Down Sacramento way this is how the ladies of The Sacramento Bee make a simple garden fountain when the cookies are baking in the oven. It is well worth watching this 3 minute video on Howcast if you are serious about putting together a garden or tabletop fountain. It is also worth noting that the spokesperson Gwen Schoen omits to tell us two important things: how the water pump gets powered and where the water comes from (is it the same water used over and over?), so you need to ask someone at the craft store, hardware shop or gardening center to explain this when you buy the pump.
Okay, what you need is a water pump, rubber hose, flower pots, a cork, cobble stones, water and water plants. You need a small pot to work in conjunction with a larger pot. You really need to watch the video to get a measure of this. The pump you need should be able to pump water to a height of 12″ to 24″ and the lower pot should be deep enough for you to submerge the pump entirely. This pot must also be one that does not rust or leak. As long as you know how the pump is being powered and where the water comes from, making this simple garden fountain should be a breeze — if you follow Gwen’s video closely.
Are the hose pipes in your yard a muddy, tangled mess? Anne McMahon from Yardlover.com says there is a solution to this problem. What about hose pots! She describes hose pots as “a beautiful solution to an ugly problem.”
Using a hose pot you are placing a pot around the “neck” of your hose and storing the tail of it within the pot. The head part feeds through a hole in the side of a pot leading to the faucet. These pots remind me of the type of containers occupied by the snakes of snake charmers in India. They are beautiful. The ones Anne shows are made of resin or metal. They are certainly a lot nicer looking than a piled up and forgotten hose.
Humans are notoriously inert. Will the type of person who allows a hosepipe to hang around the yard develop into a paragon of efficiency who will painstakingly coil the hose into the pot after use? I’m not sure. It’s a well-meant idea anyway. Take a look at the 1 min, 16 second and make a snap decision about whether hose pots are for you.
2-year gardening veteran Peggy Robertson believes that gardening is great relaxation and a wonderful way to give something back tot he planet. Here in an Expert Village video (1 min, 45 secs) she talks about selecting the right size pot for a plant. It is something you can really only appreciate with visual assistance, so make sure and look at the video.
Essentially the plant should be happy and thriving and filling the space at the top of the pot. It should also show off the pot to its best advantage. So a plant that is too big for its pot will look miserable and the leaves will be yellowing. The plant will overwhelm the pot and no soil will be visible when you try to move the leaves to see it. A plant that is too small for its pot will be lost in the large space above the pot, inviting the question: “Gosh, what else are you planning to plant in there?” There will be lots of soil still showing. So a happy compromise is what you are after. Plants in pots should be visually pleasing, that’s the main thing.
Bonsai master Mike Hansen, owner of Midwest Bonsai, gives a potted lesson for total beginners in this 2 min, 11 sec video on Expert Village. Mike is a diffident man that has spent most of his life tending to these miniature trees. It is worth listening to his quiet, gentle expertise.
Mike puts the viewer right on three important points. The first is that “805 of bonsai trees that die, die from lack of watering.” It is not being small that kills these little trees, but sheer thirst. Mike points out that bonsai potting soil is quite coarse. It is not meant to retain water. At best, the soil in a bonsai pot will hold water for no more than a day and maybe less at the height of summer.
Another point Mike makes is that many beginner bonsai growers put their little potted trees on the window sill, TV or coffee table and then are disappointed when the tree dies. Mike says: “In fact, bonsai trees are outdoor plants. They would do better on the patio — which is not to say they couldn’t do with some protection.” Mike cautions against “loving your bonsai to death — literally.”
Mike reminds us that bonsai trees are small because they are pruned to be that way, and not because of hunger! “So make sure they have enough water, fertilizer, fresh and air sunshine.”
Wise words about bonsai from Mike Hansen, who is someone that knows.
Jose Zuriga doesn’t know a thyme plant from a basil plant (he confuses the two in this video – check it out) but he manages to convey some useful information anyway in 2 mins, 23 seconds. This video is part of a video series entitled “How to grow a herb garden indoor or outdoor.”
Essentially you plant an indoor herb garden in pots, one to several plants per pot. Fill each pot halfway with organic soil, then loosen the plant’s roots by squeezing the nursery bag. Take the plug of soil out gently and transplant it to the pot. Build up soil gently around it and then tamp it down firmly.
The big message here is that you should not over-water your potted herb plants. They don’t like being swamped. They want well-drained soil. And if you are keeping them in your kitchen, don’t put them anywhere near the stove or they will get burned to death.
Here’s Tomato Gardening for Dummies, or Tomato Planting 101.
The blurb says: “Are farm stand tomatoes still not fresh enough for you? If so, then you will probably want to grow your own. There are many varieties of tomatoes and the good news is that you do not have to choose just one.”
It sounds promising but all you really get to see is a tousled lady sitting in an ancient armchair in a garden shed (one assumes this is a garden shed as this is a gardening show. It might be her house for all we know.)
And yet some interesting things emerged from the video, such as an insight into what made the early tomato breeders tick. Some of the extraordinary names they called the old classic varieties include Brandy Wine, Burpees, Green Zebra and Zorba — not a single one of which makes you think “tomato.” In fact, they make you think “disease,” as they are highly susceptible to tomato sicknesses.
The number of modern hybrid tomato varieties available is startling. You get plum, cherry, stewing, drying, bottling, salad — and all of them are disease-resistant (bred for resistance) and many of them bear fruit all year round. Get advice from your nursery before buying a selection of plants. And — this is important — when buying the plants you should buy the staking materials you will need. It’s best to have the stakes in place before the vines grow, then train them up the stakes as they grow.
Our Lady of the Shed says you can use things like hockey sticks and fishing rods (?) to stake your tomatoes but you should avoid your garden looking like a junkyard.
This is a short, sweet introduction to planting bulbs with a superscript that says: “Bulbs are a great way to add colour to your garden all year round. Charlie Dimmock shows you how to spot a good bulb and how best to plant them.” Well, I though Charlie would be a knobbled-fingered man but it turned out to be a redheaded lady kneeling in an overgrown garden in England somewhere.
Charlie told me several things I never knew about bulbs. First, you get the hardy and non-hardy types, so ask you garden center about which is which. Second, “bulbs” is a misnomer. They are either corms or tubers. Third, you plant begonia corms with the hollow side facing up. Fourth, a healthy corm is fat, round and hard (like a good garlic bulb). Fifth, you plant bulbs at three times their depth. Sixth, if you have heavy clay soil put a layer of grit at the bottom of the hole to prevent the bulbs lying in moisture. And seventh, you plant summer-flowering bulbs in early spring and winter-flowering bulbs in early autumn.
It was well worth spending a couple of minutes seeing how it’s done.
Soilman, the presenter on this video, could stand only 58 seconds of demonstration. The reason for this was a large bag of chickensh..t. Yes, that’s what it takes to really get your compost heap into the stratosphere. Soilman, a gardener of British origin judging from his accent and sense of humor, opened the bagfull of chickensh..t his Mom donated him — “Thanks, Mum,” he said — and with visible paroxysms of revulsion emptied the bag into the compost bin. Reeling, he managed to say: “Anything that smells that bad must be good.”
Soilman then advised that you need to spread it all around, and then tried to follow his own counsel, but was unable to do so. “I can’t really,” he said in a strangled voice, “It’s all congealed and disgusting. The smell is outrageous.” He staggered backward from the bin and then rallied somewhat to deliver this parting shot was: “It (chickensh..t) is packed full of nitrogen so don’t put it on anything until it has rotted down well or it will burn the plants. You have been warned.”
I just love Kimmie Haworth of the National Gardening Association. Apart from having a nice rosy complexion, she is irreverent. Lots of her gardening videos are quite tongue in cheek, such as the one about a hundred ways to control snails.
In this video (just over 1 minute long) Kimmie talks about something I would never have thought would justify a video of any duration at all — garden gloves. According to the inimitable Kimmie, “A gardening girl can never have enough gloves.”
Okay.
She then goes on to show that all you need are two pairs of gloves: one pair made of leather or thick material for working out in the garden with thorns and foliage and stuff, and a neoprene pair for working with chemicals (not rubber, not plastic, not latex) because neoprene prevents chemicals from penetrating the glove and getting through to your skin.
Then Kimmie washes her hands of the whole subject by illustrating how you should clean your dirty garden gloves. Why, you just wash them with them still on your hands, just like you wash your hands, even using a handwash liquid, then spray them off with the hosepipe. Take them off and let them dry so they are ready to use next time.
Gardenmagik spokesperson Melissa Allman says there are two types of folks in the South: those who plant their own tomatoes and those who will plant their own tomatoes. This is an 8 min, 7 second “audio visual” (Melissa talking to camera) giving us a kind of overview of tomato planting for amateurs.
Prospective tomato growers need to consider your garden size when thinking about planting tomatoes as the bushes can be determinate or indeterminate. This refers to their size. Determinate vines are predictable. You know how big they will be. But the indeterminate types can be really huge — only you don’t know just how huge! They might need caging or staking.
You also have to decide what size fruits you want. You get the small cherry / grape sized fruits and then at the other extreme some types that can weigh 5 – 7 lbs! And when do you want your tomato plants to bear fruit? Their are spring types, summer types and autumn types.
Melissa says it’s better to prepare the soil in the fall when you can plant other crops. The soil needs to be acidic (pH about 6.5) but it’s good to add lime when getting the soil ready. This is really important for the calcium that tomatoes need so much. A lack of calcium leads to all kinds of disorders, from rotting fruit through to leaf curl.
When planting tomato plants you need to fertilize the soil at a ratio of 15:15:15, referring to Nitrogen, Phosphorous and Potassium. As the plants grow you can change the ratio to 5:10:15. Melissa says that too much nitrogen might hinder the plant’s ability to absorb calcium — this you don’t want to do.
