Gardening from the Ground Up: Tips and Tricks

Recently I had the opportunity to teach a class on the basics of gardening. It was fun and worth all of the planning and gardening projects needed to get ready to host this and two additional classes at our home. What a whirlwind! So now it’s time to share the basic information to help others grow more food, ornamentals, trees, and bushes. We live in zone 5b/6a where the soil is more clay and alkaline so some tips may need adjustment to your growing zone, soil conditions. In the USA, I direct you to your local extension office for more information; find the best information when you search online by using “.ext” and “.edu” after your search words. In Allen County of Indiana, contact the Master Garden Hotline at Purdue Extension at 260-481-6826, extension 2. Happy growing! JJ

Gardening from the Ground Up: Tips and Tricks

Julie xxxxx, Extension Master Gardener

The Gardening from the Ground Up class is for the person newer to gardening or who ends up with more brown than green by the end of the season!

Tools

Lightweight shovel

Generally use the largest containers (with drain holes) or grow bags you can afford

Hand trowel and hand rake; optional:  hoe for weeding, pitch fork and rake for mulching large areas

Garden gloves

Hand pruners

Cart or 2-wheeled wheelbarrow to transport supplies for larger gardens

What are your favorites?

Call 811 to have your utility lines marked before you dig and as you are planning your garden areas.

Soil:  You’re only as good as your soil!

Soil demonstration:  Sand/silt/clay; ph; compost; fertilizer

Raised Bed Tour

Planters:  Rocks, empty plastic bottles with caps on, or pot shards in bottom for drainage.  Pre-moisten potting soil mix (with vermiculite or soil moisture crystals).  No garden soil or compost as it will make the soil too compacted, hard for roots to grow! 

Raised beds:  Black topsoil and peat mixture (can be mixed with vermiculite or coconut coir in place of peat).  Mix top layer with balanced fertilizer and top with compost if desired.  Need drainage so no regular garden soil.  Search “soil calculator” online for how much to use.  Delivery of cubic yards of your soil mix is generally more cost-effective than bagged products. 

Plots:  Consider testing your soil before beginning or buying anything.  We largely have very alkaline soil here that needs much help (compost, sulfur, aluminum sulfate, peat, and gypsum all help lower ph) before planting in the ground!  2 cups of soil tested at Ag Plus or Purdue Extension, $25/20.  Suggest 3-in-1 or similar soil mix that contains compost.  Kill or remove all grass & weeds before planting.  Use only composted never fresh manure; no dog or cat waste.  Raw kitchen scraps can leach nitrogen from soil when planted in garden beds before composted.

Consider starting a compost pile of your own:  2/3 brown material (leaves, sticks, shredded brown paper bags) and 1/3 chopped raw veggie, fruit, eggshell scraps without seeds.  Turn at least weekly, crumbly not wet, and protect from critters with fencing.  No fireplace ash or lime if soil is alkaline.  Ideal is 6-7 for most vegetables, flowers, fruit (except blue and blackberries), bushes, and trees.  Always check first!

Fertilizer

Balanced slow-release fertilizer for initial plantings.  Optional:  Biotone for new plantings.  Balanced/lower first number for edibles and flowers in N-P-K ratings (nitrogen-phosphorus-potassium); higher middle number for tomatoes & asparagus. 

Slow-release types generally applied 2x per growing season; liquid fertilizer every 1-2 weeks.  Always check instructions on product labels.  Fertilize hanging baskets weekly and re-pot into larger container when they are drying out too fast or “root-bound.”

Fertilize bushes and trees at “drip line.” 

Note which plants are acid-loving and add sulfur to soil amendments; gypsum adds calcium often needed for tomatoes.  Compost is virtually always helpful in building your soil but you still need to add fertilizer periodically.  Side-dress veggie and fruit rows with fertilizer. 

Plants:  Right plant, right place

Sun exposure:  6+ hours of sun is considered “full sun” but watch changes over the daytime.

Seed-starting:  dedicate some time to research heat mats, grow lights, seed-starting soil mix, pre-soaking select seeds, hardening-off and transplanting for best success.  See guide in Files of WRCA Gardening Group on Facebook for when to sow seeds and planting timetable.

Direct-sow:  Some plants do better direct-sown into the ground/don’t like roots disturbed such as radishes, corn, lettuce, cucumbers.  Follow package directions especially for soil-temp and spacing guidelines.  Don’t be afraid to thin your plants such as carrots, radishes, and lettuce!  Planting tomatoes and peppers too early stunts their growth!

Plant starts:  Local nurseries tend to have plants without pesticides such as neonicotinoids that can kill bees.  Mix balanced fertilizer into soil (and optional Biotone in plant hole) at proper depth & spacing.  Pre-moisten soil of pots before planting.  Do finger test to know when to water each week. Consider inter-planting herbs and flowers in edible gardens for pollination and pest control.

All gardens can benefit from adding native plants.  They attract pollinators and may deter pests, help cultivate, filter, and hold the soil in place; and generally are hardier, requiring less water once established.  Rain gardens specifically help manage and filter water runoff as well.  See Riverview Nursery and Arbor Farms locally plus the references in Files of WRCA Gardening Group on Facebook for some ideas.

Except for some bushes, trees, and cool season veggies, put most plants into the ground after our 6a last frost date of May 1st.  Select plants hardy to Zone 5 or below and watch the weather before-and-after planting!  Planting trees, re-seeding and treating lawns, and dividing plants early in the fall is often better than the spring; mulch plants heavily.

General Landscape Design Tips 

Don’t go too big when just starting your first garden!  How much time can you devote a minimum of 3x per week to water, weed, make adjustments (e.g. staking plants, turning containers) FOR FIVE MONTHS?  What is your budget for everything you need for success?

Water:  Plant within the length of your hose or irrigation line attached to a water source.  Chemicals won’t solve fungal problems that stem from overhead watering; water at the root zone, soil level and in the morning as much as possible.  Consistency of watering is key to success.  Consider adding a simple irrigation system on a timer.

Start small and increase with experience, resources, and success.  You will likely need to move or replace plants, make tweaks each year.

Containers:  Thriller, spiller, filler design principles. 

Landscape perennials and annuals look nice in odd numbers, staggered plantings, swaths of color.

Fall tip:  plant spring bulbs in the Fall and before October.  O.k. to put more than one bulb in each hole; fertilize with bulb booster at fall planting time and after bloom in the spring.

Pest Deterrents

Water in the morning at ground level, avoiding plant leaves.  Consider an irrigation system later on for consistency and to help avoid wetting plant leaves. 

Right plant, right location (e.g. 6+ hours of sun for edibles).  Ensure proper water drainage plus spacing of plants for air circulation.  Consider native plants to increase pollinators for edibles; these take a couple of years to mature.  Don’t plant in the ground anywhere near walnut trees.

Organics:  Apply when needed:  Dipel dust on leaves or neem oil spray, both according to package directions.  Bad infestations might benefit from Spinosad or Captain Jack’s Bug Juice.

Rabbits:  Liquid Fence on leaves of all tender plants as soon as they emerge and afterwards per package directions.  Minimum 3 foot tall fencing around edibles and plants they keep munching!  Make a ring out of poultry wire to place around favorite plants, edibles.

Japanese Beetles:  Make a plan with your neighbors!  Apply GrubEx or similar product to lawn in May and apply Neem oil EARLY (as directed on label) when they emerge, to leaves of plants they attacked last year.  Pick off Japanese beetles in morning into bucket of soapy water and discard.  Organics include BeetleJus and Captain Jack’s Bug Juice.  Use Sevin dust according to package instructions only for bad infestation and continue knocking them off. No JB traps!  Reference:  JB fact sheet in WRCA Gardening Group Files or E-45-W at the Purdue Education Store.

Brood X Cicadas:  In the Midwest in 2021, plan to wrap the trunk and cover the canopy of (1/4” or smaller mesh) young bushes and trees if you are within 50 yards of 17+ year old trees,maybe further!  They might be everywhere or might not be bad at all.  We shall see!  Consider waiting to plant new stock until after they depart if it’s not too hot- or-wait until the fall.  Reference:  Cicada fact sheet in WRCA Gardening Group Files or E-47-W at the Purdue Education Store.

Pick off tomato hornworms and plant tomatoes in a different location next year. Remove lower leaves and stake plants (especially indeterminate varieties) so no branches touch the ground.

Remember with chemicals:  less is more!  Read package labels and wear protection when using.  Spray diluted, unscented mild dishwashing detergent to leaves to deter bugs. Treat in morning, shady days.  Call the Master Gardener Hotline to help diagnose and treat problems (see page 5).

Weed Deterrents

Keep soil covered with mulch such as leaves, wood chips (no dyed chips in beds with edibles), strips of cardboard, or straw.  Groundcover plants help ornamental beds.

Walk around your yard and do a little tidying/weeding every day.  If you keep pulling weeds, the roots of most weeds and even invasives like Canadian thistle will eventually lose energy from the starch stored in its roots and will stop sending up new leaves.  Kill sod and weeds by covering with cardboard or black plastic or digging it out.  This takes time.  Minimize tiling when possible.

Homemade Weed Control

Ricky’s Gardening Tips and Tricks

From:  Ricky’s Gardening Tips and Tricks and Home Horticulture, April 2020

Ricky D. Kemery, Allen County Extension Educator Retired  

Keep in mind that this method only burns-down plants; it doesn’t travel within the plant like systemic herbicides such as glyphosate (Round- Up). Since many folks don’t want to use Round-Up because of health concerns, this can be an alternative control for common weeds.

People still need to be careful, wearing gloves, eye protection, long sleeves and pants when spraying. This will also damage desirable plants, so use pieces of cardboard to prevent spray drift. 

Plants will grow back usually so several applications may be necessary. One can also use this without Epsom salts, as the salts might damage soil if used repeatedly.

1.  Mix a gallon of five-percent household white vinegar with a cup of Epsom salt and stir until the salt is completely dissolved.

2.  Next, add a tablespoonful of Dawn dish soap to act as a surfactant. Surfactants help solutions adhere better to their targets upon contact. Again, stir the mixture for nice blend.

3.  Transfer the solution into an empty plastic spray bottle. Then proceed to spray all weed plants (as needed).

Garden notebook, importance of keeping records

Keep learning and experimenting! Happy gardening!

Anatomy of a Rain Garden Project: One Year Later

We are now one year later after the completion of the rain garden at the Huntertown Family Park. What began as a flooded, kinda trashy dirt hole next to a newly constructed concession building has become a beautiful feature of a community park for all who visit. Currently there are only a few volunteers who weed and water the 625 square foot specialty garden but that’s the best we can do. The restrictions of the pandemic and personal health constraints have changed my ability, as Coordinator, to secure garden helpers; a really hot summer seemed to complicate the matter further. Overall, the rain garden (RG) is doing its job managing water runoff from the structures nearby in the most loveliest way possible! Here’s how we got here (as published in the September issue of Across the Fence, the monthly publication of the Master Gardeners of Allen County, IN where I am Editor).

Take a class online; it will be fun!

I created and coordinated this project to fulfill the requirements of an online class in the spring of 2018 to become a Certified Master Rain Gardener. The class was excellent and matches the caliber of our local Catching Rain Fort Wayne program that I also attended later. The President of the Park, Dan Holmes, approved the project and proved to be instrumental on work days, identifying several local resources, and just being there the one day when complications of this project brought me to tears! Early coverage in our local newspaper was a fun boost along the way. Then it was a scramble to get the base of the rain garden built before the summer of 2019 as I was simultaneously learning how things functioned at this private park, addressing Americans with Disabilities Act considerations, securing grant funding from the Urban Wildlife Habitat Cost Share Program (UWHCSP) at the Indiana Department of Natural Resources, and eventually obtaining quotes from local contractors. Things got really complicated very quickly!

Start and they will follow. We will help you.

Volunteers came forth from the classes that I mentioned above, notices in Across the Fence, a little sign I posted at the RG site, the local newspaper, and random encounters with neighbors who lived across the street from the Park. There weren’t a lot of us so everyone who came worked very hard and got the respective project done for any given work day. Weeding up to 3-foot “native” weeds in two dirt piles to keep seeds from blowing into the base of the RG? Check! Rescheduling work days a couple of times due to severe flooding restricting access to our project site? Check! Breaking down and spraying weed killer around the periphery of the RG so we could increase the 50+ foot berm area with soil and mulch on a 90+ degree day with 3 volunteers? Check! Obtaining donations of plants from local and out-of-state nurseries, a Park neighbor, and fellow Master Gardeners? Check! Learning how to build our drainage tile system from YouTube videos, the good folks at our local landscape supply dealer, and another neighbor adjacent to the Park with a skid loader? Check! Discovering large landscape rocks during my first tour of the Park with Dan then witnessing their installation in the complete RG base by that same gracious neighbor 3 months later? Check again. And so it went. By the Fall of 2018, donated native plants were sleeping sweetly in my own garden ready for installation in the Spring. There was so much left to do including still figuring out how to do some of it at this level!

You need to be done by June.

Tis good to have deadlines when embarking upon a large and complex project that stretches you to the max! The UWHCSP grant provided just that. We needed to have everything planted (i.e. 75 perennials, grasses, and bushes!) and professional signage at least on-order by June of 2019 or lose our funding! There were delays from our vendor that tested our timeline but in the end we met all of our obligations. Just two volunteers planted everything in May of 2019. Dan had facilitated not only the donation of a gorgeous flagstone path by a local landscaping company but the ordering and later installation of our professional signage at a deeply discounted rate. (He and the neighbor whose mother-in-law across the street donated the milkweed seeds, installed our sign themselves!) The total cost of the rain garden was $1604.90 with an estimate of over $2,000 in donated plants, materials, and landscaping services. Our $2500 UWHSCP grant covered all of our out-of-pocket expenses and future needs. A couple of plants needed to be replaced in the Spring of 2020 and some additional mulching will be replenished when we can safely call a work day with social distancing and the requirements of Purdue Extension.

I wish to thank all of the volunteers, individuals, and businesses that contributed to the success of this project (also those named on our sign). Master Gardeners and Interns who participated include Rhonda, Linette, Greta, Simone, Linda, and Jo. Note that most rain gardens in the landscape of a homeowner are much simpler to construct than the project shared here! Rain gardens help soak rain water into the ground quickly, protect or river and creeks from pollution, replenish ground water, create beautiful gardenscapes throughout the growing season, and provide food and shelter for birds, butterflies, and beneficial insects (for pollination of plants). Once established, your own rain garden project will be a source of beauty and pride that serves important functions in our landscapes and communities for years to come. I’d love to chat more about your interest in rain gardens!

What would suit her best?

That funny bush with the orange berries

That I found tucked in a nursery corner

Was her birthday gift many decades ago

And became another treasure of uniqueness, much like that of her own.

Or the specimen discovered from the zoo

When she found the groundskeeper

And pleaded to give her a cutting

To grow with her collection of rare finds and vagabond species too.

Perhaps the devil’s tongue would be it

That bloomed in the closet each Winter

With a stink much worse than her smokes

And a tropical canopy outside in summer:  uniquely placed in the Midwest.

Surely she would be planted on the hill

Where the orange pavers from Woodstock days

Used to mark the side door to the home

Laden with so many memories and metal trash cans covering some of them too.

Oh I’ll bet she’s still out there somewhere

For her ashes got sprinkled into the earth

Forever mixed with the fruit of her hands

And beautiful gardens, a spa, some whimsy, all in squared borders of suburban fare.

Oh mom, how I miss you this day

As I tend to my own soil and dig

Preparing for Spring flowers and food

Adding amendments, turning it over again until everything crumbles just right.

One plant in particular we share

From your garden and mine:

Those “bee bush” perennial sedum

That you made me edge around in the hot summer sun by back-breaking hand!

Oh how you would love

To see me hail a sharpened spade

Defining my borders so clean with

Just one more bed added most years ’cause it’s also a passion for me borne from you.

Maybe the climbing Baffin rose

I will dedicate to you, Rose Anne:

A rambler, a bit wild yet beautiful

Yes this you shall be in my garden scrapbook come alive where you and me will always meet.

JJ

William Baffin, roses, fuscia, pink, red, climbing, vines, fence, garden
Fuscia William Baffin Climbing Roses

 

River Bear Racing is here!

Good news:  River Bear Racing officially launched this week and I am quite proud of my beloved Steve aka “River Bear.”

Well known to the racers of the United States Canoe Association, Steve has accepted an invitation to represent Stellar Kayaks in the Midwest.  Since 2009, Stellar has been delivering innovative kayaks, surf skis, paddles, and accessories across North America.  Steve always liked the cockpit and foot plate design of Stellar Kayaks as he advanced from a recreational kayaker when I met him in 2007 to the reigning State Champion in the Men’s K-1 Open Class in Indiana.  We have been on many adventures together since then, usually with me cheering him on from the side of a river somewhere, “gooooooooo Steve!!!!”  And I have loved every minute of it too.

So I invite you, Gentle Reader, to check out and FOLLOW my husband’s new website:  River Bear Racing.  Steve is an amazing storyteller so expect to be treated to much adventure and humor as he navigates the rivers east of the Mississippi in carbon fiber boats narrow enough that the rest of the world would call them a man-sized tongue depressor!  These racers are amazing, fast, fit, and  . . . well I better stop here lest I get into some wifey-poo trouble!  I am grateful to have learned so much from Steve and his love for the sport of sea kayak and surf ski racing.  And I even have Steve to thank for my really neat paddling gear (that exceeds my abilities) as well.

Lord willing, I am looking forward to getting back to our water adventures really soon.  Maybe I’ll just have to try out that S18S to see if it’s as cool as my old Stellar SR?  Hmmm, guess I’ve become a bit of a paddling geek to, eh?  JJ

Steve in his Stellar SE
Steve in his Stellar SE