Extension Master GardenerSM Volunteers of Buncombe County

General Gardening

Support Your Plants: Ways to Make Your Garden Healthier and More Fun!

Are your vegetable plants encroaching on your garden paths? Are you finding giant, inedible cucumbers hiding under foliage? Time to think about garden structures! Create these supports from hard materials—wood, plastic, metal, concrete—to enhance the growing of vegetables or other plants. Such structures can provide space, support, and creative expression to enhance your garden.

Steps for using plant supports in your garden:

  1. Plan: Consider plant characteristics and direction of the sun.
  2. Prepare: Build your structure sturdy enough to support your chosen plants.
  3. Train:  Some plants need to be fastened or tied.  Others need to be gently wound around a stake or string where they will continue growing.
  4. Water: Use an irrigation system, soaker hose, garden hose, or watering can—always water at the bottom of the plant.
  5. Harvest: Using garden structures and supports for vining and top-heavy plants will enable you to plant closer together and have a larger and healthier harvest from a smaller space.
Planted row of beans with supports by MARamsey
Beans with supports

Gardening in small places.
When you’re concerned about lack of space, there’s always the possibility of getting plants to spread up! When planning and planting a garden, it’s important to consider how much space each plant needs to be healthy and productive. Be mindful that trellised plants do cast shadows, so consider what neighboring plants might be blocked from the sun.

 

Ramsey Garden-Combining practical and whimisical
A well supported veggie garden

Disease prevention.
Supporting tall or vining plants allows for air circulation, which helps prevent fungal and other diseases. Such structures not only help prevent wind-broken branches—which can foster pests and diseases—but they can also prevent soil splashing onto leaves, which can result in fungal diseases. For vegetable gardens, supporting vining plants makes for cleaner and often healthier produce because the harvest will not be on the ground.

Match your supports to your plants.
Plants with tendrils, such as peas and pole beans, will wrap themselves around posts and strings. Tomatoes are frequently tied onto stakes or wire cages. Most cucumbers or melons can benefit from supports that are sturdy enough to hold the weight of the growing bounty. These heavy-duty supports can be made from wood, canes,metal, PVC plastic, and string or wire.

Functional whimsy.
There’s also a creative enjoyment in either incorporating found objects into your garden as supports for plants, or to use already existing structures. Fasten peas, cucumbers, or sunflower stalks to old window frames. Have your tomatoes climb a fence or baker’s rack. Let your pole beans, climbing nasturtiums, or moon flowers weave their way onto a scarecrow or up the post of a bird house. These supports bring harvests of fruits and vegetables—and smiles!

Article by Mary Alice Ramsey, Buncombe County Extension Master GardenerSM Volunteer

For more information:
UMN Extension: Trellises and Cages to Support Garden Vegetables
NC Extension Gardener Handbook- Chapter 16. Vegetable Gardening Techniques. Vertical Gardening

Bartlett, Michael V. and Rose L. The Bartlett Book of Garden Elements. David R. Godine, 2014.
Bartholomew, Mel. All New Square Foot Gardening: 3rd Edition. Square Foot Gardening Foundation, 2018.

Composting Has Benefits: And Not Just in the Garden!

By observing nature we realize nothing in the natural world is wasted. Dead and rotting materials on the forest floor are providing nutrients, beneficial organisms, and humus to the next generation of forest. When we build a compost pile we are concentrating and accelerating this natural process in order to benefit our less than natural garden plots.

Benefits of compost
There are many benefits of adding compost to the soil: organic matter improves the physical properties of the soil, increasing root penetration and moisture-holding capacity. Compost holds 200 percent of its dry weight in water versus only 20 percent for soil. Compost also helps aerate the soil by forming aggregates that create space within the soil for air and water.

As compost breaks down in the soil, it releases nutrients plants need to be healthy: nitrogen, sulfur, calcium, magnesium, and potassium. These and other nutrients invigorate the soil’s food web, attracting a wide range of beneficial life forms –- soil builders such as fungi, bacteria, earthworms, sowbugs, and many other micro- and macro-organisms –- that continue to improve the soil’s properties. Plants growing in this soil have an enhanced resistance to pests and disease and are more resilient to health challenges including weather extremes.

Buncombe County Landfill
Photo by Aiyanna Sezak-Blatt
Used with permission of MountainXpress

The landfill dilemma
These are reasons enough to create a compost pile, but there is another reason that is becoming more critical as time passes: reducing organic waste in our landfills. Our landfills are running out of space and emit methane into the atmosphere.

Problems with landfills are a long-standing concern. They were identified more than twenty years ago by Stu Campbell in Let it Rot! The Gardeners Guide to Composting. At that time, landfills were already running out of space. Contributing factors were:

  • Seventy-five percent of household waste is organic.
  • Each household produces 230 pounds of yard waste and 100 pounds of food waste per person per year.
  • About 30 percent of waste sent to landfills is compostable organic material—yard and food waste.

According to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), in a 2011 report, methane—one of the worst greenhouse gases, is a landfill problem. Landfill management compresses organic waste, squeezing out the air; organic matter still decomposes, but it does so anaerobically (without oxygen). An aerated compost pile produces carbon dioxide, not methane—methane traps up to 20 times more heat in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide.

The same factors and concerns continue to exist, over two decades later. Home composting could reduce residential waste significantly, which in turn would free up space for waste that can only be handled in the landfill.

Composting is for everyone.
Anyone can compost, from a worm bin in a high-rise apartment to a windrow of cow manure out behind the barn. One of the best ways to learn about backyard composting is to visit The Learning Garden at the Buncombe County Cooperative Extension Office (post COVID-19 restrictions). There you will find a large compost area and Extension Master Gardener volunteers eager to talk about the art and science of composting.

The Learning Garden volunteers are doing traditional backyard composting, but on a larger scale using 6 bins 48 x 48 inches, constructed from wooden pallets, and 2 fence-wire bins. Their goal is to compost all plant material waste that the property produces. Recently they expanded their goal to include culled fruit and vegetables from a local food bank. Less organic material in the landfill means reduced methane and more nutrient-rich compost for The Learning Garden. It’s a formula for success no matter how big or small your garden grows.

Article written by Dave Bush, Extension Master GardenerSM Volunteer.

For more information:

NCSU Composting Portal
NC Extension Gardener Handbook – Composting
EPA Report: Reducing Greenhouse Gas Emissions through Recycling and Composting
Campbell, Stu. Let it Rot! The Gardener’s Guide to Composting. North Adams, MA: Storey Publishing, 1998.
Pleasant, Barbara and Deborah L. Martin. The Complete Compost Gardening Guide. North Adams, MA: Storey Publishing, 2008.

 

Timely Tasks: Prune Spring-Blooming Shrubs

Mapleleaf Viburnum_Dan Mullen_CC BY-NC-NC 2.0_Flickr
Mapleleaf viburnum

Our spring-blooming shrubs have been glorious this year—flowering quince (Chaenomeles speciosa), Forsythia, Fothergilla, some hydrangeas (Hydrangea spp.), mountain laurel (Kalmia latifolia), mock orange (Philadelphus x virginalis), azaleas and rhododendrons (Rhododendron spp.), lilacs (Syringa vulgaris), many Viburnum species, and Weigela are in this category. As their blooms start to fade, plan now to prune these shrubs for next year’s bloom!

Flame Azalea
Flame Azalea
Rosebay Rhododendron_Jim Dollar_CC BY-NC 2.0_Flickr
Rosebay rhododendron

Pruning time matters
Look at your shrubs while the blooms are fading to decide where you need to prune. If your shrubs didn’t look glorious this year—or you had no blooms at all—pruning might be the culprit! Timing is critical, especially for pruning spring-blooming shrubs that develop their flower buds during the summer and fall of the previous year. This is often called “blooming on old wood.”
By mid-June, spring-blooming flowers will likely be gone, and your deadline is approaching to prune. Plan to finish pruning these shrubs soon after flowering—no later than the 4th of July. Pruning in late summer, fall, winter, or early spring will remove the buds getting ready for next year’s show!

Oakleaf_Hydrangea quercifolia 'Snow Queen'_Plant Image Library_CC BY-SA 2.0_Flickr
Hydrangea quercifolia ‘Snow Queen.’ Oakleaf Hydrangeas bloom on old wood; if they need pruning, prune right after the blooms fade.

How to prune
The North Carolina State University Extension has recently updated their series of publications on pruning (see links, below). “Before the Cut” introduces you to information on how to prune to open up the top of the plant to permit light and air to reach the interior, to promote new plant growth, maintain plant size, encourage flowering, remove diseased or dead limbs, and help control insect and disease problems.
When thinking about pruning, consider the “one-third” rules: remove about one-third of the oldest wood at the ground level and cut back one-third of the younger, newer canes about one-third of their height per season.
Spring-flowering shrubs.
The section of “Before the Cut” on “Plants that Flower on Year-Old Growth” is most relevant to pruning spring-flowering shrubs. The publication on “Pruning Specific Plants” provides more details on each individual shrub species.

Everything else!
North Carolina State Extension: “General Pruning Techniques,” which provides information on timing of pruning, pruning methods, maintaining shrubs, and specialty pruning.

Pruning woody ornamental shrubs_heading cuts_NCSU Extension
Heading cuts: A) shrub shoots headed back to same height; B) shrub shoots headed back to different heights.

Pruning methods discussed include size reduction:
• Heading back, the removal of one-year-old shoots recommended for plants that have outgrown their allotted space, and
• Reduction cuts used to train trees and shrubs and to control the direction of growth, among other purposes.

There is extensive information on cutting both small and large branches—with details about the proper placement of cuts, the guidance to “not leave a stub” following pruning, and the admonition to “never apply wound paint or tar” to the cut.
The section on maintaining shrubs provides guidance on the management of growth in deciduous, broadleaved evergreens, and needled evergreens, including the appropriate time of year to prune each in order to achieve maximum benefit in your landscape is provided.
The section on specialty pruning describes a number of techniques not commonly seen in most home landscapes. These include espalier, pleaching, pollarding, and topiary.
Article written by Extension Master Gardener Volunteers.
For more information:
Before the cut:https://content.ces.ncsu.edu/before-the-cut
How to prune specific plants: https://content.ces.ncsu.edu/how-to-prune-specific-plants
General Pruning Techniques: https://content.ces.ncsu.edu/general-pruning-techniques

Contact Us

Buncombe County Extension Office
49 Mount Carmel Road
Asheville, NC 28806
Helpline 828-255-5522

Events

Keep up with our events by subscribing to the blog or checking our Events Calendar.

Explore the Archives

Back to Top