Gardens, no matter how small, have become incredibly important havens for wildlife. This is because wild creatures have lost many of their feeding and breeding sites in the countryside — either as a result of intensive farming, which makes widespread use of pesticides, or changes in land use. Read the rest of this entry »

The wormery is a bin (usually plastic) with a lid, and layers or chambers through which the worms move as they eat up the waste.

There is a collector tray at the bottom which holds the liquid that is produced, with a tap to run it off. The lowest chamber has a layer of bedding where the worms live to start with. Read the rest of this entry »

You don’t have to own acres of garden to grow your own apples. All you need is the right kind of apple tree, compost and a pot. Then, as long as you remember to water and feed it, Read the rest of this entry »

“Black plastic has freed me from hours of weeding. I never used to finish that chore,” explains a Massachusetts gardener. “I resisted black plastic because it looks so awful, but we put dirt along the edges and scatter some on top, and that helps. We use three‑ Foot-wide rolls in our entire vegetable garden. We plant a row, lay the plastic, anchor the edges with dirt, plant another row, and so on. The weeding always had hung over me. Now I just hand-weed in the row itself, and we have more time to canoe or play tennis.” Read the rest of this entry »

A Line of Defense

“The woodchuck got to me. He ate EVERYTHING — an entire row of beans in one night. I couldn’t feed him and me, too.”

If you’re in a country place where the woodchuck and rabbit populations are high, you need a fence. Invest some time and effort to construct one that’s burrow-proof. Do it in fall, while the memory of crops unsavored (because the varmint got there first) still stings. Read the rest of this entry »

For a lazy gardener’s attack against root knot nematodes (most prevalent in the South), plant lots of French marigolds, whose roots exude a repellent, and keep the soil extra high in organic matter. Beneficial fungi that grow in decomposing humus keep these pests under control.

Hill earth over carrots to prevent a pesky fly from laying eggs in the top of the carrot root. Read the rest of this entry »

Too lazy to put in pea fences?

Prop up vines with piles of hay, a la Ruth Stout.

Plant dwarf peas, those that grow only fifteen to eighteen inches high, in rows five to six inches apart or in a six-inch wide trench. Plants will intertwine and hold each other up. Read the rest of this entry »

Have all the advantages of vertical growing without the bother of pruning and tying: grow your tomatoes in cages. Buy them commercially or construct sturdier ones yourself. Use concrete reinforcing wire with six-inch mesh. (Wire used for cages should have openings large enough for your hand to reach through for harvesting.) For each cage, cut a section of wire five feet three inches long: the three-inch pieces can be hooked to the other end of the mesh to form the cylinder. Each cylinder holds one plant. You can make the diameter of the cylinder larger (three to four feet) and put three plants inside. Open the cylinders and store flat in winter. Read the rest of this entry »

Changes in levels in a garden can be treated in a number of ways. However, the most popular are steps and ramps.

GARDEN STEPS

Any set of steps must be comfortable to use — the general rule of two times the height (riser) plus length (going or tread) equals 610 mm, plus or minus 20 mm (for example, [2 x 150] +300 = 600) will ensure comfortable steps. Most people like to use steps that have a riser of 150 mm to 175 mm with a tread of 250 mm to 300 mm. As the tread width increases, the rise lessens. Each step in a flight must be the same as the others otherwise they may be dangerous to use. In some situations other dimensions may be appropriate. Read the rest of this entry »

Wide Rows

After preparing the seedbed, run string attached to two stakes across the garden. Line up one edge of a steel garden rake next to the string and drag it the length of the row For a wider row, lay out two strings to the desired width and drag the rake between them.

Broadcast seed in the raked area, slightly closer together than you would in a conventional row. Press into soil with the back of a hoe or rake. With the rake or hoe, pull soil from outside the row to cover the seed. Read the rest of this entry »

The extreme case of the lazy gardener might be the college professor who planted his entire vegetable patch in spring and never looked at it again until it was time to harvest. He overplanted and just let the whole business go weedy. He got enough food for the family out of the enterprise, and that was all he was after in the first place.

Most of us aren’t that lazy. We take pride in order and control. The specter of carefully planned and planted crops being choked by weeds makes us shiver. Read the rest of this entry »

Get a head start on newspaper mulch in winter. As you finish reading today’s paper, staple it to yesterday’s. Make strips of newspapers as long as a garden row, roll them up and store until spring. When you need mulch, unroll on the garden.

When I was a young, newly married gardening novice, we lived on the sea shore. A violent December storm drove high tides within a few feet of our front door. When the waters receded, a huge pile of eelgrass and seaweed ringed our home. Too lazy to cart it away, we raked the debris a few feet closer to the house and stuffed it under foundation plantings. Read the rest of this entry »

Many of these seeds are chewed up and destroyed by animals and hers are broken down in the alimentary canal of birds, particularly of chickens, pigeons and seed eaters with strong beaks such as most the finches. A great number, however, have hard enough coats to remain intact while the fleshy parts are digested and are finally voided by the birds, sometimes after being carried for long distances. Birds which do not have the powerful beaks of true seed eaters do least damage; Read the rest of this entry »

The temperature in a root cellar is always a compromise. It’s never equal in all parts of the cellar. Most vegetables never get the perfect temperature.

The temperature near the ceiling of many root cellars can sometimes be 10° F. or so higher than near the floor. This variance creates temperature zones in the root cellar. Your vegetables will keep better if you understand the temperature zones of your root cellar and store crops accordingly. Read the rest of this entry »

Generally, however, the vascular bundles in a straight piece of grass stem — Maize (Zea mays) being a good example — do not run parallel to the sides but weave from the inner part of the stem to the outer, returning inwards after the leaf traces have branched off. So the vascular tissue forms a series of spirals through the stem. As well as having a different arrangement in the stem, these vascular bundles are different in their individual make-up, there being no layer of cambium between the xylem and the phloem. This means that they cannot develop a woody, strengthening tissue as can dicotyledonous plants. There are exceptions, however, as in the palms and allied woody-stemmed monocotyledons. Read the rest of this entry »

I blanch it with its own leaves

A thriving row of cauliflower is a spectacular sight in the vegetable garden, but few people think they can have great success with it. I think it’s as easy to grow as any cabbage family crop. Cauliflower is less tolerant to hot weather than its relatives, though, so it’s important to set your plants out very early or plan on a fall crop. If the heads mature in the heat, they’re apt to have a bitter taste or go by very quickly.

For your first crop, set out some plants 3 or 4 weeks before the average date of the last spring frost. Pinch off a couple of the lower leaves.

As cauliflower heads get to be 4 to 5 inches across, they should be blanched by preventing sunlight from reaching the heads. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s exciting to discover the first thumb-sized broccoli heads in the row and watch them grow. Sometimes they’ll get to be 6 or 8 inches wide at the top. Other times the heads will be quite small when it’s time to pick them.

The center head must be cut before it blossoms, even if it’s on the small side. How do you tell when the head is ready to blossom? A head of broccoli is a cluster of flower buds. When the head is young, its individual buds are packed very tightly. Rub your thumb over them and you will feel that tightness. As long as the buds stay tight, let the head grow. But when the buds loosen up and spread out, they are about to pop up and produce little yellow flowers. Again, pass your thumb across the top of the head—if the buds are loose, you’d better harvest. Read the rest of this entry »