Tips and articles by me

If you are making a new garden in an old yard you will find one thing no matter where you are, lots and lots of rocks. Ooldes and oodles of rocks in every conceiveable color and size. Now you face two problems, 1. How do you get rid of them, and 2. What do you do with them after?

I intend on answering both questions and hopefully helping you find your way to a happier, healthier garden. there are many ways to get rid of the rocks, depending on the size. I use a few methods combined to get everything out.

1. First, Cut the top six inches of soil and grass off of your yard. Pile this in a far corner where it will be left to turn back into useable soil, making sure to turn the green sides of any grass or weeds toward the ground. Next, you should use a spade to break the hard packed under soil into clumps, pulling all of the large rocks aside and piling them nearby.

Use mesh to sift out the smaller stones and pebbles and fluff the soil. Then water the bare soil thoroughly and wait for the rocks you...

Tags: gardens, rock problems

Most people tend to wait until later in the spring to attend to the nessecary garden chores, only to find that it has now become expensive and grueling chore. What was once a beautiful and quaint garden is now a tangled mess of weeds, overgrown plants, and leaves from last fall that havn't yet rotted.

What would have taken no more than an hour is now a four hour task complete, and you may find it empties your wallet or your energy just to get it to manageable levels. This is why it is good to get ahead of the game by starting in mid to late Febuary instead of waiting until late may to begin.

Start with weeding and raking, cut back your old plants and dig up the dead. Till your soil and sift out the rocks for the new planting year. Water and wait a week for the weed seedling to grow back. after this point it may be useful to get back in the garden before the new seeeds find purchase and start to flower.

If you keep all of this in mind you will find it very easy to keep up the garden from then...

Tags: gardening, new gardens, spring garden

Making your own zen garden can be as easy as one, two, three, as evidenced by Canada's house and home magazine's February/ March 2000 issue's article "Table top zen" but sometimes one of those puny gardens just isn't enough for us “Tim Allan’s” of the garden world.

The picture accompanying the aforementioned article shows a small table sized garden. My design calls for a bit more space than that, as ours measures 2' high x 2' wide x 4' long. The mixtures of cacti can be quite interesting if paired correctly.

Find or build a container that meets your needs. I prefer to build a interesting frame for an old fish tank out of driftwood or cool rocks glued together. Line your container with plastic and fill the bottom 1” with fine gravel. Fill the next 2/3 of the tank with either cactus soil or a mixture of Peat moss, sand, and garden soil mixed in a 25:50:25 ratio.

Choose your cacti carefully, pairing together types that work in the same sort of soil, water and light conditions.

Species to try:

Cardón

hedgehog cacti

peanut cactus

pincushion cactus

Armatocereus

Arthrocereus

Pygmaeocereus

Pilosocereus 

Peniocereus

Echinocereus

Haageocereus

Moonlight cacti

San Pedro...

Tags: cacti, cactus, zen garden

Building a average sized pond in your yard can be time consuming and hazardous, especially if you have little children or animals lurking about. My alternative to this is to use an above ground “pond” built entirely from freecycled materials.

We used: 

• An old bathtub

• Materials to “frame in” sides and back of pond

• (2) 8' long 2x2's

• roughly 8' of chicken mesh, doubled over

  (any type of mesh will do just fine)

• 6' of plywood, cut to the shape of a bench on the back and sides of the pond.

• 3 large hinges to secure lid

• 4”x4” of fine mesh to cover overflow

Choose your pond's permanent location, one done you can situate and frame in your pond. (We used two large metal shelving units against the sides to make the tub's rough sides look aesthetically pleasing.)

Cover the large overflow hole with the fine mesh to keep out or in any animals that are around.

Plug the smaller hold on the bottom of the tub with a regular bathtub pug. This will need to be checked when you clean your pond annually or biannually.

Build your child and pet proof cover using the 2x2's ,...

Tags: bathtub, fish pond, freecycle, mesh, pond

Killing weeds is the number one topic, come spring time, every year. The easiest way is to get out there in the cold early on and pull up all of the babies and therefore never give them a chance to seed. Most people dont catch them at that perfect time. So we have developed other methods of destroying the weed population. 

1. Vinegar water.

4 cups water, 1/4 cup salt, and 4 cups water sprayed full force on a weed in hot sun will wither it up until it dies.

2. Newspaper.

Layering newspaper about one inch thick and soaking it will prevent weeds from growing until you are ready to work with your soil.

3. Boiling water.

After all, wouldnt you wither up if someone poured boiling water on your head?

if after trying these tips, your weeds are not gone, you need to dig them out and be done with them. 

Tags: salt, soap, vinegar, weed killers, weed spray, weeds

The easiest thing to think of, when you’re trying to understand a tuber, is the potato. The potato is a tuber that I’m sure we’re all familiar with. A tuber has leathery skin and lots of eyes with no protective covering, or basal plate. All of those eyes are the growing points where the plants will emerge.

There are two types of tubers, stem tubers and root tubers.

Stem tubers are true tubers and generally grow their storage units from the sides of rhizomes or stolons. Their cell structure is a stem. Stem tubers are usually oblong or somewhat rounded with visible nodes. They are often near the top of the soil.

Stem tubers that develop underground are often temporary, and then used to produce young plants. Stem tubers that develop storage units above the ground will drop them to reproduce. A couple examples of stem tubers are the tuberous begonia and cyclamen.

Root tubers, or tuberous soft roots, are simply underground stems. They grow horizontally just below the soil’s surface. They will continue to grow and creep along under the surface with lots and lots of growing points. They are quite similar to stem tubers with a few differences....

If there is one secret to making fast compost, it is finely shredding the carbon rich ingredients such as fallen leaves, hay, straw, paper and cardboard. Shredding increases the surface area that the compost microbes have to work on and provides a more even distribution of air and moisture among the materials. The type of chipper or shredder used is not important, provided it can handle the materials. It's also important to have the right balance of materials in our fast compost so that it breaks down as quickly and efficiently as possible. The bacteria in our compost need both carbon and nitrogen to function; carbon for energy and nitrogen for protein synthesis. For every one unit of nitrogen used by the bacteria they also consume about 30 units of carbon. Therefore, in order to keep the bacteria working efficiently we need to create a compost pile that is about 30 parts carbon to 1 part nitrogen. We want to have a ratio of 30:1 in our compost bin but we only have access to the following ingredients:

• dry autumn leaves (C:N of about 50:1)

• kitchen scraps (vegetable & fruit peelings, coffee grounds etc: about 12:1)

• grass clippings (about...

Tags: carbon, composting, nitrogen, quick tips, soil

Having issues with water logged soil? Try these long lasting fix-its.

The sink hole method:

Drill a hole 1/1.5 meter - 3/4½ feet - deep with the auger (a hand-held drill for earth removal), drilling through the clay layer into the sandy soil beneath it. If you hit more rubble, even after your best clearing efforts, you'll need to widen the hole and remove the excess rubble cutting the hole out to the breadth of spade, then fill the hole carefully to about 0.5 meter - 1½ feet - below ground level with the stones and builders rubble (mixed with a little coarse sand) If you don't have any stony materials available, you'll have to obtain them somewhere. Neighbors with home renovation projects are often very helpful since everybody wants to get rid of building rubble. Then fill the hole to ground level (of the path) with coarse sand mixed with small stones. Repeat with a distance of roughly 1.5 meter - 4½ feet between each hole

Bog plant display:

If the space that is waterlogged is one available for planting, try planting in water and bog loving plants. Try gunnera tinctoria, voortuin plants, violet stem taro plant, or some...

Tags: bog plants, drilling, sink holes, water logged

Tags: growing tips, healing herb, queen of the garden, rose diseases and cures, roses

What to plant where, and when? The question of quick growing vines.

Blackberries, grapes, ivy, morning glory, and other quick growing plants can be a beautiful addition to any garden if you situate them properly and tend them regularly. If, on the other hand, you plant them improperly or forget to tend them, they can quickly overgrow the place you had intended for them.

Getting rid of blackberries or ivies, or any other plant of that sort can be back and wallet breaking and often doesn’t have a 100% success rate. The roots spread far and even a miniscule piece left in the soil will start another infestation. To prevent this, plant in cement gardens, far from house walls and trees. It is often tempting to grow ivy up the sides of your house or fence, but it ruins your house while it looks pretty.

Morning glory, I am of the opinion, was miss spelled. It should have been spelled mourning glory, because gardeners are in mourning when its in its glory. Planting these plants should only be done if you are prepared to care for them constantly and ensure not only that they don't take over and ruin not...

Tags: blackberry, chickweed, ground covers, ivy, planting, problems, solutions