If you’ve been to your local big box home improvement store lately, you’ve probably seen a curious item in with the cypress and other mulches — rubber mulch. This product is made up of ground tire waste, and is supposed to be beneficial for soil moisture due to its non-porous nature. It is also said to reduce fungal growth can be a weed barrier, as weed seeds dehydrate in the mulch before reaching the soil.
The tires’ springiness make it a good fit for playground equipment areas.
However, the material is also a hazard if ignited — and can be difficult to put out. It may also leach chemicals that can be hazardous to your plants — and possibly you if you’re growing fruits and vegetables in it.
My verdict? I like to go natural and organic whenever possible, including in my garden. I will stick with organic materials as mulch — natural, renewable resources and chopped up garden waste. Fall leaves make an excellent mulch to get flower beds and other areas through the somewhat harsh winters in my climate, and best of all — it’s free!
I love having fresh flowers in vases scattered throughout the house, but many times it means hacking away all the flowers in my garden and not being able to enjoy them outside.
A good solution to this is a cutting garden. Many common varieties of flowers make excellent candidates for a cutting garden. Check out this list of 45 fantastic cut flowers at Organic Gardening. Simply plant extra of the flowers you wish to cut to avoid having bare spots when you do pick flowers, or separate the plants you have and place them into a separate garden designated as a cutting garden, and get cutting!
I came across a packet of seeds for Cleome, or spider plant, when purchasing my seeds to plant veggies this year. Intrigued by the unusual flowers, I threw a few seeds into my greenhouse kit and waited to see what happened.
Here are the plants a few months later. As you can see they’ve grown big and bushy, and are thriving in the outdoor (and the recent heat).
It looks like soon there will be a big round of brightly colored flowers blooming. The flowers are a great attractant to butterflies and hummingbirds, and the plant is drought tolerant.
The plant is self seeding, grows three to five feet tall, and blossoms from early summer until frost.
Cats are lovely animals and make great house pets, but when they start to use your garden - especially vegetable and fruit garden - as a litter box, it’s time to take action.
There are natural and non toxic ways to repel cats from your garden. You can start by adding plants to your garden that will keep cats away. Herbs and plants such as lavender, rue, geranium, absinthe and lemon thyme all serve to repel cats.
You could also try the bait and switch approach by luring the cat into a different part of your garden. Instead of trying to keep him out of one spot, plant a patch of catnip in another area to attract the cat there instead. He’ll be much happier in that area, and so will you.
Lettuce is an easy to grow annual vegetable that should be a staple in every garden. There is nothing like going out to the garden and snipping off a few cool, crunchy leaves of lettuce for a salad or a sandwich (mmm …. BLTs!). Lettuce is easy to grow - just sow the seeds right into the ground (or in a container), and in a few weeks you’ll have leaves or bunches of lettuce ready for the picking.
Lettuce is a cool weather crop so start the plants early in the spring, or later in the summer. Keep the plants shaded for the most part, and pick off a few leaves every few days so that the plants continue to grow and produce.
I love getting deals and discounts in the mail, so I was happy to hear about the Home Depot Garden Club. When you sign up, you’ll receive a coupon for buy one get one on any shrub. The coupon is good from May 23 through June 12 - just in time to get a couple of new shrubs planted in your garden to add some nice summertime color.
If you are not a member, you can sign up here. Be sure to check the box for: “YES! Send me The Garden Club Newsletter E-mails featuring exclusive offers and coupons!”
I’ve had my eye on a couple of hydrangea bushes - I’ve always wanted a white on - and now is the perfect time to purchase them and get them planted.
One of the best ways to guarantee fresh herbs all summer is to grow your own. Herbs are super easy to grow and the flavor and convenience can’t be beat. Most herbs will happily grow in pots or containers, and with a little care, will thrive all summer long - either on your window ledge or in the garden. Place plants in a sunny spot in your home and water regularly, and you’ll have fresh herbs to use all summer - and longer if you care well for them.
You can either purchase seed packets and start the plants from those, following the instructions on the packets, or buy established plants. Plants can be found at your local nursery, as well as Home Depot or Lowes, and in the produce or nursery section of large grocery stores.
Here’s a trick to getting free or low-cost gardening supplies: use Freecycle and Craigslist. Sure, you’ve used Craigslist to apply for a job or unload some items in lieu of a garage sale, but it’s also a fantastic resource for finding items you need at no cost – other than the cost of picking up the item. Freecycle is an international non-profit group whose goal is to keep items out of the landfills that can otherwise still be used, and building communities at the same time. Local chapters, which are run through Yahoo Groups, can be found on the Web site. Membership is free, and members can post items they no longer need or request items they want.
I’ve been keeping an eye on my local Freecycle and have seen free pots, plants, seeds, mulch, and more change hands. In addition, many members put up their excess plants as they thin out their perennials and gardens.
Craigslist is a free classified ad Web site with local sections. Each Craigslist has a “Free” section, where anyone can post items they wish to give away. An “Items Wanted” section is available as well, where you can post request for specific things. There is also a “Farm & Garden” section, where you might find items you’re looking for.
Happy swapping!
As the price of groceries continue to climb, and our interest in organic and natural foods also rises, the hubs and I have decided to implement a new plan: we will instill an edible landscape around our home. No more purchasing flowering trees just because they are pretty (sorry, yellow Magnolia tree - how I admired you so). Instead, we will plant trees that have pretty flowers that also bear fruit (hello, peach and apple trees, and aforementioned cherry trees). Many herbs are also quite nice to look at and interesting in a garden, such as rosemary (which is almost an evergreen shrub-like plant than an herb-looking plant) and parsley. And you can’t go wrong with a row or two of lettuce and some tomato plants.
No, we’re not going to just plant annuals to fill in the bare spots around the gardens. Instead, we’ll tuck in a few bunches of buttercrunch lettuce around the bare spots, and landscape with plants we can also eat from. However - we’re not going to pull what’s already planted; that seems counter-productive to me. What we will do is place edibles as new plants around the house, and maybe eventually replace the non-edibles over time.
For an early Mother’s Day gift for me, my husband ordered a Hansen’s Bush Pie Cherry Tree from Guerney’s. I was thrilled to find a long box with the trees tucked inside on the front porch the other day, and quickly followed the instructions to soak the roots in water, then plant the tree. Unfortunately, we live in a zone where we’re still getting freezing temps at night, so I believe a little extra care is in order to protect the three (!) fruit trees that just arrived.
First, rather than planting them directly into the ground, we planted them in large containers. This way, we can move them around and into a sheltered area if frost or if freezing temperatures threaten.
Second, a little burlap goes a long way to protect fruit trees. We also have two peach trees on the property, and before they began to form blooms, we covered them with burlap to protect them from the cold temps and encourage them to shoot blooms. They did, and now we have the teeny, tiniest little peach buds just beginning to grow.
The weather should warm a bit by end of week but I’ll be keeping an eye on my cherry trees.
