden (about 12 to 18 inches depending on what you want to grow). Here is a link to an article on how to create an organic lasagna garden. Lasagna Gardening - from the Mother Earth News by Patricia Lanza. You can also do a Google search on Lasagna Gardening and you will get lots of sites to visit.

I don't relish the thought of having to get down on my hands and knees all summer to fuss over my gardens for vegetables and ground nuts. Wouldn't it be nice to have the garden growing at workbench level. It would be a lot easier to weed, a lot easier to work on, and a lot easier to harvest from. If you're growing ground nuts you want to have their roots accessible so you can easily harvest the nuts come the fall (if you want to eat them) or the following spring (if you want to individually re-plant and propagate them). The easiest way to do this I have found is by building an above ground self contained organic garden. (See the photos on the left side of the page.)

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Ground Nut (Apios Americana) Gardens

In Ground vs Above Ground