|
|
Nacent yellow squash
Originally uploaded by McBeth
If you’ve ever grown a vegetable garden, then you know that some plants depend on insects for pollination. For example, female squash blossoms are often open for pollination for only a day or so, and if they’re not pollinated, they’re wasted. You can always get to work with a tiny paintbrush and make sure the flowers get the pollen they need, but a better way to avoid losing potential fruit is to borrow or rent a hive of bees from a beekeeper. You’ll end up with an amazing amount of most vegetables, and while it won’t be as sweet as tupelo honey, the beekeeper will get plenty of liquid gold from his hive of busy little employees.
Popularity: 4% [?]
Morgan Raking Leaves
Originally uploaded by poplinre
Did you know that gardening is good exercise? It’s true. Just raking leaves can burn as many as 240 calories an hour, though experts warn that you should take it easy when you start; if you’re not accustomed to the activity, you can injure yourself. A little stretching is recommended first. Other standard gardening activities can burn anywhere from 120 to 200 calories an hour, and they tend to be a lot more productive, in the long run, than running on a treadmill, climbing flight after flight of imaginary stairs, or rowing to nowhere. After all, you end up with fresh veggies and flowers for your trouble, not to mention a slimmer body.
Popularity: 12% [?]
Compost piles are great, and you can make them entirely organic by creating a compost enclosure from bales of hay — the small rectangular kind, not the half-ton round ones. It doesn’t take an architectural talent to make a hay-bale enclosure, just an ability to stack a few bales in straight lines. As long as you don’t have curious animals digging in the compost, hay bales are good enough to delineate the bin and keep your compost where it belongs. You don’t need anything special; the cheapest hay bales at the feed store will be fine. The best part? As the hay bales decompose, you can just add them to your compost heap and get new ones.
Popularity: 4% [?]
Venison may be tasty, but many of us balk at dispatching the deer that nibble at our suburban flower gardens. Unfortunately, in many areas deer populations aren’t controlled, so deer have acquired the nickname “rats with antlers.” They’ve been known to strip gardens from ground level to as high as they can reach on trees. To avoid that without actually harming the deer or dousing your plants with distasteful chemicals, try planting deer-resistant garden vegetation. Attractive deer-proof flowers include hellebores, bloodroot (both single and double varieties), and primulas, most of which work well in shady, semi-wooded gardens. Small trees such as fig, flameleaf sumac, mountain laurel, and roughleaf dogwood are similarly deer-resistant, as are shrubs like algarita, dwarf yaupon, boxwood, and oleander.
Popularity: 4% [?]
Purple Martins 2
Originally uploaded by Second City Warehouse
It’s hard to beat birds and bats for insect control. For example, purple martins and their relatives are excellent pest controllers, and they’re so used to living in human-supplied birdhouses that they often prefer them to natural nests. Don’t hesitate to erect one or two purple martin houses if you’d like to keep your backyard free of pests, but don’t make the mistake of offering them feeders, or they won’t keep the insects down. For round-the-clock pest control, provide bats with comfortable bat-houses to shelter in, and they’ll handle the bugs at night that the martins don’t get during the day. It won’t hurt to give the local toads a few damp places to hang out, too, so they can help with ground-level nocturnal insect control.
Popularity: 6% [?]
Garden Wasp
Originally uploaded by LoneQuark
Wasps and hornets aren’t just annoying, they can be deadly to those who are allergic to them. Short of using nasty pesticides to kill them, you can try to spray them away with water or pepper spray — but be prepared to run if they identify you as the source of their misery. Unfortunately, even if you drive them away they might come back. One way to arouse their territorial instincts is to hang up an artificial “decoy” wasp nest that will drive them away when they see it; wasps will think it’s an enemy nest. Commercial wasp nest decoys are available, or you can try painting a crumpled paper bag gray and hanging it up where wasps are a problem.
You can also try out a chemical free wasp trap.
Popularity: 9% [?]
Garlic and hot pepper sprays make effective organic pest repellants — and you can make them yourself. Chop the vegetables up with water in a blender, then strain out the juice and dilute the resulting solution with water to the desired concentration. It’ll work just fine in a hand-sprayer.
Any garlic spray will fade but still repel insects which are some sensitive to the odors.
Popularity: 4% [?]
Killer Gecko
Originally uploaded by braddah karl
While there’s any number of organic pesticides that you can use to kill insects in your home — or at least discourage them from entering — you’re not limited to passive organic solutions. Consider investing in a gecko lizard for insect control. In some areas, you can find geckos haunting exterior walls during the night, hunting for bugs. If there are no local gecko populations in your area, go to a pet store and look for a Tokay gecko, a native of Southeast Asia. If you let the critter loose in your house, it’ll hide away during the day and patrol nightly for insects, including roaches, ants, silverfish, and centipedes. If your gecko is too efficient, you may have to let some crickets loose for it to eat. It’s recommended that you don’t get a breeding pair, as their loud, barking mating calls may disturb you.
Popularity: 11% [?]
Even if you like dogs, you don’t want them digging in your garden. Keep in mind, then, that dogs are attracted to ripe odors like rotting vegetation or fish. If you decide to use fish products, seaweed, or similar items for fertilizer, a sturdy fence is recommended for your garden. Otherwise, work your fertilizer into the soil fairly quickly after you spread it, and if it’s particularly smelly, make sure it’s buried deep; otherwise you’re likely to have canine visitors eager to find that interesting smell. Wild animals such as skunks, opossums, and raccoons may also come looking for a free meal, especially if the fertilizer is fish-based, and it’s harder to keep them out unless you use wire fencing with a small mesh, and bury the bottom of the fencing well below the surface of the ground.
Popularity: 10% [?]
Photo by Kent Swanson
Perennial plants make great additions to organic gardens, since you don’t have to worry about planting new seed every year. Flowers that depend on corms or bulbs, such as irises, canna lilies, daffodils, and tulips, will be determined to come back yearly no matter what you do; similarly, seed-droppers like four-o’clocks will be sure to leave enough seeds to return come spring, as long as they live long enough to bud out. Be careful with perennials, however, because their very nature makes them extremely competitive. Many will spread to all parts of your garden if given the opportunity. Members of the mint family are especially aggressive. To keep them in their place, erect impenetrable underground barriers, or practice judicious hand thinning.
Here are some on-line resources to help you grow a great perennial garden:
-University of Illinois Perennial Gardening Guide
-Flower Gardening Tips
Popularity: 3% [?]
« Previous Entries Next Entries »
|
|
