Time to Think About Weed Control

Is mid-March too early to think about weed control?

Absolutely not. In fact, March is exactly when you should be focusing on giving your lawn a bit of an edge in dealing with those pesky dandelions and other invaders.

If dandelions are your main issue throughout the summer, take heart. The things you need to get an edge are generally good advice for most weeds, including clover, plantain, and crab grass.

Unfortunately, crab grass requires a much more aggressive strategy, but we'll come to that later in the season, once you've identified those patches.

For most weeds, you need to do two things: keep your grass competitive, and be prepared to dig. Digging means getting out there and buying a weed puller. These tools are simple to use, but extremely effective. A spade or trowel will work too, but you may find these just take too much work if you have a big lawn. A weeding tool is the perfect solution for dealing with broad-leaved weeds like dandelions and thistles. You might not be experiencing weeds just yet, but the pre-season sales at your home and garden centre make this the perfect time to get out and buy one.

By contrast, clover, like crab grass, may need a more aggressive plan involving digging out whole patches of lawn. But don't despair just yet. Clover can actually help you identify another serious issue in your lawn: low nitrogen...[read more]

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Getting Ready for Planting

One of these days I'll get some info up on that whole eating wild plants thing. It's kind of cool, the number of ordinary things that grow everywhere that we don't even think of as food. In the event of a disaster, most of us would just stand on our driveways and starve!

But for now, we'll have to settle for planting things we know we can eat. And with spring coming up fast, it's time to take a quick look at things that can go in the garden (or your square-foot garden) nice and early.

Broccoli: This stuff hates hot weather, so you either want to plant it early in the spring or later towards the fall. It actually tastes better as a fall plant, but a spring crop is a nice way to kick off the gardening season. For a spring crop, plant seeds indoors six weeks before last frost, and bed out hardened seedlings when they're four weeks old.

Spinach and Swiss Chard: Plant it when you're able to work the soil. You can start it earlier indoors as well, and put sprouted plants out after frost (spinach doesn't really mind the frost that much though). This stuff doesn't like a lot of heat, but it will grow all summer. The trouble with heat is that the plants will actually grow too fast and can get a little tough, so spring leafy greens are always the way to go.

Lettuce: Pretty much the same as spinach. Very easy to grow, and very tasty when harvested in slightly chilly conditions. You can eat spinach or lettuce as soon as leaves appear. If you're square-foot gardening, wait until you have enough for a salad!

TIP: You don't have to harvest lettuce and spinach right out of the soil. Cut the leaves about an inch above the soil, and they'll re-sprout for you. Do this until the leaves get bitter, and you can have a crop for several months.

Cabbage: Basically the same as for broccoli.

Peas: There's a tradition of planting peas on St. Patrick's Day, but in Canada this is pretty early in the season. Throw them in a month later and you'll have a ton of peas throughout the early summer.

These are plants you can get started with early in the season. Check a few online resources for tips on summer crops that you'll need to get ready next, because once these plants run their course, your next bunch will have to be almost set for harvest.

Peas and broccoli, by the way, are great for freezing, so you can do entire patches of these and set yourself up for next winter. They do need to be parboiled before freezing though, so make sure you set aside enough time to do this (or do it a bit at a time). You could freeze spinach as well, but the boiling won't leave it as salad greens.

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5 Steps To A Better Lawn And Garden

If you're lucky enough to have a lawn with a good topsoil base, much of the hard work of keeping a lawn beautiful is already done for you. But many of us do not have this luxury, and besides, even with a good topsoil base, you still have to work hard to keep a beautiful lawn and garden.

1. The best time to mow a lawn is when it is cool and dry. Wait for the morning dew to dry off, and before the afternoon heat takes hold. Alternatively, late afternoon or early evening following a watering in the morning is also a good time.
2. A hedge is a much better boundary divider than a fence. It will provide better privacy and keep pets and children in - or out. It will attract birds to its shelter, and provide a great backdrop for plants and flowers.
3. Bring the beauty of your garden to you; plant hyacinths near walkways and doors. Their magnificent perfume will swamp the spring air and make your garden really come alive.
4. Add your garden to non-garden items, such a lampposts and mail boxes. Surround these items with flowers planted to take advantage of the earliest to the latest flowerings. You could have white snowdrops, purple and gold crocus, blue hyacinths, and various colored tulips. You could also surround the posts with rocks to provide added interest.
5. Simple, but effective weed control can be achieved on your lawn by mowing often during spring. This will prevent dandelions spreading by eliminating the yellow blossoms and preventing seed formation. Mow high during late spring and early summer. This will allow grass blades to shade the ground, and will help prevent crabgrass from sprouting.

Your lawn and garden should be a source of pride and beauty. You don't need to spend lots of money on expensive fertilizers and herbicides, or fancy lawn furniture and ornaments. A little common sense and thought can go a long way to making your lawn and garden a much better place.

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Square Foot Garden Update: Tomatoes and Beans Galore!

So, that last update with the tomato plants was apparently only half the story. Those bloody things have reached the lilac branches above the box, and are still growing!

I'm told the trick is to keep new shoots trimmed back so the plant puts more effort into growing the fruit. At the moment though, it looks as though we're not going to have any trouble there at all:

In the first two pics, you can see there are lots of flowers already on the plants. In the third pic, though, are the first fruits coming in. They're pretty densely clustered, so I'm not sure whether these are the beefeater or cherry tomatoes, but for sure this is going to be a good crop if the weather holds up.

Again, I think that answers the question of whether or not there's enough sun in that part of the yard. Remember, this is without any added fertilizer...just a few bags of manure mixed in with the gardening compost. That manure has led to some mushroom growth around the edges (mostly where it stays a little cooler than the middle), but nothing that can't be handled with a little plucking.

We also enjoyed the first green and yellow beans of the season, which was also a surprise. I actually went back to get some lettuce, but it was my daughter who pointed out that there were beans already on the bushes. The bushes are quite short actually...maybe a foot high or so. But the beans are coming in thick!

In fact, the only thing I'm worried about right now is the pepper plant, which isn't growing very quickly (though it is growing). When it went in, it was about 3/4 the size of the tomato plants. But because of their rapid growth they've shaded it almost completely. My hope is that this will give it an incentive to fight for some sunlight:

Still, I'm pretty happy with the way things are turning out in this garden project. The spinach is done...it's too hot now. I think next year I may plant the tomatoes separately; although realistically, everything else is doing just fine. Even the morning glories have figured out what they're supposed to be doing. My thinking is that the tomatoes will do well along the side of the garage, though I'm not fond of the soil there. The sunflowers seem to like it. And if I'm still in this space next season, I may build up another box for herbs (the parsley is the only thing that hasn't survived).

All-in-all, not a bad crop for a first-time veggie gardener:

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Square Foot Garden Update

Holy tomato plants! These things are getting a little big, I'd say:

The spinach and lettuce are doing nicely too, as you can see. I think the lesson here is, spread the tomato plants out a bit more (like, in opposite corners) so they don't throw too much shade on the peppers. I'm a little worried the tomatoes and beans (second pic, bottom left) are going to start arguing over borders pretty soon.

Meanwhile, the onions are doing their thing (despite near daily grazing by the kid):

...and the leafy things continue to produce even when harvested, which is exactly what they're supposed to do! (um...except the Swiss chard, which took a bit of a kid-beating this past Fathers' Day...oh well. Seeds are cheap).

I would say, all-in-all, the choice of location turned out to be right, and these plants are getting more than enough sun right where they are.

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First Garden Salad of the Season

Here it is! The first salad of the season (salad for one, of course): A mixed greens concoction of leaf and romaine lettuce, baby spinach and Swiss chard. Nothing fancy, and all plucked baby leaves, but man it's tasty!

Here are a few shots of the garden this week. You can see the tomato plants are getting quite big, as are the onions (not ready to harvest, but my daughter enjoys nibbling on the tops, which is why so many appear to be broken).

And in this last shot, you can even see a tiny green pepper plant that decided it wanted to live! It's been very slow growing, but it's got its new leaves finally. With the weather steadily warming I'm sure it won't be long before it really takes root and starts its growth spurt:

Given the bushy aspect of some of these plants, I think a little rearranging might be in order for next year. Although the instructions clearly state that you can have one tomato per square, I think there ought to be at least a square between them. They spread!

Those bush beans are looking pretty vigorous too. Just for the record, I used Miracle Gro in this bed only once about two weeks ago, just to get the rooting started. Since then, it's been only sporadic watering (lots of rain the last few weeks anyway), and the only fertilizer is in the manure that was mixed in originally. There's lots of compost coming to rebuild the soil after the harvest is done in the fall, but for now, I think it's looking pretty damn good!

Better than the weed farm I call a lawn, anyway.

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Square Foot Garden Update

I'm already losing track of the weeks, but I will say this: all four bean plants are up, the tomato plants are doing great, my daughter has been grazing on the onion tops, and today we shared our first nibble on a couple of choice spinach leaves. Lookin' good so far!
By next weekend we should be into some edible lettuce. I was also happy to see that my last surviving pepper--which I threw in just to see if it would take--has sprouted its second set of leaves. It might work after all!

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Square Foot Garden Update

Here we are two weeks in, and we're already seeing some progress. My tomatoes didn't fare too well from seed, so I had to hit the store and buy some seedling plants. I think the spring we've had has been a little too short on light. I also elected to start my onions from sets rather than from seeds this year. They've come up really fast, so with sets I'm likely going to get a few crops without too much hassle.

Of course, my daughter's head is blocking the view of the bush beans that are already on their second set of leaves. Within a week or two, we'll be harvesting onions (she's already sneaking the tops for snacks) and lettuce for sure. The spinach is on its way up too.

That's dependent on the sun. We've had a lot of rain over the past few weeks, but a few solid days of long sunny hours should really kick this plot into overdrive. The morning glories are in at the back, as is my only surviving pepper (cross your fingers that it's warm enough!). The parsley crapped out, but I can re-source that square for another onion crop starting next week or so. Everything else is up, including the carrots!

Last to go in will be some cucumbers...I hope this weekend.

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Summer Project #2 -- Real Men Build Fairy Gardens

I have a three-year-old who's into Tinker Bell. Like, in a BIG way.

Well, truthfully not as much as she was a year ago. But that doesn't mean she's not into fairies. Her favourite blanket (right now) is a quilt featuring fabric prints of the The Flower Fairies of Cecily Mary Barker. And her absolute favourite movie (which she got from the Easter Bunny) is Sesame Street: Abby in Wonderland.

So with springtime in full swing, it's time for Daddy to suck it up and do something special for his little girl. And what better springtime surprise than a fairy garden?

The original concept for this was much bigger, but after digging that hole for the square-foot garden and realizing how dense the root bed is in that sod, and how hefty the clay underneath it is, I elected to forgo renting the Bobcat for this season and try a little micro version of the idea, using the little garden bed at the front corner of the house.

The first thing was to prep the bed, and make sure that the soil was actually workable. So far, it looks OK. Not too heavy, and while a little on the dry side, we can probably pep it up with some Miracle Grow later on. Maybe next season I'll try to fix the soil with something healthy, but for now it's just a play garden anyway.

(Yeah, I'll admit I had fun with it...)

Next stop was the dollar store to find some fairy-ish stuff to put in the garden. As luck would have it, they had a little mushroom house, and a polyresin shoe with a drainage hole in the bottom. Can't get much more Mother Goose than that (for a buck fifty each!). I also found some solar garden lights there for $2.00 each...when in doubt, buy a few and see if they work! Can't beat that price.

Then it was off to the garden shop to pick up some flowers. I already had marigolds for the other garden, so those were easy. I also had a couple of (as yet) unidentified perennials and some day lilies I dug up from the back yard (why buy when you can dig?). So really I just needed some fairy-sized flowers to act as a ground cover.

I was lucky to find some pint-sized pink alyssum, a couple of yarrow, and a great campanula. These campanula are actually my favourites, because unlike other bell flowers these ones have double blooms that look strikingly like tiny blue roses!

In the end, all I needed to complete the look of a little fairy farm was a broken flower pot and last year's Christmas tree. No really...that's the lumber you see in the pictures. From there, it was just a matter of doing some arranging and creating a little setting. With luck, those little plants will spread and create a nice carpet, and the bigger plants will turn into something like a forest. I didn't have the lights in the ground when these pictures were taken, but they just rim the edge of the garden.

 All the response I needed was when my daughter came over (her mom and I have joint custody), and that little girl gasped and started petting the flowers. And said "good night" to the fairies in the house before we went in.

As a matter of fact, whenever we come home from anywhere, or on our way out to anywhere, she spends about five minutes sitting there talking to the fairies. Here's the bed a little more filled in after almost two weeks:

Any other ideas or pics of your fairy garden ideas? I'd love to hear about them.

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Summer Project #1 -- The Square-Foot Garden

If you're not familiar with square-foot gardening, there's a ton of resources on the web. Of course, there's also the original book by Mel Bartholomew (now a classic of gardening literature). But the crux of the system is pretty straightforward:

In a space that's four feet by four feet (16 square feet), you can break up a plot into 16 squares. In each of those one-foot squares you can plant a crop of vegetables. By using clever crop rotation techniques, you can create a garden that yields fresh vegetables all season long. The advantage to this system is that you're never stuck with the traditional row upon row of vegetables that you can't keep up with to consume. You're also never more than two feet away from any space, so tending and weeding become much easier. And you can change the crops to reflect seasonal changes without having to allocate huge plots of land.

There are lots of ways to do square foot gardening, but the preferred method is to use a raised bed. This gives you more direct control over soil quality, saves you having to bend over or kneel in the dirt to do your weeding and planting, and warms the soil faster in the spring. Plus, it gives you the chance to do a PROJECT!!

Of course I have pictures :)

The basic plan I went with consisted of these materials:

4 pieces of 2x2 lumber, 8' long.

4 pieces of 2x4 OSB (chip board) panels, 7/16" thickness.

That's it. Impressive, huh? I'm surprised it worked, considering I wasn't actually following any plans. But that's the advantage to building a square box out of dimensional lumber using simple round numbers like 8', 4' and 2' :)

I decided to build it on my deck so I'd have a relatively level working surface. After moving it into place, my dad said, "Son, next time you build a boat, don't do it in the basement." Sage advice...that sucker was heavy. More on that later.

So here's the basic structure. Start by cutting one of your 2x2's in half. Take one of those halves, and cut it in half again. You now have two pieces 2' long. These will make the front corners of your box. Line up one of the panels flush with the corner of each 2x2 and use 2" wood screws to hold the sucker together. That's your front.

Line up another panel on each side. Make sure you line the panels up with the corner of the 2x2, and not the corner of the front panel...otherwise your dimensions will go a little wonky. What we're looking for is an exact interior dimension of 4' by 4'. Screw those panels in place too (you may need extra hands, or some clamps...I just used a C-clamp).

Next, line up one of your 8' 2x2's with the other end of the panel and screw it into place. Take another 8' piece and do the same with the opposite side. Finally, screw the back panel into place, making sure to line the panel up with the 2x2 and NOT the side panels (yes, this will leave a bit of a gap, but that's OK. It doesn't affect anything).

You should now have a box that has an interior dimension of exactly 4' by 4'. So next, we're going to brace those uprights. You should still have one 4' 2x2 left over, and one 8' 2x2. Because the space between the uprights is less than 4' (it's 4' minus two 2x2's), measure the space between the uprights right at the top of the back panel (this will be most accurate, as the uprights will be bendy at the top). It should be something like 45". Cut your remaining 2x2's to fit. These will make up cross-braces between the uprights. Put one about a foot down from the top (I screwed in from the outside of the uprights into the end of the cross-brace), one about 2' down, and the third another 2' down. You now have a pretty solid box that looks a bit like this:

What you see above was me trying out some branches and misc. scrap trim pieces woven through the cross-pieces, to see if I could make something rustic-looking. I wasn't satisfied with it, so I scrapped that idea and decided a trellis on the front would  better serve my cucumber aspirations.

Trellises are ridiculously expensive for what they are. A pressure-treated square trellis can run $25 and up, while a cedar one can run you upwards of $40. The one I installed was hand-made. I hit the decking dept. at Home Depot, and grabbed ten pressure-treated nailing strips (3/4" x 3/4"), at a whopping $0.69 each (total $7.10 after taxes). I then simply nailed three vertically at one-foot intervals, plus two along the outside edges of the uprights, level with the top cross-piece. Then I nailed the other five strips horizontally, starting level with the top cross-piece, at roughly one-foot intervals. Not hard, and far cheaper than the alternative.

By the way, the cedar nailing strips were $1.69 each. Also not expensive, but more than I wanted to cough up for this minimal feature of the job.

Next, I checked for square by measuring corner-to-corner, then corner-to-corner on the opposite side. It wasn't square, but a little nudging got it there. To keep it relatively sturdy, I dropped a 4' piece of old 2x4 inside the box, roughly in the middle at ground level and nailed it in place. What a beast!

I decided I didn't like the idea of an OSB box in my yard. One of the best lessons I got from my dad was this: whatever you do in your back yard, your neighbours have to live with as well; so make it attractive and finished, and they'll appreciate it. In this instance, that means finishing work.

It turns out that 6" pine paneling is expensive. Like, really expensive. So what to do?

Well, 1x6 spruce planks are not so expensive (less than $5.00 a board). I pulled five of those out of the bin so I could get three planks per side (3 times 4' and a bit, times three). Out of each 12' board, I had the cutting dept. at HD slice two pieces 48 3/4". That's four feet, plus 3/4", due to the size of the exterior dimensions of the box. Aha! What I needed was a total of nine pieces that length, which requires five boards. The leftovers (around 46") were actually put to use later, as we'll see.

I started by actually clamping a scrap piece (using an extra block, just in case I needed the good lumber later) to the side panel in order to get the left edge of the plank I wanted to mount on the front. This saved me having to do any measuring at all. Then I lined up my front plank with that board, and along the top of the OSB panel. A couple of pilot holes saved any splitting, and in went some more screws into the 2x2's on either end. From there, I simply lined up each plank right below it.

I decided to butt-joint the side planks. This brought them forward a bit, so they weren't lined up perfectly with the back of the box. What I wanted was to close off the corners at the front though, so that's what I did. Facing the box, you get the end grain of the side planks.

I braced everything by throwing some 1" wood screws through the interior of the box into the back of each plank, just to secure them (without making a bunch of ugly screw holes on the outside).

With the leftover bits of plank, I just invented a closed back panel by screwing the pieces vertically to the lowest cross-brace. This is totally optional of course, but I thought it a good way to prevent vines from escaping down the back.

You'll no doubt notice that there's a big piece of unfinished OSB at the bottom of this thing. That was intentional, as I planned to bury about six to eight inches (it's the latter, since 1x6 is really 1x5 1/2) in the ground. No need to panel that part.

At the back of the yard, I dug up the sod in a 5x5 square, and dug down eight inches. I piled the clay up behind the spot in the old flower bed (you'll see another piece of paneling I used to keep the dirt from falling through the fence into the neighbour's yard). Then, using shear willpower and the might of my unprecedented determination to get this thing in the ground, I managed to get it over the deck rail and onto the lawn so I could drag it into position.

Um...get a friend to help. That's what I learned.

Once in position, I used a couple of bricks and some soil to level it as best I could. Here it is in position:

Due to dicey weather, and having a toddler running around, I actually elected to fill the box before staining it. You could, of course, stain it before you even move it into position. Totally up to you. But first, the fill:

If you do the math (or Google the math, as I did), you'll find out that 4x4x2=32 cubic feet. 32 cubic feet equals 906 litres (since soil products are sold by the litre in Canada, this number is very important). I didn't hit exactly that number, but came close. This was the mix:

First, I put in three bags of 1/4" gravel for drainage.

Next, I put all the soil I had dug out back into the box. My daughter helped.

Next came a potent mixture of 5 bags of black earth compost, 1 cube of peat moss (I couldn't find coconut coir, which I would have preferred...this cube was about 30 litres), 3 bags of garden soil, and 2 bags of cow manure. "Bags" in this case represents a standard 28 or 30 litre bag. I then mixed the daylights out of it. This filled the box about half way.

The next day (because my Camry can only hold so much weight at a time), I went back to the "dirt store" and picked up the same bunch again. 5 bags of compost, 1 cube of peat, 3 bags of soil, and 2 bags of poop. Filled and mixed. 

That's a lot of stuff. I'm told I might have to add some sand later on...I'm cool with that. It will depend on what it looks like after this season's crop and the next thaw. Oh...I also added some grass clippings between fills to keep the worms happy; just a tip from an old gardener friend of mine.

So, the only thing left at this point was to stain it. This went on super easy, but if the last thing you stained was a diaper let me give you this advice: stain is not paint. It's less forgiving, and it's really, REALLY runny. Just a heads up. And wear gloves...seriously.

I opted for Minwax Red Oak. It's an interior/exterior wood stain with sealing properties. The only reason for this step was because I like a darker wood tone in general, and I wanted to protect the spruce from the weather. It's not a perfect seal, and yes I know the OSB will break down over time. I also stained the uprights and the trellis, just so it would look pretty uniform. I think it came out not too badly:

The very last stage was to divide the bed into the planting sections. This I did by very cleverly cutting six pieces of old trim that was kicking around the garage into 4' lengths, and creating a grid by laying the pieces a foot apart. I threw in some tomato cages to make sure they'd fit, and that's the whole job.

To plan my planting, I used this handy Kitchen Garden Planner from Gardener's Supply Company, along with Bartholomew's book, which has a ton of useful planting guides for various crops. What's surprising is the amount of food you can grow in something like this. The exact plan I'm using goes like this:

Back row (l-r): 2 cucumbers, 2 morning glories, 2 cucumbers, 2 sweet peas (the flowers are included to attract pollenators).

Second row (l-r): 9 onions, 1 tomato (plum), 1 bell pepper, 2 swiss chard (which you can harvest leaves from practically all season).

Third row (l-r): 2 parsley, 1 tomato (cherry), 9 spinach, 16 leaf lettuce (to avoid being swamped with lettuce, I'm planting a row of four Grand Rapids, followed by a row of four Romaine a week later, then doing the same again two weeks after that; remember that with leaf lettuce you can select leaves, or cut it an inch above the soil and it will regrow until it starts getting bitter, so 16 plants is a lot for a small household).

Front row (l-r): 16 carrots (actually 15, due to the 2x2 in the corner), 5 marigolds (to keep butterflies off the lettuce and spinach), 4 bush beans (again, to stagger the harvest I'm using one green and one yellow, followed by another green and yellow planted two weeks later), 1 chives (both as an herb and as a pest repellent).

So you see, even a small garden like this can yield a lot of produce. And it's all about rotation too, so once the carrots run out, a fall harvest crop like broccoli could go into that same space. I happen to have a fairly big yard, but I know the compact size of this type of garden is great for urban gardeners as well, who might otherwise not have the space for a huge row garden or might have to suffer questionable soil conditions.

All told, this project ran around $200 (I'll update when I dig out all the receipts), with the soil actually making the most expensive component. But it's in, and should pay for itself for years to come. And it took two days to build, two days to fill (due to the weight of the soil products, remember), and a day to stain. Really, it could have been completed in about three days if I had a truck to move soil and didn't have to wait for a weekday to avoid having a stain-covered toddler. So a quick, cheap, and simple build that will bring years of satisfaction. Sounds like a good project to me.

Time for a cold one.

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