When I visited Daniel Botkin of Laughing Dog Farm some time ago, he showed me how he did a lot of planting in goat manure-laced hay. I envied his access to so much bedding because it does provide plants with nutrition and eliminates weeds. No fertilizing. No weeding. He is a lucky man to have manured goat bedding from his barn, as well and old hay bales. He said he doesn’t use the hay bales for planting until…
It is planting season. I have been planting roses. That means I have been digging holes. And I have been dreaming of a book, first published in 1952, that I often read to my young children, A Hole is to Dig by Ruth Krauss and illustrated by a young Maurice Sendak, who has recently departed our world. Sendak’s lively children are shown digging, energetically planting a garden and jumping and sliding in the mud while yelling doodleedoodleedoo. I’ve…
Container gardens seem to be more and more popular for ornamental plantings, and even for vegetable plantings. No matter which there is an opportunity for container shopping, ceramic, terra cotta, resin – all kinds of handsome containers are available at garden centers. This spring I succumbed and bought a terra cotta strawberry jar, not because I wanted to plant strawberries, but because I thought it would make a good looking herb garden in a pot. I bought a…
In 2004, when the Bridge of Flowers was nearing its 75th anniversary, Elaine Parmett, a member of the Bridge Committee, decided to find out just who and how the Bridge of Flowers began. “I was a historian so I did research and learned it was Antoinette Burnham in 1928 who complained about the way weeds had taken over the abandoned trolley bridge. She wondered why they couldn’t have a flower garden instead. Her husband, who worked for the…
We finally got rain. Hallelujah! And more was promised, but it does not seem to be arriving, at least not in the amounts I was hoping for. The lesson seems to be that we need to be always prepared for flood or drought. The question is how do we do that. Rain barrels, rain gardens and raised beds can help us to moderate, though not eliminate, both of those problems. Rain barrels that collect the rain from our…
In March we had May weather, and now we are having March weather. We gardeners know that the weather is always unpredictable but this year Mother Nature is really keeping us on our toes. I confess. I could not resist the lure; I direct-seeded greens in my Early Garden during that March heat wave. Then what? The soil was cool enough that my seeds, radishes and lettuces, did not germinate very quickly. By the time they did the…
Water is everywhere around us. In streams, rivers and the oceans. We need water for everything, drinking, cleaning, agriculture, powering turbines. We cannot exist without water. In fact, we are water – about 60 percent water. Because it is so easy to turn on our taps and get all the clean, sweet water we need, we rarely think about water, how much we use, how we use it, what other people use it for, who doesn’t have safe…
Soil is alive. It is more than sand, silt or clay particles. It is even more than rotted organic matter. It is full of bacteria and all kinds of fungi, good and bad. Soil is alive and it needs to be fed. Some people go to the garden center and buy bags of 5-10-5 fertilizer. The numbers stand for the ratio of nitrogen (N), phosphorous (P), and potassium or potash (K). This kind of fertilizer is soluble and…
Soil is alive. It is more than sand, silt or clay particles. It is even more than rotted organic matter. It is full of bacteria and all kinds of fungi, good and bad. Soil is alive and it needs to be fed. Some people go to the garden center and buy bags of 5-10-5 fertilizer. The numbers stand for the ratio of nitrogen (N), phosphorous (P), and potassium or potash (K). This kind of fertilizer is soluble and…
Mother Nature has been playing with us these past weeks, but no matter how she laughs as she keeps us off balance spring is coming. Crocuses, daffodils and sky blue scillas are laughing right back. Forsythia bushes are sunbursts of blossom. Even some small trees are beginning to bloom. My neighbor Paul has a golden witch hazel in his garden. Hamamelis vernalis blooms early in the spring and is noted for that early bloom and twirly petaled flowers.…