Dreaming of succulent vegetables, fruits bursting with sweetness and juice, redolent herbs to spice up the cooking pot? Like many before you, a kitchen garden may be just what the doctor ordered, literally. With today’s emphasis on healthy eating of fresh fruits and vegetables, at least five to nine servings are recommended, what better inspiration than growing your own?  Walking out your door to harvest sun ripe tomatoes, snap beans, or a garnish of parsley could satisfy your eye and your palate The kitchen garden is the dressed up version of the homely, but indispensable vegetable patch of our forebears in an earlier America. They have some truly enviable garden design possibilities.

Kitchen gardens are traced back in time to the Middle Ages when a large garden to produce food for the castle and estates was necessary. I have an inkling, however, that it dates quite a bit further back in time than that- as Romans and other ancients were quite fond of their gardens containing delicious produce for their dining tables.

‘Fine fruit is the flower of commodities.’ It is the most perfect union of the useful and the beautiful that the earth knows. Trees full of soft foliage; blossoms fresh with spring bounty; and, finally, fruit, rich, bloom-dusted, melting, and luscious.”
- Andrew Jackson Downing

The kitchen gardens of old transitioned into English Cottage gardens and French potagers, we Americans kept the vegetable patch and physic gardens of colonial times until style pundits such as Wm. Robinson, Gertrude Jekyll, and Andrew Downing coaxed us into a more romantic style that resulted in the vegetable garden moving discreetly from front or side yards to the backyard. Traditions that hold onto the older styles, such as Amish farmyards still retain the feeling of the old colonial garden with neat rows of vegetables and flowers cropped near to the house, often in the front yard.

It has been opined that the kitchen gardens fell out of favor with the rise of grocery stores which made fresh produce easily available, with only a few revivals during wartime when ‘Victory Gardens’ were promoted as a patriotic duty, as well as for family health. Perhaps today’s need for nutritious fruits and vegetables with good old fashioned taste will lead to a more long lasting resumption of the home kitchen garden. It takes skill to raise good produce, but the results are well worth the effort and time.

How to Create a Kitchen Garden of Your Own

Today’s kitchen garden will probably contain many contemporary uses for the space instead of anything like the display at one of the most famous of kitchen gardens, Château de Villandry (which is disputed as being like any of the kitchen gardens of the day). Nevertheless, the kitchen garden is to be seen. Whether it is a rim around the lot filled with espaliered fruit trees underplanted with strawberries or herbs, or whether a large vegetable patch including a cut flower space, the main thing is to provide a culinary harvest. A continual supply of fruit, flowers and vegetables all for provision and decoration of the dining table. The requisites for this are

• a sunny space
• fertile well cultivated soil
• proximity to water

Besides these three ‘musts’ you have a great deal of leeway in arranging your space. Most of these gardens in former times had a wall enclosure, and it is still a good idea to protect your plants from the likes of Peter Rabbit and Benjamin Bunny; some barrier against wind is welcome, also. Some protection from wind will make your space friendly to pollinators such as bees. Hedges, walls, and fences are all candidates for the job. Location close to the house would afford a microclimate with even more protection and some captured warmth, south, south-east or south-west-facing ensures the maximum amount of sunshine.

Being right outside your kitchen door is the epitome of the idea of this type of garden: imagine yourself stepping outside for a fresh salad all made with your own lettuces, tomatoes, and slices of crunchy green peppers! If you are picturing something large enough to hold a cold frame or a small green house, those would be traditionally a part of the kitchen garden space. It might extend your garden season.

You might want to try "lasagna gardening" to easily build up rich soil for your vegetable beds.Lasagna Gardening 101 can start you off, or really dig into it with Patricia Lanza’s book,Lasagna Gardening

The tradition of raised beds is making a comeback for gardeners for many reasons, easier to get ready for the new season and preserving soil tilth. If you are going to use a tiller every year you need a flat garden, but if you have a small space that will stay fairly permanent then raised beds of soil are an option. I have tried these at different junctures of my gardening career here in my home, and the important thing with raised beds is to keep them replenished with soil and to keep them well weeded. Weeds love the pampered conditions as much as your favored plantings. Raised beds can provide a neat appearance and that lends itself well to the goal of making this a food garden that is a pleasure to the eye as well as to the palate.

Using a combination of flowers and vegetables is a way to incorporate companion planting for organic techniques and healthier plants. Some plants can do double duty if they are edible, such as the lovely nasturtiums. Monet used them along his walkway,sprawling plants that bear bright citrus colored blooms cheerfully all summer and have round luminously green leaves, both of which can be eaten . They are a bit peppery in flavor. Used as a “catch crop” for aphids, it is a good idea to wash them thoroughly before eating- to make sure no ‘critters’ find their way into your dish!

A kitchen garden is not a perennial garden, as a rule. Vegetable crops are mostly annuals and they need rotation to keep the soils healthy and to give continued nutritious harvests. The usual crop rotation cycle is three-years - in other words you only have a certain vegetable type in the same spot every third year according to Clare Hogan’s article. It is the structure of the garden that gives it its permanence, while the more long lived perennial additions, such as espaliered fruit trees or a strawberry patch and fruit bushes, can find themselves used around the perimeter.

Edgings

Edgings of marigolds are part and parcel of my vegetable plantings every year. They ward off destructive insects, especially nematodes if you use the Mexican marigold, tagetes minuta. One of the beauties of the kitchen garden is its sense of neatness and order with raised beds and pretty edgings such as the marigolds. Teucrium or herbs such as lemon thyme could be used, English kitchen gardens in grand form used boxwood to surround block plantings.

• Lettuces can be used as edgings, as well as annual herbs such as basil, which has a pretty appearance and comes in various leaf colorations.
• Hardscape edgings include bricks, brick pathways, and wood frames for raised beds, something easy to manage and weed.
• Landscape edgers come in many styles, textures and colors and could be used to build up some very attractive beds.

Trellises

The trellis seems to be an integral part of the kitchen garden. Serving to hold precious fruits off the ground, save garden space, and give a vertical focus to the eye, these prove both utilitarian and decorative. Simple central tripods or trelliswork along a wall, these supports are easy to make and also available in almost any garden center both in wood and ornamental metalwork.

On the grand scale they provide shady arbors, and even pergolas dripping with grapes, on the smaller scale they are the support for runner beans, peas, or a single tomato plant. They can be plain or brightly painted, even placed against a wall in such a way as to trompe -l’œil
.

Pathways

Paths in this type of garden are straightforward and geometrically ordered. that simplifies the maintenance and underlines the fact that this is a working garden after all, no meandering down the path when supper awaits. They are for walking on and keeping up with the weeding, but that doesn’t mean the straight lines and geometric patterns are not pleasing. They can echo trellis work or simply divide the beds into the old quarter system; there is something settled and right about such a design and it is thankfully simpler to maintain in good order. Brick is a beautiful material to use for this, but hard beaten dirt paths can be almost as good…as long as there isn’t too much rain and muddy conditions. I personally don’t like materials such as mulch or straw in these areas… the mulch is messy and the straw seems to beget weeds. Rosemary Verey had an endearing such garden constructed with brick paths.

I think the orderly design adds to the whole atmosphere of productivity that is the best thing in a kitchen garden. ~Rosemary Verey

For more reading on Kitchen gardens:

Answers.com 

NorthernGardening.com

Eye Appeal Edibles

The Perfect Potager

A Home Example

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The most important matter in creating your garden is the soil. From that source springs all the rest of the dreams and plans of a beautiful landscape. So move improving your soil to the top of your garden priority list.

Your garden’s soil, unique to your region, still is categorized in one of three ways and their combinations: sandy, loamy, or clay. Each type has assets and drawbacks, but they all benefit from soil building amendments, and yield better healthier plants in response.

Several respected sources had this to say: “It can take 10 years or longer to build productive Garden soil.”

And while that may seem a discouragingly long time, the benefits are often quickly noticed, even if not fully realized in a couple short seasons. The cardinal rule is to add “organic matter” to any and every soil type. And if there were doubts about why the fuss over making “compost”, this the explanation why. There is no better way to add organic material to your garden than to have a supply of compost. Peat moss and manures are other forms of “organic material”, and you probably will want to add all of these.

• If you have clay soil, the organic matter will help break up the fine particles that make clay compact so maddeningly
• In sandy soils, the amendments help retain nutrients and moisture
• Loamy soils are made more fertile and given even better tilth with organic additions

Why Compost?

One reason to compost material before adding it to your garden soil is the fact that there are problems with just adding things in, and compost takes care of those problems. Manures need to be aged, or their high nitrogen content can “burn” your plants roots (translation: dead plants). Leaves, yard waste, and grass clippings all need nitrogen to ‘rot down’ and while doing that can rob your plants of their necessary nutrients. That leaves the plants weak while competing. Composting serves to soften, age and mellow the various yard waste and other amendments.Compost promotes microbiological activity and that is a good thing.

Beneficial amendments for the soil:

• peat
• manure
• kitchen waste such as veggie and fruit peelings, egg shells, coffee grounds, etc
• sawdust, if composted
• leaves and pine needles
• mulched branches and twigs
• grass clippings, if composted

What Other Amendments Are Good?

I ♥ Peat Moss, and Dirty Talk for more on improving your soil

If you have clay soil, I had read about and used gypsum with good results- it improved the soil texture. Other things which improve the soil and its fertility are:

• Bloodmeal
• Fish meal/emulsion

I have always liked using fish emulsions and seaweed emulsions- I think they produce great results and improve the health of plants, but they are pricey for inland areas like Central Ohio. Now leaves we have plenty of, and they break down within a year, into a nice mellow leaf mold. Some have acidic and some have alkaline reactions, Oak leaves tend to be acidic and Maple to be alkaline. That can matter when you have acid loving plants, so take note if you grow azaleas, etc.

Organic matter also encourages earthworms, and earthworms are the gardens underground workers. While there is debate on whether they are good and whether you want them or not, if you have them they will aerate the ground and are generally considered helpful.

Using mulch slowly builds up soils, if it is of the organic type. Bark or hulls that rot down add to the soil and improve it. Read more on mulch and its benefits: types, assets, drawbacks… from my point of view.

You can add woodash, but remember it is alkaline. Greensand is used as a natural fertilizer and soil conditioner. Manures are of different types. Chicken manure is considered “hot”, requiring more time to mellow, and horse and cow manures are considered better suited to add directly to the garden. An old fashioned way of using manures is as “manure tea” which is the addition of manure to a bucket of water and then using the top water for feeding the plants . The old sediments can be added to improve the soil tilth.

Tilth… Do You Tilleth?

Adding organic matter is not the only way you improve the soil, physical handling of your soil makes a difference, too. Digging the ground at the right time help the texture of your soil stay ideal, don’t work it when wet, especially if you have clay soils. Beware of overusing the mechanical tillers, they can create a hardpan beneath the area that the tines impact.

If you’re breaking ground for a new garden, it might be a good idea to rototill in amendments, but if your soil is loose, open and fluffy, rototilling could destroy the soil pores that enable water and oxygen to pass through, and could harm millions of microorganisms that help feed the soil and prevent soil-borne diseases. -Ciscoe’s To Do List

I roto-till ground every once in awhile in the vegetable garden. I like the idea of raised beds, but if you get lax in weeding you should rototil the area, I think. Both the till and non-till types of gardening are good as long as you stay away from herbicides. I just don’t think you ought to use them on a large scale in the garden.. and ideally not at all. The best way to keep the soil in good health is to continually rotate through the seasons with organic additions, cultivation, and attempting to reduce weeds each year by not letting them go to seed, and uprooting them. A good garden fork is a very good tool for working soils of all types.
helpful Links:
OSU Factsheet: soil
OSU Factsheet: chlorosis
Oregon State’s articles on soil

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sundials

Culinary Herb Garden

• chives
• oregano
• fennel
• parsley
• oregano
• sage
• thyme
• rosemary
• garlic
• angelica
• borage
• savory

Dyers Herb Garden

“Red cabbage leaves, carrot tops, cranberries, curry power, fresh dandelion flowers, fennel leaves and flowers, fresh goldenrod flowers, hop flowers, mugwort leaves, red, yellow and white onion skins, rosemary needles, sorrel leaves, tansy leaves and flowers, turmeric powder, and yarrow leaves and flowers. Many berries and vegetable matter like cabbage and beets are considered stains more than dyes because the bright colors quickly fade to yellow or brown shades.

· Plant leaves are best gathered in the pre-bloom or blooming stage. Flowers are best picked as they are coming into bloom. Berries are best harvested when fully ripened and roots should be dug in late summer or in autumn when the plant is past its peak flowering period. Bark gives its best colors picked in the spring, although bark from trees cut in autumn will also give you good color.

· Anne Bliss, author of North American Dye Plants, gives this advise for determining what colors you can expect from plants: “Yellow-flowering plants most often produce yellow-cast dye, as do most white bloomed species. However, some white-flowering plants yield tans. Plants with purple blossoms usually give tans, golds and greens. Red berries generally produce yellow or golds.”

- quoted from The Herb Society of America, read the rest for dyeing how-to

Black: black walnut, alder
Brown: burdock, comfrey, fennel, onion, geranium
Gold: goldenrod, plantain, safflower, agrimony
Blue: indigo, elder, elecampane
Pink: bloodroot, chicory, madder
Green: agrimony, angelica, betony, coltsfoot, foxglove, marjoram, rosemary, tansy, yarrow
Gray: poplar, raspberry
Red: dandelion, St. Johns Wort, sweet woodruff, hops

Bee Herb Garden

Directions for making a bee garden and a “bee house”

• Monarda
• Lavender
• Thyme
• Borage
• Catnip
• Yarrow
• Dill
• basil
• catnip
• chamomile
• fennel
• germander
• horehound
• hyssop
• lemon balm
• marjoram
• oregano
• rosemary
• sage
• savory

Physic Herb Garden

• Echinacea
• Artemisia
• Feverfew
• Costmary
• German chamomile
• Roman Chamomile
• Valerian
• Skullcap
• Yarrow
• Macleaya cordata

General Herb Garden

• lavender
• yarrow
• thyme
• sage
• germander
• rue
• hyssop
• rosemary
• santolina
• horehound
• artemesia,wormwood
• basil
• tarragon
• dill
• chives
• oregano
• Chenopodium bonus-henricus
• Borage

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• Sundials
• Bee skep
• Gazing ball
• Edging and decorative fencing

Good Reading

As old as the apothecary’s art and beyond, is the making of herb gardens. For fragrance, flavor, and medicine, the plants we now refer to as herbs were a vital part of the household. Now we consider herb gardens mainly for their decorative value, the culinary useful ones finding their place in the vegetable plot and the rest incorporated in perennial flower and foliage schemes; but as a decorative form, the herbal garden lives on. Still oftentimes echoing the ancient garden forms, we use garden layouts not very different from those of Medieval days.

Many of our ideas of how an herbal garden should look derive from the old monastery cloisters with regularly spaced beds in a formal arrangement. Using those design elements are a plethora of garden styles, from the intricate Tudor knot gardens to the loose, yet still organized colonial gardens of early America. The main characteristic is that they are formally arranged, often in geometric shaped beds.

The best part of an herb garden is of course the plants themselves. Some are quite beautiful in flower and form and hold their own as members of a perennial garden, some are more sprawling or given to rampant ways of growing. But the herbal garden forms are adapted to controlling the worst neighbors while exhibiting the better behaved. Whatever the choices, one of the highlights of growing herbs is the heady scent and the soft colorings. The herb garden is of long history given to themes, since particular herbs were used for specific purposes and early on that was deemed one of the ways to organize them in plantings. Herbs were used for cookery, remedies, and as strewing herbs on floors; and so we have the culinary herb gardens, the medicinal, the dyers plants, and their variations according to household needs.

“Herbs do comfort the
wearied braine with fragrant
smells which yield a certain
kinde of nourishment.”-William Coles, 1656

Styles and Variations

If you have the time and inclination, a Tudor knot garden is one of historical interest and beauty. Herb plants which take clipping well are combined in patterns of intersecting lines which follow geometric shapes such as the circle or diamond; trimmed to resemble ropes interlacing one another. There are books available with design patterns and detailed instructions. Close attentions is paid to to plant choice for foliage color and maintenance of clipping into shape on a regular basis. Plants commonly used were boxwood, santolina, lavender, germander for the varicolored roping.

Colonial gardens with simple pathways along an axis and rectangular, square or circle beds, built in raised boxes or carefully maintained, orderly paths and beds, are somewhat formal due to these simplified bedding shapes which hark back to the practical monastery gardens and look ahead to the Cottage style. Often using a quadrant garden design, the gardens were simple to keep maintained and to harvest from, planting beds sometimes surrounded by small fences or hedged borders of boxwood (a favorite for Southern colonial gardens, especially). A feature of this style might be clipped evergreen topiary.

Some of today’s forms are Ladder gardens (Martha Stewart had one of these) using an actual old ladder as the dividers between the specific plant areas, checkerboards of modern paved sections alternated with plant-filled areas. Butterfly and hummingbird gardens have so many herbs recommended that they could be your choice for the herb garden style for your yard.

Garden Tips for Herb Gardens

If you are laying out a geometric form use a string and peg, the pegs from which you stretch string to mark even straight lines or the circumference of your circles. A little lime dust or builders chalk can outline it clearer, if necessary, sprinkled along the lines as you lay them out with the string.

Like all garden preparation be sure to improve the soil in your herb garden. Just because herbs are considered low demand plants does not mean you should shortchange their soil preparation. Add organic matter and soil additives according to your soils needs ( determined with a soil analysis).

All herbs with running roots (mint is notorious for this) should have their roots contained, or they might take over the garden. Some suggest using old chimney pipes, and 10 inch diameter drain pipe might be useful also. Set it upright and make sure enough is buried to keep the roots from spreading, with a rim above ground.
Keep these points in mind when creating your herb garden:

• herbs usually like full sun (4 to 6 hours of sun)
• most prefer well drained soil
• most need even moisture, though some are drought-tolerant

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Garden Retreats

Any portion of a garden can become a place of peace and repose, and I think it is well worth making at least a spot in the garden a place of quiet and reflection. Better yet, creating a theme garden dedicated to a feeling of calm and relaxed enjoyment.

I think that many of the accouterments would depend on what the gardener finds personally peace invoking, but certain aspects of a garden can be generally found to be important to a calm and peaceful feeling in an outdoor space.

Color

Too much color, too many colors, and clashing colors are all going to be highly stimulative to the visual sense. They might even be a bit disturbing! Any color harmony or palette that works as a serene one indoors will work outside, too. We all think of green and white as cool, calm, and refreshing, while any of the variants known as a “white garden” ( made famous by Vita Sackville-West) , or softly harmonious pastel with gray foliaged plants could be fine choices as well. A stronger color, so long as the palette was minimal and monochrome, could be peaceful and harmonious to your eye if that color gives you pleasure.

One combination that I have always liked is the gray and burgundy one. This is a color combination done to perfection by Penelope Hobhouse, and I recommend any of her fine books for examples of this color scheme. The interplay of various green and green/white variegated plants with either white flowers or a soft pink is as soothing as a garden can be anywhere. A moon garden- planted to be especially beautiful at night is peaceful both night and day. Simply combine what calms you: colors, times of day, scents, and then you have a start to your plant list and hardscape materials. Perhaps grassy walks, or light gray gravel, are peaceful colors to you. Place your ideas all together on paper.

Situation

There is something about enclosure that gives one the actual quiet, muffling the outside world and shielding your senses from its demands. Even if busy traffic is just outside, plant materials and sheltering fences can remove you from its sight and some of the sound. Trees, especially can provide dappled light and a place to welcome birdsong, and vines draping the fences. My own preference is for pruning the trees high or using decorative smaller species, and having sunshine filter through softly. If in a hot climate, perhaps you want strong areas of shade, but think of somehow enclosing your retreat from the rest of the garden and the world.

Simplicity

Keeping the plantings simple in color scheme and using an edited number of contrasting plants will keep things from feeling too distracted. Swathes of large leaved plants, a few types of shrubs, and flowers in groups as ornamentation; or conversely in such large groupings that the eye settles upon the form of the planting, not so much on spotty little dots of competing interest.

 Simple structure and a place to sit and enjoy are two requisites. Plan what sort of destination this is for your garden. Just to sit quietly and listen to your own thoughts? a place for reading, for early morning tea? How do you picture this garden for your time and place of serenity? An evening open view of a sunset or water? An afternoon respite from the the sun in a cool shady nook? Imagine the feeling and create the seating, pathways, and shelters accordingly.

Water

Many find a water feature calming. the splash of a fountain, the running of a rill, the reflections of the sky. There are many ways to incorporate the sight and sound of water, and if done simply or borrowed from the landscape in an open view, a focused viewpoint, it tops the list of what people find enjoyable in such gardens.

Scent

I think in such a garden that one would delight in some scent on the air, but not too strong a scent, and certainly not an unpleasant one. While people differ in their sense of what smells pleasant, I think you could safely steer clear of cimifuga, cleome, privet, and some of the other strongly scented flowers and foliage. There are some plants that have almost universal popularity, including lavender and roses. But in your own garden you will have to decide what aromatherapy works best on your heart and mind. I personally love the smell of eglantine rose foliage: it is light on the breeze with an almost apple aroma. Peonies are fresh and sweet, and there are many things that mingle deliciously, yet lightly in the air. Foliages can also be fragrant, and who can forget the flowers of an orchard? Apples, crabapples, cherries, all have sweet bloom in their time. One unassuming little ground cover is Sweet Woodruff whose note of coumarin make one think of field in the summer and in the fall have a strawberry fragrance. Mix in some woodland fragarias for the real thing.

Make It Your Own

I hope these ideas inspire you to make a little corner or a theme garden of your own, a little place of peace in the garden.

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While there are erudite books and articles on the topic, I will give you my own interpretation of how I see this style, especially as it is developing in popular gardening. Previously, if you read the components of xeriscaping, you likely read a bit about the New American garden style.

The idea or feeling of a place is comprised of many things, and it is this that makes a “style” as we recognize it. A worksheet to help you think out your own style is one way to begin observing your own space and decide your place in it and its place in the wider community. One example can be found from “Louisiana Voices“. I don’t personally subscribe to the ideas of spirit and soul being as presented in this idea which originated with the Romans, but at the same time I think it is descriptive of what we innately gather from our environment and interpret through our emotions. The dark coolness of a woodsy ravine is very different from an open savanna plain dotted with trees: the sunshine’s light is different, the colors are different, and the entire feeling of space and plants creates the raw resource against which we build our living spaces of homes and gardens.
So what are the factors that give it interest and attractiveness?

• masses of ornamental grasses
• strong drifts of brightly colored native flowers
• naturalistic “feel”
• importance of foliage, en masse
• pathways and ‘hardscape’ that give freedom to the visual effect
• a sense of drama and importance

Prairie grass Framed Art Print
Gehman, Raymond
Buy at AllPosters.com

The American Style

This style seemed to ripen in Europe with a development and replication of the feeling which native plants give American natural landscapes. It wasn’t so very long ago that long grasses were eschewed as the bane of the garden, giving an impression of neglect, but now everywhere are innovative uses of ornamental grass clumps and their graceful swaying reminding us of prairie views of long ago. Real prairie is now hard to come by, but it lives on in the large drifts of Rudbeckia and grasses, interspersed with Echinacea and Liatris. In tandem has been the growing American interest in creating meadow or naturalistic areas in their landscapes, sometimes in defiance of neighborhood sentiment and zoning.

Do gardens have to be so tame, so harnessed, so unfree? What’s new about our New American Garden is what’s new about America itself: it is vigorous and audacious, and it vividly blends the natural and the cultivated.”
-James van Sweden

As I see it now, the “New American” garden has strong elements of the cottage style tempered with the landscape style … or the natural look of Downing’s Country Place Era.

One of the biggest differences in New American style is the use of ornamental grasses, and the large sweeps of plants with strong visual presence. If English gardening is about the intricate interplay of plants in textured layers of plantings, American style in this new shape-shift is simplicity of impact. The strong colors of the flowers against the (mainly) neutrals of the grasses, which is why Rudbeckias, Black-eyed Susans, are so popular an element. Grasses automatically insert a gracefulness of movement into the garden scheme, and create the perfect foil for bright color blocks of flowering plants. Another thing about this style is that it is left on its own much more, something unimaginable in the English-style gardens. Native plants which are stalwart and hardy in ones climate, large expanses of plants which thrive together in the wild, and low maintenance plants, all these factors combine into a garden area much easier to maintain without the “gaps” of the careful color plans, meticulous maintenance, and stepped heights that many other styles require. This makes it a style for public area landscaping, and that might prove its downside. The very ubiquity of the style means an unthinking application wholesale to any and all environments, and the consequent disdain that is now apparent towards “suburban foundation planting”.

That mundane future does not need to be the fate of this rich and subtle style.

It is a further evolving of Frank Lloyd Wright’s integration of home with surroundings in design, keywords being freedom ease harmony.

New American Garden Philosophy

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As I was listening to a gardening radio show the moderator answered someones question about garden spiders, which tend to be prolific in the garden during the late summer. As he put it, they are fattening up for the leaner winter season, but that makes them “the good guys”, eating up insects destructive to the garden. So, besides garden spiders …just who are the good guys among the creepy crawlies of the garden?

Ladybugs for sale

• Lady bugs- no surprise here. They eat aphids (their favorite meal), scale, mealy bugs, leaf hoppers, and more.
• Beneficial nematodes ( there are bad ones, too) are microscopic insects, but they really go after a number of the bad guys like flea larvae, cutworms, corn root worms, strawberry weevils, white grubs, gypsy moth larvae, cabbage root maggots, fungus gnat larvae. Quite a list but not nearly an exhaustive one. You can buy them to add to your garden.
• The praying mantis, my personal favorite, fun to watch they prey on a large numbers of insects. They also tend to stay around the garden
• The pretty lacewings, in their larval form are death to small caterpillars, aphids, and other similar insects.
• Ground beetles. UGH, but they are good guys and eat other insects.
• Tachinid flies, parasites of other insects, look like houseflies, and little trichogamma wasps are are also good at keeping insect populations controlled. You can see the little white eggs attached to caterpillars.
• Dragonflies and damselflies, so beautiful and such graceful notes in the garden also benefit it by eating aphids.

The three most important beneficial insects in the home landscape ? Ants, spiders, and ground beetles which - according to ‘Gardening and Yardening‘ have a scurvy bunch of names such as:

•     Assassin Bugs
•     Soldier Beetles
•     Minute Pirate Bugs

Your own little mercenary army.
I had purchased some praying mantis egg cases when I first moved to my country place, and they were resident here for years. Eventually, though, they have suffered total attrition here- either due to some county spraying, or farmers, or eventually moving off. I miss them and in the spring it will be time to again replenish them on the land here. The cases were from Mellingers (out of business now), I believe, and they look like small grayish pieces of styrofoam if you’ve never seen them. When conditions are warm enough the tiny mantids break out in a small horde of hungry little predators. They are really sort of cute.The adults often stay around and lay their egg cases on stiff, but light, stems and I used to see them when weeding in the fall. Should you chance upon them in a place you don’t like you can move them to some branches in a shrub.

Now don’t say I didn’t warn you, but if you follow this link to the power of the praying mantis you will see some pictures not for the weak of stomach. You may not be inclined to support the praying mantids with as much enthusiasm, but remember that they do eat lots of bad bugs!

More on biological controls.
More on Praying Mantis.
More on the Ladybug.

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• Remember that deep watering less often is better than shallow watering more often. Shallow watering is actually more detrimental since it encourages plants to grow their roots too close to the dry surface rather than reaching down deeper into the soil for moisture. Deep roots can withstand the drought better.
• Letting the hose drip water, or better yet, using a “soaker” hose will water more efficiently than overhead sprinklers which lose more water to evaporation.
• Spacing plants so that they have enough soil and moisture for their needs
• Mulching. This is always the number one defense in keeping moisture in the ground. There are many types of moisture preserving mulches including a “dust mulch“. For this you cultivate the surface shallowly, loosening the top layer of dirt with a hoe. Grass clippings left on the lawn serve as a type of mulch, and remember to keep the grass mown high: 2-3 inch mower height. There are newspaper mulches, bark mulches, and many other kinds. Each has assets and limitations ranging from whether they help fertilize or allow for water permeation, etc.
• Direct water from your downspouts to your garden areas
• Organic matter, besides making your plant grow better in healthier soil, is also helpful in conserving and retaining moisture. Add it when you plant, when you first prepare the soil and even use some as a mulch. However, be aware that peat moss can form a water impermeable crust when not worked into our soil ( think about peat pots!).
• Layer heights of your plants to provide an uneven surface to give a bit of microclimate effect-plus it looks pretty

Xeriscaping is a long term gardening method of combining all the water conserving means of soil amendments, mulching, irrigation, and the choice of low water need plantings. One style given to this type of gardening is the “New American” as exemplified by the designs of Oehme and van Sweden . The term and development of the style is attributed to Wolfgang Oehme and James van Sweden. I’d call the gardening of Piet Oudolf this type of gardening also. It is a natural gardening style using lots of native plants and grasses.

Bold Romantic Gardens: The New World Landscapes of Oehme and Van Sweden
   
Parts of the UK can be dry, UK readers may wish to look for some of these books on Amazon.


More on Piet Oudolf

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]]> http://ilonasgarden.com/53/the-weather-is-dry/feed/ http://ilonasgarden.com/51/how-to-plant-those-flats-of-annuals/ http://ilonasgarden.com/51/how-to-plant-those-flats-of-annuals/#comments Sun, 10 Jun 2007 22:59:26 +0000 the gardener http://ilonasgarden.com/2007/06/10/how-to-plant-those-flats-of-annuals/ You bought beautiful annuals by the flat, you have loads of colorful annuals that in your minds eye will fill your garden with bloom, but now you need to put them in the ground. Here are a few tips for good success.

First, make sure you keep those plants well-watered before they go into the ground. They are growing in very small amounts of soil and dry out and wilt quickly, so keep your hard spent money and careful picking of the best plants preserved by keeping them watered. By the way, the best plants are sturdy, not leggy, and just budding, not blooming. But if your plants are brought into bloom by the nursery to better catch your eye…. here is the next step.

Cut off all those full lovely blooms. I know you hate to do it, I know it is hard to delay satisfaction of looking at all those little spots of color, but more blooms will replace them…. and they will have the healthy established root system to support them, especially if the weather hits a dry and sunny spell. Cut or pinch off the flowers.

You have cultivated and loosened the ground, it is all ready for your new plant , and now all you have to do is pop them in, right? Well, you could skip this step, but you want your plant to reach full potential and that means taking care of that all important root system at the beginning. When you remove the plant from its growing pack slice it out or carefully shake it out, then with a tool, or garden scissors or a sturdy twig, or your fingers, tease out the roots a little. That means when you see them curling around in the shape of the pot pull them free carefully and then spread out the roots in the planting hole. Once you get started it only takes a bit more time and effort for this step, and the plant will establish so much better and sooner. It seems like a fussy step, but believe me, it makes a big difference.

Fill in dirt around your plant and firm it in, and then water and keep the plant moist for the first week or so. If it is a hot sunny day you can tip its pot over it to keep it shaded for the first day or so, if you like ( this only works with single pots!!!) . Don’t fertilize anything yet, give the plant a little time to get adjusted to the shock of being transplanted.

When you plant annuals one of the lovely things about them is that they bloom their little heads off all through the season, but sometimes they are a little too enthusiastic about it and start going to seed. You do not want your annuals to go to seed, since that spells the end of their life cycle. And besides, they can start to sprawl and look a bit ratty. So you dead head or else give them a little haircut. In plants like alyssum, you give a haircut: just shear off the excess growth to make a more compact plant. With other plants with larger blooms you pinch off the dead blooms before they can set seed. This will renew the urge for the plant to produce flowers and give some strength back to the plant- since making seed seems to be an exhausting process.

Annuals can be fertilized all through the season. I know you are going to have a beautiful garden!

Some good general garden books:
   

More annual plant fact and hints and tips on planting them:
My annuals page 1
My annuals page 2
Fernlea’s Growing Annuals

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]]> http://ilonasgarden.com/51/how-to-plant-those-flats-of-annuals/feed/ http://ilonasgarden.com/46/containers/ http://ilonasgarden.com/46/containers/#comments Tue, 29 May 2007 05:07:41 +0000 the gardener http://ilonasgarden.com/2007/05/29/containers/

container tips:

wash out your pots with mild bleach solution
use fresh potting soil, ready mixed or your own recipe
think about keeping your containers larger in size- to prevent drying out

Soil-based potting soil has good drainage, it holds water and nutrients well. Personally, I prefer its heavier consistency, and in my sunny, often windswept place that is an asset. Many people advise soiless (peat-based) potting mix, so it is a matter of experimenting with what works best for you. Both are recommended.

Most importantly, water daily and keep fertilized throughout the season for best results (fertilize every two to three weeks). Trim back when necessary and dead head annuals.Don’t let your plants dry out! Try lining clay pots or having a water reservoir saucer underneath. The best times to water are at night or in the early morning.

Containers: To Pretty Up Just About Anyplace

Creating your own container accents

Containers make eye catching focal points, or can even comprise an entire garden picture when grouped together. With the variety within the components of container style, size, and combination of plants the effects and uses are many. Container gardening has become increasingly popular due to the easy effects and versatility for the busy gardener.



Traditionally, containers are often seen as urns on garden piers, or flanking doorways holding either greenery or shrubs, or as in modern use: flowers. The original use of urns in ancient gardens, Greek and Roman, seem to be for the purpose of conserving water. Large tubs containing citrus trees were used in “Orangeries” for the rich, but as Victorian times advanced containers and urns of all sorts became common for the middle classes and many photographs record their uses in gardens and yards.

“Beauty is truth, truth beauty,” that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.
John Keats, Ode on a Grecian Urn

Containers can form a number of functions. They can provide height and interest, they can provide a movable feast of color, and they are easily planted, with seasonal displays or replacement plants as needed. In my case, presently containers provide color while I renovate the rest of the garden. No need to do without our visions of paradise whether living in constricted city conditions or circumstances which prevent large in-ground flower beds. They are also ideal for experimenting with combinations of plants and colors.

Container Style

Generally I like to keep styles coherent with one another and with the general feeling of the house and garden, although there are no real rules. A Country garden seems best complimented by large clay pots with decorative rolled rims, although a classic and simple design probably will fit with most homescapes. Good examples and one I liked - fun and contemporary,Smith & Hawken® 10" Wave Pot.



Something that can be quite effective is the “Found” container. Have an old sink, wheel barrow, or wooden kitchen chair? All sorts of things become garden planters with a little imagination. Sometimes they need a little help to blend in, sometimes the whimsy of it is enough. Try painting the old tub or adding a coating of tuffa concrete and moss-inviting yoghurt. Sounds a little crazy, but you would be surprised how wonderful some of these cast-offs can look filled and covered in plants.

Here’s a quick recipe for growing moss on a surface:
1 can of beer
1/2 teaspoon sugar
Several clumps garden moss

You will also need a plastic container (with lid),
a blender and a paintbrush
_________________________________________________

To begin the recipe, first of all gather together several clumps of moss (moss can usually be found in moist, shady places) and crumble them into a blender. Then add the beer and sugar and blend just long enough to create a smooth, creamy consistency. Now pour the mixture into a plastic container.

Find a suitable damp and shady wall on to which you can apply your moss milkshake. Paint your chosen design onto the wall (either free-hand or using a stencil). If possible try to return to the area over the following weeks to ensure that the mixture is kept moist. Soon the bits of blended moss should begin to grow into a whole rooted plant ~thanks to Moss Graffiti

Filling that Fabulous Container

Some of the best looking garden focal points and ornament have been an elegant pot filled with just one magnificent plant, but half the fun of container gardening is putting together the combinations. First choose a color scheme, then the sun exposure… sunny, part sun, or shady. Then find your plants and put together your creation. I like to set out the plant choices together on the deck before deciding which I like in combination, and I love viewing other peoples ideas and taking notes. There are many brand new plants for container plantings that I wasn’t familiar with, but chanced upon in nurseries and public gardens.

It is possible with larger containers to add height with a trellis and some climbing plants- this would work best against a wall surface. Try a variation of the Christmas grapevine coil- only as a base for vining summer bloomers.




Some excellent online sources for planting ideas:
Fernlea’s Awesome Accents Planting Recipes
“Proven Winners” Container Recipes

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