Garden prep Ideas, Tips & Guides

I HAULED THE GARBAGE BAGS OF CANNAS and other tender bulb-like things from the cellar yesterday, where they’d slept quietly for months, to clean them up for action. Do you remember how to sound the wake-up call for cannas, callas, dahlias and other such tender things? This slideshow is a good step-by-step reminder.

YOU’VE PROBABLY HEARD the expression “No Mow May” in recent years, a campaign borrowed from an effort in the U.K. meant to increase diversity by leaving lawns unmown for the one spring month, but is that the answer for U.S. gardeners?

YES, IT’S TIME or almost time to do some raking, and to dig the dahlias to stash: time to perform the rounds of the fall cleanup, and put the garden to bed. But Ken Druse and I want to advocate for a sort of “cleanup-plus”—for tending not just to the obvious chores, but also doing some reflection, and making time for often-overlooked late-season tasks like seed-saving.

IT IS NOT TIME quite yet here for what I call the mad stash, storing those non-hardy plants for the winter that we wish to keep alive for another year of service. But it is time to make some plans to do just that.

YES, OF COURSE I know about the more backbreaking ways to make a new bed, but lately I confess I’ve been relying more and more upon the magic of recyclables: newspaper and cardboard to be specific.

What method of composting you use should be determined by the volume of material created in the yard (and to a lesser degree, in the kitchen, where vegetable scraps, egg shells and coffee and tea grounds can be collected for the heap, too). I create far too much raw material for a mere bin-type system, the commercially available kind made of metal or heavy plastic or mesh that are about as big as a washing machine. I have one of those, a metal one that shuts tight and thereby keeps animals out, to hold my vegetable food wastes, alternating them with layers of garden debris and a little soil or finished compost to get things activated and reduce any chance of unpleasant odors.The latest rage is all about lobster-trap-wire bins, meaning really durable even under the ocean day in and out. But my main heap is about 40 feet long and 5 or 6 feet wide, a long, open pile that in composting jargon is called a windrow. In the peak of fall cleanup and leaf raking, it gets to be about 5 feet tall, too, but as the material begins to settle, and eventually to break down, it’s usually more like 3 to 4 feet high.Whatever style of composting you choose, from a simple, small pile to a long windrow to an

Down the road apiece, all the flat, wide-open fields of my farmer neighbors revealed themselves the last few days, but not here. Not yet.Yesterday my beloved old friends from Windy Hill Farm in Great Barrington, MA, came anyway to prune the beloved century-plus-old apple trees, despite having to trudge through all the white stuff. We just couldn’t wait any longe

THE ANNUAL VEGETABLE-GARDEN ARCHAEOLOGICAL DIG yielded the usual suspects—perennials and small shrubs I plunge in there for wintertime storage, things I use in summer pots: huge hosta clumps (I do love hostas) and Hakonechloa and other random bits. In went 3 inches of compost, 10 pounds of lime per 100 square feet, an all-natural organic fertilizer made of meals and manures, seeds for short rows of various salad greens, and a few-dozen onion plants.

“It’s like sheet mulching or lasagna gardening,” says Dave Whitinger of the National Gardening Association, who regularly lectures on the subject, but in hugelkultur, “wood is the first level of your sheet-mulched bed.” That’s his robust hugelkultur onion bed up top.Read along as you listen to the April 22, 2013 edition of my public-radio show and podcast using the player below. You can subscribe to all future editions on iTunes or Spotify or Stitcher (and browse my archive of podcasts here).my hugelkultur q&a with dave whitingerFOR DAVE (above), the idea of this style of recycling came from a w

“Gardening Without Work,” Ruth Stout’s wonderful 1961 work, is one of my most treasured vintage gardening books, published when she was 76 years old. Though I am a couple of decades shy, the subtitle running up the right side of the cover cries out: “For the Aging, the Busy & the Indolent.”Guilty on all counts at the moment, Ruth. Mea culpa.It is more the spirit of the book than anything that I love, an attitude brought to life in a series of videos of her that I am thrilled to have just found (ask your library if they have them for rent; one sample is embedded from YouTube farther down this page). Written a year before Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring” came out, Stout’s funny

The numbers on a fertilizer bag are the so-called N-P-K ratio, the percent of nitrogen, phosphorus, and potash (or potassium, chemical symbol K) inside the bag. Simply speaking, nitrogen is for green growth; phosphorus is for roots, flowers, and fruit; potash is for general vigor and disease resistance. A so-called balanced fertilizer, often recommended in books, is one that has equal percentages of each element.With chemical fertilizers, the numbers are much higher than with organic formulations. A standard is 10-10-10 or 5-10-5, meaning there are those percentages of each element in the bag (the rest is filler). You won’t find those totals in any organic formulation. In fact, if the total of the three numbers on a so-called organic or natural bag adds up to more than 15, I’m suspicious. Unless blood meal—an organic material very high i

Come spring, several weeks before I plan to plant each area, I’ll cut or mow or pull the grain and legume combination down, depending on which pair I used and where they’re located, then turn under the remains. It’s like composting in place, with the foliage and underlying root system decomposing to improve soil texture and fertility.Cover crops can serve other purposes: Some specialized ones, like various Brassicas, can also provide not just biomass but other benefits including pest and disease control (more on that from Cornell). The subject is much wider than this simple explanation, but stated most simply:Grasses (like rye, sorghum-sudangrass crosses, and wheat) add organic matter to the soil very effectively. Note that I don’t list buckwheat

In March, I outlined tactics–such as making sure things are well-watered before a dip in temperatures–and offered links to detailed frost-minimizing strategies in this story that would be a helpful read if you’re gardening in a blue zone as I am on the current National Weather Service map.This weekend, I pulled out all the stops (and empty pots, tomato cages, bed linens, garden carts, you name it…) like in the slideshow below, and got help to wheel my big potted Japanese maples–whose leaves are very sensitive to frost–back into the barn, where I overwinter them, but had set them free a week ago. Oops.(Click on the first thumbnail to start the slideshow, then toggle from side to slide with the arrow keys on your computer, or using the arrows next to each caption.)Always be sure to remove covers before the sun hits the plants the next day, even if another night of frost or freeze is forecast. Which means out I go before supper to re-cover everything and hope aga

I’m a believer that each raised bed, which I like made from 2-by-10’s, must be a level entity unto itself, but that all the beds within a plot don’t need to match in terms of how much they extend out of the ground. To make them match on my crazy terrain, you’d have to build the downhill-side walls of the lowest ones several times as high as the uphill sides of the highest ones (if you can even decode that sentence). Then you’d have to bring in about 10 truckloads of soil and shovel for a year to fill them.Like I said, it’s easier to explain in photos, but first one more thought: Strive to have your pathways between beds, which should be just wide enough for a wheelbarrow, end up on the level, too. Nothing worse than uneven footing while working, or having a barrow-load of so

IT SHOULD COME AS NO SURPRISE, since it’s true so many other places still: In the asparagus rows, males are in charge. ‘Martha Washington’ and ‘Mary Washington’ were names you used to see most often in catalogs, but no more. Their weakness: The Washington strains include both male and female plants, and the males are far more productive if what you want is lots of spears. Who doesn’t?

1. Target earliest bloomers like Euphorbia for immediate cutbacks. Don’t try letting them re-grow from up above; it’s too strenuous for their good. Ask them to push anew from the base by giving an end-of-winter severe haircut, down near the base. Even later-bloomers that grow from those dense, cushion-like crowns (Sedum spectabile, such as ‘Autumn Joy,’ comes to mind) will be easier to clean up now than once they start to push.2. Evergreen or otherwise-persistent perennial foliage (European ginger or Asarum europaeum, Helleborus, Epimedium) that will soon be replaced with a fresh flush of leaves needs to go, too. Yes, the plant will do just fine even if you leave it on…bu

I was fighting the cues: wanting to get on with cutting miles of clean edges between turf and beds despite sodden soil (answer: don’t!) or rake some grassy areas that are still plastered with leafy, twiggy winter detritus but likewise still soft. Again: no can do, without pulling up the lawn.As much as I want to make it all “just so” in time for Open Day next weekend—maybe I can’t.The orientalis hybrid hellebores (Helleborus x orientalis) know about

MAKE A PASS through each garden bed each week, since weeds are not just unsightly but steal moisture, nutrients and light from desired plants. Apply mulch to all beds to help in the plight.GARDENS NEED an inch of water a week from you or the heavens. Check your rain gaugeto make sure they get it, and remember: Soak deeply in the root zone. Don’t spritz things with a sprayer now and again like you’re washing the car. That’s a garden no-no. Pots need extra attention, especially smallish ones in sun, and they also need regular feeding. Be alert!TREES & SHRUBSBE ON THE LOOKOUT for dead, da

Prepping a bed without turning or tilling may actually help reduce the number of weed seeds that sprout, so in many situations, it’s my tactic of choice. If a sunny patch of lawn is destined to house a crop of summer tomatoes or a fall-planted bulb garden, or an existing border needs some smothering of weeds. how to make a bed with cardboardTHE EXPLANATION below assumes the underlying soil is fairly decent, neither bog nor wasteland nor highly compacted, and that the vegetation growing in it is mostly herbaceous (like lawn, not a thicket of blackberries or po

I work like a triage nurse: first identifying damaged woody plants and hauling off the heaviest debris from them, so I can get around with carts and wheelbarrows and start on finer work.Next up, the urgent perennials: hellebores, ornamental grasses and epimediums (I haven’t gotten to the last one yet).The vegetable garden gets a fast cleanup right away, too, and also a rough turn of the soil where cover crops are growing…all of which you will see better in pictures than I can explain, so on with the show (unless you want to read about my six earliest spring tasks in more detail ins

My mathematical equation starts on paper around June, like this:1. Make a list of what you want more of (or a first crop of, if it’s a warm-season thing or if you simply didn’t plant an earlier crop).2. Make a list of things that have gone by or will soon, to assess real estate that you can utilize. In early to mid-June my lists looked like the one below; yours may be very different. My July and August list–for my latest s

The backstory: About 20 years ago my longtime friend and fellow garden writer Ken Druse and I were working on a book about native plants, called “The Natural Habitat Garden,” and I joined Ken as he traveled around the country photographing natives, in nature and in gardens.One of our wildest stops was up in Sebastopol, California, at California Carnivores, which has been open and dedicated to cultivating these dramatics plants–including various native American species–since 1989.  (A highly recommended destination if you are near San Francisco.) In 1998, Peter wrote “The Savage Garden,” but a lot has changed in carnivores in 15 years since the first edition–and even more so in the 40 years D’Am

When Katherine Tracey and her husband, Chris, aren’t manning Avant Gardens,  their longtime retail and mail-order nursery in Dartmouth, Massachusetts–which I am proud is a sponsor of A Way to Garden, and a friend—they are out helping others make, and refine, their landscapes. Chris is a master dry-stone artisan, so his work is often one signature of their landscapes.The “sense of place” of the nursery (which is also their home), as Katherine describes it:  “Intimate, but not fussy, with a wide variety of plants, but not one of this and one of that everywhere.”In a Q&A, Katherine and I talked about taking a sharper look at our home landscapes with an eye to enhancements.my garden-design q&a with katherine traceyQ. What are the most common reasons h

I HAVE ISSUES with mulch–and what is, and is not, qualified to be used as this most important of all garden “tools.” Yes, I am fussy on this score, very fussy–as doodler Andre Jordan knows. Want to know just how fussy? My popular Mulch FAQ Page will answer that (and all your mulching questions, from which material to how deep to apply it and much, much more).

Note I used the word “shred,” because on my radio show and podcast, Mike and I talked about shredding, and how the right strategy along with the best shredding device can make all the difference in making mulch and compost from those brilliant leaves you’ve been piling up.Read along as you listen to the Nov. 23, 2015 edition of my public-radio show and podcast using the player below. You can subscribe to all future editions on iTunes or Stitcher (and browse my archive of podcasts here).my leaf-processing q&a with mike mcgrathQ. Congratulations, I should say first, on 17 years of “You Bet Your Garden.”A. Isn’t it amazing? People remember me still to this day from “Organic Gardening” magazine, a

MY LATEST WEEKLY SHOW with NPR affiliate Robin Hood Radio, WHDD in Sharon, Connecticut, tackles the topic of replanting your vegetable garden for a harvest well into the fall. Stream it, or subscribe free on iTunes.Soil Too Hot and Dry for Germination?SOME SEEDS WON’T GERMINATE in baking soil, so a day or two before I sow things in high summer, I moisten and shade the bed-to-be. Cultivate at least lightly to prepare the seedbed, then water well and erect knitted shade fabric on hoops (over the area, or just lay it on the ground).  With heat-sensitive crops like salad things and spinach, I leave the shade cloth up as the plants develop.But When Exactly to Sow What?IT DOESN’T ALL GO IN AT ONCE—each crop has its timing, thoug

JUST AFTER SPRING’S OWN SNOW OF APPLE BLOSSOMS, crabapples and lilacs falls, I set to mulching the beds beneath them, timing my work to spare the fresh, dark coat of mulch any sullying. Flower-free beds got topped up first, with carefully chosen mulch that improves my soil, conserves moisture and suppresses weeds.

These little discoveries are what keep me going as I crawl around, teasing fallen twigs and leaf litter from among the bulb foliage, cutting back perennials and generally trying to make order in the post-winter chaos. Because so many things pop out of the ground tinged pinkish or purple, it’s like an Easter egg hunt. Each colorful prize unearthed beneath the detritus is a cause for glee.There are a few new birds, too, to likewise encourage me this last week: Hello, phoebe, with your distinctive, eponymous song. Welcome back; my porch is your porch, so nest away.Not new, but lately bolder: A t

Here’s the wrinkle, though: Most of us probably don’t know which ones those are, and in fact have misconceptions about who’s who–often deeply ingrained by fear or a visceral sense of creepiness about insects.In her new book “Good Garden Bugs: Everything You Need to Know About Beneficial Predatory Insects,” Mary Gardiner (above and below) introduces us to a world of garden helpers, and she joined me on my public-radio show and podcast to do just that.Read along as you listen to the June 29, 2015 edition of my public-radio show and podcast using the player below. You

OUT CAME THE EARLIEST ARUGULA, the last of the spinach, and one early row of peas is fading fast. Lamentable? Perhaps–but also reason for hope, as each precious portion of a plot that opens up is a chance for another crop.

Y ES, THEY CAN MAKE YOU FEEL VIOLENT, author Teri Dunn Chace admits about weeds in “How to Eradicate Invasive Plants.” In fact, if authors named their own books, this new one might have been called, “The War of the Weeds.” But in that “two wrongs don’t make a right” way of thinking, Teri reminds us that getting out the big guns isn’t where to begin. Understanding who you’re up against, and being strategic, is.

My longtime friend Ken, an award-winning garden photographer and author of many books, including “The New Shade Garden” and “Making More Plants,” produced his own “Real Dirt” podcast for 10 years, all available on KenDruse dot com.Read along as you listen to the May 15, 2017 edition of the program using the player below (or at this link). The May show is a doubleheader, and includes a whole “overtime” segment (starting at about 24 minutes into the audio file), which I’ve separated into its own transcript and is at this link (and includes questions and answers on what to do next, after you pull or dig invasives like garlic m

Gallione, in his position as Technical Services Technician in the research department at Johnny’s Selected Seeds in Maine, is used to answering gardeners’ questions. I started at the beginning with mine: Why grow crops under cover, anyhow?There are two basic uses for fabric row covers, Paul explained:To modify temperature (for heat retention or frost protection, most early and late in the season with heavyweight fabrics); As a barrier to keep out insects, crows, and chipmunks, to name a few common troublemakers. (Note: You can also create some shade, perhaps for summer salads—t

THINKING OF CREATING SOME NEW BEDS next spring? Or as you’re cleaning up this fall, have you noticed that you need to smother some pesky weeds and turn existing beds back to tame? Don’t wait till winter ends; starting now–in autumn–make (or smother) a bed with cardboard, or newsprint. Here’s how to kill weeds and prep new gardens easily and without chemicals–perhaps where lawn grows now–and without having to till.

As I told my six-friend panel, I have four such transport devices, each that has stood up to many years of rough use:one large and one medium Vermont Cart (wood, oversize spoked tires, removable end panel); one aluminum-frame Smart Cart with similar tires, aluminum frame, and removable high-density polyethylene tub that can be used as a soil-mixing vessel; one single-tire, 6-cubic-foot True Temper r

Inevitably, there is not just soil and grit to brush aside, but also moisture on outdoor surfaces. Traditional corn-fiber brooms can take a beating after repeated damp duty. See what I mean?The broom that has never given up here is not made of natural fibers, but of stiff, thick polypropylene “bristles.” It’s by Casabella, and called its Outdoor All Sur