Arrangements for Early Spring

Okay, all you parents and grandparents, it’s time to garden with your beloved little ones. That’s right, start them young, make it fun, and they will garden forever. The key part is fun. Never make a child pull weeds. Digging in the dirt is fun. Playing with a hose or a watering can is fun. Picking flowers and eating cherry tomatoes warm from the sun is lots of fun.

 

When my grandchildren were small, I created little gardens at my house for them. I used boards to create distinct little beds, one for each. What size? I made them their height by their wingspan – the span of their arms – about three and a half feet square. I actually had them lie on the lawn with their arms out to set the dimensions. That’s good for a giggle.

 

The boards were just six inches wide, and were made of ordinary lumber – definitely not of pressure treated boards, which even now are full of chemicals, albeit not as toxic as those produced when pressure treated lumber first came out. But remember, they will not be that size long, so you don’t need the beds to last forever.

 

The simplest way is to build a sturdy bed is to cut pieces of two-by-four as long as your boards are wide. Put one in each corner, and use a cordless drill to screw the boards on to them in the corners. Screws that are two inches long are fine, and much easier to work with than nails if you are not accustomed to building things.  Two screws are needed on each end of the boards to make it sturdy. Work on a flat surface such as your driveway, or inside the garage to make work easier. Metal brackets are also available to help make sturdy garden boxes.

 

Pick a spot for the garden in full sun. That means six hours of sunshine at a minimum, but preferably all day sun, from morning to late afternoon. Choose a site that is flat, or nearly so. If you are giving the kids garden beds in your garden, be prepared for it to be weedy and messy at times – unless you intend to weed it yourself. Some kids will want to weed, but most won’t. So you may want to place the little gardens somewhere on the back lawn.

 

If you choose to place the garden box on the lawn, you don’t need to remove the sod. Just cut the grass as short as you can, then cover it with 6 pages of this newspaper, and fill it up. The soil will kill the lawn. The first year carrots may stop or bend when they hit the bottom of the bed, but after that the soil will loosen up with the action of the microorganisms, and you can grow deep-rooted things without a problem.

 

What should you use for soil? I like to mix plenty of compost with ordinary garden soil, roughly a 50-50 mix. You can buy bags of compost and top soil, or raid your compost pile and your garden for soil – you don’t need but a couple of wheelbarrows of soil. 

 

When the bed is first built, your kids may want to just play in the fresh earth. Soil smells good, is pleasant to touch, and is ideal for making little roads for trucks or mounds for castles, just as it’s fun to make sand castles at the beach. I suggest you don’t be too goal oriented, telling the kids they need to stop now and plant their carrot seeds. Let them see you planting things, both seeds and plants, and they will want to, too.

 

Ask your children about their favorite vegetables. Have they ever seen a purple or red carrot? Would they like to try growing some? Where do French fries come from? In my experience, planting potatoes is great for all kids – the seed potatoes are a size even the littlest ones can handle, and later on the harvesting is like going fishing and knowing they’ll catch fish. Very exciting.

 

Maybe take them with you to a garden center. Look at the marigolds, which are already blooming. Encourage them to smell flowers, and if they find something they like? Buy it. I like the idea of kids growing flowers with their veggies, and my grand kids did, too.

 

Remember, success is important. That means you will have to be attentive to their gardens. Weeding and watering will be your responsibility unless they live nearby and want to do these tasks.

 

By the way, it’s important to have a few child-sized tools and especially watering cans.  Ours watering cans are too heavy for them, and a hose can easily blast a tomato seedling from here to Milwaukee.

 

What if your grandchildren want to grow pumpkins or watermelons? Those vines will quickly exit the mini-garden you have lovingly prepared. Are you willing to let the vines run, making it impossible to mow the lawn there? Perhaps you can convince them to grow something else, and together plant the pumpkins in your vegetable garden.

 

My maternal grandmother died when I was seven, and my parents sent me to stay with my grandfather that summer to keep him company. I took the train by myself from New Haven to Worcester, Massachusetts – complete with a change of trains in Springfield. It was a bit scary the first time, but I refused to let my mother put a name tag on me! Grampy and I had a lot of fun so I went every summer until he died when I was 21. I learned to garden by observing. He never lectured. That’s probably a good recipe for success.

 

Henry is a gardening consultant and the author or 4 gardening books. Reach him at henry.homeyer@comcast.net.

It’s spring, and insects are hatching, flying, and munching. Contrary to what you may think, most are not a problem for your garden. There are over a million named insect species and many – perhaps most – co-evolved with flowering plants. They pollinate our crops and do many wonderful things for us.

 

One of the most hated insects is the Japanese beetle. These beetles, as the name suggests, are originally from Japan, and were first observed in New Jersey in 1916. In just over 100 years they have become omnipresent in Eastern United States. Why? They have very few natural predators – even birds don’t want to eat them. 

 

As larvae, these pests generally live in lawns, feeding on grass roots. They are whitish grubs of various sizes, but up to an inch long. If you cut open a square foot of lawn with a sharp shovel and peel back the sod, you are likely to see a grub or two. If you count 10 or more in that sample, you have an infestation that will be a problem. 

 

The U.S. Department of Agriculture) developed a remedy in the 1940’s called milky spore, which is a bacterium that can be suspended in water and sprayed on lawns. It is not a miracle cure, and is quite expensive. Not all entomologists believe that milky spore is an effective cure, at least not in New England where cold winters can kill the bacterium.

 

Not only that, those darn Japanese beetles fly. So you can treat your lawn with milky spore only to have your neighbor’s beetles fly over the fence to attack your roses. I did talk to an enterprising gardener once who convinced her neighbors to treat, too, and she feels it made a significant reduction in beetle numbers.

 

What else can you do? There are beneficial nematodes (unsegmented worms) called Hb nematodes that will attack Japanese beetle larvae and are said to be 96% effective in eliminating Japanese beetle and rose chafer larvae if applied properly. The best time to apply these nematodes is July and August when the grubs are feeding in your lawn. If you buy them, follow the directions carefully: they need to be applied to moist lawn at dusk, and then watered in. These are live worms, and as such need to be used soon after purchasing them. They are not generally available at garden centers, but are available on line.  

 

What about those Japanese beetle traps? Give them to neighbors you don’t like. They attract lots of beetles, but only capture some – so they attract more hungry beetles to your property if you use them. Really, just don’t buy them.

 

I am a firm believer that the best method of insect control for most bad bugs is hand-picking them and dropping in soapy water. Insects often have several life cycles in a summer, so try to reduce numbers before they reproduce.

 

Hand picking works for potato bugs, for example, if you check your plants early in the season, before large numbers have appeared. Look under the leaves: if you see orange egg masses, scrape them off and drown them in soapy water, along with the beetles and larvae. If you grow too many potatoes for hand picking bugs, try something called “Bt”, another beneficial bacterium.  It is readily available at garden centers. It does not act as a contact poison, but sickens the larvae so they stop feeding and don’t reach adulthood.

My insect nemesis is the striped cucumber beetle. It is a small striped beetle that can devour an entire small plant in one night. It eats not only cucumber leaves, but anything in that family including squashes and pumpkins. I do two things to help prevent their destruction: I grow my seedlings in pots until they have 3-4 leaves so the beetles can’t kill the plant in one night. And I cover my plants with row covers (breathable garden fabric) to physically keep those darn beetles off the leaves. Which is not to say that they can’t come up under the covers through the soil, but the method does help.  And when the blossoms come, I’ll have to remove the row covers to allow pollination.

 

Can you create habitat for beneficial insects? Sure. Don’t manicure every inch of your garden. Leave a few dead branches or decomposing flower stems in piles at the edge of your property. Allow fallen leaves to serve as mulch. Consider putting up a simple structure for solitary wasps (such as those that control those pesky tomato hornworms). They are sold next the birdhouses at the garden center.

 

I’m afraid that mosquitoes, black flies and deer ticks have given all insects a bad name, but most are beneficial. They pollinate, serve as food for baby birds, they help to keep vigorous plants and other insects from taking over. And please remember this: if you decide that spraying pesticides is easier than the organic methods described here, know that those same sprays will kill small beneficial insects that you probably never even notice.

 

Henry Homeyer can be reached at henry.homeyer@comcast.net. His web site is www.Gardening-Guy.com. He is a longtime UNH Master Gardener and gardening consultant.

Traditionally, June is the month for eating strawberries. I dream of big, fat, juicy local berries that melt in my mouth and swim in juice when cut and made into strawberry shortcake. But you can, in fact, grow varieties of strawberries that produce berries all summer, or that produce berries in June and again in the fall. In any case, now is the time to buy your strawberry plants before they are all sold out.

 

First, some basics: there are three basic types of strawberries: June-bearing strawberries, so-called ever-bearing strawberries, and day-neutral strawberries. Plant June-bearing berries this summer, and you will need to wait until next summer for your first berries (pick off any blossoms this year so they develop good roots). Ever-bearing berries are not really ever-bearing: they will deliver a load of fruit this fall, and again in future years in June and the fall. Day-neutral berries are not affected by day length, and are truly ever bearing. The first year, however, you will not get any June berries from them.

 

Strawberries are sold in clumps of bare root plants, usually 25 per bundle. They should be planted when the soil is at least 50 degrees, and when risk of hard frost has passed. A hard frost is one that is colder than 28 degrees, and lasts for 12 hours or more.

 

You can buy plants starting in early May at your local garden center or feed-and-grain store. You can also go on-line and order from seed companies, but many varieties were already sold out at Fedco Seeds and Johnny’s Selected Seeds when I checked in late April. Nourse Farms in Massachusetts prefers that you order in the fall, but still had several varieties available when I checked.

 

All strawberries like rich, well-drained soil. If you have a heavy clay you will need to make raised beds and add lots of compost. Work the compost in with a fork or shovel to make the soil fluffier. Even average soil needs compost for best results, as does sandy soil. Sandy soil will hold moisture much better if you stir in plenty of compost.

 

You do not need to create wood-sided beds. Just mound up the soil to create a bed about three and a half feet wide that is four to six inches taller than your walkways. For 25 plants, a wide bed twenty feet long should do. For day-neutral berries, you can plant a two rows of plants 12 to 18 inches apart in a bed. June berries need more space, so plant just one row per bed, and space 18 to 24 inches. But always read the directions that come with the berries and space accordingly. Don’t crowd your plants or they will produce smaller berries.

 

I recommend the day-neutral berries. They do not require as much work as June bearing plants, which send out runners that need to be rooted in or pinched off.  The day neutral plants stay in nice tidy clumps. And they produce berries all summer long, starting in the second year. Their berries are smaller than June berries, however.

 

Assuming you have just average soil, you should work in some minerals and fertilizer in addition to compost before planting the berries. Five pounds of an organic, slow-release fertilizer in a 20-foot wide row should be adequate. A good organic bagged fertilizer will add the three most necessary minerals – nitrogen for green growth, phosphate for strong roots and good flowering, and potassium for strong cell walls and resistance to drought and cold.

 

 Organic fertilizers also add other nutrients that do not come in a bag of chemical fertilizer, things like calcium, magnesium, sulfur, manganese, chlorine and iron. Organic fertilizers are made from things like seaweed, chicken manure, peanuts hulls and cotton seed meal. These break down over time and supply nutrients to your plants.

 

There are a number of ways of planting your strawberries, but the main thing to focus on is getting good contact with the soil. To plant your berries, I smooth the soil surface, then dig shallow holes with small mounds of soil in the center of each. I spread out the roots over the mound, and then cover the roots with soil and pat it down. It’s important not cover the crown, (the growing point where the leaves begin).

 

An alternative way is to just cut a slice in the soil with a putty knife and push the roots into that slice with the putty knife. The crown needs to be at the soil surface, and the soil well patted down. Nourse Farms ( www.noursefarms.com) has a video on how to use that method.

 

After planting, water well and then water two or three times a week until they are well established. All berries are high in water content, so don’t let the plants dry out if we have a drought again this summer.

 

Strawberries hate weeds, so always plant into a weed-free bed. Grasses will compete with your berries, reducing the size and number of your berries. One way to minimize the labor of weeding is to mulch well. I put down 4 to 6 sheets of newspaper over the soil between beds and cover it with straw, mulch hay or dry leaves.

 

Strawberries are a relatively easy crop to grow, and will reward you nicely. Most varieties will come back for a few  years, but eventually they lose vigor. Still … strawberry shortcake anyone?

 

Henry can be reached at henry.homeyer@comcast.net. His website is www.Gardening-Guy.com.

This is a good time to look carefully at your garden, and to decide what you might do to make it better. Spring is upon us, trees and shrubs are waking up in my garden, but perennials are still mostly dormant and woody plants are just beginning to leaf out. It is a good time to look at “the bones” of the garden and decide what needs to be done.

 

The bones of the garden are the trees, shrubs, stone walls, sculpture, water features and pathways. These are visible in winter, though often covered in snow. In summer they can become focal points, or almost disappear as flowering plants shout out for attention.

 

Each of us reacts to spaces a little differently. Some want an enclosed garden that is quiet and private. Others want a long view of the sea, a pond, or a distant mountain. If you are lucky, you might be able to divide your garden up so that you enjoy more than one type of garden: sunny, shaded, private or open to the view of passers-by. If you have just a city lot, you may have to choose just one kind of garden to focus on.

 

Making a garden private means creating visual barriers. You can do that overnight by hiring a company to put up a wooden 8-foot fence. Your neighbors may not like this and walls are generally monochromatic and boring. Of course you can then grow vines up them, or plant trees and shrubs in front of them, but plants take time to fill in and disguise the fence or wall. Still, if you have a new puppy or a bouncy four-year old child, you may opt for the immediate enclosure provided by fencing.

 

Alternatively, you can plant trees. There are advantages to this: trees get bigger and better every year. They provide habitat and food for birds, pollinators and all sorts of small animals. They reduce water runoff. And although some require occasional pruning, most of Mother Nature’s trees do just fine on their own. Some are fast growing, others will just inch along, holding place without shading the understory.

 

The street side of your house is important. What you show the world says something about you. If you plant a tall hedge, it can send a signal to others that you wish to remain undisturbed. If you have just lawn, it says you are not a gardener. If you plant beds and islands of color, you are saying, “Welcome, and enjoy!” Of course, lawns are the easiest to maintain, especially if you accept my mantra, “If it’s green and you can mow it, it’s a lawn.” I love a few dandelions, and love my clover which fixes atmospheric nitrogen into the soil – it’s free fertilizer.

 

Trees and shrubs are important on the front lawn as much as in the gardens behind the house. You can break up the straight lines of driveway and front walk. When thinking through your plans, take a garden hose and curve it around to define spaces. Create beds with bump-outs, and drive stakes to indicate where you might add trees, and use shorter stakes to indicate shrubs. And instead of lawn between the trees, imagine groundcovers. It will soften the look of your home, and invite birds and pollinators. You can keep some lawn, just reduce its footprint.

 

What other bones can you add to your property? Stone is wonderful in all its forms. The simplest stone additions are just boulders or tall, narrow standing stones. One and done. Stone walls are delightful, but expensive.

 

You can also build a cairn – a pile of stones similar to the markers seen on mountain trails above the tree line. The key, if piling up stones to create a pyramid or cairn, is to ensure that each stone is resting on two stones below it. And be careful that when you touch a stone it does not tumble. The earth does move a bit with the seasons, so building a sturdy structure is important.

 

Water features are nice, too. A simple birdbath can add interest and provide water for insects and birds. I have a blue ceramic birdbath that adds color and height to a flower bed – even though the birds seem to ignore it. I was told to put a stone in the water for them to perch on, but even that has not lured them in. Of course, I have a brook nearby, so that is probably their choice instead.

 

I love sculpture in the garden. One of my favorite sculpture gardens is the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum in Lincoln, Massachusetts. It’s 20 miles outside of Boston and has 30 acres of gardens chock full of delightful art, and it’s worthy of a visit. A place like that might inspire you to make or buy some art. So long as it gives you pleasure, it’s worth garden space. Found metal objects can be turned into art – if you think outside the box.

 

Sculpturefest in Woodstock, Vermont is an annual outdoor exhibition of sculpture made by local artists and is always worthy of a visit. See more at https://www.sculpturefest.org/

 

Pathways are important to gardens. They can keep your shoes out of mud and protect the soil from erosion. Flat stones are great, as are pea stone or small gravel. Chipped branches or bark mulch can be used for walkways, too. Pathways naturally lead one forward to other parts of the garden. Grassy paths are simple, and work well so long as they are not worn bare by too much foot traffic.

 

So go outside and do some planning – even if it is too early to do much now.

 

Henry is a garden designer living in Cornish Flat, NH. He is the author of 4 gardening books. His web site is www.Gardening-Guy.com. Reach him at henry.homeyer@comcast.net

By now birds are finding their own food and have less need for that sunflower seed we have been providing during the cold days of winter. So what can we do to help our birds as they go into the season of having young? Growing native trees and shrubs on our property can be a huge help to our bird friends.

 

Let me explain. It is not enough to put out birdhouses, we need to help birds find food for their chicks. The diet of baby birds is about 90% composed of caterpillars. Caterpillars – the larvae of Lepidoptera (moths and butterflies) – are high in fat and protein that developing birds need to grow and be healthy. One clutch of chickadees can, according to entomologist Doug Tallamy, a PhD researcher from the University of Delaware, consume 6,000 to 9,000 caterpillars in the 16 days from hatching to fledgling. And most parent birds continue to feed their chicks even after they have fledged.

 

In Tallamy’s new book, Nature’s Best Hope: A New Approach to Conservation That Starts in Your Yard, he explains that not all trees and shrubs are created equal. Those that evolved alongside the butterflies and moths are palatable to them. Those that were imported from Asia or Europe mostly are not of interest to them.

 

Most woody plants create toxins or bad-tasting chemicals to keep all sorts of animals from eating them, but caterpillars have developed ways to eat most native tree leaves – they have adapted to eat what was available to them. It’s as if they learned to eat things, the way we learned to eat Brussels sprouts.

 

Although caterpillars eat the leaves of our native plants, they rarely damage or defoliate their host plants. Tent caterpillars and a few other imported species will defoliate trees, but that’s rare. It’s just that most of us never notice the little holes chewed in the leaves that are supporting the caterpillars.

 

In fact, I rarely notice caterpillars in the trees and shrubs at all – but our bird friends certainly do. They evolved along with the caterpillars and are genetically programmed to recognize them and bring them to their young, even birds that are seed eaters.

 

As Dr.Tallamy explains in the book, not all native plants are created equal. Some native species may only feed a few. Some, like our oaks, feed many hundreds of species of caterpillars. These “keystone species” are critical to supporting our wildlife. Five percent of the native species support over 70% of our Lepidoptera, according to Tallamy.

 

So what plants are best to feed the caterpillars that support our birds?
According to Tallamy’s research, native oaks, cherries, willows, birches, poplars and elms are best, and goldenrods, asters and perennial sunflowers “lead the herbaceous pack.” The National Wildlife Federation’s Plant Finder website ( https://www.nwf.org/NativePlantFinder) allows you to enter your zip code and see what plants are best for your zone, and how many pollinators are served by each.

 

Tallamy did a study in Portland, Oregon and found that of 1176 trees he identified on the streets there, 91.5% of them were from other continents or ecoregions, mainly Asia. What does that mean? Portland is a pretty city with lots of trees, but it is largely a wasteland for caterpillars that feed our baby birds. The birds need to nest where they can get food for their young.

 

If you wish to improve your landscape and plant native species that will support wildlife, think about reducing lawn size. Tallamy explains that there are 40 million acres of lawn in America, an area the size of New England. Thirty percent of our water is used to water lawns, and 40 to 60% of all fertilizer ends up in our waterways and drinking water, he wrote.

 

Doug Tallamy proposes that we all join him in creating, a “Homegrown National Park”, by reducing our lawns by 50% and growing native plants. This will create wildlife corridors and improve our environment in many ways. The plants will sequester carbon in ways that lawn does not. It will help to save endangered species of insects and birds. It will reduce pollution of our air and water. Who could argue with such an idea?

 

According to one study, in newer housing developments lawn covers about 92% of space not covered with driveways and buildings. If we were all willing to reduce our lawns and add trees, shrubs and native perennials, that would make a big difference in helping to reduce species extinction of Lepidoptera, birds and small mammals. It does not require eliminating lawn, just reducing it. Think of lawn as area rugs, not wall-to-wall carpeting.

 

What else can you do to help our birds? Add a water feature. Even a small pool with a re-circulating pump will attract birds, especially migrating birds that need water and food for their long journey.

 

Instead of lawn, add native groundcovers. Lawns get compacted by lawnmowers, making it difficult for caterpillars and native bees to burrow in the ground. Most caterpillars pupate in the ground or in leaf litter, but lawns are not suitable. Other than honeybees, most bees burrow into the ground or into decaying wood to lay their eggs and hatch their young.

 

I love the idea of us all of linking our properties together to support our butterflies and bees. You can go to www.homegrownnationalpark.org to register your property as part of this movement. Thanks!

 

Henry is the author of 4 gardening books and a UNH Master gardener. You may reach him at henry.homeyer@comcast.net or PO Box 364, Cornish Flat, NH 03746.