Organic Gardening

Composting is in essence recycling, that is to reuse and recycle what earth has bestowed to us. It is about the love for our environment and ensuring those future generations will continue to reap the rewards that we are bestowed with.Compost is essentially an organic substance that helps to fertilize our soil, to allow it to have the nutrients and minerals to grow. There are fundamentally two types of compost, the greens and the browns. The greens are rich in nitrogen and protein while the browns contain high amount of carbon or carbohydrates.

We can each do our duties by contributing to composting as composting entail materials from nature that are recycled. Among them are vegetables, animal manure, grass, dried leaves, sawdust, etc. Those can be used for the sole aim of gardening especially if you are into organic gardening unlike the broader term of recycling, which comprise synthetic materials. With compost, it gives rise to healthy plant and in turn healthy produce. (more…)

Flowering trees are an effortless way of annually acquiring a great number of blossoms to enjoy, either as they grow outdoors, or in indoor bouquets. Many are lovely for several weeks. Here are some of the lower-growing kinds that will thrive almost anywhere in a tangle or a planned array.

Grow a dogwood for its beautiful pink or white blooms, brilliant red autumn berries, and rich mahogany foliage. A dogwood grows fast and, if five or six feet tall to start, may well bloom the year after transplanting.

The Sargent cherry flowers in late April; the blooms appear ahead of the bronzy young foliage, and seem literally to hide the branches and trunk. No wonder the Japanese have festivals at cherry blossom time! (more…)

A broad, rich green lawn may be a fine thing, but to have a meadow for a lawn is even finer. A meadow-lawn needs mowing only once a year, requires no rolling, no watering, no feeding, and you can be gaily unconcerned about moles, slugs, and crabgrass that may turn up in it.

Only a narrow strip of mowed green grass surrounds our house. The rest of the “lawn” is all meadow-sunny meadow. Parts are high and dry, parts are low and boggy.  A stone wall stretches along one boundary-a wall where maples, ironwood, laurel, elm and wild cherry grow. Nearly 200 kinds of wild flowers thrive through the seasons in the meadow. Many were there when we moved; some we have added. Other new ones have simply appeared. In the nine years of our occupancy the flowers have doubled in quantity and quality-largely, I suspect, because we have delayed the annual mowing of the meadow from June till late August which gives the plants a chance to reseed and multiply. And what a wealth of material is here for indoor bouquets.

When you begin dealing with wild plants, just about anything can happen, most of it good, and much of it a surprise. Down in the meadow, I often find some new flower I have never seen before. Rushing to one of my books on wild-flower identification, I soon make the acquaintance of the meadow’s new inhabitant. (more…)

March has been called the 3:00 A.M. of the year-it isn’t quite winter and it certainly isn’t spring. The weather cannot be depended upon-a warm sunny day momentarily may freeze into a blizzard, and a blizzard may melt away under a seventy-degree sun.

The only thing predictable about March-as a few million people have already noted-is its complete unpredictability. Here in Connecticut we can be pretty sure of snow during the month.

But through all the weather’s vagaries we had the surprise and joy of a lovely little winter flower garden beside the front door. The gap between winter and spring was gaily bridged by this garden’s rainbow of color. While on our place we have a minimum of cultivated areas and flower beds, I wouldn’t be without this one little garden spot even if it demanded a lot of care-which it doesn’t. (more…)

You may think of hay as that sweet-smelling stuff that fills the lofts of country barns with something soft for the young to bounce on. Perhaps in your youth hay came down a chute in the barn and you fed it to your pony, hoping he wouldn’t nip your fingers. Or is hay to you that beautiful fragrance over New England meadows in early summer, when it lies freshly cut, neat and combed?

Whatever your previous concept, one thing is sure: If you are looking for a guaranteed low-labor method of soil improvement, hay can be one of your best allies. A thick layer of ordinary field hay will actually prepare any area for planting, literally transforming a piece of nubby ground into soft soil ready for growing things. And no digging and sod removal are involved. All this will occur in eight months to a year, depending on how tough the field is.

Suppose you have a desire to plant flowering shrubs, or a hedge of the self-sufficient multi flora roses at the wilderness edges of your place, or where the area is thick with weeds, field grass, heavy turf. Perhaps the very thought of plunging a spade into such matted earth fills you with dismay. A disc harrow and tractor seem needed to penetrate. Suppose you would like to set out some fruit trees, but the place for each tree must be dug and prepared at least 3 feet in diameter, which is a prospect to give you pause. But with the hay treatment it will be easy to prepare these or any areas you wish to plant. (more…)

The hay-scented fern (Dennstaedtia punctilobula, 2-3 ft.) is found in sunny openings in rocky woods where its light green lacy fronds grow in dense masses. It spreads madly, and even when transplanted produces new fronds from underground runners all season. The fronds taper gradually at the tip. When cut, crushed, or dried, the foliage gives off a wonderful sun-on-the-meadow scent.

Interrupted-fern (Osmunda claytoniana, 4 ft.) is very like the cinnamon fern but the identifying feature is its freedom from tuft at the base of the pinnae. On the sporophyll the orderly march of pinnae up the stem is interrupted by a section of twisted curled dark brown spore cases—a most interesting feature and, of course, the reason for its name. Very hardy, very easy, very beautiful.

The lady fern (Athyrium filisfemina, or Asplenium filis-femina, 3 ft.) though delicate to look upon, is tough, and a rank grower. By fall it becomes raggedy and loses its color, but all summer its soft green fronds and feathery look make it a must. The curved fruit dots are one of its identifying features;
also, the pinnae increase in length sharply from the tip of the frond to the base, giving it a triangular look.

Maidenhair fern (Adiantum pedatum, 1-3 ft.) is a delicate, lovely species that grows in rich moist leafy soil. It will be content in a rocky, well-drained location, especially on a steep bank. In the spring the fronds uncurl in small wiry button¬hook designs of a deep magenta color. These fronds open into a sort of semi-circle pattern. The whole effect of the plant suggests, in color and texture, wild columbine, or meadow rue. This is the fern that dances. The fluttering delicate pinnae are ever in motion, so susceptible are they to every breeze. New fronds constantly emerging from the running rootstock produce fresh green foliage from April to September. This is one of the most beautiful of all ferns in its swirling patterns, its rhythms, and dancing grace.
The marsh fern (Dryopteris thelypteris, 2 ft.) grows under the speckled alders, or perhaps you’ll find some plants in a sunny bog among the cattails, facing their fronds helter skelter in any old direction. This is a rampant grower. Its lower pinnate are very long, and the pinnules of the sporophyll appear pointed because of reflexed edges.

The New York fern (Dryopteris noveboracensis, 1-2 ft.), though related to the marsh fern, is different in that the fronds taper at both ends. New Yorkers are said to burn their candles at both ends, hence its name! The fronds, thin in texture, grow erect and are arranged in parallel ranks facing the light. Stems are smooth and scale-free. What a pleasant odor the fern emits when crushed, and what a fine ground-cover it creates, multiplying and spreading rapidly. Look for the fruit dots on the margins of the pinnules. (more…)

The joys and adventures of growing ferns are countless. Being perennial they return year after year. Many ferns thrive in dense shade where few other plants will live. Some are evergreen. Most are easy to grow, requiring literally no care and upkeep. Ferns multiply rapidly, remain lovely all summer, seldom are seriously bothered by insects or diseases. The appeal of a fern lies in the exquisite beauty of its form, texture, and its various shades of subtle foliage color. Incidentally where you have ferns you will also have birds: the furry down that covers the young fern fronds makes ideal nesting material.

If you have but three trees and a little shade, ferns will convert this to a real woods setting, small in scale perhaps, but genuine in feel and atmosphere. Whatever small wooded area they grace, ferns seem to enlarge it. They even bring the feel of woods where no woods exist at all, as when planted on the north side of a wall, in the lea of a building, or in any protected shady place.

What’s more, you can dig almost any fern you need from the wild; few species are on conservation lists. (Check first, just to be sure.) (more…)

We have a real ?primrose path,” with lots and lots of primroses! Although at first you may feel that any large tended planting is incompatible with my constant emphasis on carefree gardening, you’ll soon know it is not. That’s chiefly because primroses are so easy and obliging.

At any rate, it all began one recent April—with spring fever in the air, warmth penetrating the soil, and three delightful primrose plants in a grocery store window. Large and lush and yellow they were as they caught the sunlight that golden morning. It was one of those days when anything could happen and all of it good—but how could I have anticipated where just three primroses would lead?

They traveled home, packed carefully among the butter and carrots and chile sauce. The groceries disappeared in due course. But by the second season those three primroses, planted informally in the wooded area along our brook, had doubled their size and number of blooms. Obviously they liked their environment. In England the hedgerows glow with primroses which receive only ordinary care. Why not have an “English Woods” on our Connecticut acres, with not dozens but hundreds—maybe someday even thousands—of primroses running riot in sweeps, in clusters, and with utter abandon? Why not indeed? (more…)

About a half-century ago Reginald Farrar discovered the butterfly bush or buddleia in Kansu, China. Every June this delightful shrub becomes a purple waterfall of fragrant flowers.

Prune immediately after flowering or by picking the blossom sprays for the house. Plant in a rich, well-drained soil, and sunny location. While the blooms open in profusion in June they also continue the rest of the summer. They attract myriads of butterflies, especially in late autumn, hence the name.

Spirea is another “immigrant” from the Himalayas. From English gardens comes the variety Spirea arguta, the garland spirea, a foolproof hardy sort. Give sun, rich loam, moist location, and in June it is transformed to a tumbling mass of white flowers. The mahogany red seed pods in July are equally attractive. A wicked young woman so beguiled St. Peter with several sprays of meadowsweet, so runs the tale, that he inadvertently let her slip into heaven. Spirea was also a Middle Ages “strewing herb,” and Queen Elizabeth’s favorite. With this they “strewed her chambers withal.”

The Rose of Sharon, originally from Syria, suggests the great hibiscus flowers of the tropics. (more…)

Making A Peaceful Place In Your Garden

You should arrange at least some part of your limited “man-made landscape” to provide an area where you can rest and think, a peaceful observation point. I prefer a natural “planted” space instead of the old-fashioned gazebo garden-house structure. Though we all want some gay flowers and brilliant sunshine, we also need the seclusion of a quiet area, a cool reflective private spot. Here you will almost taste the freshness of the air you breathe. You can listen to the mourning doves, and the phoebe—the wind rustling the maple leaves. Smell the warm dry scent of summer, the fragrance of the lilac drifting on the breeze.

Our own private retreat is a cool shady spot—a hillside above the brook. A hillside and a brook are, of course, not essential. They just happened to be there for us.
Bulldozed level, this terrace hideaway is twenty feet long and fourteen wide. Two spreading maples provide shade. We made a small retaining wall about two stones high (three in some places) to hold back the bank on one side, and hold the land up on the other side. A rope hammock is attached at one end to a cedar post, set for the purpose, and at the other end to one of the maples. (more…)