Poet’s Narcissus, Narcissus Actaea is lovely, and fragrant. You can’t have too many of these.
You know that sick feeling when you feel your shovel going through a bulb already in your garden bed? It’s a tricky flower bulb planting challenge to remember where the heck you planted them last year. Or the year before. Here’s a great method to get some bulbs in the ground and allow you to increase your spring display without endangering any bulbs planted previously.
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Fruit is heavy. Stake and tie before they flop.
Potato plants in my garden exploded with top growth last week. They’ve been surging up and up with mad abandon, then suddenly got tired of being upright and flopped dramatically over the sides of the container. “It’s harrrd being a potato plant,” I may have heard them moaning. What to do?
Ten containers of heirloom tomatoes have also responded to the heat and burst every which way with gonzo growth. I did catch these mostly in time, and gave myself a gold star. Here are a few staking tips to keep your garden veggies from tumbling over.
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The inspiring, entertaining, and straightforward Ruth Stout (1884–1980) was an American gardener and writer who perfected what she called the “No Work” vegetable garden method: the principle of using a year round mulch of hay. She came to gardening late in life and wrote several gardening books on making gardening easy. Ruth was one of the first to propose the no-dig, no-plow vegetable garden, a practice that preserves the soil structure and valuable microorganisms. The video above shows Ruth planting potatoes by casually tossing sprouted spuds on the ground, then covering with hay.
A thick layer of straw, newspaper, or any other organic mulch is essential in the hot, dry days of mid summer especially now, in the middle of a heat wave and drought. As Ruth says, “mulch keeps the soil soft and moist”, the perfect growing medium for most plants. When watering, if soil is very dry, pull newspaper away from base of plants to make sure water sinks in, then re-cover to hold the moisture in.
I can’t argue with Ruth’s gardening philosophy, “I don’t do anything I don’t want to do, and I don’t have to.” I also like her professed habit of having her breakfast Roman-style, on the couch.
“I’m not like all the other patio chairs..”
I don’t know if you drool (like I do) over all the new garden furniture that’s available now. You can now have a second living room outdoors (if you can afford it), with comfy couches and chairs complete with thick upholstered pillows. But, hey, then next thing you need is a huge shed to put those oversized pillows in when it rains. I don’t have a shed. I don’t even have a place indoors to store monster pillows. I do have a couple of boring white plastic chairs though. They are also ancient, but I must admit, pretty comfortable with a pillow. That’s why I perked up when I saw this chair revitalized with cheerful red paint. Take a bad chair and make it better! And make it any colour you want. Look for paint that covers plastic, or epoxy paint for a project like this. Clean and sand first, then use a primer before you add the colour coat. Some instructions are here.
Another flourish with paint that caught my eye was this charming multi-coloured rock, presumably designed and painted by a little kid. The paint may eventually wash off if it’s water based, but I could imagine a whole garden dotted with these charming objects. It’s amazing how cheerful and fun a little paint can be. On a boring rainy day kids could have a ball making painted garden decorations out of rocks and sticks.
A garden rock that got colourful. A fun project for kids in the garden.
I’ve been wanting to paint dead trees with latex paint lately. I was inspired by this artist who painted living trees with a non-toxic blue paint, The Blue Tree Project. I think it might be time get the brushes out.
Heather harvesting lettuces from her community garden plot.
If you’ve got no sunshine or space to grow veggies, a community garden plot can come to your rescue. Perfect! Now you’ve got space, and all day sunshine, but now what? Do you just toss in some bean seeds, water with the hose, then go home? It’s possible to have success that way, but there’s no guarantee.
There are definite challenges to growing food in a garden that’s away from your living space. With a back yard veggie garden, you have the luxury of being able water anytime you step out your door. Not the community garden. You may be walking, cycling or driving to your plot, so it’s not always easy to nurture and water those seeds every day during the critical germination period. Heather solved many community garden challenges with these methods:
We're looking for dads and grandfathers to feature in our Apron Strings video series. If you can cook something special, let us know.
