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General Gardening

Kids Post: Fun Ways to Support Your Plants!

May 11, 2022

Creating play areas or constructing garden structures that kids can help build is an easy way to make gardening fun all summer long.

Make or purchase strawberry towers for a fun way to grow your own.

Strawberry Tower
Building a planting platform for growing strawberries is a quick, easy, and attractive way to grow strawberries in a small space, keep the fruits clean and easy to pick.

Detailed instructions for building your own: How to build a strawberry tower – Master Gardeners of San Mateo and San Francisco Counties (ucanr.edu)

In Western North Carolina choose June-bearing varieties—Apollo, Bish, Cardinal, Chandler, Earliglow, Galleta, Sunrise and Tennessee Beauty are some recommended varieties. Set the tower up in a sunny area, add recommended amounts of a balanced fertilizer (such as 10-10-10) to potting medium (NOT garden soil), tuck strawberry plants in the openings, water, and watch for the flowers to turn into fruit. You can also purchase strawberry towers online or at hardware or big box home improvement stores.

A homemade bean teepee makes a special garden spot.

Runner Bean Teepee
A simple 6- or 8-legged teepee frame, wound with twine and planted with runner beans can become the perfect place for children to play in the garden. Once the vines start racing up the poles, the structure will be shady, and as beans start to ripen, they can provide an instant snack.

To build bean teepees, there are many online sources including How to Make a Teepee for Your Climbing Beans (growveg.com)

Plant pole beans in WNC from May 1 to June 1 in a sunny spot where they won’t shade other plants that need sun. Kentucky Wonder and Greasy beans are two favorite varieties for the mountains. Test garden soil for fertilizer and lime recommendations and water weekly if it doesn’t rain.

Straw bale gardens can serve as formidable fortresses.

Straw Bale Gardening
A single bale of straw (not hay!) can grow flowers or vegetables with nothing more than plant seeds, a little potting soil, some fertilizer, and water. Form several bales into a fort or a passage from one portion of the garden to another. Aged bales—covered in black plastic and left in the sun for a few weeks—work best, but if you don’t mind some grain sprouts, any straw bale will do!

For small seeds, such as carrots, lettuce, or radishes, cover the entire top of the bale with potting soil before sowing. Tall crops, such as corn or tomatoes, require firmly anchoring the bales into the ground. As plants grow, the bale fort can become a great hideout, with fresh carrots, radishes, or flowers an added bonus.

More instructions can be found at Step by step of creating a straw bale garden |(uada.edu).  Or by reviewing the Wood Pallet and Straw Bale gardening video on this website: Wood Pallet and Straw Bale Gardening, (beginning at the 16:49 mark in the video.)

Article written by Anne Spruance, Extension Master GardenerSM Intern.

For more information:
Strawberries: https://macon.ces.ncsu.edu/2020/03/starting-your-strawberry-patch/
Beans: https://wilkes.ces.ncsu.edu/2020/05/grow-your-best-series-snap-beans/
Straw bale gardening: https://s3.wp.wsu.edu/uploads/sites/2071/2013/12/Straw-Bale-Gardening.pdf
North Carolina Vegetable Planting calendar: https://extensiongardener.ces.ncsu.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/NC-Vegetable-Planting-Guide.pdf?fwd=no

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Categories Gardening for Children, General Gardening Tags bean teepee, children gardening, plant supports, straw bale gardening, strawberry tower

Saturday Seminar: Composting, May 21

May 7, 2022

Saturday Seminar at The Learning Garden presents:
Composting, May 21, 2022

Saturday, May 21, 2022
10 a.m. – 11 a.m.

NC Cooperative Extension
Buncombe County Center
49 Mount Carmel Road
Asheville, NC 28806

Presenter: Dave Bush, Extension Master GardenerSM Volunteer

Seventy percent of the material going to landfills is organic and most of that is kitchen and yard waste that can be composted at home and returned to your soil. Join this “in the garden” program to learn to compFood for Good HK_IMG_2545_CC BY-NC 2.0_Flickrost with a multi-bin system; what to use and what not to use, how to mix it, how to monitor the pile, when is it ready, and how to use the finished product.

Please dress appropriately for the weather.

The talk is free, but seating is limited and registration is required.  Please Register Here or click on the link below.  If you encounter problems registering or if you have questions, call 828-255-5522.

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Categories Lectures & Seminars, Soils & Fertilizers Tags compost demo, The Learning Garden

A Garden Is Living Art in Nature

May 1, 2022

Occasionally I ask myself, “Why do I garden?”  It takes work, can be expensive, things die.  But to answer my question: “I feel alive in the beauty of my garden.”  The garden, for me, is like living within an artist’s painting.  As a career, my mediocre talent would have rendered me a fair but struggling artist.  But in the garden, I get to create my artistic voice—a composition filled with shape, color, texture, and mood.

Gardening inspiration varies by gardener
Gardening holds a variety of interests for different people.  Some are fascinated by unusual plant varieties; others are horticultural enthusiasts who seek scientific knowledge of plants; some approach gardening as a contribution to environmental health; others maintain a garden to improve the appearance of their home and play space.  Mine happens to be simply an artistic experiment in visual appeal.

For the most part, I’m happy with the landscape I’ve created over the years—except this one, small, oblong, garden space near the driveway.  I’ve tried so many different things:  ornamental grasses, roses, daisies, ajuga, and marigolds.  Who can’t grow marigolds?  I’ve had the soil tested and know the dirt is really good.  Moisture levels and drainage are fine.  I’ve even tracked an entire year of sun and shade patterns.  So, what’s wrong?  The area is just dull, uninteresting, and unappealing.  It needs to be replanted.  And I’ve decided to tackle it like an artist preparing to paint a masterpiece.

Creating a plan
Many techniques for creating a good painting and a pleasing landscape are actually quite similar.  Each requires thinking about composition, focal point, color choice, and movement or directional lines.

Small garden plot of mixed perennials and shrubs
Newly planted mixed perennial bed

Artists will often begin by creating a rendering of the envisioned painting.  Likewise, I started this replanting project by creating a plan.  I measured the area (8 feet by 16 feet) and sketched a rough outline.  I showed both the straight and curved edges of the oblong, and I highlighted the portion that receives full afternoon sun in summer.  I noted the most important existing feature—a ‘Bloodgood’ Japanese maple tree—and the least attractive feature—a telephone utility box.  Then I noted conifers in my neighbor’s yard that would become the background for my “painting”—Hinoki false cypress (Chamaecyparis obtusa) and a large cedar tree.  These elements defined the starting point of my composition.

Composition for a painting and for the landscape involves shapes, sizes, groups, and patterns.  It involves how these masses are arranged relative to each other and how they direct the eye along curves, lines, or see-through spaces.  Every composition needs a focal point and mine will be the Japanese maple.  The tree is perfectly situated off-center in the oblong, its branching structure frames a distant azalea bed, and its burgundy-red leaves define my color palate.  Everything else in the area will become supporting elements to this primary focal point.

The utility box needs camouflage.  The area in front of the conifers needs to be softened and brightened.  The sun-baked, curved edge at one end of the planting bed requires a different treatment than the shady area beneath the maple tree.  And the viewer’s eye must travel the length of the planting bed, pausing at secondary points of interest, before arriving at the primary focal point.  An artist can create these effects using objects of different shapes and sizes, color and light, and the angle or direction of brush strokes.  My design challenge is similar.  But instead of using paint and brush strokes, I must choose plants that create the visual effect I want and that tolerate the growing conditions of my space.

Selecting the elements of my living art
I decided on a grouping of Otto Luyken laurels and hydrangeas to transition from the conifer background to the planting bed, to introduce a different leaf texture, and to brighten the area with white and pink blossoms.  The hydrangeas will grow to partially obscure the utility box, as will a grouping of penstemons, or beardtongue.  The burgundy foliage of the penstemons replicates the color of the Japanese maple and helps the eye skip from the front of the bed to the focal point.

I heightened the interest under the maple tree by grouping hostas, heuchera, and Japanese forest grass.  The white and lime-green leaves of the hostas and forest grass will brighten the shady area and contrast nicely with the burgundy heuchera foliage.  A row of yellow-blooming coreopsis follows the curve of the lower edge of the bed and directs the eye toward the maple tree.  The coreopsis is underplanted with Cerastium tomentosum ‘Snow in Summer’ for its white flowers and silvery, fine-textured foliage.  A final nod to contrasting textures and repeating colors comes from a grouping of red and yellow day lilies.  Their spiky leaves and tall flower stalks will shoot up between the hydrangeas and the coreopsis to offer another element of interest in the garden.

Cerastium tomentosum 'Snow in Summer'_Jim Janke_CC BY 4.0
Cerastium tomentosum ‘Snow in Summer’
Coreopsis 'Jethro Tull'. Commonly called tickseed.
Coreopsis ‘Jethro Tull’
Penstemon digitalis 'Blackbeard'. Commonly called beardtongue.
Penstemon digitalis ‘Blackbeard’
Hydrangea macrophylla 'Mini Penny'
Hydrangea macrophylla ‘Mini Penny’
Japanese forest grass. Hakonechloa macra_Lucy Bradley_CCO
Japanese forest grass
Heuchera 'Palace Purple'_Kathleen Moore_CC BY 2.0. Commonly called coral bells.
Heuchera ‘Palace Purple’
Hosta 'Mediovariegata'
Hosta ‘Mediovariegata’

As I muse about my garden, I recognize that my enthusiasm comes from the artistic endeavor of design and that my joy comes from seeing the final composition.  I garden to create spaces that convey a visual message—some quiet and tranquil, some exuberant and colorful, some invitations to explore, and some reflecting memories of people and places.  My garden is my canvas—my contribution to art through nature.

Article written by Beth Leonard, Extension Master GardenerSM Volunteer.

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Categories General Gardening, Landscape Design Tags landscape design, soil-full musings

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