Now is the easiest time of year to start a new garden bed (assuming “now” = early fall, day time temperatures around 45f). All you have to do is lay down cardboard:
Top it with still some nitrogen rich compostable matter, in this case grass clippings:
Some carbon-rich matter, in this case old wood chips:
And keep layering until it’s pretty thick:
And then walk away and ignore it until spring. All winter long, it’ll be decomposing, while killing the grass and weeds underneath. By spring time, the soil underneath will be nice & loose and fertile, and you’ll be able to plant straight into it.
(If you want to meet organic standards, then make sure any cardboard or paper is non-glossy and black & white.)
Update to this bed, and replies to comments I remember.
First off, to the person who was very concerned that I was “destroying” the lawn, I think it’ll be fine, there’s a lot of it:
This person, who is not me, has a lot of lawn. I’m allergic to grass (it gives me hives and makes me incredibly itchy) so if it were mine you can be assured I would definitely destroy it the first chance I got. But that’s not the case here, and adding one additional bed isn’t hurting anything.
It’s not got a barrier or border for edging because that matches the rest of the person’s garden beds, and honestly, I’ve found that you still have to edge around barrier, so I skip that and edge twice a year. Here’s what the edge currently looks like:
Would some sort of edging be nice, aesthetically? Perhaps, but this person wanted to make a bed as cheaply as possible, so this works.
Someone else was concerned about wind blown weed seeds, and you can see the resulting weeds in the above picture as well as in this close up:
No weeding had happened at this point, so you can see there’s remarkably few. At least for this climate and time of year.
There are a couple ways you could deal with this. First off, you can hand weed, which is super easy because they’ve had a very easy life in the mulch, so it’s quite easy to get all the roots up. Secondly, you could just mulch more. It just depends on the situation and how developed the weeds are. You could, hypothetically, also just take a stirrup hoe to it, but we just hand pulled the weeds and it hardly took any time.
In other news, my fava beans have started to bloom:
These are the large seeded kind, for eating rather than use as a cover crop. I really like their flowers, though I feel like the cover crop version has more flowers. These are still gorgeous though.
And yeah, there are weeds in there. That’s life. Especially when you garden for other people for a living, and thus don’t have so much time for your own garden :/
If you want to support bees and have really hardy plants that don’t require a lot of fussing, native plants are the way to go. I’ve got several in my yard, but I’m particularly excited about three berry species: thimbleberries, black cap raspberries, and native blackberries:
There are so many flowers on these guys, and I’ve been seeing multiple native bees on them, including bumble bees. Because they’re native, they’re well adapted and I don’t have to water them- and they don’t care at all about how wet and cold it has been this year. Really looking forward to the berry crop.
Highly recommend looking up what is native to your area and connecting with a native plant salvage group.
Keyhole Gardening: a Drought-Tolerant, Compost-Style, Sustainable Concept
The key hole garden concept is quite simple. A circular planting bed (with a “keyhole” to allow access to the center) is constructed with bricks, stone, gabion-style walls, or even aluminum siding. In the center of the keyhole is a circular compost bin in which kitchen scraps and household “gray water” are poured.
Layers of soil inside the circular walls slope slightly outward to encourage positive drainage away from the central compost bin. As kitchen and garden waste breaks down and gray water is added, a natural “compost tea” soaks into the surrounding soil providing nutrients to plants growing within the circular wall. More information and instructions at the link.
An ice storm is on its way. This, after two polar vortexes in January and a two-inch snowfall that paralyzed Atlanta’s roadways for 24 hours. Thank goodness for primroses (Primula vulgarism) - just in time for an icy, snow-bitten Valentine’s Day.
It’s still too early for spring bulbs to appear from beneath the frozen tundra, so I brought home a few primroses from the local garden center to brighten an otherwise grim growing season. I dressed up an old vintage plant stand with terra cotta pots and filled them with primroses. Then I tucked a couple of plants into milk glass vessels that I keep on hand for various flower projects. The snow-white milk glass is such a pretty contrast to plant materials, and the primroses are no exception. For a tabletop centerpiece, I placed a pretty red primrose under a garden cloche for Valentine’s Day. What better way to spend the next two weeks, than under the influence of primroses?
Because primroses like cool temperatures and moist soil conditions, they are an easy flower to grow this time of year. The garden doesn’t offer a lot of color in February, so the first burst of spring usually comes in the form of primroses. As the garden starts to break out of winter, group primroses in planters with violets and pansies, all of which are edible flowers if you grow them organically (I use an organic cow manure tea from Authentic Haven Brand to keep my primroses blooming over a long period of time). Add organically-grown flower petals to salads, pasta dishes, or desserts for subtle, colorful flavors from the garden. Freeze the petals in ice cube trays for fruity beverages, or dry them to use in tea, but introduce them sparingly to guard against possible allergic reaction.
“Primrose” comes from Medieval Latin: prīma rosa, or “first rose.” They are my first flowers every spring.
How about a garden giveaway? What a lovely way to start the new year! The dead of winter is a perfect time to plan a garden, so here’s a little gift to get you started.
Susan is one of the most gracious and generous gardeners I know, and is always willing to share her secrets to growing roses with the rest of us. “Roses are easy, people can be difficult,” and Susan proves that point with her tips in the new 2014 guide, filled with colorful photographs of roses she took in her rose garden. You can read about her journey to write the guide on her blog.
The American Rose Society awarded Susan with its Presidential Citation “for Promoting the Rose and Rose Education Via Social Media,” and her photo of the Julia Child Rose is included in the 2014 ARS Calendar for the month of July.
You can find Susan on twitter, @gagasgarden, or on her blog, Gaga’s Garden when she isn’t taking care of her roses.
A blossoming fruit orchard. Grape vines sit next to the outdoor dining room. There are citrus trees in pots and giant privacy hedges in the background. Project Name: “Provence in Ojai.” Landscape Design + Furniture Design by Paul Hendershot Design, Inc. paulhendershotdesign.com
The goats and horses are now living their best lives in a clean and organic landscape. Apple trees are a foodscaping element the goats find especially pleasing. Project Name: “East Coast Style.” Landscape Design by Paul Hendershot Design, Inc. paulhendershotdesign.com
A blossoming fruit tree at a residential home orchard. These beautiful flowers will start budding fruit soon. Happy first day of spring! Project Name: “Provence in Ojai.” Landscape Design by Paul Hendershot Design, Inc. paulhendershotdesign.com
My cat hanging out in the garden while our tomato plants are being watered. Interested in water saving drip irrigation for your garden? Check out www.gardendripsystem.com
In my last post, a reblog from last year, I mentioned the cut conifers to be sold as Christmas trees had started arriving at the garden centre where I work, but together with the trees we also received some visitors.
As of October, ladybugs (Coccinella septempunctata) begin congregating in sheltered places to spend their winter dormancy period, a time when their mobility and activity level are strictly dependant on the temperature, and it seems a large number of them had chosen the dense, evergreen foliage of the Nordmann firs (Abies nordmanniana) to do so. Whenever I would free a tree from its net, shaking it, several ladybugs (as well as a variety of spiders) would fall to the floor, suddenly thrown out of their cosy temporary home.
I collected and placed dozens of them around the garden centre, where they will be valuable allies in my battle against aphids next year, but I also decided to relocate some of them to my allotment. I had one of those boxes sold as “butterfly houses” installed on a south-facing portion of the fence, and I thought it could serve well for the purpose of giving them shelter, so I filled it with some bamboo sticks and placed them inside to see what they would do.
They seem to find it suitable, the following day the box was still full and the majority had climbed up to rest under the roof. If all goes well, they will spend the winter there, and when they emerge they will find the place to be a good breeding site, which will also, inexorably, be filled with food for them.
Aphids, mites and all of you, soft-bodied insects, cower before my army now!
Exactly two months after giving the ladybugs a new home, I gave a small group of them a first task. A Salvia plant overwintering in my mini greenhouse had become the target of likewise overwintering aphids, taking advantage of the sheltered position. I could have simply used an insecticidal spray, but why, when I can mingle with biological warfare?!
Jokes aside, any shelter or protective structure you can give a plant against the cold will also be ideal for other creatures. Biological pest control means playing with the balance in the numbers of these creatures, encouraging what’s beneficial to your situation.
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