Small Gardens Can Be Great Gardens

Small spaces may present some gardening challenges but with a bit of planning and careful thought, you can create a great garden in the tiniest of places. Be it backyard, balcony, or rooftop, space can be transformed into a green oasis.

To get started ask yourself the following questions:

1. How do you currently use the space? Is it a quiet getaway; a place for you children to play, or pets to roam, for entertaining?
2. What do you want to grow, herbs, flowers, annuals, perennials, shrubs, fruit trees, vegetables?
3. Thinking about a water feature?
4. Do you use it as an outdoor office?

Once you have answered these questions, here are a few more to ponder.

1. How much money are you willing to spend, on hardscaping, plants, watering system and décor, lights, garden art?
2. How much time do you have to look after your garden?
3. What specific challenges do you need to address, sunlight blocked by nearby buildings for example, ugly view?
4. Measure the space and draw a plan. You do not need to be an artist but setting in down on paper will help you focus.

You are now ready to create your garden plan, and, of course, there are more questions.

1. Are you growing in containers? If so, you need to select containers that are the appropriate size for the plants you choose and fit in with your overall décor.
2. Is there a view you which to hide? If yes, then you may want to include a trellis and a climbing plant such as English ivy or you could consider ornamental grasses; it depends upon the situation.
3. Do you want to add lighting, furniture, garden art? If you do they must flow with the design.
4. Think up, small spaces are ideal for growing vertically; you can use trellises and other supports or stackable plant holders for herbs, for example.
5. Fill in all the items that will be in your garden on the plan, again, accurate representation is not the goal, only you need to be able to understand it. Label items, such as chair, light rose, peas.

We grow beans and peas vertically so why not expand that list. When you make the choice to grow vertical your small space expands, growing up means growing more.

Deer Proof Your Garden

Deer. Oh, deer, you may find them to be cute, reminding you of Bambi but once they have eaten your prize roses your feelings may change.

You may get even more annoyed with these four-legged eating machines when the vegetable garden you planned all winter long and so passionately prepared turns into a deer buffet. Deer will devour your greens and veggies and many of the ornamentals that we do love so.

What can you do?

Well first remember this, deer are just being deer and foraging for food where they can find it; it is not their fault that you have gone to so much trouble to lay a feast before their eyes.

Also one of the reasons that deer are becoming pests in areas where they were rarely seen is that human, through urban sprawl and other activities are destroying their natural habitat and hey they have to live and eat somewhere.

So how do you deer-proof your garden? If you are growing vegetables, the safest way to do so is to build or buy a greenhouse. This will keep the deer out and keep your food safe from their hunger.

A greenhouse will also help keep another unwelcome garden raider away, the rabbit. A greenhouse is more effective than a fence

Now you could put up an electric fence; however, the price of energy is rising and adding to that bill offsets any gain that you may get from growing your own food.

Of course, a small solar panel could be used to fuel the fence. Deer when properly motivated and food is a great motivator, can leap pretty high. However, for a small garden plot an electrified fence can be a good alternative to the greenhouse.

Deer cannot sense electricity but will come up close to an object before leaping it so if they receive a shock, they are unlikely to proceed and will turn elsewhere for their meal.

If you want to grow organic vegetables then either a greenhouse or a solar-powered electric fence is your best option for success. There are other alternatives such as repellants and some of these will work but they do need to be applied more than once over the season so if you forget, you may wake up one morning and find the cupboard bare.

There are ornamental plants that are not on the deer’s favourite dining menu and if there is something they like handy, your ornamental garden might be safe. Rittenhouse has put together a list of plants that are deer resistant, just remember that a hungry deer is not a fussy deer.

Humans have destroyed deer habitat and humans have expanded their territory so that deer-human conflicts are all but inevitable. If you live in an area that has a large deer population and are a gardener then you will need to plan for deer control when you plan your garden.

Greenhouses will keep the deer out

If you build a glass greenhouse your cost will be higher. However, the added advantage to ether greenhouse is that unlike the fence they will extend the garden season both in the spring and the fall and this increases the yield and variety of plants that you can grow.

The choice is yours to make.

Weeds?

Weeds, if they were called by any other name, would they still annoy us to such a degree. The topic of weeds and weed control can touch off a frenzy of discussion when gardeners gather.

Some gardeners have little to no problem with weeds as they either use them to attract beneficial insects to their garden, eat them, for example, lambs quarters have serious food potential, or they read them and realize that the existence of weeds is telling us something about our garden; usually about the condition of the soil.

When we get the message we can take the proper steps to eliminate the problem and watch the weeds disappear.

Nature does not like bare patches of soil and the plants that we call weeds are nothing if not opportunistic, they will quickly move in where others fear to grow.

Weeds are hardy pioneers that are often the first plant life to appear on an abandoned site. So if you do not want the weeds to move in then do not leave patches of soil available to them because if you leave it they will come.

In addition to mulching, you can avoid digging all together; often when we turn over the soil to create a new garden bed what we do is free the weed seeds that have been lying in wait for the opportunity to grow to spring forth.

Resist the temptation to dig and deny them that opportunity. No-till gardening plus mulching will reduce your weed concerns.

Like many activities how you approach your garden depends to a considerable extent upon your attitude towards the garden; towards Nature and towards weeds.

When I am giving a garden talk or starting a workshop and feel the need to gain some insight into the people who are there; I ask one question; when you hear the word dandelion what is your first reaction?

If they gasp and say weed or worse then I know that I have my work cut out for me; if they say healthy, salads, wine or tea substitute than I have a very different crowd.

The dandelion, the bane of many suburban lawn and gardeners, is probably one of the most versatile and useful plants that grow so freely in our yards and just about anywhere it can get some sun and put down roots.

I am not suggesting that you deliberately grow it, although you can buy seeds if you wish, I do feel that you can learn to love it and try some of the recipes, like dandelion fritters.

I find the dandelion to be quite a beautiful plant that contrasts brilliantly with green lawns; if you pick the heads before they go to seed and deep fry them in batter, for example, you won’t be spreading them around the neighbourhood.

In fact, you could invite the neighbours over for dandelion tea and fritters and maybe just change their minds.

Once again, if you do not leave space for weeds to garb hold in your garden and do not set free the seeds already hiding in the soil, you are well on your way to reducing your weed worries.

Compost: What is it and Why use it? Part 1

Compost is decomposed organic matter.

Compost energizes the soil food web, which is made up of microscopic bacteria and fungi, along with earthworms, crickets, and many other life forms. Many fungi form symbiotic, or mutually rewarding, partnerships with plant roots, making it possible for vegetables to feed themselves more efficiently ...

How to Save Time When Gardening

Reducing the work you need to do and creating a garden that thrives begins in the planning stage.

My Small Garden is located near my front deck and my container garden.

Planning steps to take:

1- Calculate the amount of time you have to invest in your garden.

2- Determine what available space you have or where your garden will be.

3- The first two steps tell you how big your garden should be.

4- How much light does that space get? This tells you what you can grow.

5- Be sure to write your answers to the above down.

6- What do you want to grow?

7- Draw a rough plan which you can refer to as you go.

8- Get started.

Simple activities:

1. Which garden tasks would you rather not do?
2. Which garden tasks do you enjoy doing? If there is nothing on this list, perhaps, you are not a gardener.
3. If you dislike mowing the lawn, reduce the lawn space. Add a shrub, some berry bushes or a fruit tree or two, Put in a vegetable or cut flower garden or add a deck.
4. Dislike weeding, add mulch. Mulch will not only reduce the need to weed but also reduce the need to water. You are reducing labour in two ways and improving the garden’s health.
5. Keep a compost bin. This gets rid of food scraps, lawn clippings and tree leaves, for example, and turn them into organic matter that will help the garden thrive and reduce the amount of garbage you will need to put out.
6. Spend time in your garden, just watching the plants grow. What could be easier? While there check for any new and unexpected happenings. This way you can catch a problem in its early stages and reduce the work you will need to do, if the situation gets out of hand.
7. When planting put the right plant in the right place. Make sure the plant gets the sunlight it needs.
8. Water in the early morning and water deep; you are watering the roots.
9. Plant a diversity of plants and use a combination of herbs, vegetables and native wildflowers. This will attract the pollinators your garden needs to reproduce.

Time spent in the garden is a great investment; one that will repay you for many years.

Forest Gardens

Have you begun to feel that the time you spend watering and cutting your lawn is a waste and probably doing more harm than good? Tired of using poisonous chemicals to keep that lawn green and golf course ready?

Or are you longing for fresh fruits and vegetables?

Perhaps both appeal to you and if you have answered yes to one or both then it could be time to turn your yard into a food forest garden.

If you do undergo the transformation, you will be no longer be using your time and energy to maintain an unnatural ecosystem- the lawn- which gives you little in return for your efforts.

Instead, you will be investing that time, energy and dollars in an ecosystem that provides you and your family with fresh right off the vine, produce all the while, creating a backyard habitat that will attract, butterflies, bees and birds.

The backyard food forest meets not only you and your family’s needs but provides food and shelter for butterflies and songbirds, for example.

The inclusion of native plants and others, such as herbs, berries and fruit trees, in the backyard forest garden will form the layers of your backyard forest.

Your lawn wants to become a forest; it wants to follow Nature’s way and eventually become a forest but the constant maintenance that a lawn requires prevents this natural progression from taking place and creates considerable work for the homeowner.

As you move away from the lawn; from an unnatural and stalled ecosystem that wants to evolve but is constantly thwarted in its desire, you move from wasting your resources to investing them and stop using resources poorly and begin to invest so that one day you can reap the rewards of your work as you harvest, fruit, berries, herbs and vegetables fresh from you own backyard.

The role of the gardener is not to stall ecosystems and combat natural growth but to work with that desire and need to grow and guide the progress so that it meets the needs of all beings.

This way balance is maintained and the garden becomes a place of mediation between Nature and Civilization rather than a war zone.

You can start small. There is no need to overturn your whole backyard into a forest garden the first time around, select a sunny corner and work with dwarf fruit trees for example.

This is a process and you may proceed at your own pace.

If you are interested in converting your backyard into a food garden then the book, I’d suggest is Gaia's Garden:A Guide to Home-Scale Permaculture by Toby Hemenway. It is published by Chelsea Green, 2001, and has a foreword by John Todd.

introduction

edible forest gardens

Wild But Not a Weed

Chicory is a perennial and one that many consider a weed; it certainly is persistent enough. Formally known as Cichorium intybus ), it is a member of the family Asteracea.

Chicory is well know, the roots, that is, as a coffee substitute but if I was to wild cultivate it for this or any other edible purpose I would want to know more about the soil where it is growing.>

The young leaves can also be used in a salad. However, once again if I was planning to wildcraft the leaves I would need to know more about the site other than chicory was growing there.

For example, how long has the site been abandoned, in an urban setting, there can be a number of areas where buildings once stood but have come down for one reason or another. Depending upon what the purpose of the building was, for example, industrial, and how long ago it came down, you may just want to enjoy looking at the wild things rather than eating them.

You could collect a soil sample and get it tested, at your own expense, if sufficiently motivated.

If the motivation is strong within you, take a trip to the local municipal office and find out who owns the property and gather all the information you can.

It may be worthwhile to contact the owner and find out what you can about the site. Meanwhile enjoy the wild garden. Nature is a fine gardener, observe and learn.

My Small Garden: Update

Good day. Cool and windy here today. The photos are from my Small Garden:

Pumpkin rising

part of my container garden on deck. Glass gem corn, pumpkin, peas.

Why I Garden?

Why do I garden? There is no single reason that underscores why I like to grow plants, just as there is no single plant, I like to grow more than the others. There are a number of reasons why I enjoy spending time in a garden.

First, I believe that people need a hobby, interest or activity, call it what you will, that takes their minds off their day to day realities.

All of us are busy and often have a number of different thoughts or things to do that are competing for our attention.

Speaking of things to do, your hobby or personal interest should not result in you developing another list of things to do. That is not helpful and may indeed take the fun out of the doing.

That does not mean that you do not make a plan, without a plan you may never get started or get started and then have no idea what to do next.

It simply means that your plan is not the law; it is not engraved in stone, and can be changed or tossed aside, in favour of another approach.

I find gardening to be the perfect activity and that is primarily why I garden. It can keep me enjoyable occupied all year round, either doing it; reading about it; ordering seeds or planning the garden and even redrawing last year’s plans.

When I sit down with a seed catalogue, the day’s news and events slip from the forefront of my mind and images of what the plants will look like when they grow. 

This leads to giving some thought to where the new plant(s) will look best and where they will most benefit in the existing garden.

Will this be the year I plant that flowering crab-apple that I have been reading about or perhaps a redwood dogwood. These thoughts nudge out the concerns about the economy, the environment and all the bad news that fills the media.

An hour spent with a seed catalogue in the deep of winter refreshes my mind and awakens the hope that Spring brings when the gardening season begins anew and old friends reappear and new ones are waiting to be discovered.

I garden because I love spending time outside; feeling the wind and the sun on my face and hands.

Of course, these days you need to protect yourself from any prolonged exposure to the sun’s rays but a hat works and gardening gloves serve many purposes.

I love to grow things; there is immense satisfaction and sense of accomplishment from watching a flower come alive from a seed that you planted a few weeks prior.

Gardening offers you an opportunity to make decisions and choices. It is your garden. You can decide what you want to grow; how much you want to grow and what you will do with what you choose to grow.

I often refer to the garden as a place that exists between Nature and Civilization and the gardener is responsible for maintaining the balance between the two. When you create a garden, you are opening the door to remembering the connection that exist between humans and Nature; a connection that is very real, whether we acknowledge it or not.

Gardens do not require chemicals poured over them to thrive; that is the gardener’s job to create and maintain the conditions that allow the plants to mature and reproduce.

The garden is a learning ground where you can learn about botany, biology, math, history and become acquainted first hand with the processes that make the garden grow.

You see the relationships between the various beings who work with you to make your garden grow.

Birds and butterflies, for example, bring their beauty and other services to the well-tended garden. Bees carry out the important work of pollination and you observe the connection between what the bee does and your garden’s growth.

I garden because I love to grow things and watching a plant break the surface as the seed spring into life is always a wonder and an encouraging moment. I like to have cut flowers for our house and do not want to buy them but step outside and cut them myself. That way I know that they were grown without artificial pesticides and fertilizers.

Tomatoes are a favourite food but the ones I buy at the supermarket just do not have the flavour that the ones I plucked off the vine in my own garden do.

It is only truly fresh when the farthest distance it travels is the distance from my backyard to my kitchen table.

Simply spending time sitting in a comfortable chair in the backyard after a slow stroll through my garden is one of the best ways that I know to calm my mind and relax at the end of the workday.

As I take my first step into the garden, I can feel the day’s concerns sliding off me. My eyes begin to focus on the plants, their fruits and foliage as I look to see what has changed and how each plant is faring.

Then when the quiet inspection is complete, I sit back and watch the dance of life performed by the bees, butterflies and other small creatures who are busy at work maintaining the garden while I sit back and enjoy the view.

There are many reasons to garden and each one of us may well have our own and that is another reason that gardening is a delightful way to spend our time; our gardens are our own creations; and we are free to pursue our own interest when in the garden.

Gardens, both great and small, are a refuge from the concrete and asphalt world that surrounds so many of us as we travel back and forth to work.

Anyone who wants to, can garden; it is a matter of will and design and is a wonderful opportunity to get away from it all without ever leaving home.

Great Gardens Grow

Great gardens take time. The learning curve never ends.

When people ask me how to get started with a garden, one of the first questions I ask them is how much time do you have to spend in your garden each day?

The reason I ask this question is people often have great gardens in their minds but in their daily lives, they simply do not have the time to care for those gardens. Sure, the first few days are full of energy as the garden bed or beds are prepared and the seeds and seedlings are planted and everything is watered.

But then life happens and the busy schedule that is many peoples’ reality starts to take over and tending the garden gets put aside or left to the weekend. Now, once a garden is established, you do not need to visit it every day, although I do recommend that if you really want a thriving organic garden then allow yourself at least five minutes each day.

During those five minutes, all you are doing is observing, looking for changes like any unwanted visitors or signs that something may be wrong, brown leaves, chew marks and so on.

This early warning will increase your odds of saving the plants before the problem zooms out of control.

Also, in unusual weather, heavy rains, excessive heat or not enough heat, you need to care for your plants, to help them endure the extremes, and still produce the flowers, and vegetables you want.

Great gardens take time. Do not start a garden you do not have to have the time to tend. Be sure to enjoy a quiet stroll around the garden. You are looking for anything unusual, so you can handle it, pests, diseases, before the situation gets out of control, then,  back and watch nature do her thing.

When you calculate your time as part of the overall garden design process you will avoid building a garden that is too big for your lifestyle and also avoid the disappointment that can follow, especially if this is your fir

Food is Our Common Ground

Everything needs to eat.

What we eat varies due to personal preferences, ethics, financial ability, for in our world, food is a commodity and no pay, no eat, is the rule; culture and political and religious beliefs also play a role when we choose our fare.

Regardless of our food choices, the one choice that we cannot and usually do not want to make is to not eat. We eat or we die

If we eat but do not get the nutrition that our body requires from the food we choose then we become ill. If we do not eat enough, even of good food, then we weaken and become ill.

In North America, we often complain of our fast paced lives and how busy we are; this reality is well reflected in our food lifestyle, fast food dominates the food scene. Drive-thrus and delivery, microwaves and frozen entrées have replaced cooking; which, along with growing our own food, is a basic survival skill.

How many people would suffer greatly, if they could no longer pick up or order in their supper or no longer pop something into the microwave and wait a few minutes for dinner?

How many days food do you have in your pantry or storage cupboards? When was the last time that you preserved any food?

How long would your food last if the transportation system broke down and the food you buy was no longer on the grocery store shelves and the pizza place was out of dough?

North Americans have let the food supply system slip out of their grasp and the very item, the second most important need that we have, after air; water being the first, is in the hands of companies that are in many cases far away.

We can live for up to three weeks without food, but only 3 days without water.

Food is trucked, flown and put in box cars so that it can be shipped to its destination. How fresh can it be if it has been sitting in a container for 2 weeks before it reaches your plate?

Do you know how far your last meal traveled before it became a meal?

Tomatoes, for example are being bred for their ability to travel rather than their flavour. So we get tomatoes that can travel but are tasteless.

Even the fast food that we so dearly love relies on transport to deliver the bulk of what it serves.

Transportation requires the use of fossil fuels to power the truck that carry much of our food and the airplanes that fly in the foods from distant ports. The price of gasoline is rising in many places as is the price of food, they are connected.

The agriculture industry is one of the biggest users of fossil fuels, not just for transportation, but for the production of pesticides and fertilizers as well.

There is an episode of West Wing where President Bartlett is speaking to his chief of staff. The topic is the news that mad cow disease has raised its head in the United States. The President says and I am slightly paraphrasing this: “Often what we take for granted is the very thing that turns around and bites us in the ass”.

The conditions that the animals that we consume are kept in are all too often appalling to say the least; this means that before they are killed they suffer. This reality is the reason that many people become vegetarians.

There are a number of food based movements that are working to address food quality, local economies and the sheer pleasure of preparing and sharing a meal with friends and family. The organic movement has become big business, the push to local food ahs drawn nation attention and the slow food movement has spread across nations.

If we have any real interest in improving our quality of life, our environment and address issues such as poverty and hunger then we only need to look inside our cupboards and refrigerators and begin to change with what we put in them on shopping day.

Food is our common ground; we all eat so let’s give our next meal some thought.

Local Food

Beans, Beans, Beans

Beans are a perfect crop. For the home gardener, there are two types of beans that you will want to consider. One is the pole bean. Pole beans will need some kind of support; support that is strong enough to keep the plants from tumbling to the ground.

The support must bear the full weight of the plants but it has to also withstand the summer winds and storm. You do not want to come out one fine sunny morning and find that last night’s storm knocked your beautiful beans flat.

The other is bush beans, which are a smaller and more compact plant, and will provide a heavy first harvest as well as a lighter second picking before the plants are finished.

When you use bush beans you may be able to plant more than one crop during the season so that a continuous supply of beans is always close to maturing.

I have built tripods/teepees from poles to use as supports and if the poles are long enough and put into the ground at least six inches and securely fastened at the top they have withstood some fairly heavy wind storms.

Beans should not be sown until the danger of the last frost has passed; damp and cold soil will cause the bean seed to rot and bye-bye bean.

There is a wide variety of beans to choose from and remember when you buy seeds of any kind, beans included, read the seed package and follow the instructions.

Beans are also a great way to introduce children to gardening and the connection between food and the earth.

What you need are a bean seed, a small garden pot (3 inches across) some soil and water. You will also need a place at home to put the pot where it will get 4-6 hours of sunlight.

Fill the pot with soil; make a small hole using the pinky finger about ¼ inches deep, put in the bean cover over, water.

Then place the pot in a sunny spot and watch it grow. Be sure the planter has drainage and be sure to place a saucer or something else to catch the excess water.

We have done this exercise with quite a few children over the years and they enjoy the planting and have often told us about their beans and even brought pictures.

This exercise works well with children between the ages of 2 and 4 years old but children up to 7 have participated and had fun.

Create a Balcony-Container Garden

Balconies and containers make a great garden.

If you want to create a balcony garden then there are a few things you need to do.

First and possibly the most important step is to ask yourself, how much time do you have to spend taking care of the garden? Balcony gardens usually take the form of plants in containers and may actually require more attention than a backyard garden does.

Balconies can be hot, dry and windy spots and this means that your plants will need to be watered frequently. You will also need to check on them regularly to determine if watering or other attention is required. Pests and diseases can affect the balcony garden.

The second determination you will need to make is how much sunlight the balcony receives. This, in part, determines what you can grow. If your balcony is heavily shaded then most vegetables are out but shade plants are in.

This is where the right plant, right place (RPRP) guideline comes in handy. You place a plant in the location where its needs are met and that plant will flourish if something is lacking, water, soil, food, then the plant may die or languish. So select your plants with knowledge and care.

Now that you know the light conditions, you can decide how much space you want to allow for the garden. You will need room to move around to care for and harvest. What else do you use your balcony for?

The last question is are you growing herbs, vegetables, fruit, yes you can grow dwarf apple trees on a balcony if the conditions are right, or ornamentals.

Once you have answered all the questions you can draft your garden plan. This does not need to be elaborate, a pencil sketch on a piece of paper will do. Simply indicate where the plants will go and be sure to include anything else that may be on your balcony, chairs, for example.

The plan is not carved in stone and you can make adjustments as you go; it is designed to keep your focused and not to get carried away.

It is easy enough to buy more plants than you can use when you visit a garden centre. It can be difficult to resist some of the floral beauties that are teasing you into taking them home.

Use your garden plan to develop a plant list and do your best to stick to the list. It can be helpful to talk with the garden centre manager or a horticultural expert and explain your plan, before buying.

Balcony gardening is as rewarding as any other form of gardening as long as you follow the few simple steps that I have outlined. Most importantly, have fun gardening is a joy, not a chore.