Author: digman

Back in the 1970’s the average backyard vegetable garden was about 1000 square feet. Now it is typically 200 square feet. New houses tend toward smaller yards, so the farm model of growing food and the generous space it required has become obsolete. Contemporary vegetable gardening borrows the best design ideas from the past, while incorporating new technology and materials to make smaller vegetable gardens easier to manage, and more productive.

Two ways to coax more production from limited space is by borrowing from old cultures the concepts of raised beds and vertical growing. Shifting a garden layout from rows to raised beds almost doubles the available growing area, as most of the ground formerly devoted to paths is dedicated to production. Growing food vertically to exploit the airspace above the garden again almost doubles its effective production area. This configuration facilitates the use of soaker hose irrigation, woven fabric mulches and other space age materials to dramatically reduce the amount of work involved in producing crops.

Raised Beds
Raised beds are permanent, rectangular plots holding soil that remains loose and rich because it is never compacted by foot traffic. Paths between the beds are also permanent. While they require a significant investment of physical labor to dig and box, they do not have to be dug again every year. Raised beds promise years of virtually instant bed preparation and easy planting each spring. Try one bed at first. Dig it in the fall when the weather is cool, then add more beds over time. Because their excellent soil permits intensive planting, it will not be necessary to have as big a garden overall as before.

Making Raised Beds
Lay out the bed’s dimensions with stakes and string. A width of 3 or 4 feet is a comfortable reach from either side for most adults. Lengths of 8 or 12 feet (conveniently allowing for evenly spaced trellis supports every 4 feet) are most adaptable to the typical backyard.

Begin digging within the string at one end, cultivating the soil to a depth of at least a foot-deeper is better. If working in a turf area, put aside pieces of sod for the compost pile. Working backward to avoid stepping on newly dug soil, turn over shovels full of soil and mound them in a loose pile within the measured dimensions of the bed. This is a good time to incorporate organic material such as compost, peat moss or chopped leaves into the soil. Overachievers may wish to double dig the bed, but it is not required.

Designate at least 3 feet for path area around the bed. Scrape off the valuable top few inches of topsoil from the paths and mound it on the newly dug bed to increase its height, then spread wood chips or gravel, or lay bricks in the path area to eliminate future problems with mud. Rake and level the surface of the mounded soil in the bed and it is ready for planting.

A layer of straw or chopped leaves will protect the soil over the winter and discourage erosion of the mounded soil into the paths. While it is not necessary, boxing each bed with 2 by 10 inch wooden planks prevents erosion most effectively, makes beds easier to manage and looks more attractive. Boxed sides also pro vide a place to fasten fixtures to permit quick attachment of sturdy vertical supports for various crops.

The Value of Vertical
Another way to maximize production in limited space is to exploit the air space above the garden bed. Combined with raised-boxed beds the potential for dramatically increased production with vertical growing is enormous. Plants grown vertically can be planted more closely together and produce more in the rich, friable soil of a properly managed raised bed. Because they take up only a few inches of surface soil, there remains lots of bed left to be intensively planted with low growing vegetable plants. Orienting beds on a north-south axis assures that plant-laden trellises do not block the sun from lower growing plants as it moves from East to West across the yard during the day.

Erecting vertical supports is always a time consuming problem. Freestanding ones provide flexibility in placement, but are precarious, tending to collapse part way through the season from the weight of maturing crops. The planks that enclose a raised bed offer a convenient place to attach year round fixtures that make setting up and taking down trellises quick and easy. They make it possible to have a flat trellis system that runs along either side of the bed that is stable, yet easily reconfigured to facilitate crop rotation.

Establishing a Trellis System
There are lots of ways to fasten trellis poles to the wooden planks of boxed beds. One tried and true method is to fasten 12 inch lengths of PVC pipe, 1 1/2 to 2 inches in diameter, with plumber’s brackets at four foot intervals along the insides of the long sides of the bed. Dig the PVC pipe into the soil so the opening is flush with the top of the board. Sturdy vertical poles, wooden or PVC, up to 8 feet long, fit easily and quickly into the PVC pipe fixtures for instant stability. Since their first 12 inches sit in the fixture below the soil level, the trellis will actually be 7 feet tall, about maximum reach for most adults.

Next, cut 4 foot lengths (the between the vertical poles) of strips or similar I by 2 inch slats, crosspieces to make panels of trellis fasten to the vertical poles at top tom. The trellis material itself hand-strung wire or twine, or co netting made of nylon or plastic with 4 or 6 inch holes allows for access when picking large vegetables as tomatoes. Fasten it to the crosspieces with a staple gun to form panels easily mounted and removed from a poles, rolled up and stored year. Drill holes at the ends of pieces and at the tops and base poles for attaching panels of trellis beds. One tried and true method is to with screw bolts and wing nuts.

Veggies That Grow Well Vertically:
Beans, Lima Pole
Beans, Pole
Cucumbers
Melons
Peas
Squash, winter varieties such as acorn, butternut Tomatoes, indeterminate
Benefits to Vegetables of Vertical Growing:
Better air circulation
Better access to sunlight
Less exposure to soil pathogens
Easier to harvest
Dry off faster after rain Less likely to be curled or deformed

Reasons to Use Boxed Raised Beds:
Save space
Maintain soil texture
Do not need annual digging
Heat up earlier in the season Use water and fertilizer more efficiently
Improve soil drainage
Permit intensive planting
Are neat and accessible
Support trellises securely
Permit use of shade cloth or plastic tents
Avoids soil compaction due to foot traffic

Provided by the National Garden Bureau www.ngb.org.

What a wonderful world it would be if we could discover the lawn grass that stayed green year-round, never had to be watered, fertilized, or sprayed and only occasionally mowed. While the cruel side of Mother Nature probably won’t ever allow such a thing to happen, there is a lot that we can do now to come closer to that low maintenance lawn. While a fortunate few homeowners who are just starting to establish a lawn can come closest to a low maintenance lawn, even the majority of people who have to contend with a lawn planted well before they bought the house and yard can gain some advantages.

From the Ground Up
Low maintenance lawns begin with almost compulsive attention to the site’s soil and most likely the need for its improvement, according to Doug Fender, director of the Turf Resource Center. “For new lawns”, he points out, “an essential first step is soil testing followed by incorporating whatever amendments are called for to create the proper pH and physical characteristics. For existing lawns, the only practical way to modify the soil is with seasonally repeated aeration and light top-dressing with high quality, mature compost or other soil test-determined amendments. Without good soil, even high maintenance lawns will have problems.”

Good soils accept and retain moisture, while allowing adequate drainage and providing sufficient air space to permit roots to penetrate, absorb moisture and nutrients and exchange gases. To the degree that the soil can be improved, the lawn’s overall maintenance will be reduced. Conversely, the poorer the soil, i.e., compacted clay or 100 percent sand, the more the lawn will require energy, effort and maintenance, in the forms of water, fertilizer, pesticide and probably even mowing. Yet, high maintenance in poor soils will return only high levels of frustration.

Selecting the Right Grass
After soil preparation, the next step is to understand and recognize the need to balance desires for low maintenance with the actual uses that the lawn will have. Growing prize-winning roses in a battlefield is impractical, so too is hoping for a low maintenance lawn that must endure high traffic use For example, in cool-season areas, fine fescues (hard, chewings and red creeping) are generally recognized as low maintenance grasses, compared to many varieties of bluegrass. But, if the lawn is subject to heavy use, fescues don’t have the capacity to recover from wear as rapidly as bluegrasses. So the low maintenance advantages and slow recovery disadvantages of fescues would each have to be weighed against each other. Which is better, re-seeding and restricting traffic on a fescue lawn, or going with bluegrass and achieving reduced maintenance in other ways?

In selecting a grass specie and variety for a low maintenance lawn, search-out those that have undergone multi-year tests for water and fertilizer requirements, plus consider more strongly those grasses that contain beneficial fungi called endophytes. Present in ryegrasses and fescues, but not yet in bluegrasses, endophytes offer increased resistance to surface feeding insects and seem to better tolerate heat, drought and many diseases. As turfgrass breeders expand their knowledge and abilities, expect to see more grasses with endophytes in the future. Turfgrass sod producers, whose business success depends on satisfied customers, spend a great deal of time reviewing the special attributes of new grasses and their suitability to the producer’s climate before determining which they will select for their sod fields. Homeowners can choose to do their own seed selection research, or utilize the expertise of a sod producer and gain an instant lawn. While the initial cost for sod will be higher than seed, the establishment routines required for seeded lawns are far from being a low maintenance process.

Maximize the Return on Every Effort
Compared to the hand-weeding, watering, fertilizing and spraying that most flower beds or vegetable gardens require, a sound argument can be made that on a square-foot for square-foot basis, lawns are naturally a low maintenance landscape feature, they simply take up more square-footage. But moving beyond that potentially endless argument, homeowners striving for a low maintenance lawn should try to maximize the return on every bit of time and energy they expend on their lawn. Here are some tips every homeowner can use to increase the return on their lawn maintenance investment:

1. Water as early in the morning as possible, when winds are calmest and temperatures lowest.

2. Water only when the lawn is dry and then apply an amount that will soak in deeply.

3. If there is an in-ground sprinkler system, adjust it to the seasonal needs of the grass plant, don’t just “set it and forget it.”

4. Mow frequently enough so just the top third of the blade is removed, and leave the clippings on the lawn. (Clippings provide nutrients, a small amount of moisture and do not contribute to thatch.)

5. Fertilize when the grass plant can use the nutrients. For cool season grasses that would be in early spring (when soil temperatures are 50-degrees or higher) and late fall. For warm season grasses, fertilize lightly through the peak-growing season during the summer. Avoid fertilizers that are not slow-release or those with a very high percentage of nitrogen because that leads to more mowing.

6. Apply pesticides only to those areas that require them. Weeds can be pulled or spot-sprayed. A dense, vigorously growing lawn will crowd out weeds and be able to out-grow many insect and disease problems, so one of the benefits of proper low maintenance lawn care is that many of the high maintenance jobs of spraying insecticides, herbicides and fungicides won’t be necessary.

Finally, while low maintenance lawns can be every bit as beautiful as high maintenance lawns for much of the year, the stresses of summer heat and drought can cause them to go dormant, particularly if water is not applied. No one hangs leaves on their deciduous trees after autumn, because it’s an accepted part of nature. Why then should a homeowner attempt to keep a low maintenance lawn dark green during the heat of summer, when the grass plant’s natural tendency is to be less active and somewhat dormant?

When temperatures start to drop and fall rains increase, the low maintenance lawn will recover, particularly if it’s been started in good soil and treated properly the rest of the year.

You don’t have to cut down the grass area to have a low maintenance lawn, just cut down the unnecessary and unproductive maintenance habits that have become all too common.

The lift I feel now that I wake to sunshine pouring through the windows and a sky the blue of a robin’s egg reminds me of the literal lightness of being on planet earth. Light has everything to do with how we feel and how our gardens grow. There are rules about how much light plants need, but you have to use your head.

I’m planning flower and vegetable gardens for our new home, a property with a lot of big old shade trees. It’s difficult to judge where there will be enough light for either when the sun moves to its overhead summer position. Most flowers and vegetables need eight and can take twelve hours of light.

You can find out the light needs of a plant by looking at the light symbol on the plant tag or seed packet:

Full sun: the plant can take light from sunrise to sunset, will be just fine with eight hours, and can make do with six hours of direct full sun.

Semi-sunny or part shade: the plant will do well with four to six hours of direct sun, or dappled light all day.

Shade: the plant can succeed with only two to three hours of direct sun a day, or half a day of bright dappled light.

That’s useful information, but the light in your garden, your region, and the inside of your house for that matter, never fits these descriptions exactly, and anyway, light varies from month to month throughout the year.

In spring the sun not only rises earlier and earlier, it also moves from fairly low on the horizon toward an overhead position. So the light available in any given spot — except one out in the open with nothing around to cast a shadow, changes with each season of the year. And the intensity of the light (and heat) also differs from region to region. Sunlight in the South West is more intense and hotter than in the North East, one reason native vegetation differs from place to place.

You can use the knowledge in that table to decide how much “extra” sun or shade your plants can take. A tropical plant said to need part sun is apt to accept more direct sun in a window in Chappaqua, New York, than in a window in Orlando. Pansies said to thrive in full sun cooked to death in my warm Washington, DC, garden by mid May. Planted in the dappled shade of a flowering cherry, and growing in moist humusy soil with a mulch cover lasted longer. Here in Connecticut they can go all summer in the sun.

There are so many other variables the “rules” sometimes hardly seem like rules. In the North, plants growing in full sun often can stand the cold more than plants in part shade. Snow cover is tremendous protection from cold. Deep snow cover allowed the tuberose in my Vermont garden to survive winters that killed them in Washington where there was much less intense cold, but almost no snow. Moist humusy soil and a layer of mulch enabled plants in DC to stand more intense sun and heat than if they were growing in porous, sandy soil without mulch.

So what’s for real? The plants themselves tell the tale. Out in the garden not enough sun can make plants grow tall and spindly, fail to flower or fruit, and flop forward. Too much direct sun can cause sunburn in plants as well as people — the green leaves turn whitish and wither.

The same thing happens indoors where the plants have the advantage of steady temperatures. Seedlings waiting for time to move to the garden grow tall, thin, and tend to flop over at the slightest provocation unless they have at least 12 hours of good direct light. Growing 18 hours a day under grow lights they grow stocky, sturdy and dark rich happy green. A glassed-in sun porch facing south is second best: it admits as much light as a greenhouse from the side, but less overhead.

And yet, some flowering plants we associate with the outdoors do very well in the light that comes through south clean windows. In the early fall I plant petunia seedlings in a south window and they bloom all winter long.

Houseplants are tropicals, plants that evolved in a climate of steady year round warmth, that come from the understory of jungle-like areas. They do well with relatively low light levels. Recommendations to grow a plant in a North window has nothing to do with geography; it is a call for a cool situation and indirect light. A recommendation to keep a plant in an East or West window means it needs diffuse light all day, or direct sun half the day.

But even indoors light and the heat that comes with it changes with the seasons. In hot weather, the East window is best for plants that like to be cool because afternoon sun is hotter than morning sun. A South window provides the longest hours of direct sun available which helps most flowering plants. But the closer you get to summer, the hotter the south window becomes. I handle that by moving plants that need part shade, African violets for example, back a foot or two from the window as the sun heats up. The seasonal variation is the position of the sun in the sky also affects the light your houseplants receive. Since in summer, the zenith of the sun’s trip across the sky is higher than in fall or spring, it is less likely to shine directly into a window. Especially a window with an overhang or near a tree. That protects sun-tender plants, but can rob sun-loving plants of light.

And, summer and winter, mirror and white walls bounce light and may be adding to the levels on the sill. Interior lighting also affects the plants — fluorescents, especially if they are less than a year old, add to the footcandles the plants receive. So do ordinary incandescent bulbs. African violets have flowered under my little old desk lamp.

To sum up, I find plants forgiving and wildly unpredictable in their responses to environment. A baby ficus tree I bought in a southern nursery grew up to be a ceiling high tree living in Washington, DC, in a dark corner of a room papered in Chinese red. The usual recommendation for a ficus is good light in a window facing West or East. What was different about this plant’s situation is that it spent six months of the year on a covered porch. That saves a lot of light-deprived houseplants. And also maybe that, having starting out as a baby with low light, the plant adjusted to it.

Plants will tell you right quick if they are getting enough light. A ficus drops its leaves. If you improve the light by adding floods, or moving it closer to a bright window, or moving it back from light that is too bright, it will stop dropping leaves. The real answer to how much light does my plant need is: consult the plant.