Gardening Mourning October 14, 2008
Posted by liajo in general.Tags: A Basin, blooms, flowers, frost, gardener, grapevines, morning glory vines, ski, sunshine, vegetables, zucchini
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Well it happened, we had a frost last night. The zucchini is all wilted and sad looking. So are most of the morning glory vines. There are a couple of ones that have more protection that don’t look to bad. Most of the leaves have fallen off the grapevines on the back fence.
I heard on the local weather forecast that A Basin, a local ski area, will be opening on Wednesday. I bet all the skiers are jumping up and down in their ski boots.
As a gardener all I can do is mourn. Where did all my 80 and 90 degree days go? Where are the days with 12 hours of sunshine? Can it be six more months before I have beautiful blooms on the flowers and vegetables?
Let the skiers rejoice, I’ll read my seed catalogs and dream of next summer.
Don’t till the dirt!!! September 30, 2008
Posted by liajo in How to tips.Tags: composted, dirt, fruits, garden, gardener, Mother Earth News, plant, potato, potting mix, soil, till, vegetables
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I was web surfing last night looking for some advice on potato growing. I ran across a great site with lots of useful information about potatoes and other vegetables and fruits. I decided to look around the site a little more and clicked on an article about “how to start a garden.” In the first paragraph the new gardener was told to till the earth as deep as they could. I wanted to scream.
When will well meaning gardeners stop giving such advice?? You should never till the earth. There is an entire micro ecosystem under there that we can’t even see, but whose homes we are destroying. These little critters are vital to the health of any garden.
The easiest and quickest way to a new garden is to lay bags of potting mix on the ground open holes in them and plant directly in them. Check this out on www.MotherEarthNews.com. If you want a “traditional” garden then very lightly hand till the earth to a very shallow depth. Next layer on a three to four inches of good composted soil and plant. Never and I mean never till the earth as deep as you can.
playing n the dirt 