Jack’s Gardening Ideas

If you have a pretty big lawn like I do, has it crossed your mind that it’s getting more and more expensive, both in terms of time and money, to maintain it?

Should I retire the Husqvarna, and just hire someone with one of those high-speed, zero-radius things and let them do it for me? I know they could probably cut it in half the time, presumably producing half the emissions and using less fuel.

I think of how much more time I’d have for all the other outside chores if I were to offload the mowing task. The thought has its appeal.

Another idea I have, is to plant vast areas of some sort of grain crop that I can just let grow to its natural height, and cut it once or twice throughout the entire growing season. The problem I foresee with this is, you would need a big ol’ honkin’ machine to mow those areas, maybe something like a farm tractor! We do have farmers in the area, though. I’ll have to ask around.

Well, it’s in the ground and doing well. We bought a live tree this year, for the first time. First of all, let me tell you, that baby was heavy! It took two of us to get it in the house, and we could have used a third. The tree itself was a short-needled fir tree, and it did quite well during its two-week stay indoors. On January 6th, we got smart and wheeled the yard cart into the house and hoisted the tree right into the cart, wheeled it down the front porch steps and out into the yard, stopping next to the hole that I had dug for it in early December. After some adjustments in width and depth, three of us tipped the garden cart at an extreme angle and slid the tree in the hole. A half hour later, after some backfilling and mulching, the job was done.

I just came in from inspecting the tree and it looks great. Next Christmas, another tree for the yard!

Also known as yard clean-up.

If you take a walk through Longwood Gardens this time of year (which, fortunately for us is a half mile from our house), one thing you will notice is how neat and tidy their beds are. I know they have a huge staff or trained professionals tending the grounds, but I think it’s a worthy goal, nonetheless, to try to make my beds free of debris, with old perennial remnants gathered up and taken to the compost pile.

Winter is also a good time to envision your perennial beds for next season. Now that you have cleaned your beds for the season (right?), you can visualize next year’s layout. In my case, one of our beds is performing too well, and has produced many large clumps of various specimans, which are now starting to crowd each other out.

I usually leave the Rudbeckia and Ecinacea seed heads standing as long as they still have bird food on them. The Siberian Iris I like to cut low with a sharp blade, around this time of year. After one or two frosts, your hosta are a slimy mess. Gather those ugly boys up, using a blade to cut them close to the ground, though they usually just come up in your hand with little resistance.

I know, its been a long time since I made a gardening entry. I’m still at it, though this year has been very busy with other things, and it has not been easy finding the time I once had. Well, first of all, my lawn is  an acre and a half, and if you cut your own grass, you know mowing can take a big chunck out of your weekly yard time. So, I’ve been keeping up, if just barely.

One thing that this time crunch has done: it has prompted me to think of low-maintenance yard and garden solutions. One thing I tried is, replace parts of perennial beds with a nice, unique shrub. In one case, I removed all of the  lillies  in a 4′x6′ bed and put in a dwarf fothergila. It looks great, and is a lot easier to take care of. Maybe I save 5 or 10 minutes in weeding time every week. Maybe a little less, but the point is that changes like this can start to whittle away at your chore list. There’s not much material removal necessary in the fall, either.
I’m also real interested in finding a medium height grain of some kind, perhaps sea oats,  to replace sections of what is now grass in  my yard. I want something that will take over an area, and that can be cut back once or twice a year with my Husqvarna riding mower.  Not only does mowing take a lot of time, its also a big-time polluter, and not much fun to breath in while riding behind a 24 HP Briggs and Stratton. So, there are a couple of good reasons to reduce the size of the lawn.

Speaking of lawns, why are we so compelled to surround our homes with vast swaths of green that we keep cut to a tidy height? I understand the merits of keeping the area that’s closest to your house neat and tidy. It promotes safety and security, makes it easier to keep critters away from the door, enables you to inspect your home for water and insect damage. My concern is with how much time it takes me every week during the gardening season to mow the lawn. There has to be a better approach. What I envision is this. The area near the house is traditional grass, cut to a traditional height. As you get farther out, I see taller grains, allowed to grow to their natural height and cut once or twice a season. Maybe something like oats but I don’t know, I’ve done very little investigation on the subject.

Well, I could go on about lawns but you have to stop sometime.

Mo later.

OK, I know I claimed last year that I was finally building compost bins, and the year came and went and still, no bins. Well, I finally got around to it, and they’ve been a great help in keeping things organized, not to mention the great compost I’ve gotten out of them already. I spread the compost from one bin a couple weeks ago, and have a bin cooking now that should be ready in a month or so. Its really amazing how much a couple of inches of compost around the base of a plant will keep down the weeds, and the Lilacs produced lots of blooms this year, thanks, I’m sure, to the generous amount of compost I fed them.

There’s work still to do in this area. For one thing, I need another holding area for chopped up leaves and other brown matter, which I’ll be making out of wire fence and angle irons, and I really could use two more wooden compost bins, given the amount of weeds I’ve been pulling lately, but that’s a story for another time.

If you plan on building compost bins of your own, I recommend the open-front approach. I know some folks like to close them in, but I really don’t see the point. Its much easier to work with the compost if you build the bins without a front. You have to be able to toss in new stuff with your pitch fork, and a front panel just gets in the way. Another thing I like to do is this. After one bin is fully cooked and ready to spread, I empty it all out, spread it, and then transfer the contents of the other bin into the just-emptied one. I can’t emphasize enough how good it is to turn your compost. It will cook so much faster that way.

In spring 2005 I planted a couple flats of Coreopsis Early Sunrise. They didn’t bloom the first year, but they’re making up for lost time this year. I have several massive plantings of c. Early Sunrise, and man do they look good. The clump pictured here is three plants, placed around 8″ apart, planted in a trianglular pattern.

While Early Sunrise is far from an exotic, it is attractive, reliable, and long blooming, making it a great addition to your perennial garden. After the initial burst of blooms in June, deadhead the spent blossoms and you’ll get color practically all season long.

Well, spring is creeping up on us, and I’m starting to get the urge to get out in the yard and dig. Of course, right now there’s snow on the ground, but today was 60 degrees and sunny. The bulbs have been showing for several weeks. So, here are some of my priorities for this coming season:

- Hydrangea: this is the year that all my hydrangea pain is going to pay off, I think. In the past I’ve not done well with them, and its been my fault. It took me two seasons to realize that I was pruning them at the wrong time of year. Last year, I didn’t touch them with a pruner and now, in February, I can see the little buds forming at the tips of each stem. I think I’ve broken the code and it should be a good year for these babies.

- Canadian Thistle: last year was my introduction to this awful weed, full of frustration and grief. Is there a weed that’s harder to get rid of? I don’t think so. My plan for the spring is to cover the infested areas with landscape tarp, and cover that with wood chips. I’ll leave that in place for several weeks and hope for the best. If that doesn’t work, I’m prepared to dig up the entire bed and replace the soil. I also plan on spreading corn gluten on my beds to prevent future weed infestation.

- Magnolia: I planted a small magnolia tree last fall, and it seems to be doing fine. I’ll be moving it this spring to a more permanent location and hoping it grows to a healthy size by fall.

- Roses: We’re going to build a raised bed for the roses this spring and move them out of their current location. I don’t know why, but rose growing doesn’t come easy to me. My mother was good with them, and my dad, at 87 years old, still has some nice ones. Maybe I just don’t spend enough time with them but we hope to get better results when they’re in the raised beds.

- Compost Bins: Well, they didn’t get finished last fall, even though all of the pieces are cut and ready for assembly. That will be a spring project.

Ok, now that I’ve totally used up all of my free time, I better get to work on this list.

Ok, this is the year I finally build the compost bins that I’ve had in mind for what seems like forever. I have the materials, I have the mitre saw, the time and the place to put it. There’s no longer an excuse for not getting it done. I’m using the wood from one of those huge children’s playground swing sets that was on our property when we moved in. I took it apart this summer and got lots of pressure-treated, 2×6 and 4×4 wood to work with. I’m thinking about something around 4 feet high, maybe a 6×6 enclosures. It will be two or three side-by-side bins. The exact dimensions will be determined once I measure the wood. My plan is to build this without having to spend any money on additional materials.
Once I finish this Caddilac of compost bins, I’ll post pictures here.

So, this past spring I put lots of seeds in little peat pots and, when the ground was warm enough, I went outside and put them in the ground. Its a hopeful exercise, planting from seed. It also requires a degree of imagination and a sense of humor.
Now, its almost September and I’m feeling like assessing my seed crop for the season. Some did well, some didn’t. Some I’ll try again next year, some I’ll write off as learning experiences better left to the professionals.
The good ones: Delphinium, Purple Coneflower, giant sunflowers, Early Sunrise Coreopsis. Next year I’ll be planting lots more delphinium. I can imagine vast plantings of those guys, they look so good in clusters. The purple coneflowers are hard kill, and are an easy way to get started with seed plantings. One of my favorites this year, and a plant that I’ll be growing from seed again next year, is Rudbeckia Morveno, a “double row of mahogany red petals tipped with yellow and supported by a pinkish-red cone”, to qoute the seed packet. Its one of those plants that looks best in large clusters, though, and I just didn’t start enough of them this year. Next year…..

Here on the east coast of the US we’re in the midst of a heatwave the likes of which we’ve never seen. So far, we’ve have over 20 days over 90 degrees this summer, and its only August 15th. This has meant more watering and more mulching and composting for us. I’ve been spreading compost by the wheelbarrow-full, trying to keep the ground around the base of my plantings as cool as possible. Another thing that we’ve adopted this year is the use of gallon plastic jugs for slow irrigation. Just poke a few holes in the bottom of the plastic jug, fill it with water and set it at the base of your plants. It will dispense the water at a nice, slow rate, reducing wasted water runoff, and this summer, as hot as its been, every bit of water conservation helps.
So, for the azaleas, white pine and lilac that we planted this spring, watering has become essential. So far, they look like they’re all going to make it, but we have to keep up the watering because the last time I looked at the Weather Channel, there’s no rain for us on the horizon for at least a week.