Somewhere down in Texas one winter, a man looked at the camera to tell us about the two types of irrigation you can use for your raised garden bed. According to the man with the winter grass stretching out behind him, compliments of ExpertVillage and YouTube, you can have Precision Button Irrigation (for directing water to a specific area) and Laser Drip Irrigation (for soaking a wide area).
Button irrigation involves small pipes leading off a main hose with a button at the base to control the flow of dripping water. Laser irrigation is a long, thin pipe with laser holes drilled all over it allowing water to leak all over the required area. If you want a short visit down south for some contrasting visuals and some very basic information, spend 1 minute, 53 seconds checking out Mr. “Lone Star” Irrigation.
Here’s a video with a weird provenance. It features a lady in Trono Zoo, Canada telling us how to fling together a flower container in a basket that will last all spring and summer long. Thing is, the video was posted on LiveVideopedia by someone called Shaktee in Israel. The internet is truly a wonderful thing.
Optimism is the watchword of this 2:32 minute video. The botanical expert (Jennifer Reynolds, Landscape Designer and Editor-in-Chief of Canadian family magazine) grabs a basket, lines it with plastic, punches some holes in the bottom, fills it with potting soil containing a coconut primer and lots of additives, and then proceeds to put bulbs, shrubs, perennials and annuals, even roses, into the basket to create what can be politely described as a patchwork arrangement of colors and textures. Ms Reynolds says that all we need to do is add liquid fertilizer so that the basket lasts all season long like that — healthy, colorful and verdant. Maybe in Trono Zoo but not in my house or garden.
At 40 seconds, this little tomato plant selection guide is short and sweet. You get two types of tomato plant: vine and bush. Some are big, some are small. Consider the size area available before buying a tomato plant. If you have very little space, consider choosing cherry tomatoes. Above all, ask the experts at the garden center before making a decision.
Seeing a couple of survivalists and their bad old truck somewhere way out in the country where they have cultivated squashes and zucchinis raises all sorts of questions. If these people had to live off the land, why would they want to live at all? They seem to live such tortured, suspicious lives as it is. An international conflagration is what they live for. What would be left for them if it actually happened?
Anyway, this country boy tells us that tinned food and MRE’s (Standard USG issued, preprocessed enclosed meal, including a balanced mix of foods, for consumption during wartime by US troops) is all very well but what if you have to feed yourself for six months? A year? Two years? A vegetable patch is the answer. The video shows how the squash and zucchinis grow practically wild in a field. They are affordable and a certain number are kept for seed production. Seems a bit of a sad idea really, planting vegetables for Armageddon.
Melinda Myers, a.k.a. The Plant Doctor (for Birds and Blooms magazine) makes successful seed sowing look easy. As Melinda says, growing plants from seeds is a great opportunity to try new and unique varieties that aren’t available at the garden center. But you need to sow the seeds properly. Melinda observes (rightly in my case) that one might not have had seed success in the past. But she offers three tips that should get me off to a good start in the spring.
First, always use a sterilized container, either purpose-built seed trays from the garden center or from last year’s gardening, or empty plastic containers. The important thing is to sterilize them by washing them in 1 part disinfectant to 9 parts water. Or you can use biodegradable pots.
Second, you fill your seed container with sterilized container mix. Plant the seeds according to instructions and water them softly and gradually with a gentle stream so that the seeds don’t get washed away. keep the soil damp at all times.
Third, watch the environment. If the seed trays are not in a greenhouse, keep them in a warm place. Some seed trays come with plastic covers attached to help keep the plants warm. You could even consider putting down a purpose-made heating mat under the trays.
Here’s an optimistic video for those whose lawnmower blades are suspected to be blunt. Fred Olson, of Olson’s Saw Shop in Eugene, Oregon, who has been sharpening blades for 30 years, shows us how. The video blurb says “sharpening lawn mower blades will make cutting your yard easy and give better results. Learn how to sharpen your gardening tools with these video instructions.”
No, you need a lot more than video instructions. You need to know how to get it out of the lawnmower in the first place and then you need that heavy duty industrial sharpener and a tradesman of Fred’s caliber to sharpen the blade and balance it. Then it’s easy. The unspoken message here is that you need an expert with the proper tools if the job is to be done. Nevertheless watch the video. It’s great to see how Fred makes it look.
Melinda Myers, a.k.a. The Plant Doctor (for Birds and Blooms Magazine), was asked for her choice of 5 Must-Have Garden Tools. She came up with the following:
1. Bypass pruners (the small hand-type)
2. Loppers (these are long pruners for reaching high branches)
3. Neverdull scissors (great for dead-heading plants)
4. Cast aluminum trowel (never rusts and is well-shaped for easy use)
5. An intriguingly-shaped weed remover, a so-called cobra hoe
Melinda couldn’t resist throwing in collapsible weed-carriers and a gathering basket with a wire bottom “so you can wash of the harvest right there in the basket, in the garden.” Take a look at the video. Some of these products you might never have known existed!
Somewhere in England there is an attractive woman called Claire who has an allotment and an insatiable desire to tell us what she grows there and how she goes about it. In this — Part 9 in the Claire’s Allotment series — Claire takes 5 minutes to show us how to avoid carrot fly in carrots and onion fly in onions. You simply plant onions and carrots together in one bed. This is because onion flies hate the smell of carrots and carrot flies hate the smell of onions. Therefore the flies stay away in droves.
You plant the little onion bulbs (you buy them ready to plant) and the carrot seeds in rows (“drills” they call rows in England) about 3″ to 4″ apart, with the rows themselves a little further apart — about 8″ to 12″. Remember to turn the soil over really well, breaking up the clods and removing the stones, as carrots need soft soil to grow. If they hit a rock or a hard place they tend to produce “prongs” and then you get carrots that look like alien vegetable matter. For the record, Claire quite likes these extraordinarily shaped carrots…
Eric of www.gardenfork.tv fame is here to teach us about growing carrots but, as usual, it’s a bit of a cookie affair involving two labradors, a frisbee and the Invisible Witch of the Woods who I would REALLY love to see one day. Eric does not claim to be any kind of carrot farmer or even carrot gardener. In fact, he makes it clear that, in his view, planting carrots is not a financially sensible thing to do. They cost $.99 a bunch down at the store and $4 a packet of seeds. Why would you go through all the labor and difficulty just to feed carrots to a horse? Don’t know.
Eric is some kind of stoked gardener. He actually gives very detailed lessons about THINGS HE KNOWS NOTHING ABOUT and yet it can be more-ish viewing. One finds oneself wondering: is he stoked? is he tired? is he hungover? is he trying to be funny? is he really funny? what is he doing? Don’t go here to learn anything at all about carrot growing. But do go to spend a bit of time with a weird couple, their dogs, a dog toy, a lake and a reading from Monty Don, a writer who really does know about carrots and a lot else besides.
No, this is NOT a video about snails that are really controlling, insisting that you take out the trash and be in by a certain time and stuff like that. To the contrary. This is an overview of the variety of measures available to discourage snails and slugs in your garden by killing them. Sadly, there is not silver bullet for getting rid of those destructive critters once and for all. If there were, this lady would have told us so.
Kimmie Haworth of the National Gardening Association talks like someone whose life’s mission is to control snails. She really hates them, and gets really excited when talking about how these silent menaces just love the wet weather “cos they can slide around in your garden eating all the goodies out of your plants.”
Kimmie recommends a whole armory of products and techniques for controlling snails. Note that this video is not called “Getting Rid of Snails Permanently.” A pity.
Kimmie says you can use chemical grains or pellets, liquids, organic substances (I love the one called Sluggo – isn’t that a great name?) or salt. I get the feeling Kimmie is saying that snails and slugs are so persistent that you had better use all of these at once. Or you can make snails feel completely uncomfortable and totally unwelcome by casting crushed eggshells or fireplace ashes around the garden. Kimmie says: “Snails don’t like rough things on their feet.” Feet? Oh well.
Kimmie even mentions salt as a snail and slug control measure but concedes that the results are “psychadelic.”
Finally, Kimmie says plain violence will also work. “Snails like to hide under things,” she says, seizing a pottery bowl. “Such as for instance under this. So lift things to find them and then..” Kimmie puts down the bowl and squirms it around a bit. “..squeeze them to death.” Wow, Kimmie, you really ARE controlling…
