Newspaper, Pennies, Cardboard & Eggs--For Growing a Better Garden: More than 400 New, Fun, and Ingenious Ideas to Keep Your Garden Growing Great All Season Long
352
Newspaper, Pennies, Cardboard & Eggs--For Growing a Better Garden: More than 400 New, Fun, and Ingenious Ideas to Keep Your Garden Growing Great All Season Long
352eBook
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Overview
What's the secret? It's a mix of ingenuity and efficiency, accented with fun! Newspaper, Pennies, Cardboard, and Eggs-For Growing a Better Garden contains more than 400 clever solutions for easing garden troubles, new techniques for turning around an underperforming garden, and innovative ideas that will amaze even long-time gardeners.
If you're looking to add more nutrients to garden soil, whip up a kitchen scrap smoothie and pour the juiced-up liquid right in the planting hole. If you need to chase away bulb-hungry voles, a little sharp-edged driveway gravel around the bulb will do the trick. And if digging potatoes is too tiresome, discover the no-dig, no-shovel method that lets you grow potatoes in a heap of straw mulch.
You'll also discover:
- Intriguing and new plant varieties for sweeter corn, delicate salad greens, and handsome winter squash
- How to fill a shady spot with color, find affordable bulbs, rejuvenate peonies and perennials, and enjoy blossoms even when there's snow
- A creative arsenal for dealing with backyard weeds, including vinegar, hot water, plastic, and flames
- Ways to turn inexpensive items from the garden, closet, and pantry into indispensable yard and garden helpers
Filled with usable, earth-conscious, and creative ideas and tips, this lively book will help you discover how to work smarter-not harder-to cultivate a better garden, year after year. Let a few of these suggestions and projects take root, and you'll have the better-looking, more productive, and more rewarding garden in just one year.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781605299709 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Harmony/Rodale |
| Publication date: | 12/26/2007 |
| Sold by: | Random House |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 352 |
| File size: | 9 MB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
Seed Starting and Saving
Seeds are the tiny germs of life from which the garden grows. They need to be coaxed into sprouting, typically with warmth and moisture and sometimes with light as well. You then have to tend the seedlings, making sure that they make it through this vulnerable stage.
Why bother, when you can buy sturdy plants already well under way? Local nurseries may stock a selection of heirlooms, regional specialties, international favorites, and wildflowers. And mail-order nurseries offer an ever-expanding inventory of plants that will arrive at your door after a cross-country trip in excellent shape. One family-owned firm, Forest Farm in Williams, Oregon (www.forestfarm.com), lists more than 5,000 varieties of plants in its latest catalog.
Why bother? The main reasons can be summed up as economy, a mind-boggling selection, and taking part in a miracle of nature.
Starting with the last of these, many gardeners are both humbled and fascinated by the way in which little specks of matter turn into sprawling, musky scented tomatoes or a glowing bed of zinnias. Horticulturalists have described the process a thousand times--the sprout feeds on the starchy cotyledon, and so forth--but that doesn't explain what we see unfolding before us. The migration flight of monarchs to Mexico is no more amazing a feat than the way a single seed will grow into an acreage-commanding vine that will keep your household in butternut squash through the winter.
As for economy, that may not add up to much of an incentive if you are growing just a few plants for a modest yard and garden. But if your vegetable garden supplies a part of your diet, or if you want to plant flowers in drifts of a hundred rather than drifts of three, then seeds may be the way to go. One packet of seeds typically can generate several flats full of seedlings. All it takes is time and care, flats, and seed-starting mix.
Aside from commercial sources, thousands of gardeners share seeds of hard- to-find varieties through Seed Savers Exchange catalogs and various Internet groups. Nature itself has seen to it that seeds are an extremely transportable commodity, and they can be mailed safely and inexpensively.
While it's true that the seeds of some plants need babying, the tricks of seed starting are few and easily learned. You are apt to have better results with a modest investment in equipment, beginning with flats and pots and possibly including bright lighting and a source of bottom heat. Before long, seed starting can become an annual ritual that you look forward to season after season.
A NOTEBOOK FOR SEEDS
Unless you're a mouse or a bird, most seeds look pretty much alike. Here's a way to keep them in order.
If your seed packets tend to stray, and you habitually tear off the name of the plant, there is a tidy way to put whatever you're after right at your fingertips. Buy ring binder bags, place the packets in them, and use a three-ring binder to organize the packets as you see fit--by planting date, or by the type of plant. So, the tabs in such a notebook might be labeled by the weeks of the year, alerting you to the seeds that are to be started now; or, you might want to gather all the lettuces, the tomatoes, and the peppers in one section. The bags are available from office supply firms.
You can also store seed packets in three-ring binder photo sleeves. Choose sleeves that hold 3-by-5 or 5-by-7 photos, fold over the seed packet top, and insert the packets into the sleeve pockets.
Seeds are tiny, and all the more difficult to store and organize because of it. Slip seed packets into resealable plastic ring-binder pages and come up with a system for putting them in order.
EASY DOES IT
Preventing Leaking Packets
Once you open a seed packet, it can be devilishly difficult to keep the leftover seed from spilling out. Save yourself a lot of frustration by keeping a roll of artist's tape or low-tack painter's tape wherever you keep seeds. This tape is available at artist's supply and paint stores and can be used with a sturdy dispenser. The tape will repeatedly seal the envelopes without tearing them to shreds.
MAKE YOUR OWN GROWING MIXES
You probably go through a lot of bagged growing medium when you start your own seeds. Now's the time to economize by making your own in big batches.
Just about anything costs you more if you buy it in small containers, and that goes for bagged seed-starting and potting mixes. Instead, come up with your own custom blends for both in large quantities, and store them neatly in plastic garbage cans rather than floppy plastic bags that tend to spill. The one thing you don't want to do is include ordinary garden soil in your recipes, with its weed seeds, disease organisms, fungi, and insects. Not only that, but most soils are just plain too dense to get plants off to an optimal start.
To combine the ingredients easily, use a plastic tub of the sort sold for mixing cement. Or for larger volumes, spread the measured amounts of each ingredient on a tarp spread over the driveway or patio. Choose a relatively windless day to work. Even so, the dust may fly, and you may want to occasionally mist the medium with a fine spray from a hose. Use a dull hoe or a metal rake (tines up) to mix thoroughly. Then place the mixture in a new plastic garbage can--use one for seed-starting mix, and a larger one for potting mix. Keep a plastic bucket on hand in which to moisten small amounts of mix by stirring in water. Allow enough time to ensure that the medium in the bucket is completely moistened. Dry mix may dehydrate young seedlings, killing them. If you do a lot of seed starting and potting over a short period each spring, you may want to have several buckets of soaking mix on hand so that you don't feel tempted to rush the moistening process.
There are any number of recipes for seed-starting and potting mixes, so feel free to adapt the suggestions for mixes on this page. Be sure to include compost only if it is thoroughly processed, rather than half- degenerated plant matter.
What You'll Need
Seed-Starting Mix
1 part milled sphagnum moss
2 parts vermiculite
2 parts perlite
Potting Mix with Compost
1 part finished compost, screened through a mesh of 1/4-inch hardware cloth
1 part vermiculite
Potting Mix without Compost
1 part commercial potting soil
1 part milled sphagnum moss
1 part vermiculite
EASY DOES IT
Moisten Mix Quicker
It can seem as though plant mixes take forever to absorb water, and there may be the temptation to plant seeds in a medium that's not thoroughly moistened. To save a bit of time, use warm water--it's soaked up somewhat more quickly than cold.
PUT THE DAMPER ON DAMPING-OFF
A tiny forest of just-sprouted seedlings may be felled by fungi unless you take precautions. Try these reliable remedies.
Damping-off is a fungal disease that can rapidly lay waste to entire flats of vulnerable young seedlings. You'll know it by the afflicted stems, which may take on a water-soaked appearance or turn thin and wiry at the soil line. The unsupported seedlings topple and die. As a preventive, moisten the seed-starting medium with a mild homemade fungicide. To 1 gallon of water, stir in 1 tablespoon of clove oil (available at supermarkets and drugstores, as well as by mail order) and a drop or two of dishwashing soap. Among various powerfully scented herbs and spices, clove has been found to be particularly effective against two principal soil-borne pathogens.
You also can buy a fungal control agent formulated to prevent damping-off, marketed as SoilGard. It contains dormant spores of a beneficial fungus. When mixed with water, the fungus comes to life and puts off an antibiotic substance. Another product, Mycostop, harnesses a beneficial bacterium that controls or suppresses damping-off and other soil-borne troublemakers as it grows among the seedlings' roots. It too can be mixed with water for use as a soil drench.
An additional step that takes little time is to scatter a dusting of milled sphagnum moss over the soil surface. This thin layer will help keep seedling stems drier, suppressing disease, and the moss also contributes a certain antimicrobial effect. Note that this product is marketed in small bags--don't confuse it with baled peat moss. To make it easier to apply a thin layer, you can give the moss a spin in a blender to reduce the particles to a dust.
ADVICE OVER THE FENCE
Water Warily
Avoid casually splashing when watering seedlings, at the risk of spreading soil-borne diseases to many plants. Seedlings in plugs may avoid being infected by sick neighboring plants, but if you see signs of damping-off in one part of a flat, remove the entire flat from the area and discard it.
SAVE WITH SOIL BLOCKS
Can you really save by spending? Sure! If you start a lot of plants each year from seed, a soil-block mold may be one of the best investments you make in your garden.
Instead of buying dozens of little pots or plug trays in which to seed next year's garden, you can skip the containers altogether by using a mold to make soil blocks. These blocks are nothing more than cubes of planting mix. They encourage a healthily branching root system that sets up plants for a happy transition to the garden. (Because the blocks are relatively shallow, however, they aren't the way to go with deep growers like carrots and beets.) The steps for converting damp mixture into planting blocks are easy enough, once you buy a blocker. These devices are available from nurseries and mail-order supply companies. You'll also need trays in which to place the blocks.
You can buy blockers in two sizes, with the smaller model making many little blocks that eventually will fit nicely within a square hole in the larger blocks, which look something like square doughnuts. This system avoids disturbing the seedlings as they're moved to a larger container.
1. Stir up a batch of planting medium that will keep its shape once popped out of the blocker. Johnny's Selected Seeds (www.johnnyseeds.com) sells a mix that will work well. Here's a recipe for making your own:
. 2 parts peat moss, screened through a mesh of 1/4-inch hardware cloth
. 1 part vermiculite
. 1 part finished compost, also screened through hardware cloth
Do your mixing in a flat-bottomed container that's wide enough to allow you to press the blocker into the medium; a plastic tub sold for mixing concrete is ideal, and a clean wheelbarrow will also work. Make sure you allow enough time for the medium to fully absorb the water you add to moisten the mix.
2. Press the blocker into the medium so that the squares are filled. Then push the handle to eject the row of blocks into the tray.
3. Plant seed in the conventional way.
4. You can water the blocks from the top as you would seedlings in pots or flats. Use a misting nozzle or fine rosette on a watering can to avoid causing the block to come apart. The blocks will become sturdier as roots spread through them, but to avoid the risk of crumbling them, you can deliver water from the bottom up with capillary matting.
A PLUG-IN WELCOME MAT FOR SEEDLINGS
Instead of hoping your new plants are warm enough atop a water heater or furnace, steal a secret from professional growers--entrust them to a seedling mat.
At a cost approaching $100, a thermostatically controlled seedling mat may seem like a luxury if you're accustomed to using the secondhand heat from the top of a furnace or water heater. But assuming you start vegetables and flowers from seed each spring, you'll appreciate the convenience--and the dependable results, especially for seeds that are tricky to germinate. And because plants get off to a quicker start, they may be less vulnerable to damping-off. Small-scale greenhouses and specialty growers have discovered that seedling mats create ideal conditions, meaning less work, less reseeding, and less babying of weak plants.
A less expensive alternative is to snake a length of heating cable under the flats to provide gentle bottom heating. The cables cost roughly a dollar a foot; you can expect to pay more than that for shorter cables, and less for lengthy ones. Adding a thermostat substantially increases the price.
HEAT HELPS HEAPS
Supplying bottom heat can make a startling difference when starting seeds. Have a look at how long it took lettuce seeds to come to life at various soil temperatures, as reported in Knott's Handbook for Vegetable Growers, a resource for commercial market gardeners. If you're patient--fine. But if you're anxious for that first bowl of garden-grown salad, a heat cable or seedling mat makes good sense.
77°F--2 days
68°F--3 days
59°F--4 days
50°F--7 days
41°F--15 days
32°F--49 days
ADVICE OVER THE FENCE
Use That Heat Twice
Heat rises. And the warmth from a flat with a heating mat or cable can be used to help to sprout the seeds in a flat stacked above (although at a lower temperature). Check seed packets for a variety of vegetable or flower that germinates best in cooler conditions and place it on the second tier.
PRESPROUT FOR BETTER RESULTS
Know before you grow! Give your plants a head start even before you stick them in growing medium.
To increase the percentage of seeds that will make it as plants, pre-sprout them rather than trusting that garden conditions will be favorable. The germinated seeds will get off to a faster start once they reach soil or planting medium. The system works particularly well for plants that need warmth to get under way, including cukes, melons, pumpkins, and squash. Here's what you do:
1. Dampen a sheet of paper towel that's been folded over once or twice to make a blotter.
2. Arrange the seeds over the surface without allowing them to touch.
3. Place a single damp sheet of towel on top of the seeds, press down to help hold them in place, then slowly roll up the toweling.
4. Place the rolled toweling in a plastic bag. Leave the bag open and put it in a warm place, out of direct sunlight. Take a peek at the seeds each day to determine when they've begun to sprout.
5. Plant the presprouted seeds in potting mix and place them under fluorescent lights or in sunlight.
EASY DOES IT
A Ticklish Cure for Spindly Seedlings
Seedlings are apt to become leggy if light levels are too low. Keep the fluorescent lights close to the seedlings and gradually move them up as the seedlings grow. Also, seedlings will have stockier growth (and a better chance of standing up to the elements) if you agitate them just a bit. Tickle the seedlings with a feather for a few minutes a day. If you're too busy (or would feel a little foolish) to do that, let a fan do the work, setting it up to blow gently over the plants.
SOWING IS CHEAPER BY THE DOZEN
Eggshells are the perfect biodegradable planting pots!