Where you put your compost pile will influence your attitude toward it. Think of it as an easy way to dispose of waste you have to get rid of anyhow. It should be near, or even in, your garden. The less hauling you have to do, the more convenient it will be to stockpile and use. Read the rest of this entry »

Bean Poles

Poles for pole beans must be anchored well — two feet into the ground — or they’ll blow over in a summer thunderstorm. Instead of going to all that work, tie three poles together at the top, spread them tepee fashion, then push the bottoms into the soil and plant around them. Children love the natural tepee they form. 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 »

Set up a wire collector

Choose a well-drained spot, preferably a shady one that’s not too far from the house or garden. It’s nice to be near a water source, too. Set up a wire collector for your pile. I use a strong turkey wire with a 2- or 4-inch mesh and a height of 3 feet. Cut off a 9-foot section of mesh and shape it into a circle, fastening the ends together. If you want, you can loosen the soil up a little where the collector sits. This will help drainage. Read the rest of this entry »

I encourage gardeners with animal problems to put a fence around the garden. Nothing beats a secure fence for keeping out rabbits, woodchucks, raccoons, dogs, and cats. It even helps to control the traffic of neighborhood kids scooting through the yard.

Get your fence up early, before animal pests make their first forays. Once they get a taste of what’s in your garden they are determined to get back in for extra helpings.

I use fences made of 3-foot-high chicken wire (1- or 11/2-inch mesh), topped by a single strand of electric wire 1 inch above the top. An electric fence is the best way to keep raccoons out of the corn patch. The jolt a raccoon gets when he grabs the electric wire convinces him to try a garden somewhere else. The only time I hitch up the battery and energize the wire is before and during the corn harvest. I run it from late afternoon until early morning. Read the rest of this entry »

Hanging baskets and wall-mounted pots provide you with more opportunities for creating colourful displays outdoors, on house walls and even on outbuildings such as the garage or shed. They are mainly for summer displays since plants, even if hardy, often do not survive winters in these containers, except in areas where winters are very mild. Hanging baskets or wall containers are relatively small, and the soil in them can quickly freeze solid. There is not much one can do to prevent this, except to hang baskets of plants in a cool but frost-free greenhouse during freezing weather.

Choosing and Using Hanging Baskets

Traditionally hanging baskets are made from a widely spaced mesh of strong galvanized wire and are bowl-shaped. They are generally supported with three chains. Plants can be planted right through the wires in the sides to create a ball of colour. Such wire baskets are inclined to dry out rapidly in warm weather, so frequent watering is a must — at least twice a day. Read the rest of this entry »

We were surrounded by high walls and nothing was growing on any of them. The three-storey malthouse and the cowhouse, being strictly utilitarian, were starkly bare, nothinggrew on the high wall along the road except tufts of arabis and an odd wallflower or two, and Walter was very anxious to clothe the end of the house where the old stones were too decayed to be repaired and the surface had been covered with stucco.

He sent me to the local nursery for ampelopsis by the dozen, we bought roses, pyracantha, cotoneaster and clematis. My sister gave us a Ceanothus Veitchianus for the front of the house, which was a sheet of blue in a very few years. Read the rest of this entry »