Archive for April, 2010
Organic Landscape Design
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Photo by Laura Leavell
These days many people are taking the organic route by trying to do seemingly everything as earth friendly and natural as possible. Organic Landscaping is coming back. Fifty years ago it was a necessary practice but with the development of pesticides and fertilizers, using organic methods for landscaping became unpopular. No matter what your personal political views are on the rise of organic use in our country, it’s hard to deny that organic landscaping has several benefits. Fewer chemicals in the yard where the kids play is one that caters to me as a health conscious mom. Plus, organic landscaping can be less expensive than inorganic landscaping. You’re not buying chemicals since the big push in organic landscaping is to use elements of the natural world around you for fertilizers, pest control, and general softscape upkeep.
Sometimes the word “Organic” scares me. I see big dollar signs and complicated methods, but with landscaping it is simply a return to the old ways. Use the natural elements of your area to design and promote your landscape. Here are some ways to make your own property organic.
For The Lawn
• Purchase organic fertilizer for your lawn. The initial cost is more, but over time it requires less application which means less expense.
• Practice aeration in your yard. Punching little holes all over the yard is better for grass root growth and will allow friendly bugs like earthworms to move more freely.
• Try top dressing. Create a mixture of half composted material and half sand to spread thinly over your lawn. This is good for lawn rooting and will yield hardier grass.
• Over seeding is the use of more grass seed for your lawn than you need. Use 1 ½ times more grass seed to allow quicker germination, thicker grass, and natural weed control.
For The Plants
• Make use of native plants. Exotic plants require more time and attention and chemicals to thrive.
• Keep soil healthy like nature does by keeping it covered. Use mulch or aground cover plant to keep moisture and nutrients where they should be.
• Grow plants in conditions as near to their natural habitat as possible. Don’t put plants that love the shade in the sunny spot of your yard.
• Grow a “monoculture”. A monoculture is a wide range of plants grown close together instead of a just one plant. This is a natural practice. Trying to grow one single type of plant can require chemicals to flourish. You don’t see wild roses growing in straight lines and beds by themselves out in nature. They are surrounded by other plants and work together to be healthy.
• Practice natural pest control. Allow plants that harbor friendly insect predators like the ladybug to grow in your landscaping. This will reduce or eliminate the use of pesticides to keep your plants looking great.
I enjoy a great looking landscape. I’m discovering that a great looking landscape doesn’t always require the use of potentially unhealthy chemicals. Organic landscaping will give you beauty and peace of mind by using natural practices and materials for landscape upkeep and design. Let me know if you’ve had success “going green” with your landscaping!
Ask the Gardener-April 19th
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We have decided that there are so many great gardening questions, that we can’t possibly answer them all in our monthly newsletter. So we are going to introduce this feature column that will be published every Monday. We would like to invite you to submit your questions to us by either leaving a comment on the Ask the Gardener post each week or by e-mailing us your questions. We will do our best to answer all of your questions either in this column or in our monthly newsletter. So don’t be shy! Ask away!
Today we are going to answer one of the great questions we have received via e-mail from one of our newsletter subscribers.
How can I get my lifeless clay dirt to grow healthy vegetables?
This is a great question! And it brings up an important part of gardening: soil. In order for plants to grow, they need to be able to establish a healthy root system. In order to do this, the soil needs to be loose and enriched with nutrients. The problem with clay soils (and we deal with this too), is that they tend to be heavy and lack essential nutrients that the plants need. Unfortunately, this isn’t the best scenario for healthy plant growth. So what does one do when they are faced with soil such as this?
The first thing that you need to do is to add organic material to the clay soil. When you have done that, add some more. We like to use humates, or humic acid, which are in essence dinosaur poop. You can find this at your local garden center. We also use leaves, compost and grass clippings. You can add the grass clippings from your lawn, as long as you haven’t treated the lawn with weed killer. When you add lawn clippings that have been treated with weed killer, you are just asking for trouble as most weed killers will also damage the plants in your garden. Not exactly what you are trying to do when you are growing a garden.
Work the organic material into the clay soil until it is loose and light. This will enable your vegetables to establish a great root system and to breathe. Yes, I said breathe. We are taught in school that plants provide oxygen into the air for us to breathe. What isn’t taught, is that plants use just as much oxygen as they generate. The roots of the plants need oxygen to survive. When they are planted too tightly in soil, it makes it difficult for the plant to breathe and it will eventually die without the oxygen that it needs to flourish.
You will want to add organic material every year. This will help you to improve your soil and maximize your potential for a successful garden year after year.
So what is your gardening question? Leave a comment below with your question or you can e-mail us at info@successfulgardens.com
What Shape Are Your Gloves In?
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Photo by Jean Scheijen
It is that time of year again; time to get the band-aids out of the cabinet and onto my hands and fingers. While I am building up the calluses on my hands for the season ahead, I have already had a couple of blisters form and pop. Sitting in front of a computer and driving as much as I have done in the last six months, has allowed my hands to go soft and lose the calluses from last year.
Spring time has brought about the time to start working out in the yard more and more. With the additional daylight we are starting to get each day, it is easy to find myself out longer and longer on the days that I am home. There is always something that needs to be raked, shoveled or moved. My hands are now starting to show the effects of the extra time spent in the yard.
I have been raking the dead leaves from last year away from the rose bushes and some of the perennials throughout the yard. Some of these leave were purposely and strategically placed last fall as an insulating protection. However, there were plenty of stray leaves that, over the course of the winter, blew in and decided to add their protecting values to places I didn’t know needed protection. But what do I do with all of the extra leaves?
There has been talk about a community composting project. I didn’t want to wait that long to see what was going to happen there, and I don’t like sending clean yard waste to the landfill, and by clean, I mean without chemicals. And I couldn’t burn the leaves, so I spread them out on my lawn, got the lawn mower out of the garage, and mowed over them. I’ll start my own compost pile.
Actually, I’ll discuss composting later, but for now, the chopped up leaves are going in the garden. We are putting in raised beds for part of our garden this year, and so the leaves will aid in mixing with the soil, creating a lighter, fluffier planting bed. However, this would be a great additive to help in the aeration of a regular garden and/or flower bed too.
Since the chopped up leaves are brown, a high carbon ratio, and I won’t be adding any green material to the soil yet, I will have to offset the high carbon ratio with some added nitrogen. This will help in the balancing the carbon to nitrogen ratio that is so important in composting. This source of nitrogen can come from regular fertilizer but be careful how high the first number is on the fertilizer bag. I like to use some of the organic nitrogen fertilizers, such as blood meal, because they are slower to break down and will not burn or hurt new vegetable starts.
As I am raking, shoveling and mixing the chopped leaves with the dirt that I brought in from the neighbors, the blisters have started to form once again on my hands. But that is my fault because I was willing to work with the broken tool that needed to be fixed or replaced. Yes I consider gloves to be tools. They are important and need to be taken care of also.
There are many things that need to be done to get ready for spring and working in the yard. Make sure your shovels, hoes, and pruners have been sharpened and are in good working condition. These maintenance tasks or repairs will allow for easier work and for your safety in the yard. Duct tape isn’t the answer to fixing a cracked handle. Though I have seen it done, I can say that I haven’t used it myself to splice a handle of a shovel or hoe. When using the proper tool in good working condition, that task at hand won’t seem like drudgery: You will enjoy working in the yard even more.
Even though I have several pairs of gloves to choose from, I have one pair in particular that have been worn through a couple of seasons, they are very comfortable, and has seen a lot of use, they have served me well, yet I can’t seem to part with them. Hence the real reason to get the band-aids out: my gloves, that I have relied on for so long, just need to be replaced, band-aids won’t hold them together any longer.