Sjostrand: ‘It’s all playing in the dirt’

Hallock man practices unique gardening with continual curiosity

By Anna Jauhola
Just as Mother Nature finds a way, Ron Sjostrand does the same with his garden.
The Kittson County native moved back to Hallock nearly two years ago after he spent his working life working with plants in one way or another. Between designing the landscaping at the University of North Dakota and later breeding plants for various seed companies, Sjostrand said curiosity has guided him through.
His backyard garden in Hallock is something not many would consider typical gardening. Many gardens are planted in rows, much like the thousands of acres of crops in the county. Sjostrand’s garden, however, is much more circular in nature.
“I tend to explore rules. I tend to push the limits,” Sjostrand said with a laugh.
He said his garden is partially based on the Fibonacci sequence – visually it is viewed as a spiral, like a nautilus shell – and also on circular gardening.
“That combined with what can be termed square-foot gardening and the attempt to garden collaboratively instead of by force,” Sjostrand said.
Upon entering his garden, there are towers of beans circled by pepper plants, and large melons circled by smaller bean plants.
“There are six varieties of beans I’ve been working on,” he said in a recent interview. “This is the gene pool in general that I call ‘A Flock of Swallows.’ One of them out of the six will perhaps get that name.”
One variety he has created is growing purple beans, which is a variety in the gene pool.
He has a variety of melons growing too, which all get along great.
In his garden, Sjostrand uses plants that naturally repel insects or divert blight to keep others healthy, and also will find solutions in his garden to help defend his plants otherwise.
Under his tomato plants, he planted lettuce to limit early blight.
“It exists in every bit of soil around here,” Sjostrand said. “It’s natural, native. If you’ve got damage to any one of the leaves at all, or along the stem, and you get a rain shower and those internal parts are exposed to the soil, that’s a window for early blight. The lettuce helps prevent the rain from splashing back up onto the tomatoes.”
Further back in his garden are bok choy, cabbage, turnips, rutabagas, cauliflower and cucumbers planted in close proximity to carrots, dill, onions, beets, mustard spinach, sage, rosemary and winter savory. Fragrant plants will help mix up a chemical signal for insects that are attracted to different plants. He specifically noted the cabbage leaves show little damage from insects. How Sjostrand handles cabbage looper worms gives an example of natural gardening that pioneers would be proud of.
“All you have to do is pay attention, be curious and look for the dried up little thing that almost looks like a bird turd, but you can see it was a worm of some kind,” he said. “Bring that along with four to five of its brethren, let milk sit out until it separates into curds and whey. Crush up the critters, put it in the whey.”
Mixing the dead worms with the whey creates more of the bacteria that killed the worm. He mixes a teaspoon of the whey to a quart of water, and a drop of dish soap to make it stick, and sprays it onto the cabbage.
“By and large, if it’s attacking your garden, you can find a solution in your garden or find a solution in your yard,” he said. “If you find a dead insect, preferably you’ll have a good idea of what the insect died from, because you don’t want to increase something that’s toxic.”
Sjostrand’s expertise comes from years of experience and, most of all, curiosity. Studying and finding out what works best, and putting it into practice has brought him this far. But curiosity never ends and he’s always learning.
“And because I push the envelope a little bit with how much you can grow in limited spaces, these are two varieties of squash,” Sjostrand said, pointing to a densely packed circle of plants. One is in the butternut family and the other is a summer squash. The varieties do not cross pollinate, so they grow beautifully.
As for the bok choys, Asian cabbages, mustard, spinach, and others in that certain group, they all cross. He said when they cross, the produce often comes out even better, tender and savory.
If a neighbor grew the same type of plant Sjostrand had in his garden, but he wanted to keep his seed pure, the fence and lilac bushes would do 75% of the work in separating those plants.
“Occasionally you’re going to have an errant cross. But that’s a gift!” he said. “You’ll find out next year what the hybrid is and a year later, which of the traits it’s adopted from its parents. It’s all playing in the dirt.”
While he will harvest the fruits of his labor, many of his plants will also provide seed for the following year. His radish plants will bloom and go to seed, as will the mustard plants. Some of the seeds are also delicious snacks – particularly radish seed pods carry the same flavor as its fruit – spicy!
As he grows his vegetable garden on one side of his yard, his wife, Dawn, has been cultivating a flower garden on the north end. It too does not resemble a typical row garden, but is more freewheeling with bachelor buttons, snapdragons, morning glory, amaranth, marshmallow, creeping thyme, cock’s comb, peonies and others.
“Eventually, there’ll be more medicinal plants too. That tall white guy back there is valerian,” he said, pointing to a white cluster of blooms.
Valerian root is commonly used as a sleep aid, often steeped as a tea or dried and capsulized. They have also started mint plants, black cumin for spice, camomile and salvia. In a separate bed by the house, they are also growing milk thistle, often described as a weed. Sjostrand said milk thistle seed can be crushed and put in capsules also, or steeped as tea. It is purportedly good for your liver and can help with migraines.
Overall, gardening simply makes Sjostrand happy. Plus he likes good food and natural ways to treat what ails him.
“I quickly learned that, biologically, plants being allowed to do what they naturally do makes at this old man’s body feel a hell of a lot better than forcing plants to rows,” he said.