I trust these photos of before and after the Mid-Atlantic's "Snowmagedden" will tug at the hearts of gardeners in all climates and maybe provide a teachable moment for homeowners in wintery places. In the "before" shot you see the now-ruined 'Little Gem' magnolia on the left and one of the now-ruined Foster hollies on the right. (In between are some acuba, damage unknown but they'll bounce back from anything.) They're all technically my neighbors' but visually they're very much in my garden. And another heavy snowfall predicted for mid-week? NO COMMENT (at least none that's family-friendly).
For three years I wrote how-to gardening articles for local readers of the Takoma Voice and loved it – til I finally gave it up to focus on activities that would help pay the bills. Reality, I hear you! That meant confining the garden-teaching to garden-coaching clients, which brings in a bit, and looking for paid work as a garden writer.
So I offered my services as a blogger to Homestead Gardens and now they're paying me to write the most useful stuff I possibly can on their blog. There's a lesson here – or at least some serious encouragement – for anyone hoping to make a living doing what they love to do.
So with that back-story introduction, here's the next installment of my garden-coaching column - What I Really Do in my Garden in November.
Who knew there was so much controversy around the question of what's the "greenest" thing to do with dead leaves? Actually I've gotten more than a hint of the 
controversy because over on GardenRant people have, of course, ranted about this very topic. More than a few who follow the "leaf it be" practice of letting leaves stay in the garden all winter criticize the leaf-removers for their choice, even going so far as to make armchair diagnoses of the the leaf-removers' "problem" (apparently we're anal-compulsive!).
It all came to light again on my local gardening email group recently, and that prompted not one but two blog posts covering the controversy and trying to make some sense of it all.
Part 1 covers whether to remove the leaves or not (minus the Freudian diagnoses) and Part 2 covers chopping, mulching, and composting by homeowners or their local government (pictured here).
Do I know to bend at the knee? Was I born yesterday? Of course I know to do that!. Ditto doing regular exercises to strengthen the big muscles that take the load off our tired old back muscles when we're working hard. (I use weights and Pilates.)
Now about stretching before gardening, do YOU do that? I confess that I don't and my excuse (other than always being in a big hurry to get to work in the garden) is the conflicting advice I've read – to always warm up the muscles before stretching them. Makes sense to me! But is there a chance in hell I'd start my daily gardening work with a one-mile walk followed by a stretching session before picking up a single tool? You know the answer.
So now that I've revealed back health program, such as it is, I'll mosey around to the subject of how I managed to put myself out of commission for a while, and it involves the one back-safety rule that goes without saying. To wit: when in pain, stop doing whatever you're doing. Really, really obvious, but that's the rule I broke. But ya know, when guests are coming for lunch and the front yard's a mess, not to mention the deck where we'll be having lunch, you keep at it for just a little longer.
So this week in preparation for the first-ever brown-bag-lunch meeting of the new Self-Employed Support Group in my town, I overdid, to put it mildly. To the point that support-group members had to wait on me. And lots of ice packs and some serious drugs later, I'm able to dress myself but not without everything hurting like hell. B.jpg)
itch, moan, repeat.
About the Support Group
On the bright side, how about that Self-Employed Support Group notion, huh? Everyone took turns asking the group for ideas about whatever business challenge we happen to be facing – how to get more clients, more writing gigs, more advertisers, how much to charge, and so on – and got lots of great ideas. All good people with good ideas, and we're neighbors, so getting together is no hassle. (Metro D.C. traffic is ugly, really ugly.)
Best Advice for Back Pain
And eager to get the absolute best advice for lower back pain, I googled those words and found, among the typical Internet drek, this information from the National Institutes of Health, and it was just what I needed. Ice for three days, THEN heat. Anti-inflammatories. No bedrest. Anonymous writers in little-known government agency, thank you!
Full disclosure: my friend Pam J was one of those anonymous writers and later editors for various of the National Institutes of Health for 35 or so years. Just like the writer of this low-back-pain piece, she distilled medical information and advice from the scientists into super-usable form for the public. Now entering her second year of retirement bliss, she's become as obsessed a gardener as any I know. Also a lover of worms and weeds, (and clearly, of blogs and blogging), and I hear tell she's lobbying her husband for chickens!
I love this story in today’s NYTimes. It’s by the owner of a small townhouse garden in Manhattan, taking us through his consultations with friends and lots of professional designers about a much-needed transformation of his back yard. It’s especially interesting because like most people who hire me as a coach, he’s a nongardener. Really, he wants nothing to do with it, yet the story ends with "I had become a gardener". AND he compares garden designers to "life coaches", which pretty much describes what garden coaches can do – with clients who are as open to it as this writer turns out to be.
Also, lots of good design and plant ideas.
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.
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.
[This is my October column for the Takoma and Silver.jpg)
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.
[click to continue…]
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