Plant Markers

For decades now I have saved a fortune by making my own plant markers. I resent spending $$$ on little bits of white plastic. So I use old food containers. Depending on the size you need you can use anything from a yoghurt tub to an ice cream bucket. It's so easy, and you get a free saucer as a bonus.

Composting

People assume that because I'm an organic gardener I am some great guru on composting.

"Do you compost?" they ask me. "Yes" I say. Then they get all technical, and I'm lost.

When we moved here 15 years ago, we build a big composter from wood (3 feet across both ways, and 4 feet high). We had to stop adding to it last year as the wood has rotted. In other words, our composter is now composting. For many years however, it gave us good service. We'd put stuff in the top and take compost out of the bottom on a continuous basis.  We have built a new one, obviously.

So, if I am a successful composter, why can't I teach composting? Well, I don't really DO anything. I leave it to it. Nature invented composting after all (that's why we have soil) and is perfectly capable of doing it inside a wooden box, without any help from me.

But I think I know why some people have problems.

1. They buy a commercially-made composter. This may have 420 features, but most of them hinder rather than help.

2. It's not big enough. The thing is supposed to be warm. So a lot of compost works better than a little as the outside insulates the inside.

3. They don't add to it often enough, or add too much of the same thing, or it's not broken up enough. If you bury a head of lettuce, it takes over 20 years to decompose (they found one in a landfill). Egg shells need to be crushed, BTW or you'll be pulling them out whole.

The reason a big, wooden composter works, is that it allows Nature to do its thing. The rain can get in (and out) easily because the lid is slatted and not watertight.

When I was a child we had a compost PILE. This is obviously not pretty. Compost isn't pretty. Compost is not supposed to be pretty.

But maybe you have no space for a pile or a huge wooden box. Maybe the only composter you are permitted/can live with is small and commercially made. I know little about them. I do know they have to be "started".

Pee in it.

Yep.

OK then, get a child's potty and dump that in. OR.........most small boys will be happy to oblige. And some bigger ones too.

What can you put in a composter? Anything organic. If it can be eaten by any species it can go in. Just don't add too much paper or grass. You can put grass cuttings in, but don't overdo it.

There's a question of protein, from kitchen scraps. You'll hear people tell you not to add meat, cheese, and eggs. I compost these without any problem at all, actually, but it WILL attract critters, and that's the real reason for not adding it. If you have critters anyway, or don't care, then don't worry about it. My barn cats help themselves.

"Do you need worms?" Yes you do, and lots of other small helpers, but in a big wooden box they arrive of their own accord. If you are using a commercial composter, you will need to add some of them, consult the instructions, it's not my area.

Now talk among yourselves.

Shade

I have very few places where shade is an issue, and as a percentage of garden, it's irrelevant. For many of you with a small garden, and where most or all of it is in shade, there is a huge challenge finding suitable plants. I have plenty of other places to plant, so I pretty much just ignore the shady spots.

So the north-east side of our house is a neglected place. It's been neglected a long time. Grass grew to the wall, except it didn't. It gets so little sun (only early mornings) that even that was patchy, weedy and ugly.

Tyler dug out a strip along half the wall. In this photo you can see both his handywork, and the ugliness of the location, with the electricity meter piping, a vent, and a tap that has left rust marks all down the wall, plus the standard ugly basement window.

The back half of the wall is covered by the pool deck, so I only have a strip about 12 feet long to worry about. I shall put shade plants there and then gravel and rocks around them for low maintenance. I really don't need any more weeding to do.

Now I have to find suitable shade plants. Tyler's boss suggested boxwood, hostas, and spiraea.

Spiraea (Neon Flash)

Spiraea will work. I can plant it right in front of those pipes and it will hide them without preventing access to the meter at the top. We had one round there before, atop the well, but it was lost during the well repairs. So I know it will do well, and I liked it.

Boxwood (Variegated)

This is a possible. Again, had one before but it was in the front flower garden, and I prefer flowering plants. But for this purpose I think it has a place.

Hosta

I hate hostas. I am FAMOUS for hating hostas. I dug up all the ones that were here when I moved in, and have offended several friends over the years by refusing gifts of hostas. That will not be happening.

If you were wondering what you can plant in shade, first I'll offer the complete list, and then my choices.

Perennials for Light Shade or Part Sun (Those that take deep shade are marked with “*”)

Anchusa
Tall Phlox
Monarda (Bergamot)
Day Lily
Bergenia *
Bethlehem Sage*
Balloon Flower
Siberian Iris
Carpathian Harebell and other Campanula
Creeping Jenny
Meadowrue
Virginia Bluebells *
Foxglove *
Oriental Poppy
Astilbe *
Marsh Marigold
Trollius
Primrose
Feverfew
Gold Moss
Cimicifuga
Chives
Arabis
Trillium
Purple Coneflower
Planted Daisy
Filipendula
Shasta Daisy
Columbines
Gas Plant
Leopard’s Bane
Macleaya
Christmas Rose
Jacob’s Ladder
Hosta *
Cardinal Flower
Gooseneck and Yellow Loosestrife
Japanese Anemone
Peony
Brunnera
Solomon’s Seal *
Saxifrage *
Nepeta
Spiderwort *
Chrysanthemum
Viola
Aconitum
Bleeding Heart
Goatsbeard
Globe Thistle
Geum
Perennial Geraniums
Obedient Plant
Coral Bells
Veronica
Lupins

Perennial ground cover for shade

Ajuga
Goutweed *
Crown Vetch
Cotoneaster
Epimedium*
English Ivy
Hall’s Honeysuckle
Virginia Creeper
Pachysandra*
Creeping Potentialla
Periwinkle
Euonymus
All ferns *
Many ornamental grasses
Lily-of-the-Valley
Wild Ginger
Wintergreen *

Obviously not all of these will be suitable, as some would die in my winter.

My choices will be as follows:

Foxglove

Nice and tall, will cover ugly things. They aren't long lived, but they do self-seed and multiply. As before, I know they do well here.

Pulmonaria aka Bethlehem Sage (I often prefer Latin names)

This is a short one for in front of the window. The other one for this position will be:

See how nice that looks among gravel. 

I may put some annuals in this year while the perennials are small, and the obvious choice is pansies. I don't do impatiens, no, no, no. No.

Soon as it's in, I'll do an update here with photos.

Not An Update

Just going through my various blogs this morning, I am acutely aware that this one is in limbo.

Obviously, there is no gardening going on here, we're still under a blanket of snow.

But there is also no planning going on, my time has been taken up with too many other things, I will get to it.

What I will just mention briefly is something that cropped up again in conversation on some random Facebook conversation.

Without expensive technology (at the very least a heated greenhouse, and probably some automatic irrigation) actual self-sufficiency is only possible this far north if:

a) You also hunt, because livestock limited to a finite area are a finite resource, and
b) You are willing to TOTALLY change your diet.

Native people managed just fine at these latitudes, with a few weeks of hunger round about this time of year, but so long as things went according to plan living off the land was doable.

I like my diet the way it is, and have no intention of ever switching to subsistence level living if I can help it.

AND...even going halfway, by which I mean half your food comes from your own land, be it half by quantity, or half by grocery budget, or half by summer/winter, or whatever would actually require more financial investment than could be justified by the dollar value of the harvest.

I just want to inject that realism into the whole issue before I do anything else, because I'm getting bored by those whose dream is to "live off the land". Even if they succeed (which I doubt) that is not my dream, not here. I'd be willing to give it a shot somewhere warmer, but I live HERE. So I write about HERE. I am neither a show gardener nor a wannabe "homesteader". I'm a realist.

The Makeover

So, as I mentioned, this year I am planning on turning my farm into something much prettier, for my daughter's wedding. This is a massive task, as you'll see.

Thankfully I'm being helped by Google. Even if their overhead photos of my place are pretty awful.

Believe it or not the white blob is a barn/barnyard, and the black smudge below it is a large pond. The house itself is invisible, but you can see the front drive - where that ends, obviously is the house. The curved line on the left of this picture is the stream that runs across the back of our property. We are only concerrned with the front of the property, as most of it is pasture and (beyond the stream) swamp, and the scrubby edge of woodland. 

So this is the area where the work will be done:

You can see pathways etc. I'm going to use this to create an accurate plan. I'll show you that later on.

What Google have done well is drive up the road and take wide-angle photos of the front. So these are the "before" photos.

You'll notice particularly in the second image that it's very "natural" or "rustic". In other words, there is a lot of long grass and little else. Close to the house you'd see flowers, but we want a bright show from the road, as well as all over the property. (You can click on all the photos for a bigger image). 

We also want to make a feature of the pond. It's about 40 feet across with an island in the middle. I have managed to establish a few hollyhocks on the island by throwing seed bombs, but this year somebody has to swim out there and actually do something impressive with it. As it's full of leeches we can't get any volunteers, so I assume I'll be buying an inflatable sunbed thingy. 

#1 priority is to grow things up the fence all along the left-hand side of the front. Probably sweet peas, morning glory, mirabilis etc. But it's VERY soggy there, so it'll be tricky. 

#2 is to paint the barn and sheds a nice country green. 

But there's a lot more. I'll present the ideas a bit at a time.

Pests and Diseases

As soon as I say "organic" (and mean it) I am immediately asked what I do aboust pests and diseases. The answer is not much.

There are products sold in stores labelled organic that some gardeners use. I don't. They cost more than they are worth.

There are "recipes" you can find online to combat specific problems. I can't comment, as the only one I ever tried was soap spray for aphids and it was a waste of time.

There are easy companion plantings that keep some problems to a minimum, and a row of marigolds near the broad beans is much more inviting to the nasty black aphpids than the beans.

I suppose I'm lucky really, we don't have major problems here. When the caterpillars get on my brassicas the numbers are small enough to just pick them off. We've never had cutworms, and the major caterpillar problem went away when I dug up the roses and burned them.

My biggest issue is tomato blight, and that can be minimized by harvesting early, never planting them in the same place twice, and in fact if you grow them in a container with non-affected soil, you can avoid it entirely.

In fact the problem critters in my garden are much bigger. My own chickens stole all my peas one year, and I've had sheep in the garden on a couple of occasions. For the first time ever we've seen rabbit tracks on the snow this winter, so I may get visitors this summer. At least I don't have to contend with deer. They are too shy, thankfully, to come that close to the house.

So why am I writing this at all, if I have nothing to offer as advice?

Well, I'm not absolutely certain, but I think it's possible that our approach works. Perhaps the reason we don't get a lot of pests and diseases is that we don't interfere much with the balance of nature here. If something does look sick we burn it fast before it spreads.

That may not be much help to you if you have inherited infected soil, or your neighbours have created a problem by spraying everything. I'm sorry if you find yourself in that position, it really sucks.

But if you have the opportunity to grow things in a rather more natural way, I recommend doing it. Long-term it seems to yield better results.

While I'm here, I often get asked about the safety of manure. With the exception of rabbit manure, which is a magical garden ingredient if you can get some, all manure should be left to mature before use. Anything harmful in it is long gone by the time you put it on your garden.

What I'm trying to say, is that I have found, that by interfering as little as possible, I have had better success. There will always be exceptions to that, but it reminds one of drugs that cause side-effects that need more drugs, and so on, until there is complete dependency on cures. When it's a human being we don't really have the optrion of tossing them on the bonfire and starting over, but my approach to a diseased plant is to do just that. There are plenty more.

Cucumbers

Somebody mentioned cucumbers. I am very, very good at cucumbers. We concentrate on the mini ones used for pickling, and grow hundreds of plants, but the same applies to all types, and indeed, up to a point, to its relatives...........

Cucumbers are related to gourds, melons, zucchinis, pumpkins, and squashes, and they all look very similar as seedlings and small plants. They've been around a long time and can be found mentioned in Sumerian mythology.

We know them best in three forms:

1. The smallest varieties, which are primarily pickled.
2. Ridge varieties ("slicer" cucumbers) which are simply larger versions of these, with a tough skin
3. "English" cucumbers (which actually come from Syria), less bitter and with an edible skin.

You may notice a bit of bias there. I consider the skin of the ridge cucumber to be inedible, and in actual fact, I never use them at all. Like most things it's a case of what you are used to. I grew up with English cucumbers, while in some areas of the US, I'm told they are expensive and/or difficult to obtain.

The English cucumber is a wee bit trickier to grow, as it needs more heat. In cooler climates they are a greenhouse-only crop. If you want them straight like the ones you are used to buying you must grow them as a hanging vine, on strings, a fence, or a strong mesh. They will grow just fine on the ground but will curl.

Otherwise these are very undemanding plants, and will grow from seed simply dropped into a hole in the ground you can make with your finger. You don't need rich soil, it will just give you more leaves. But you do need space if not growing on a trellis, they sprawl. I've had plants reach 6 feet across.

Plant directly in the ground after the last frost date. Or start in a pot indoors (see previous blog) 2-3 weeks before that. Water WELL. These are thirsty plants. At full maturity I give each plant an absolute minimum of a litre (quart) of water a day. Never let them dry out.

Be careful when weeding or hoeing. Even if you plant the seed deeper than recommended, the roots will be very thin and delicate. There is a very sudden noticeable difference between the sturdy stem above ground and the whiskery roots below. You can encourage longer roots by using very well tilled soil, but you still have to be careful not to accidentally pull them out when working around them. If you accidentally uproot it, the chances of it recovering after re-planting are iffy.

At harvest time be prepared to check for ripe cucumbers daily. They grow very fast and they also hide under the big leaves. If you are growing pickling cucumbers, be prepared to do regular batches. After picking they go limp and wrinkly quite quickly even if refrigerated - I'm quite disgusted to see them being sold like this actually. When the time is right I'll post my customary world-class pickling recipe on my food blog.

This is a FUN plant, great for a beginner (even a child) and the leaves are interesting enough that you could grow one in a flower garden, just because. Certainly, if the only place you have to grow it is in front of your house, there's no reason why not. Because of their vertical ways, these also make great balcony plants.