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 »
Herbs are easy to grow and a boon to the gardener who’d just as soon have someone or something else do pest control. Interplant crops with onions, garlic, and marigolds. Try sage, mint, catnip, or dill among your cabbages. Sage, for instance, gives off camphor, which repels the cabbage butterfly. Herbs may discourage insect infestation not only by their specific effects, but by breaking up a large planting of one crop, which is an open invitation to pests. Read the rest of this entry »
A successful landscape needs a garden style which appeals to you, and this is often linked to the house design. It can also be influenced by the kind of plants you like, or by your garden site and its climate.
There is a variety of garden styles, from formal to cottage garden, each with its own atmosphere and character. A predominantly natural or wild garden might look best in the country, or, alternatively, it could turn a town garden into a green oasis and bird sanctuary. A Mediterranean courtyard style would suit a small garden or echo Spanish-style architecture. You may like a formal garden for its symmetry, or an oriental garden for its serenity. Read the rest of this entry »
Hire your children to save the garden from Japanese beetles. Pay them a penny a bug. In the evening, when the beetles won’t fly away, the kids can tiptoe along and brush them from plant foliage into jars of kerosene. Bet they won’t even be able to count their catch! Meanwhile, you can relax with a long novel or take in the evening news.
If Japanese beetle grubs are destroying your lawn, introduce milky spore disease, a microbial attack against the larval form of this insect. A little energy invested this year is well spent. Put a teaspoon in the ground every three feet for several years’ protection. It’s death to the grubs, but leaves the earthworm population untouched. Read the rest of this entry »
Beans have been the most important vegetable crop through the ages. They are the best vegetable source of life-giving protein, and today in many societies, beans are still the staple of life. Beans are also the one protein source you can keep for a long time without processing. And you can get a heavy harvest from a small amount of work.
Our family relied on dry beans when Iwas young. Every Saturday night (if not more often), the heart of our family meal, like the traditional New England Saturday supper, was baked beans. Read the rest of this entry »
These plants are suitable for growing around the base of winter- or spring-flowering shrubs, for bright splashes of colour in the border..
Suitable for a sunny, sheltered wall, or any structure which receives full sun.
Some types are so distinctive that they are best planted in isolation. When planting in a lawn, leave a 45cm/18in radius of bare soil around each one, as grass right up to the stems or trunks retards growth.
An autumn garden can be highly colourful if it includes some of these shrubs. Some are grown for their autumn leaf colour and/or berries, others for their flowers. To complement them, plant some autumn-flowering bulbs and perennials, such as autumn crocuses and Michaelmas daisies. Read the rest of this entry »
These are widely planted small trees which you could include in a shrub border to give extra height; or, if you prefer you could use them as isolated specimens, although none of them has a particularly distinctive shape.
You can also grow your own seedlings, or dig them up from your own or a friend’s garden. Taking growing plants from the wild is now illegal and so it is irresponsible to suggest that you look for suitable specimens on the local common, although I cannot see you being marched off to prison if you should carefully lift one tiny 4 inch birch seedling from among thousands in the wild. Wherever you find your seedling be sure to remove it very carefully, bringing as much soil as you can and not damaging the roots. Keep it in a sealed plastic bag until you are able to plant it in as small a pot as will comfortably take it. Don’t at this stage prune the roots, other than trimming any that may have been damaged, but leave it to settle in for a few weeks. Once you see signs of new top growth you can begin leaf pruning, reducing top growth and encouraging the development of side growth. Never strip a tree of all its leaves, for these are essential to the process of photosynthesis by which plants live. Read the rest of this entry »
Only so much as whisper to a serious bonsai enthusiast that you are thinking of growing bonsai trees in a window box and you will probably be greeted by howls of protest. But if you are unfamiliar with the art of growing bonsai—and it is an art, and no less surrounded with ritual than the Japanese tea ceremony itself—you could make a very creditable start with a few small subjects on your windowledge. These need not be expensive but they will give you the opportunity to practise some of the bonsai techniques and to see whether the conditions your window ledge offers are right for these rather demanding subjects. If they are, and you have been bitten by the bug, you will feel more confident about treating yourself to more mature, and more expensive, trees. If the enthusiasm wanes, or your lifestyle does not admit of the frequent watering necessary in very hot weather, you will still have had the pleasure of creating a tiny forest of seedlings, or a mini landscape of rocks and trees. Read the rest of this entry »
Starting with rooms which have great atmosphere, the trick is to use plants which work with existing features and not against them. A low-ceilinged, Elizabethan timber-framed house looks entirely wrong filled with palms, monsteras or other tropical plants. Simpler, softer subjects such as pelargoniums, cyclamen, begonias and ivies have much more the right feel and don’t clash with the traditional atmosphere. Similarly a cool high-tech city interior might look very strange with small fussy plants; the scale and simplicity would demand plants which are large and dramatic and make bold statements themselves. This is a case for a beaucarnia or a big Dracaena marginata or an aphelandra, whose marvellous graphic markings remove any chance of it being ignored. Read the rest of this entry »
Description: A perennial plant about 60 cm high, with hollow, quadrangular stems. The petiolate, ovoid-lanceolate leaves have prominent venation and diffuse a strong, characteristic menthol smell. Pale purple flowers in dense spikes appear from July to September. Propagation is vegetative — the plants form an underground network of woody shoots or runners. Various mint species hybridize naturally and peppermint is thought to be a hybrid of water mint (Mentha aquatica) and spearmint (Mentha spicata). Read the rest of this entry »
