Backyard Gardening Blog

Three Simple Tips for a Beautiful Ornamental Garden Bed

July 11th, 2009

My garden beds are looking wonderful right about now, and, not to toot my own horn, but nothing else in the neighborhood comes close. I was pondering my success today, and decided that there was probably just a few key principles I follow in the design process to achieve the looks I’ve gotten. I know there are a lot of homeowners out there who probably do not want to think about garden design as much as I do, so I thought I’d share these three simple tips that anyone can follow to create a bed that looks like it was professionally designed and is visually appealing.

1. Avoid Straight Lines and Even Numbers

Your garden bed should avoid any and all straight lines. If your bed is a foundation planting the back of the bed may be straight because it borders the house, but the front better have a curve to it. Pickpockets and magicians move their hands in arcs to distract us because our eyes cannot follow curved lines as well as straight lines. So when you use a curved line in your garden design you’re forcing the eye to slow down and follow along it rather than skip to the end, you’re telling eyes to stop and smell the roses so to speak. It makes the garden more interesting. Long sweeping curves look far better than straight lines, one of the most boring garden beds you’ll ever see is a flat straight 3 foot wide section along the foundation of a house. In a formal geometic garden straight lines can work, but such gardens also tend to require fulltime staffs of landscapers to maintain their precision pruning, they aren’t the style most of us want or can afford.

Even numbers, or planting things in matching pairs, should also be avoided, as they are easier for our brain to add up and categorize. Instead plant things in odd groups such as 3 or 7, it feels more natural and is more visually interesting.

2. Plant in Many Colors

Flowers are transient, foliage is forever. Every garden bed should have atleast one plant that has foliage that is red or purple, one that has golden or yellow foliage, and one that has silver or blue foliage. The more shades you can add the better, bonus points for black foliage.

In the red/purple foliage category there is barberry (in the pictures), purple smoke bush, ‘forest pansy’ redbud (a wonderful purple leaved tree seen in a picture here), various heuchera or heucherella (in one of the pictures), red maples (in one of the pictures), some ornamental cherries, some sedums, and some types of hardy hibiscus.

In the yellow/gold category there is golden privet (which smells wonderful and honey bees love, in a picture), eunonymous, lots of hostas, some heucheras or heucherellas, golden barberry, some arborvitae, some other evergreen hybrids, some sedums, and lysimachia.

In the blue/silver category is the well known blue spruce, but there are many varieties that are bluer than what the average person is familiar with, really striking. All types of juniper (my favorite are upright narrow varieties, in pictures, or groundcover varieties), some irises, artemisia, various other conifer cultivars, some hostas, and blue fescue.

In the black category there is “Black Lace” Sambucus, and black mondo grass, as well as a type of bamboo.

3. Plant atleast one of each of the follow…

A tall ornamental grass. For northern climates this generally means miscanthus, but in the south you have other species to choose from. Many people overlook grasses because they can be expensive and seem plain at the nursery, plus they think they have a lawn full of grass so why need one in a bed? But tall clumping ornamental grasses provide a feathery texture that creates interest with the wind like no other plant can. Only in a full shade bed, where most would not grow well, would I recommend not planting atleast one.
An evergreen. You’ll want interest in winter, and evergreens provide structure to a garden bed. Garden beds can’t be all flowers, then need structure and anchors, foundation, you get that with trees and shrubs, and let one of them be evergreen. I really like dwarf pines, but there are lots of options.
A tree or standard-form shrub with an exposed trunk. Foliage and flowers are not the only part of a plant worth showing, bark trunks provide interest all their own with interesting colors and textures. A standard-form shrub is a shrub that has been grafted on top of a trunk to resemble a tree, so you can plant one of those, or an actual tree (one that has an exposed trunk, ie not a spruce). It doesn’t have to be a large tree, but you need something that’ll have interesting bark one day.

Follow those simple guidelines and you will create more visually interesting garden beds. One final fourth rule, if you can afford it, is something inorganic. A large boulder can be invaluable to a garden bed, or use stone or brick as your edging material. A scultural item can work as well, be it made of wood such as driftwood (technically organic I guess), stone, ceramic, bronze, glass, concrete, whatever. A large container works here as well, a container a 5 year old could hide in, that big.

Posted in: Gardening, Landscape Design, Pictures | 7 Comments »

Introducing: Wildcrafting

July 9th, 2009

When I’m not gardening I’m running websites and I have a new one I want to tell you about. It isn’t strictly about gardening, it is more about living off the land, but topically those two things are very close, and I think many of you will be interested in this.

Wildcrafting.net is an advanced mashup of plant data and Google Maps which allows you to find or plot exact locations where a plant grows. If there is a wild elderberry bush growing on the side of the road, you can plot it, then come midsummer when the berries are ripe, you can visit the site and see all the local elderberry locations, thus allowing you to drive around and pick loads of elderberries.

Of course there are hundreds of plants, elderberries aren’t the only option, but the overall goal of the site is to make it easier for people to go out and find free food growing in nature by marking the locations where wild edibles grow on public lands. There is also an option to keep your marks private, allowing you to use the site as a diary or library of your own known locations, if you don’t want people to know about them.

Right now the site is brand new, there aren’t many plant locations plotted yet, hopefully that will change, so that eventually with enough user participation the maps will just be full of plotted locations. Allowing anyone to pull up the site, type in their address, and see what free food grows near their house.

This site was built as an extension of the Wilderness Survival Forums, so to participate you must first register there. Then you can add marks, add pictures, comment on marks or plants or pictures, rate things, add new plants, and more, all for free.

So go ahead, check it out. Wildcrafting.net Wild Edibles.

Posted in: Gardening | 5 Comments »

Purslane, Weed or Feed?

June 26th, 2009

Purslane (portulaca oleracea), also called verdolaga, pigweed, little hogweed, or pusley, is a weed, or is it? It is naturalized the world over and is a very very successful plant. It can grow in cold northern areas, it is succulent so it can withstand droughts (not unlike sedum actually), it can handle poor soils, and it has this neat trick whereby if it is uprooted it will use stored energy to produce seeds. So all those gardeners that uproot it as a weed and toss it elsewhere are really just spreading it. As such it can be invasive.

But is it a weed if it is a food crop, something cultivated for thousands of years in other parts of the world, and still eaten there today? A superfood with more omega-3s than any other leafy vegetable (so long spinach), as well as oodles of of other vitamins and cancer fighting antioxtidants and health benefits? A plant that is so versatile it can be eaten raw, sauted or stir-fried, even used in soups and stews? Supposedly it also has medicinal properties for a healthy GI tract. Does that sound like a weed to you?

A weed we eat isn’t new, but one that tastes good is, to me anyways. The most commonly eaten weed, dandelion, is just bitter to me, not something I like at all. Purslane though is good, crunchy and fresh, a satisfying texture.

Purslane is a prostrate growing succulent, most resembling ground cover sedum. It has reddish stems and oblong rich green leaves. The stems, leaves, seeds, flowers, are all edible, anything above ground really, so eat the whole thing. If you see this growing in your garden and you want to pull it up, well, I can’t stop you, but if you do pull it up, make sure it ends up in a salad bowl and not your composter.

It grows everywhere, chances are it is growing in your yard right now. I personally seem to get it whenever I get store bought bagged composted cow manure. But I’ve also now planted it on purpose in my yard to get it to grow.

I’ve not found seeds for the prostrate variety most commonly found growing wild, however if you have some you can easily collect seeds thanks to the aforementioned survival property of the plant going to seed after being up rooted. Simply uproot one and hang it upside down over a paper bag, you’ll get your seeds, and once you plant it in a permanent location it’ll reseed readily year after year. The seeds I have found are for an upright variety, I found those on ebay.

When harvesting purslane you could pull it up, but why? Use scissors and just cut off some stems, and they’ll grow back. Constant food for you all summer long. Some people can get confused and harvest a weed called spurge (which is poisonous) when harvesting purslane. I don’t think they look much alike, but I’ll repeat the warning just in case. Spurge is not a succulent, it has a wiry stem, and when broken the stem has a milky sap. Purslane is a succulent with clear sap.

So you have an easy to grow, well adapted, nutritional powerhouse that can take drought, poor soil, is easy to seed save, can be continually harvested from, and cooked and eaten in a myriad of ways. Sounds like food to me. Try carmelizing a pan of onions, add some balsamic vinegar and purslane.

Posted in: Edible Gardening, Gardening | 13 Comments »

Caterpillars on a Pine Tree

June 24th, 2009

The other day, well, almost 4 weeks ago (we’ve got a new baby, and so I’ve been too busy to blog), on my way to the hospital to see said baby I noticed large clumps of something on my Tanyosho pine. The pine hadn’t been looking too hot this Spring but I hadn’t looked too closely at it, but now it couldn’t be avoided.

Clumps of something had weighed down the tips of the needles to the point where they were drooping noticably, very obvious abnormal. So I took a closer look. It wasn’t a growth, it wasn’t needles with elephantisis, it was an infestation of caterpillars. They looked like the “tent worms” (gypsy moth larvae) that had defoliated so many trees around my parents house when I was younger (eventually forcing government intervention with airplane spraying).

I don’t, or rather I didn’t, often think of pines or other conifers as having pest problems. Their foliage is much more armored and it just didn’t seem like something they’d deal with. But these larvae had made short work of the needles on my pine and had defoliated maybe 30 or 40% of it before I noticed. This, is of course, much much worse than a critter defoliating a deciduous tree, because such trees are used to losing their leaves yearly and growing a new set in Spring. When most evergreens lose needles they usually do not grow back. Pines are somewhat of an exception, they do lose a small amount of needles every year and regrow them, but no where near 40%. So this is a big hit to the tree.

I googled it of course and turns out these are sawfly larvae, and the specifically target young or short pines, who would have thought, with all the other more vulnerable trees out there, the sawfly evolved to have their larvae target pines.

Couple the very bad damage, and the fact that I needed to get to the hospital (not for the delivery mind you, this was two days later) I didn’t bother trying to deal with it by hand (there were many dozens, but they were big suckers, so I could have, technically) or finding an all natural pest control (something I do usually think about, but rarely try, because they’re so hard to find to buy, and the one time I tried a home made concoction I killed every plant I tried it on). I grabbed trusty Sevin, and making sure no bees were present, I went to town. They rapidly started dropping and I haven’t seen one since.

Posted in: Troubleshooting | 2 Comments »

Pictures of My Front Yard

May 28th, 2009

My front yard is looking really good this year, and I thought I would share a picture. Here it is circa May 23rd 2009.

Click the picture to see it bigger. The two smaller beds are brand new, I’ve got two dwarf apples and a paw paw tree planted in them, as well as some vegetables. In the big circle center bed I’ve got a tanyosho pine surrounded by alliums for the time being. Later I will plant squash there, as the squirrels instructed me last year apparently it is a good place for squash.

I’ve got a red maple in the small circle coming up out of a bed of frothing yellow lysimachia ground cover. Then within the bigger bed itself I’ve got an upright blue juniper, some red barberries, a black lace elderberry, lilies, daylilies, yucca, and in bloom all over you see carpet phlox.

Way up by the road you can see the pre-bloom ditchlilies I used to fill the space between the sidewalk and the road.

Next year or this fall, whenever I can afford it, I hope to put in a stone patio between the two larger beds in that S-shaped strip of grass. Something informal with a low groundcover going through the cracks.

Posted in: Pictures | 6 Comments »

Recycle Nursery Pots, Grow Potatoes

May 28th, 2009

What do you do with the big mammajamma containers that trees or large shrubs are delivered in from the nursery? Well you could recycle them if they’re made of #2 plastic, but many are made of #5 or something and unable to be recycled (at least at our recycling center) and in anycase reuse is better than recycling.

When you buy potato sets (aka seed potatoes) you get a whole bunch. More than what most home gardeners need. You can plant some in trash cans, I do, but I plant the left overs in this nursery pots and it works. The dark plastic of the pots absorbs heat and helps them grow. You put about 4 inches of compost or potting mix in the pots, add your potato sets (4 or 5), cover, and as the potatoes grow keep adding soil each time they peak out, this “hilling up” allows the potato to hopefully form more spuds along the stem.

Then, to harvest, you just dump out the pot, no need to worry about accidentially wounding a spud with your shovel.

This year I’m growing “All Blue” potatoes, they’re purple in color and have some of the same antioxidants as blueberries. They taste the same as others, but are better for you.

Posted in: Edible Gardening | 4 Comments »

How to Stake a Tree

May 20th, 2009

Short answer, don’t. Most trees that are staked do not need to be. In fact I would venture that most trees you, the individual homeowner, plant do not need to be staked. Yes, any tree small enough to be handled by one person really doesn’t need to be staked. Trees only need to be steaked when their top growth massively outweighs their rootball, and that tends to mean a large tree.

However, if you must stake a tree, let me explain to you how, because it is not as easy as you may think.

The above tree is an example of what not to do. For one, the tree is far too small to need such massive stakes. If your stake is wider than the trunk of the tree, you’re doing it wrong. For two, there are three stakes. The people obviously thought they needed to immobilize the tree trunk, and long term, those stakes have been there years. This is not the goal of staking.

Staking is used to moderate swings or to protect the tree from violent winds that could uproot it prior to it being established. It is not meant to prevent all movement. If a tree does not move it does not develop a strong trunk. Trees develop strong trunks in response to wind, it is a response mechanism, all plants do. This is also why plants grown indoors can be spindly and tall, there is no wind indoors (you can direct a fan at your seedlings to correct this).

So, when plants aren’t allowed to bend, then don’t put energy into growing stronger, so instead they grow taller. You can see this in nature. Trees clustered together in a grove will be taller and skinnier because they offer each other wind protection. Whereas the tree alone in a field with no wind protection develops a much wider trunk. This has repercussions even within the maple syrup industry as farmers have to balance planting density with the desire to encourage large trunk development.

In addition to not wanting to completely immobilize the tree, you also only need to stake it until it is established, which means one year, tops. Any longer than that and you can permanently weaken the trunk. The tree will grow tall, and spindly, and if you ever unstaked it it’d tip over like a limp noodle, so you think it needs to be staked more, nope. The only think that’ll fix a spindly trunk is removing the stakes. You stake for the roots, not for the trunk. Because of how staked securely increases vertical growth in lieu of a thicker trunk, nurseries often do it because many unwitting consumers buy the tallest tree. When you do your shopping, do yourself a favor, buy the one with the widest trunk.

Then, finally, the actual material you use to tie the tree has a big impact as well.

The above is a picture of my espaliered apple tree. Espalier is a method of training a tree to grow two dimensionally (such as along a fence) as opposed to three dimensionally. It is used for aesthetics, but also to increase air flow, make it easy to harvest fruit, and to spray fruit trees. Training is the exception to all of the above rules and is different from staking, if you’re training a tree for bonsai, espalier, niwagi, or whatever else (such as training a weeping tree to stand upright), you obviously need to tie it and manipulate it as such, but I show you this picture to show you what can happen. I had wrapped a wire around the trunk of this tree and forgotten about it, as you can see the tree has now grown around the wire and is completely encapsulating it. There is also now a good chance that eventually this wire could choke off and kill all the top growth of the tree. This wouldn’t be the end of the world to me, because two good scaffold branches exist below this point, but it would be a set back. What I should have done is loosened the wire every year, I forgot to.

But I mention all this to illustrate what can go wrong if you use the wrong material, like wire (or even synthetic ropes), to stake your tree. The tree can and will grow into it. and it can permanently harm the tree. The one thing the first picture in this post did right was to run their wire (which they shouldn’t have been using to begin with) through a bit of tubing to provide it some padding, but over time even that tubing is not big enough to fully prevent the tree from growing over it because padding or not, it is still on there tight.

So, now that I’ve written you a book on what not to do, let me write you a couple sentences on what to do.

To properly stake a tree place two stakes one foot away from the trunk on either side of the trunk in such a way that they’re perpendicular to the prevailing winds (which means typically one stake on the north side, and one of the south side, unless you’ve got abnormal wind directions in your area). Tie the stakes to the tree using something broad and flexible. Specialty tree ties are made, but old nylons work great. They’re stretchy, flexible, and broad. Then, leave your stakes on no more than one year. But before you do any of that, think if you really need to stake at all, and if the tree is less than six or seven feet high, the answer to that is usually no.

Posted in: Gardening, Troubleshooting | 3 Comments »

Video: How to Assemble Your Compost Tumbler

May 18th, 2009

This was the first video I filmed, but I hadn’t posted it to my blog until just now (obviously).

This video covers how to assemble a UCT9 Compost Tumbler from Organic Compost Tumbler. I do it in less than 10 minutes (though, I did three takes, so by the third take I was pretty good at it).

Posted in: Videos | 4 Comments »

Video: How to Build a Raised Island Bed with Retaining Wall Bricks

May 17th, 2009

I’m doing videos now, this is the first one I’ve posted (though the fourth I’ve filmed). Some notes.

1. Expect to spend around $5 a linear foot for a 2 brick above ground (3 rows total) retaining wall as in the video. This assumes $1.50 per brick.

2. Use high quality soil for back filling. I used composted cow manure, it is like $1-$2 a bag, not much more expensive than standard topsoil, but oh, so much better. You rarely get the opportunity to fertilize beneath plants, do it when you can. It all starts with soil. This isn’t poop, it isn’t smelly. It is cow manure that has been composted for a year or more. Its just some of the richest darkest earth you’ll find.

3. Raised beds rule! Sod busting sucks, critters eating plants suck, tilling sucks. With a raised bed you only need to cut up a little sod and can instead dump dirt in instead of tilling or tearing dirt out. Much much easier, much better for the plants. Raised beds also increase drainage, lift your plants off the ground and away from munching rodents (though, obviously, they can climb, so it isn’t foolproof protection. But… rodents also don’t like to sit on top of things exposed to owls and cats and the like). The buried course of bricks can also confound moles and gophers (yes!). If you want to really confound them lay a layer of hardware cloth (fence-like metal sheeting) at the bottom to prevent tunneling up into it. A raised bed also makes it easier to weed (less bending) and can even provide a little freeze protection since cold air sinks.

4. Stone raised beds are the most awesome, but the hardest to make and really really expensive. Wood raised beds are the cheapest and the easiest, but aren’t at all good looking. Retaining wall bricks I think are a good compromise of ease and affordability with attractiveness. By the way, one the size I made in the video is perfect for a dwarf fruit tree.

Full text construction directions to follow soon.

Posted in: Gardening, Landscape Design, Plant Profiles, Videos | 1 Comment »

How to Protect Plants from Frost, and Building Microclimates

May 16th, 2009

So, bad knews. I thought last weekend was the end. I allowed myself to say “Wow, no late frosts this year, awesome!” Boy was that stupid. Now, tonight, they’re predicting a late frost.

I bought some hardy kiwi vines in 2004 and they have grown quite a bit. Had I known in advance I would have bought the variety called “Michigan State” which was developed a mile from my house and so probably can handle my climate better, but I didn’t know that variety existed. So the ones I have are very vulnerable to late frost. What is worse, this is the first year that they’re blooming, the flower buds are set, I’m quite excited. Maybe it would have bloomed in previous years if not for frosts (that happened a little earlier than May 17th!). So this frost doubly annoys me because it could prevent my first fruit.

So, since these are big sprawling vines, I tied tarps over them, what else can I do? In vineyards they have gas fed torches and literally run the fires all night. I thought about doing that with my tiki torches or my grill, leaving it on low all night, but decided not to. Small plants can be protected with unside down jars, pots, buckets, even cardboard boxes. You can use a styrofoam row cover like I posted about previously. Big vines and trees though that are marginally hardy you need to think of microclimates. In hindsight I wish I had planted this vine in a better microclimate.

A microclimate is a small area that might functionally be a zone or two warmer than where you normally would be. For instance if you lived in zone 5, you might be able to build a (or use a natural) microclimate that is really zone 6 or maybe even 7.

The first major factor in creating a microclimate is wind. The simplest microclimate can be created by blocking wind with a house or a fence or a series of trees. If there is a shrub or small tree marginably hardy, planting it really close snuggled in with other trees or shrubs (evergreens preferably) will shelter it and help it survive the cold.

The second factor is sun exposure, southern exposures (in the northern hemisphere) will be warmer, as well western exposures. An area that is sheltered to the north and east and exposed to the south and west is about as warm as you’ll get, and is the microclimate where my onions are.

The third factor is going to be radiant heat. Buildings radiate heat, as do rocks, stones, bricks, concrete, or pavement that absorb sunlight during the day and release it at night. A plant planted along a building’s foundation benefits both from heat from the building as well as the wind break.

The fourth factor is water. Liquid water does not go below 32 degrees (salinity aside), else it’d be ice. So a body of water (anything, big or small) that is liquid in effect provides a buffer. Pools, ponds, streams, lakes, all can warm the nearby air in winter (or fall or spring) and cool it in summer. The general rule is that water moderates. You will get more of a benefit if the wind typically blows across the water to reach you, so for most of the US if you live on the east side of a lake you’re warmer than people who live on the west side. The bigger the body of water the larger the affect is to the temperature. Water also raises ambient humidity, and humid air retains more heat so cools down slower at night.

The final factor is elevation. Wind trumps elevation so being on the top of a hill, exposed, is no good. But, cold air does sink, and a garden on the side of a hill with a slope down and away can receive some benefit and avoid a frost if the temperature only gets down to 31 or so. So, so long as you are sheltered still, a raised garden can and does provide some temperature protection if the cold air has somewhere to sink to.

If you look around your house you may see some microclimates already. If you’ve got the same species of plant in different locations pay attention to when they break dormancy, when they leave out, or when they bloom. The ones that do so first are in a warmer microclimate.

Had I known about the marginal hardiness of my vines I may have planted them elsewhere, such as on the south side of my house, someplace less exposed. There isn’t room near them for a water garden, a big one, but I could put in a well sized one, and I may.

Sometimes I go to the nursery and see plants I know are not hardy here (like blue atlas cedars, le sigh) and I’m always both tempted to buy one put it in a microclimate and pray, and tempted to swear at the people for trying to sell a plant that isn’t hardy here. But if you find yourself in such a situation, think of microclimates, and maybe, just maybe, you might have a spot in your yard that’d work.

Posted in: Gardening, Troubleshooting | 4 Comments »