MAKING THE MOST OF WET GROUND
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Have Fun, You Silly Ducks
Wouldn’t you know it: I write about the extended dry spell one week, and the next week, which is now, the rain comes and doesn’t let up. Not that all this rain makes me regret having a drip irrigation system watering my garden. Rainfall could come screeching to a halt and send us into another dry spell.
My five Indian runner ducks offer many advantages here on the farmden, not the least of which is affording me the pleasure of watching creatures that actually enjoy cool, rainy weather. The ducks also are entertaining and decorative, spend much of…
DRIP, DRIP, DRIP, WHERE’S THE AGUA?
I'm Dripping, So Why Am I Watering?
Up to a couple of weeks ago, little water had dropped from the sky this spring here in the Hudson Valley. But a drip irrigation system automatically waters many of my plants. So why have I been spending so much time with hose in hand? Not all my plants drink in the drips. Trees and shrubs are on their own except their first year in the ground when I religiously hand water them every few days initially, and then once a week throughout the season. These plants get 3/4 gallon per week for every square foot spread (estimated) of their root systems. That’s…
MONOCOT THREATENED, MONOCOT SUCCESS
DRIP, DRIP . . . A WORKSHOP
Drip irrigation has many benefits: saves water, healthier plants, easily automated, less weeds. I'll be holding a DRIP IRRIGATION WORKSHOP on June 20, 2015 in Bloomington, NY. Learn why drip is the better way to water and the components and designing of a drip system. And then, hands-on, we'll design an install a system in an existing vegetable and flower garden. For registration and information, go to www.leereich.com/workshops.
Lily Turds
The turds on my crown imperial plants were unwelcome, but no surprise. I’d been forewarned that the red lily beetle (Lilioceris…
MORE PRUNING, AN INVASIVE?
Training Sessions
Anyone appalled at the apparent brutality with which I approached my grape and kiwi vines a few weeks ago, pruning shears, saw, and lopper in hand, would have been further shocked today. But no harm done. (The kiwis are “hardy kiwis,” that is, Actinidia arguta and A. kolomikta; fuzzy kiwis are not cold-hardy here.) Left to their own devices, grape or kiwi vines would, every year, grow larger and larger, eventually, if once coming upon something to climb, sending their fruits further and further out of reach. Or, if not out of reach, then increasingly tangled in…
EEK, A DINOSAUR IN MY COMPOST PILE!
A Creature Not Really So Strange
One of the strangest creatures I ever found in my compost was the dinosaur that emerged today as I turned the pile. It was worse for the wear, the gash in its head probably from my machete, the “solar powered” shredder I use for stemmy compostables like corn stalks. (Think about it.) After a year in the pile’s innards, the dinosaur’s greenish, scaly skin has been bleached almost white.
I typically build compost piles through summer and into fall, then turn them the following spring. Turning, not absolutely necessary, lets me mark…
DRAMATIC PRUNING & NOT-TOO-BIG ONIONS
Henry IV Method of Pruning
Deb get’s a little nervous every time a go into the garage for some pruning tools this time of year. Not because she’s afraid I might hurt myself but for what I might do to the plants. Today it was so-called “renovative pruning” of the St. Johnswort ‘Sunny Boulevard’ shrubs that line the western edge of the brick terrace. I approached the shrub with some unconventional pruning tools. Let’s first backtrack and put everyone at ease. A shrub is a shrub because it’s shrubby; that is, it’s always growing new shoots at or near ground level rather…
FEAST OR FAMINE
Is Gardening Too Easy?
Control yourself, Lee! Growing seedlings this time of year is too easy. Within a single packet of seeds is the potential for a gardenful of vegetable or flower plants, even shrubs and trees. As such, a packet of seeds is relatively inexpensive. I have envisioned delphinium in my garden, its tall, blue studded spires backed by the fence surrounding my blueberry planting. I could have just gone out and purchased a few potted delphinium plants, but I wanted a bolder effect so purchased instead a packet of seeds. Who would have thought that germination would be…
QUICK, NO WORK GARDEN, FOR STARTERS
Prescription for a New Gardener
It seems like everybody’s a gardener, or is becoming one, this time of year. And a lot of people have been asking me questions. Like my niece Lana, for instance, who moved along with her husband, a baby, and a toddler to a new house last fall and is ready to dig into a garden this spring — but, as Lana said, a garden “that will be easily manageable for her and interesting to her 3 year old.” (The one-year-old is still enthralled with her thumb and other such things.) So, for Lana and other beginning or non-gardeners, here is a simple plan for a small…
BLUEBERRIES OUTSIDE, APHIDS INSIDE
Plant the Best-Tasting Fruit
My sixteen blueberry plants keep me in blueberries year ‘round, so I’m not planting any this year. But you are, or should be. The bushes are attractive in every season, with white blossoms in spring, foliage that looks spry all summer and turns crimson red in fall, and stems that shade to red in winter. The bushes are almost pest-free. And the berries are healthful and delicious.
All you would-be blueberry planters out there: Pay attention to the soil for your plants, about which I’m going to offer advice. Too many people plunk a blueberry bush…
