Real Gardening

I visited a local reader and when he mentioned that he used worm castings on his lawn I asked for more info, please.  So he wrote to tell me exactly what he puts on his good-looking lawn:

•  "WOW pre-emergence weed control" - this is basically 100% corn gluten with a slow nitrogen release, and I apply it with a hand-cranked hand-held spreader when the forsythia bloom each spring.

• "100% Pure Earthworm castings" - again, I apply it with a hand-crank, hand-held spreader about a month after I’ve put down the corn gluten.

• "Gardener’s Gold Premium compost" - goes down at the same time as the worm castings.  (About every three years or so I’ll pick up a small 10-lb. bag of fish emulsion and I’ll mix that into the compost before I spread it onto the lawn).

Then he concluded:  "And that’s it; that’s all I do for lawn care - I don’t apply anything else during the year. As I think I told you, I use no chemicals in this garden at all.  I do mulch the fall leaves into the lawn with a mulching mower.  I hand-weed throughout the growing season when/if necessary (and that’s pretty rare - the corn gluten really does suppress the weeds).  I also keep my lawn high - I let it grow to 5 inches or so and then cut it down to three and a half inches - that keeps the sun off of the soil and helps discourage weed germination as well.  In the hottest part of summer, if we’ve had no rain for 10 days I’ll give it a half inch of water via a sprinkler.

"I’m continuously mystified by the far more complex and expensive lawns regimens that I read and hear about."

And can I just say, his garden looks maaarvelous, and in no small part because he avoids a huge swath of lawn like the one you see here.  His garden is mostly borders, and they’re filled primarily with conifers.  The model of the sustainable garden looks good every day of the year, and costs the gardener very little in time or money.

Photo credit.

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I have my own post about early-spring pruning on the way but in the meantime, Adrian Higgins covers the subject in the Washington Post.  Text and photos cover pruning/hacking back for:

• Ornamental grasses
• Hellebores
• Vines
• Nandina
• Roses

Just yesterday I cut back all my ornamental grasses, including some ratty-looking carex, and now the garden looks, um, pretty damn naked.  In fact, at its absolute ugliest!  But ready for March, baby.

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[This is my October column for the Takoma and Silver Spring Voice newspaper.  I'd love your feedback!]

Gardeners want to know: Do I really have to remove leaves from my lawn? And the answer is that a few are fine but a thick coating of leaves will smother turfgrass over the winter.

Next question: Can I leave them in my flower beds and borders? On that one opinions vary, and some sources even recommend raking leaves into the beds for the winter. But like most gardening advice, it depends - in this case on their size and shape, and how many you have. An impenetrable mat of leaves, especially from oaks, can smother groundcovers and keep rainwater from penetrating into the soil, so my own practice is to wait til all the leaves are down in late fall, then lightly rake the easy-to-get majority of them, being careful not to yank the groundcovers out of the soil. I hand-remove the remaining leaves during spring clean-up.

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Surf right over to The Green Parent to see my guest-post "Kids and Gardening."

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Not that I’d ever recommend this, of course.  But sometimes our creative urges just can’t wait til the temperatures cool down enough to move plants safely, so measures must be taken. 

• Watering twice a day at first, then daily through the first week or so.
• Providing shade til the roots get established.  My neighbors assume I’ve become a radical front-yard laundry-dryer but lucky for me, they’re mostly hippies (at least in spirit) and couldn’t care less.

In this case I moved the decidedly shade-loving pulmonaria to a spot that gets direct sun from 3 to 6 in the afternoon.  Wish it luck.  For more about this front-yard garden, now an anti-lawn, catch my story about it and GREAT comments over at GardenRant.

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 Sometimes it’s damn hard to keep up with the current best thinking on gardening practices, and the question of whether wood chip mulch is good or bad for our plants is a case in point.   After what thought was a lot of research, I came down against it in my page about mulch and mulching, recommending instead the use of shredded pine or leafmold mulch.  (Around plants, that is.  Wood chips on paths are indisputably okay.)

Now here comes Master Gardener Magazine with an article about wood chip mulch by Linda Chalker-Scott (Ph.D., Extension Urban Horticulturist and Associate Professor, Washington State University) to contradict conventional wisdom.  (Those durn scientists can be SO annoying, with their namby-pamby reliance on the scientific method and peer review and all that stuff for sticklers.) 

Here’s what she has to say:  In tests (something that apparently scientists are still doing) wood chips perform with the best of all possible mulch materials for moisture retention, temperature moderation, weed control,sustainability and enhanced plant productivity.  And what’s more, in urban areas they’re often FREE.

Drawbacks?  What drawbacks?

Referring to the reported drawbacks of wood chip mulch, she calls them "much ado about  nothing".  The concern that wood chip mulches can tie up introgen and cause deficiencies in plants, it turns out that studies show that it actually increases nutrient levels in soils and the foliage of plants.  "My hypothesis is that a zone of nitrogen deficiency exists at the mulch/soil interface, inhibiting weed seed germination while having no influence upon established plant roots below the soil surface."  For that reason, she recommends against wood chip mulch around plants with shallow roots - annuals and vegetables.

Even if you remain unconvinced by the research, you can still use wood chips on top of a more nutrient-rich underlayer (say, of compost).  This "mulch sandwich" approach mimics what you’d see in the mulch layer of a forest.

How deep?

Here’s what surprised me - her recommendation that 4-6 inches of the stuff be used.  That’s because "A review of the research on coarse organic mulches and weed control reveals that shallow mulch layers will promote weed growth and/or require additional weed control measures."  Again, a divergence from lots of other writers recommending 2-4 inches, or even a maximum of 2 inches. 

But what about soil structure?

Now here’s something the article didn’t addres - the impact of mulch on ability of the soil to hold moisture and other benefits of what we call good soil structure.  Do wood chips decompose fast enough to improve soil within, say, a year?  I’ll shoot the link to this post to the good folks at Master Gardener Magazine and see if we can get a response. 

Photo credit.

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Ready or not, the biggest gardening task of the year is upon me - the spreading of 7+ cubic yards of leafmold mulch.  Here’s what it looks like just off the truck, delivered this morning by my city’s public works crew.  (And can I say that the near-severing of my power lines by the raising and lowering of the truck bed was harrowing.  The memory of that same mechanism knocking an air conditioner out of its window and onto my living room floor is still fresh, so there’s some justification for my less-than-total faith in these public servants.)

Anyway, notice that some of the pile encroaches on my neighbor’s driveway?  That’s why the goal here is to get the whole pile moved ASAP, which means hiring help to move it downhill (and down steps) to the backyard.  I stirred up quite a fuss over on GardenRant recently by admitting to hiring what I called "immigrant laborers" but guess what - I’m doing it again.  True, some gardening professionals insist I should be hiring only professionals to haul mulch, but $10 an hour is what’s budgeted for the job and it’s either that or risk my own back doing the job.  Sorry!

One more thing.  This time of year - every single year - there are the same questions on all the gardening-related Yahoo groups about mulch - which kinds are best, is hardwood okay, does the city’s leafmold have weeds, and on and on.  But I hesitate to just post this link in answer to all those questions because it seems almost self-promotional but really, that’s why I compiled all that information in the first place, so let’s use it. 

Hey, I know.  I’ll tell them to visit this link to the very same information on the DC Urban Gardener site.  No harm promoting that, right?

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 Why, in my 23 years gardening in one place have I never had the soil tested?  Let me count the reasons (excuses?  You tell me.)

• It’s mostly undisturbed soil.
• Everything seems to grow well here.
• I’ve never grown food.

Well, how’d I do?  Think they’ll take away my Master Gardener certification for admitting to never testing my soil?  Lucky for me, the DC Master Gardener program grants permanent certification (a situation they’ve finally corrected) so that ain’t gonna happen.  (But why DID they grant permanent certification, rather than require community service hours every year?  Because it’s too much work to keep records - and if that seems incredible, here’s my full rant about all that.)
 

But back to the soil.  What’s changed is that I’ll be growing food this season and have been utterly convinced by my DC Urban Gardener buddies that I MUST test the soil because horrible things like lead could be in it!  So I took the advice of one unnamed Master Gardener in the Beginner’s Guide to Growing Food and used the University of Massachusetts Soil Lab.  It tests for not only nutrients, which is all some of the crappy labs do, but also lead and other possible problems and only costs $9, so count me in!
 

And could it really be this easy?  I followed the instructions on their site: to gather soil from a bunch of different areas (they say 12 but the food-growing garden in question is so small, I used 6), then dry, mix, and put a cupful in a Ziploc bag, label the bag, and ship it off.   Three days later I had my test results via email, followed soon by the print version in the mail.
 

IT’S COME TO THIS: BRAGGING ABOUT MY SOIL
Here’s all it takes for me to get all proud of my soil: "Your soil pH is in the desired range."  And "Your soil contains very high levels of phosphorus and potassium."  That had my writing this to Ed Bruske:  "My soil is awesome!"  He sternly instructed me to forward him the actual results, which I did, and boy, was my bubble quickly burst.
 

First, after I’d raved about the complete-yet-cheap services of UMass, Ed shot that notion down with the put-down that the results are difficult to read and don’t even indicate the amount of organic matter, for crissake!  So maybe I should have paid another 6 bucks to use A&L, the lab that everybody around here recommends.  I see by their site that the "Complete Test" for $15.90 includes everything - the good, the bad, and the organic.  And astute readers probably already noted my mistaken glee at my "awesome" soil because it seems more like overfertilized soil and why the heck is that?  Given my modest, eco-friendly, organic (yada-yada) lawn care in the area tested I’m at a loss to understand, unless some soil science geek can postulate a reason.  Huh.  So, no more P or K for me, huh?  And no more UMass Soil Lab.
 

This just in:  I read in the latest Organic Gardening Magazine that it’s TYPICAL  for soils to have plenty of phosphorus and potassium but not enough nitrogen, so I’m back to bragging about it.  It’s lead-free!

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Here’s MY version of How to Get Your Garden Ready for Spring, the very important subject that so many garden writers and speakers are opining on this time of year.   It’s my March column for the alternative  paper I write for. 

Here’s what most homeowners do.  They wait until it’s already warm and colorful outdoors before noticing that their yards look like crap and wondering what they can do to change that sad fact.  And what’s even sadder is that by then, usually late April or May, they’ve already missed the best time to get their gardens ready for the season, so here’s what you should be doing in March, okay?  Early April at the absolute latest!  (Late February would have been even better, so remember than next year.)
 

CLEAN-UP
Now there’s lots of controversy (who knew?) about whether it’s best to remove leaves from beds and borders in the fall or leave them there until spring, with some sources even recommending raking all your leaves into your beds for the winter.  Here’s what I say: it depends.   Some leaves are large enough to form a crust that keeps water from getting to the soil, especially in quantity.  So in yards with lots of oaks I suggest chopping them first (using a mulching mower or shredder/chopper), which turns them into a dandy mulch for your borders.  I’ve tried that myself and find it way too time-consuming, given the quantity of leaves on my property, so I gather and compost most leaves in the fall, then do final clean-up in late winter or early spring.  That means now, if you haven’t done it already.

Basic spring clean-up means:

• Removing all the leaves.  Even if you did this in the fall, more have probably blown your way.
• Cutting off the ratty- looking foliage of perennials that are aboveground.   
• Digging out all the weeds you can see.
• Cutting back vines that are where you don’t want them.
• Cutting back ornamental grasses, including liriope, and the dead stems of perennials if you left them up for the winter (which is a good idea, for wildlife) to a few inches high.
• Using a cultivator or gloved hand to loosen the mulch, acorns and other dried plant matter covering the ground around your shrubs and perennials.  This allows water and air to more easily penetrate to the roots.
   

Why do all that now, so early?  Because if you have spring-blooming bulbs or perennials that emerge early in your borders, they could be trampled on if this clean-up is done after they’ve emerged..  Or worse, if you wait til your garden has started producing masses of new growth, you won’t be able to see those weeds and out-of-control vines.  Weeding now will reduce your weeding burden throughout the entire season.

MULCH
Applying organic mulch on top of your garden is the single most important thing you can do for your garden every year, bar none.  That’s because it prevents weeds, regulates soil temperature, and retains moisture.  Plus,  as it decomposes over the course of the season and is carried underground by earthworms and other creatures of the soil, it improves soil structure, which means better drainage and better use of nutrients.  In my garden organic mulch is the only form of fertilizer I use, though most gardens and all new ones benefit from a one-inch application of compost in the spring, also. (Certain plants - edibles, annuals, and anything in pots - still need fertilizer no matter what).  And as mulches go, nothing’s better than good old Takoma Park leafmold mulch because it decomposes over the course of one season, which is a good thing because it improves your soil.  The more attractive mulches like bark and hardwood chips aren’t as helpful because they last a long time, which is a bad thing.  Like weeding and leaf removal, mulching is a job that’s easier to do before new bulbs and perennials have emerged, especially if they’ve just popped up and are hard to see.
                   
GOT PLACES TO STEP?
One frequently heard caveat about spring work in the garden is that if you tromp all over your beds and borders when the ground is super-saturated from spring rains, you’ll cause soil compaction, a very bad thing for the future health of your plants.  So providing places to step in the garden is essential if you want to, for example, pull weeds when it’s easy to do because the soil is so wet. So this month when you’re cleaning out those borders why not strategically place small fieldstones or pavers where your feet need to be placed in order to reach your plants.  This one-time chore will help you stay in control of your garden (by weeding and pruning back as needed) throughout the season.  Without safe places to step, it’s best to test the soil before walking on it by grabbing a handful of soil and firming it into a ball, then dropping it.  If it stays in a ball, the soil is too wet to dig in or walk on.  If it crumbles, it’s okay to walk on.

LAWN CARE
Another area of disagreement is whether or not to feed your lawn in the spring.  Many sources recommend against spring feeding because it encourages top growth at the expense of root growth, promotes weeds, leads to extra mowing and, with spring rains, causes nutrient run-off into our waterways.  Yet some experts in organic gardening say it’s only synthetic or fast-acting fertilizers that cause water pollution, not organic, slow-release fertilizers like Lawn Restore or Safer.  So if you forgot to feed your lawn last fall and it really needs it, go ahead but give our rivers a break and use an organic one.

If your lawn is sunny and has a history of crabgrass, corn gluten is an effective organic preemergent weed killer, applied when the forsythia are blooming (or, according to other experts, when forsythia blooms are dropping). As an added bonus, corn gluten contains a small amount of nitrogen (10 percent by weight), so it helps to "green-up" your lawn in a safe, organic way.  Remember to always follow the instructions.

Fall is the best time of year for planting grass seed but bare spots can be seeded in March, which gives them time to germinate and get established before it gets hot..  Just don’t seed at the same time you’re applying fertilizer or corn gluten.

PRUNING
Late March/early April is a great time to prune trees and shrubs that have dropped their leaves because you can see what you’re doing.  Also, because they’re dormant, they won’t respond by sprouting new growth that could be killed by cold spells. 
    -Remove broken branches.  Bleeding sap doesn’t hurt them, so don’t worry about it.
    -Remove bagworm bags now.  Destroy them or throw them away; don’t just leave them on the ground.
    - March is a good time to prune butterfly bushes, spireas, caryopteris, forsythias and crape myrtles - if needed or desired.  The detailed how-to’s won’t fit in this column, so just Google "prune" and the name of the shrub type to find out whether yours really needs pruning and if so, how to do it.

NEW PLANTS
Buy and plant shrubs and perennials as soon as they’re available in the garden centers - the sooner the better.  It gives them more time to get their roots established before the heat which is much more of a killer than winter cold.   Be careful not to disturb still-dormant perennials, though, so if you’re not sure where things are, wait.

BULB CARE AND DESIGN
Make notes now about where you want to plant bulbs next fall.  Draw little diagrams to guide you.  Otherwise there’s no way you’ll know where to plant them when the time comes.

Okay, now get out there and get your hands dirty!

Extras for this online version:  links to lots more information about mulch, and lawn care.

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