GardenersCardiff answers:

Cute idea, as is word play.

Loam grown
Down and dirty
Green side UP

I could work on this for hours, but won’t. I wish you well in your callouses.

Steven Wolf

GardenersCardiff answers:

You could discuss how bad it is to over-till your soil since it can kill the worms and destroys the hyphae formed by advantageous fungi.

GardenersCardiff answers:

You don’t want much, do you! I am in the same position as you and I also came late to horticulture. Therefore, I cannot ‘do a Monty Don’ for you! I can only tell you what successes I have had in my small garden, with containers and pots. Much depends, by the way, on which way your garden faces. Soil condition is not a problem if you are just using containers – as you can look for plants which do well in widely available composts. I have have always done well with my local supermarket bags of all-purpose compost. I avoided ‘specialist’ plants which need particular attention.

Basically, it was a hit and miss affair but the flowers I had most success with were the good old Busy Lizzies (Impatiens). After the growing season I often ‘chopped off’ stalks and put them in water in coffee jars inside on window sills and most stalks grew roots ready for the next season. You can’t get cheaper propagation than that!

Petunias always work well and the colour varieties seem to be endless. Long growing season. Cheap to buy. Dwarf geraniums, which actually look like miniature roses, do well in pots.

A great buy was the osteospermum range. These come in many colours and look a little like daises. You can’t stop them flowering and coming back each year!

Pansies and lobelias, for delicate looking plants, are surprisingly hardy, as are Sweet Williams.

More expensive plants are perenniels. I have had success with Asiatic lilies of various colours. They grow quite tall and are hardy but the spectacular flowers only last for a few weeks. Camelias give good colour during winter and spring. Peiris give good foliage and delicate flowers. For other foliage contrast, various ivy plants do well, as do slow-growing conifers – which you must have seen in people’s front gardens. I have even tried ‘supermarket roses’ and they gave fantastic results for a few years, although they can’t stay in pots forever. Still, they are cheap enough. Dahlias have done well, also, for several years at a time.

Hanging baskets always look nice. You can buy ready-made ones if you are lazy!

Care of the plants.

I only go for those which require minimal maintenance. I am not keen on reading up on minute details, as I am not a gardener! I want to ‘pretty up’ the garden, as you say.

However, make sure that the containers are of suitable size for the plants. Put broken crockery/pots, etc. In the bottoms of pots for drainage. ‘Dead head’ flowers regularly to promote growth. Feed with, say, ‘Miracle Grow’ during the growing season. Water reasonably but not excessively. The hardy plants I have mentioned can stand a bit of neglect! Remove dead growth ready for the winter and take inside those plants which cannot tolerate frost.

I place many pots on those plastic saucers – but with the saucers upside down. This prevents waterlogging in heavy rain and helps to keep off garden pests. You can then sprinkle anti-slug pellets around the bases.

As for ‘veggies’, I have only tried a few, as there is too much involved with propagtion, ‘planting on’, sheds and greenouses, etc.! I bought one of those supermarket ‘potato towers’ and bought the recommended varieties of potatoes from the garden centre. Quite good success, except for one year when disease struck. You would need mesh covering to keep out the critters! Some fruits like tomatoes and strawberries have done very well but you have to look out for the squirrels!

I am not into all of the things which experts talk about. However, for years, my little garden has been a ‘blast of colour and contrast’. Where there were failures, I tried something else, as long as it was cheap. I did all of this with one pair of garden gloves, a trowel and a pair of secateurs! I am not Capability Brown and I don’t care about designer gardens and ‘balance’ and that sort of thing..

Experts would be horrified to read all of this and tell me how much more I could have achieved but I would not have been ashamed to ‘open my garden to the public’ – three or four at a time, that is!

I hope that my ‘non-gardener tips’ will help you. If you become more serious about gardening, ignore me completely and go to the experts! Good luck.

GardenersCardiff answers:

Compost is used vegetable matter, that is broken down, to produce a “peat”, or soil if left to its own long enough…

DO NOT ADD ANY PROTEIN – MEATS IN THE PILE!!! This will make it smell like a garbage dump! And your neighbor will have a right to complain because there WILL be rats then!

Also, grass is not a good thing to add, because its mostly all water 90% and it will STINK!! When it decompose, so it has to be turned once a day, until its decomposed in there, (and not everyone wants to turn it that much, because grass decomposes down to almost nothing after the water is out of it, so, its not worth the bother!).

What you do, is take all the vegetable matter, and put it in a bin, or a pile, and turn it every week. (I would put in leaves, and other plant materials to make it a huge amount, because a little bit and rodents may come into the thing, if a lot, then the compost pile will get “hot” and no rodents will live in it!)…

A proper compost will get to about 114 degrees, as I recall, and no rodents will live in that. The best thing you can get is a pitch fork, to turn the large compost at least once a week, thus it will break down faster into a moss like material.

Then, you take that, and add it to the soil, so the organics will make the ground more permeable and water and air can get through the soil better, plus, it wont compact as tight and be easier to work the next time.

I wish you well..

Jesse

GardenersCardiff answers:

There are blogs and websites that can help you. The crafts page on American Made Yes shows pictures of things you can make and the instructions and where you can buy craft kits and supplies.

There are two projects offered without charge on the website, with pictures and full instructions.The free instructions are for an easy to make planter and an easy to make miniature satiny bed for a doll house. The satiny bed uses ordinary things like an old cd which cut in half makes the headboard. It is very clever. Then there is the planter which uses a straw basket. It makes a nice gift filled with plants and is easy to do and practical.

There is also a feature for making a cold frame, with a link to the free instructions, and pictures of the cold frame under construction. This is, of course, a project requiring a fair amount of skill but fun to do and very useful indeed.

Some super websites that offer kits are Greenleaf Dollhouses with wonderful miniatures you can make, birdhouses that can be hung in the garden, and crafts kits from Janlynn, Toner Crafts, Wildwood Crafts, and others. You’ll find all these listings with pictures on http://americanmadeyes.com/crafts.html

GardenersCardiff answers:

I know how you feel. Or should I say I KNEW how you feel. I lived on the end of an out-of-the-way cul-de-sac. In the spring I’d get cars coming by every day just to check out my yard. I enjoyed the attention, but after a few years I started feeling the pressure not to disappoint. It got to the point where if my family wanted to spend time with me they came out to “visit” with me in the garden. The only time I saw my pool was when I was fussing with the plants that surrounded it. It was time to do something to free up some time to enjoy my work. I made some simple changes and managed to cut my garden time in half. These are some of the steps I took.

1st. I installed a good agricultural grade micro-drip system with automatic fertilizer injector. Electric valves on a good, easy to use automatic irrigation controller. The controller was a modular design. I could program it at my desk & just walk it out to the garage & snap it into the pre-wired wall mount & I was done.

2nd. I started using larger, colorful, low maintenance perennials & shrubs in the outer areas, away from the house. Lots of salvia, ceanothus, rock rose, penstemon, verbena, westringia, nandina and the like and went heavy on fields of hybrid repeat blooming daylilies in shades from cream to deep plum.

3rd. I buried the entire property under 6 inches of mulch. Some areas got as much as a foot of mulch.

Suddenly I had time to be a parent volunteer in my son’s kindergarten class. Time to see the pool from the inside. Time to go back to school & get my Masters Degree… In fact I had time to get two Masters.
I was spending 50% less time in the yard, and the traffic still came every spring.

Just a few adjustments in your normal way of doing things can really save you time in the garden.

GardenersCardiff answers:

Yes i do,im in b.c. Canada and some farmers are selling seedlings

i havent yet perfected the art of curing it properly so it is quite a harsh smoke.you cant sell it and even i like to keep quiet about it.

But its a lot of work for little results,the one good thing is that it makes me smoke less…(if thats a good thing)

GardenersCardiff answers:

It is not illegal to grow tobacco in Australia. But you cannot sell it to anyone after it has been rendered.