Showing posts with label garden. Show all posts
Showing posts with label garden. Show all posts
Friday, March 7, 2014
Using intensive planting techniques as well as crop rotation small garden Design can be successfully achieved. Yields are high when plants are closely spaced. By growing early, mid and late season vegetables in the same space, maximum yield is realized from minimum space.
Its amazing how much you can grow in a small space if you plant intensively and continue to plant in the same space as the seasons change.
The following is a basic plan for a compact, easily workable 4-by-4-foot garden. It can yield delicious vegetables during the growing season, and provide color and interest throughout all four seasons. Although this small garden Design is only 4-by-4-feet, it can seem quite large when preparing the soil for the first time.
The garden needs at least six hours of sun a day, including mid-day sun, so choice of site is very important. This is not meant to be a hard-and-fast small garden Design but a guide for planting a high-yield garden. Other vegetables can be substituted for those Designated.
A great space saver is vertical planting. The plan calls for a fence bordering the northern end of the garden. This makes the best use of available space by training plants upward instead of allowing them to sprawl.
Even early in the year, the garden is productive and attractive. Spring flowering bulbs precede vegetables. Bulb planting is done in the fall.
As spring progresses, sugar snap peas climb the fence. Two broccoli plants are surrounded by Johnny jump-ups. Broccoli is the only edible that stays in the garden throughout the growing season. After the central head is cut, smaller heads form on side shoots. Lettuce is attractive in any garden. New Zealand spinach is a good, heat-tolerant substitute for regular spinach. Beets or carrots interplant well with radishes. Radishes grow quickly, ready to eat in about three weeks, and help loosen the soil for the deeper-root vegetables.
As the weather gets hotter, the early cool-season vegetables start to peter out, and are replaced with mid-season vegetables started from seed indoors or bought from a nursery or garden center. The only exception is the pole or runner beans that trellis up the fence, which grow so quickly they do not need to be started ahead of time. Sharing the fence with the beans is a tomato plant. A warm-weather variety of lettuce planted near the beans and tomatoes is slightly shaded from the harsh summer sun by the vining leaves. Nasturtium fit well between the broccoli plants. There is room for an eggplant and a sweet or hot pepper centered with a clump of chives. The front of the warm-season garden is reserved for low-growing herbs and edible flowers. Dwarf marigold and dianthus add color, spice, and even a measure of pest control to the garden.
As the weather begins to cool, the garden undergoes its final transformation. Tomatoes are left, as they will keep producing. I might sneak in a pumpkin of a very small variety along the fence. Chrysanthemums are a traditional autumnal plant.
Although this is a small garden Design, it contains the basics for an attractive landscape that will last several seasons each year. The rewards for growing your own vegetables are great, not only in terms of money saved at the market, but in pride of achievement.
Thursday, March 6, 2014
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| Signs that Teach |
Another great McKinleyville asset that just needs a little love is the Morris Elementary School Garden. There always seems to be just one parent at a time that takes the project by the reins and takes it as far as one can, which is apparently unsustainable. Just as in school, in the school garden, there needs to be some structure and there needs to be some literature, including a design.
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| Morris Elementary School Garden--McKinleyville, California |
I would love to see the rosemary consolidated into a well clipped hedge outside of the raised beds and to have the raised beds generally dedicated to growing food with the bed nearest the entrance a mixture of vegetables, herbs and ornamental plantings. I like display gardens to have at least one element that displays a common, fast growing, preferably edible, inexpensive plant that may be utilized to create garden architecture.
The stockpile of broken concrete could be used to create a small terrace with thyme in between the cracks. A sign recommending the use of recycled materials for garden paving and citing the ecological benefits of maximizing the use of permeable paving in our environment educates gardeners and garden visitors on one solution to mitigate two common ecological problems, storm water runoff and waste. Permeable paving may also be achieved utilizing freshly poured concrete by creating regular gaps in the paving for "green grout" a/k/a tough plantings that can be driven or walked over. These "green grout" strips allow the storm water runoff to be filtered by the plants and soil instead of just running off into storm drains. Educational signage will give the garden additional structure as well as educate garden visitors and gardeners alike.
A Woolyschoolgarden would be a smart addition to this garden, bringing the garden beyond the chain link fence yet still within the fenced in school yard, making it seem more accessible to parents and kids coming and going to and from school. It would also be a good educational element, which references vertical gardening as a small space solution and also a solution for gardeners who lack the mobility necessary to garden in low beds.
I would love to see a few fruiting trees espaliered along the south facing school house wall or along some of the chainlink bordering the west side of the garden. This could be another educational element of the garden, which references the history and techniques of espaliered trees as well as identifying it as a small planting space solution.
Creating a garden with an educational component like signage, utilizing unique gardening techniques, using eco-friendly hardscape elements and drafting a planting plan and garden design will bring the Morris Elementary School Garden to another level.
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| Childrens Gardening Educational Play Area |
Tuesday, March 4, 2014
We continue to provide you advice about the wonderful garden style. Is a difficult matter to style the garden. I begin to plan in your mind, but as you can think about a lot with increasing or not, lets do this from the begining. This can aggravate and damage your exhausted and your garden. Inside not to face such circumstances, do the first examination. A few talk about the style, it is kafanızdakiyle evaluate and decide. Do not hurry instantly to be rejoined with its wonderful garden. You can be sure youll provide right choice to take our recommendations into consideration. Now we offer a wonderful garden, with illustrations of components of style that are required. Be able to get a choice is made more precise options. Best of success.
Can make a little hut in a part of your garden. Thus, while experiencing the garden does not need to set off, go. Style of the hut there is a good way to make everything youve developed. A good example for those who want a garden with pool. Features of water to be liquid, allowing the sound of water created a relaxed and relaxing relax in a garden sitting area yaşayabilirsiniz.Ahşap components. You can modify for yourself of such areas. You do not necessarily have to perform with wood components. Now, the relax continues to be in your creativeness.Garden is little, so do not get worried, these styles will be like. This is a little garden, creativeness is very lovely as He was made by the user. Designed with vibrant blossoms around a little pond of drinking water and placed on top of a little decorative connection.
It is June and my Long Island garden is at its prime with blooms of peony, roses and salvia alongside colorful evergreen shrubs in shades of blue and gold. The peony are displaying the largest blooms I have ever seen and the roses are blooming profusely and it all seems to have happened almost overnight. The gardens were set back later than I have ever experienced with the occurrence of Hurricane Sandy in November of 2012 followed by a noreaster a week later and a winter blizzard in 2013. The gardens seemed like they would never recover but as the temperatures finally started to warm into the 70s and the rains came down in May rather than April the gardens have come to life once more and are doing just fine.
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June Perennial Garden
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| Paeony Karl Rosenfeld |
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| Evergreen and Perennial Garden |
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| Raised Garden Berm |
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| Roses and Chives |
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| Siberian Iris |
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| Double Knock Out Rose Red |
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| Peony and Salvia |
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| Salvia May Night |
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| Double Knock Out Rose and Nepeta |
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| Paeony Karl Rosenfeld I hope the gardens continue on this track for the remainder of the summer and into the fall. Its funny how "Mother Nature" works. They seem to have re-adjusted themselves and are now back on schedule to this gardeners delight. I am looking forward to what is yet to come. As Always...Happy Gardening! Author: Lee@A Guide To Northeastern Gardening, Copyright 2013. All rights reserved  |
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