The queen of mulch was Ruth Stout, author of How to Have a Green Thumb Without an Aching Back. She maintained a year- round hay mulch at least eight inches deep in her Connecticut vegetable garden. In her fifty-by-fifty-foot plot, she used twenty-five bales a year. She never turned the soil, sowed a cover crop, hoed, weeded, watered, or built a compost pile. She just mulched, making compost on the spot, for as the bottom layer of mulch decomposed, it added rich organic matter to the soil — a continuing process. Ruth didn’t bother with manures, but used cottonseed meal or soy bean meal for added nitrogen. She sprinkled it on top of the mulch in winter, at a rate of five pounds to one hundred square feet, so that snow and rain carried it down through the hay by planting time. To plant, she pulled aside the mulch and sowed the seed. 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 »

Pine Origins

There are many different types of pine tree. Pinus sylvestris, one of the varieties used to produce essential oil, grows widely throughout Europe and the USSR, the main distillation centres being in Austria and the USSR.

Pine Essential oil

Steam distillation of pine needles produces a colourless oil with a strong odour reminiscent of balsam.

Pine Most common uses

Powerful antiseptic for the respiratory tract in cases of colds, influenza, pneumonia, asthma, sinusitis, bronchitis and laryngitis Read the rest of this entry »