Forgetfulness in the Garden

As soon as it was warm enough, I was out in the garden digging around. I had a few hardy perennial seeds to put out, and decided last year to consolidate two or three beds into one big one so still had a few things to move. There was also a tall, floppy sedum that

the consequences of bad (read: no) garden planning

The sedum ended up on top of a hosta. Now I’ll spend the summer seeing which one dominates.

needed to go from the center of the garden to the outskirts.

Anyway, there was almost immediately a problem: not everything was up and I had exactly zero markers. Deciding to rely on memory alone (yes, yes, laugh if you must), I planted some asparagus, moved the sedum, scattered some rudbeckia seeds, built a grape arbor, and moved some raspberry plants.

When it became obvious that markers are a necessity in my garden, I started researching different ways to make them (because of course I don’t want to buy them — that would be money that could be spent on plants!) There are some great ideas out there, and I just happened to have a bag of old silverware.

Flattening spoons and stamping names of plants on them seemed like a lot of work, so I decided to just stick them utensils in the ground next to the plants as they came up. Forks marked the hostas, for example. Immediately, my husband started listing off all the reasons this was a terrible idea (mostly he thought the dogs would pull the silverware up and scatter it all over the yard and make mowing hazardous). I ignored him and proceeded to plant spoons and forks all over the garden.

A couple of hours later, I was walking around, staring at the ground, looking for anything new popping up (I spend hours doing this every spring), and noticed that a fork was missing. The inevitable “I told you so!” was not long in coming…but then I found the fork — buried all the way in the ground. Someone had stepped on it!

Clearly ONE piece of flatware would not do the trick. The next week I planted a small

Spoon markers

Spoon markers

patch of onions, and used spoons to outline it.

While this works great for the onions, it’s not really practical for each hosta, coneflower, peony, and other perennial in my garden. The search for effective, attractive, and free markers continues!

Belle’s suggestions:
Try knives and write on them with a paint pen or a bit less attractive but  functional: plastic slats from window blinds and write on them with nail polish pens.

 

 

It’s Just Chives Talking

First, I must make an admission: I don’t have cats. I have birds and dogs and fish, so adding a cat to the mix would be…chaotic. Or, perhaps I should say, even more chaotic. Even though I don’t have cats myself, several friends do so I know about the difficulties cat owners face when trying to start seeds indoors.

cat smelling a pot of seedlings

Sparky checking out the seedlings

There are several ways to deter your cat from digging around in your seed trays, or eating your plants after they sprout. One of the most obvious is to enclose your seed trays or planting medium. There are miniature greenhouse-type seed trays available for purchase — the kind with a domed lid that snaps on and off. You can also recycle things like plastic cake trays and other disposable food containers that come with a clear plastic lid.

The problem with the domed lid approach is that, eventually, your seedlings will need to be uncovered — at just the time the tiny plants will look like a most tender salad to your cat! What do you do then?

Many people use old aquariums. You can put the aquarium in a sunny spot and put a screen over the top. Your plants will get the light they need, air circulation, and the screen is easy to remove when you need to add water.

Reading various forum threads, I came across one creative cat owner who uses a baker’s rack and a mattress bag to start her seeds. When a mattress is delivered, it comes wrapped in a big, clear, plastic bag. Put the seeds on trays on the baker’s rack in front of a window, put the mattress bag over the whole rack, then use binder clips to pull the bag taut and secure it.  A small fan can be rotated from shelf to shelf and turned on for a couple of hours each day to provide necessary air circulation.

Other creative enclosure methods include using cages — such rabbit or small bird cages, building shelves, using chicken wire, or putting your seed trays in a room with a door and closing the kitties out (although this could well lead to pitiful meowing for a few days).

If an enclosure simply will not work in your situation, you might try deterring your feline with scent. Citrus peelings are supposed to be off-putting for cats, though you will need to change them often so the smell will always be strong. There is also a commercially available spray called Ssscat Spray.

Another tactic is to make the seed starting set-up unattractive to cats. For instance, cats don’t like to walk on anything that feels unstable, so putting marbles, rocks, or seashells in areas where the cat would have to walk may convince them to back off. Usually, this is a good way to keep cats out of larger, well-established houseplants.

The retail product Scat Mat serves the same basic purpose, emitting a harmless, low-power pulse when touched. Some people use bamboo skewers or toothpicks to create a barrier. Simply push a toothpick in next to each seed so that it sticks up out of the soil like a spike. Cats don’t like to walk on spikes!

One word of caution: some people suggest using pepper or pepper spray to keep cats away. However, if the pepper gets on a paw, then the cat licks the paw and rubs its eye…well, you can imagine how pepper in your eye would feel. Stick with a squirt of air or water, please 🙂

 

Growing Grapes: A Beginners Perspective

Guest column written by Dava Stewart

For several years, I looked at grape vines in seed catalogs. I read about raising them, and

seedless red grapes

Seedless grapes, variety Mars

felt my skills might not be up to the task. Then, four years ago, my dad brought me a plastic bag with a bare vine in it. I have no idea how long it was in the bag before he brought it, but it took me a few days to get around to planting it. My hopes were not high.

But, that spring, it turned green and started growing like crazy. I had a gate from an old chain link fence and stuck it in the garden for the grape vine to climb. That first year, it covered the gate, and seemed happy and healthy.

The next spring came along, and the grape vine continued to thrive. After a little more reading, I did some careful pruning. I went out and checked every couple of weeks to see if there were any flowers or evidence of impending grapes.There never was. I read some more. My dad expressed the opinion that the galvanized fencing on the old gate was bad, and that’s why there were no grapes. Belle has since explained to me that grape vines have to be 2-3 years old before they begin producing.

Third year: I took the vine off the gate and planned to move it to a different location (it was a year of moving the entire garden). The key word in that last sentence is “planned.” The move never happened. As summer ended, I found three fat, sweet grapes on the vine! It was sprawling everywhere, tangled with grass and weeds, and in a completely messy area of old garden. There may have been more than three grapes, and I just couldn’t find them for all the mess.

This spring the story of my grape vine will continue. Maybe moving it (finally!) won’t mean three more grape-less years. But if that’s the case, so be it. Watching for grapes is almost as much fun as eating them!

 

Dreaming of Spring

Guest column written by Dava Stewart
In Chattanooga, around the end of February and beginning of March, we usually start having random days of perfect weather. The definition of perfect, in this case, is a temperature  between 68 and 73 degrees Fahrenheit, a sky that is a shade of blue that ice and waterfallmakes you want to sing, gentle breezes that tickle instead of cut…

On such days, I want to clean up my flower beds, rake all the leaves away, and start moving and planting. But it’s a bad idea. Our average last frost day is April 15, which means there are going to be several frosts and often even a hard freeze or two between the last week of February and when it’s really safe to plant any tender perennials or annuals.

During March, we also see daffodils budding (and sometimes even blooming!), azaleas and cherry trees bursting with color, and a whole host of perennials coming up. Right now, I have some daylilies, iris, and succulents coming up. None of them will bloom until at least late May, but they are already growing.

Some years, the frosts through March are mild enough that the early flowers are unaffected. Other years, they get absolutely zapped. It’s sad to see a whole patch of daffodils with blooms drooping to the ground, as if they’ve been beaten down, or an azalea with brown edges on all the blooms. But then again, that is what life does to all of us, right? We live through the hard times and bear the scars.

Anyway, there is no other time of year that affects my gardener’s heart quite the same way early spring does. I’m full of hope, trepidation, optimism, fear, and excitement.