Category: Home and Garden

The World of Fertilizer: Again

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Hello Readers. But really I mean reader which means you, H, since I believe all others who have stumbled over this blog have quit reading due to boredom. Thank you for being blood-related to me too much to give up. And if you aren’t reading this, well then I’m just talking to myself, so by the way remember that you just left a very important document on the scanner that needs to be dealt with shortly.

The only interesting gardening think I’ve done lately is water plants. They are doing much better due to the fertilizer mentioned in the previous post. In thinking about the whole situation, I’ve decided to rewrite the last post. I know you were bored the first time round…

Still here? I have no idea why, but here’s the re-written post for you:

So the few potted plants out on the balcony were not doing hot dying. With a degree in horticulture I probably should actually care about gardening and have a lush little book-worthy mini-garden out there. In reality in takes about of month of zero growth from my plants and bright yellow leaves before I realize those plants need fertilizer.

Even then I probably wouldn’t do something except I needed stuff at Target and Home Depot happened to be next store. So I ran over there (literally because it was raining) and went to go buy a fertilizer.

Drawing on a hazy memory of scientific posters from school, I knew I needed a fertilizer with something like a 5-1-2 ratio. If you have no idea what that means you can simply buy the first thing that is labeled for what you are growing and leave within a sane amount of time. There’s not much fun in that though. I looked at the gobs of miracle grow and thought of how it is the devil of gardening. Maybe they have something angelically organic instead.

Then I realized that shopping at a hardware store for a chemical fertilizer also probably falls into the devil category and stopped looking for organic stuff. (Not a big fan of “organic” anyway, but let’s save that for another post.) I’m back looking for a 5-1-2 ratio.

Miracle grow turned out to be an epic failure at providing me the desired ratio. You would think some company would take advantage at what experts are recommending, but after staring for five minutes I have found zilch. I’m still looking for that stupid ratio….and found it! (or close enough):

Hmmm…it’s labeled for trees and shrubs. I really have no idea why you need different kinds of fertilizer for different kinds of plants. Varying amounts, sure, but nitrogen is nitrogen. (Well actually, it can come in various chemical forms…but the labeling is still very off).

This stuff should work fine. Got to be better than a 10-10-10 miracle grow, since phosphorus is frequently over applied in the home garden and hence destroying waterways and possibly the whole ecosystem. It’s slow release granular which appeals to the lazy side of me—I can put it on once and be done. It also happens to be cheap! I have a hard time arguing with price tags.

My containerized pots got a good helping of evergreen shrub fertilizer. The fertilizer shelf at home depot got a D- grade from me.

Garden, Landscape, and Yard

I use the following terms a lot, and often interchangeably: garden, landscape, and yard. The words do have different connotations for me, and here’s what I think of each term.

Yard: A piece of land surrounding a house. Nothing is required here except for physical space.

Landscape: The features of a yard or outdoor area. A landscaped yard is purposely planned out and filled with various hard-scape and plant material. 

Garden: A place for plants. In a garden, the highlight is the plants and how they interact and grow.

When I think about the area surrounding the house, I often think about it in three tiers. The bottom is the yard. If you have a yard you have a bunch of land that is not devoted to any purpose, including aesthetics. Think a dirt pad, weed patch, or even a run-of the mill lawn with boxwood foundation plantings. Nothing special or desirable here.

The next is a landscape. The area is purposefully planned out to be functional and beautiful. There can be good or bad landscaping and a slew of different styles…but there is always some thought and effort behind it. Most commercially done landscapes fall into this tier (with a few exceptions). These usually have a “before and after” type approach, with a one time installation and only minor modifications after the initial installation.

Finally, the most desirable tier is a garden. A garden is all about plants. There almost always has to be a gardener attached as well, someone who appreciates and cares for the plants. A garden changes dynamically through the years as plants are appreciated, cultivated and experimented on. In the culture where I grew up, a garden usually meant a kitchen garden with vegetables and such. Most people only cared about their vegetables too…the rest of the landscape was not cultivated by a caring gardener but occasionally hacked at with a mower and pruning shears. But there are also flower gardens, mixed borders, meadows, and more that can accurately be described as a garden.

I said that a garden is most desirable, but I think a lot of people aren’t actually looking to have a garden. They want a nice landscape, something that is functional and pretty, but avoid the effort and knowledge that is necessary for a garden. There is always something missing from these landscapes though: no piece of land can reach it’s full potential unless it is treated as a garden.

The Garden on the Balcony: Beginning

This is what the balcony looks like right now:

Not a lot going on, but I spent less than $20 and under 2 hours. Not too bad for the amount of time and money I put into it. I was a bit creative with pots–I’ve got a canvas bag with seeded flowers, some left over terracotta pots from another project and a couple of baskets from the thrift store. I used the terracotta pots for herbs, and I love how they turned out. I saw this post over at the Timber Press blog about dressing up terracotta pots. I tend to not be so craftly– the quiker and more fool-proof the better. So I skipped the whole painting of the pots, and just used to chalk to label them. Still cute, but it took basically no time.

I planted up a couple of begonia and a dusty miller in a thrift store basket. I love the grey and purple foliage combination, I tend to use it a lot in my garden designs as well. This should also do well in the shady patio. I’ve given up the notion of planting any vegetables besides some seeded lettuce–I simply don’t think I have enough sunlight ot get a good crop. The lettuce might not do anything because of heat, but I’d thought I’d try. So for now it’s a few herbs and a few flowers–easily and cheaply done. I might get around to more, but if not at least I have enough to call it a garden.

Blooms and Planning a Garden

Spring is rapidly in gear. Everyday I notice another fresh sign of spring. The leaves are starting to come in on the trees, we leave the windows open all day, and I even dressed my toddler son in shorts. Flower blooms are abundant. While I was going through my pictures its amazing to see how a plant can go from dormant to budding to flowering in a matter of days.

We drove over to go hiking today and the drive was more fun than the hiking. The streets are lined with flowering trees and shrubs. There’s flowering plums, crab apples, eastern redbud, forsythia, quince, and an abundance of azaleas. All the pictures I’ve taken are from mostly boring landscapes around my apartment and at a couple parks. But spring is making everything beautiful.

Even with a two week old son, I’m itching to get some plants growing out on the deck. I’m missing having a garden to work in (but at the same time I don’t have a lot of time for one). At least I have some outdoor space to work with in my apartment. I’m planning on some potted herbs, a few cherry-type tomato plants, and some peppers out on the deck, with a few flowers to enjoy.

The only problem I foresee with this is watering…I’ll have lots and lots of watering in my future.

Ornamental Grasses

DON’T cut them back before winter. This was a demonstration garden in New Mexico. Everything was dormant, but not boring. The ornamental grasses were spectacular.

I mentioned a house earlier that I enjoyed the landscape of. It had lots of ornamental grasses. I drove by one day and was horrified to find they chopped all the grasses down. They lost a whole season of potential beauty from doing so.

Some grasses can flop because of wind and snow load, etc. But what’s the harm in waiting until they actually look bad to cut them back? It might actually push some gardening into winter, which I don’t think is a bad thing.

Designing a Garden

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I designed gardens this years and also installed a few. I’ve recently had some thoughts about the designs and garden designs in general. I read this post about how garden designs aren’t great. I have to disagree a bit: garden design are tremendously useful. But there should be some disclaimers about them as well.

  • Designing a garden is never quite done because the garden is living. Plants will need to be re-arranged, thinned, added to, moved, and even dug out and thrown away. No garden is ever really completed.
  • Every plant reacts differently to a different environment, and every garden has its own unique environment. I can get what I think is a perfect plant arrangement on paper, and it might be in certain situations. But  it could turn out that a certain plant or plant combination just doesn’t work. It doesn’t mean the design is wrong: it simply needs to be modified for the specific situation.
  • Starting out with a design (that will most likely be modified) will mean there is somewhere to start, something to work towards, and something to modify. It’s better than no design at all. Garden designs turn gardening into an enjoyable, manageable task where everything is eventually able to come together and create a unified appearance.
  • Designing is essential to get a good backbone to the garden. The plant material will be adjusted over time as it grows (or fails to grow), but basic plant arrangement, lines, borders  and the structure of it all can be defined by an initial garden design and won’t change too much.
  • Good gardens only come about with good maintenance. Even a low maintenance design needs a watchful eye.

I’m putting this out there, but I’m also moving across the country. Any garden I’ve designed, or you would like me to design, comes with a free yearly consultation by me to see how it is coming along and offer suggestions on continued development. All garden designs really are a first draft, one that will need to be modified over the years.

Some of My Approaches to Gardening

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Never worry about pests until you see them. Then make sure you identify them and know what damage they are going to do. Most of the time I never spray, just accept the damage as part of gardening. This results in a huge decrease of chemical use.

Stuff dies. The difference between a thriving garden and one full of dead plants, is the people with thriving gardens threw away their dead plants and tried again.

Weeds are acceptable. Some are very pretty. I love the violet-clover-lawn in the back. Even the dandelions are beautiful. Manytimes weeds are just filling in niches, not overtaking other plants. If a weed isn’t ugly or offensive, I don’t worry about it.

Weeds are also a lot easier to deal with when they are tiny.

Black plastic mulch is wickedly awesome for vegetable gardens and cheap online. Use bark mulch everywhere else. Unless you are trying to grow penstemons and other plants that hate good, moist soil.

There cannot be too much compost in the garden. Unless you are trying to grow penstemons and other plants that hate good, moist soil.

There are plants that will grow in every situation. So instead of trying to change what you have to get a plant to grow, find a plant that fits the situation.

If a plant is pretty, not encroaching on anything you don’t want,  and you aren’t going to get fruit off  of it, it doesn’t need to be pruned. Except for roses, which is why I really don’t like roses.

Deadheading is usually overkill. But extremely enjoyable if you want to stop and smell the flowers.

Gardens are more meaningful if they are yours: if you planted and cared for the plants. But start small so you can enjoy it and it doesn’t turn into a monster chore.

Blue Hubbard Squash

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I grew a nice big Blue Hubbard squash plant in my garden this year. I ended up with five good sized squash, the largest one weighing right around 25 pounds. They are extremely lovely, but I didn’t grow them to just display (although they have been a great fall decoration). I have yet to deal with a squash quite this intimidating, but after a little bit of Google search and the desire to make a winter squash pasta sauce I was ready to give it a try.

I picked a medium sized squash and washed off all the dirt. I then tackled the daunting task of getting it open. Methods I read about included opening it with a saw, cooking it for a bit and then go at it with a knife, but the one I was most willing to try was to just drop it on the floor. I stuck it in a plastic grocery bag, dropped and…

Ended up with two pretty evenly sized halves. Scooped out the insides, and dropped it several more times to get nice eighths. One half of a medium sized squash fit in my large crock pot. I cooked one part on high for 2.5 hrs and the other on low for six. In the end I had soft, delectable squash perfect for any pumpkin or winter squash recipe. I’ve made a pasta sauce and pumpkin chocolate chip cookies so far.

So my advice for the day (besides growing Blue Hubbard Squash) is to forget the saw or knife and drop the squash on the ground.

Fall Clean-up and Composting

I’ve finally reached 100 posts! I’ve been around for over two years so it took me a while. This blog is continuing to gain new direction, and its going to get a twist as I uproot myself to Georgia the beginning of next year. I have recently redone my template and categories and I’m trying to post a bit more. One part of this blog I want to introduce is showing good ideas I come across (wonders) and also all the blunders I also see, along with more how-to’s on gardening tasks.

So there is something I see all the time that makes me cringe: big black bags full of fall leaves and other plant debris destined for the dump. Reading blogs this year, I’ve gained a new appreciation of things like fall leaves. They are great for mulching and compost.

I went out and mowed a good section of lawn covered in leaves, even though it didn’t actually need mowing. The leaves are shredded up (don’t use the bagger on the mower please!) and add good organic matter to the lawn. Usually lawns can handle about two to four inches of leaves mulched right in. (Use the mower and don’t just ignore the leaves. Last year, there where several sections of pretty deep leaves that were left on a section of lawn, and ended up creating nice bare spots underneath. They popped right back, but it’s not very attractive and I still had leaves to deal with in the spring.)

Large trees  that drop too many leaves to be completely mulched into the lawn can be raked onto planting beds.  On bare planting beds, leaves can simply be piled high with out mulching and left to rot.

Fall is also a great time to get to all that compost that didn’t actually get composted. I completely neglected the compost spinner, and also had a large pile of perennial clippings. I got out the mower again and used it to shed everything up and put it on top of the planting beds. Stuff will break down more on it’s own through the winter, no mulch pile or spinner needed.

I was thinking of how much organic matter I’ve wasted. I’ve thrown way too much of it away because I was lazy. Some I’ve dumped off at the local compost center and re-bought it later in the form of compost. Not a bad little system, but in the fall it is pretty easy to mulch material on the beds and let it decompose over winter. You then aren’t faced with the possibility of extra weed seeds and salinity levels that can come from city compost, plus the extra transport and expense.

Gardens are cool–we plant small seeds and end up with huge plants. But do the soil a favor and don’t keep draining it by hauling away all the organic matter. Return it back. Mulch lawn clippings. Leave leaves and other plant debris on beds. Add compost. The soil will get better over time. On looking at the current soil situation in my garden, I have a light brown icky clay. If all the plant matter in that garden wouldn’t have been hauled away over the years and instead added back into the soil, I wouldn’t be looking at that same icky soil.

Seeding a Lawn

This story starts in the spring when the horribly pruned English walnut was removed from the front yard. This was wonderful. Now we have a beautiful view of Mount Timp, no more hazardous tree right over the house and way less clean-up. (Note: don’t harshly prune, or more accurately ‘top’ your trees because they are right by the house and might fall on it. Severe pruning will only make new wood weaker and the hazard will be worse.) Now the only problem was the front lawn was fine fescue. Fine fescue is a wonderful grass for the shade, but in full sun it just gets stressed.

I decided we needed to redo the front lawn. So I set to work trying to kill it. I sprayed it with round-up, waited a couple weeks and sprayed again. I did it a third, even fourth time. Expect the lawn had gone dormant because I was spraying  in the heat of the summer. Round-up kills only activily growing plants, and my lawn wasn’t growing so it wasn’t dying either. Eventually I gave up trying to kill certain patches and tilled it up.

Prepping the ground for seeding

By this time it was the end of the late summer/early fall seeding window. Late summer, or about mid-August to mid-September here, is the best time to seed a cool season grass. To prep the ground it was tilled and then rolled out with a sod roller. I seeded the lawn with a dwarf tall fescue, using a fertilizer spreader. With the spreader, I went up/down and across several times to make sure it had full, even coverage.  It came up, but  pretty spotty and some of the fine fescue came back too. So here is what it looks like now:

Patchy, new grass

I haven’t despaired. I re-seeded just yesterday. This “dormant seeding” should pop up in the spring and cover all the current bare spots. Plus grass will naturally fill in by itself. (That’s one of the reasons we plant it.) But I think I should have seeded it better in the first place. Here are some things I did wrong:

  • I should have tried and killed the lawn in the spring, not summer. It would have been actively growing in the spring and actually died. Instead, I still have fine fescue in the lawn. I could have also irrigated it more in the summer, but I’m not a huge fan of drowning lawns in water.
  • I didn’t quite irrigate enough right after I seeded. I think this is why it came up a little patchy. Next time I’ll irrigate two or more times a day right after seeding to make sure it doesn’t dry up and germinates more evenly.
  • I was a little late in seeding the lawn. I wish I had a few more weeks for the lawn to establish before winter.

The one good thing about this was I spend about $30 total for all the grass seed I needed along with renting the sod roller. Seeding grass is a lot cheaper and it can get good results if you don’t make the same mistakes I did. I recently saw a hydro-seeded lawn that was seeded a few weeks before I did mine. It is a nice, thick lawn right now. Seedling a lawn can take a bit more patience than sod, but it’s much cheaper and can be a lot easier. If you do seed and get bad results, just take advantage of the next seeding window (spring, late summer and late fall) and re-seed over the top like I did.