Microplastics: Small Plastics, Big Problem

Caitlin Atkinson

Have you ever heard that planting a small garden is like writing a short story instead of a novel? Well, I hadn’t either—until Los Angeles designer Adam Sirak said it—and I think it’s brilliant. “Some people might think they can’t have an amazing garden or that it’s not worth the trouble because they don’t have a big space,” Sirak says. “But a small space only means you have to take all your ideas and distill them down to a concentrated big idea.” He adds that, as with a short story, there’s no room for filler, and each choice must be thought of in relationship to the whole. “In this way, a small space can be a very exciting puzzle to put together,” he says.  

If you want to Grow Unlimited Supply of Onions in Big Plastic Bottles at Home then we will tell you how with some onion sprouts you already have at your home!

The term pullet refers to a young hen, usually under one year of age. Once a chick develops feathers rather than down, it is then called a pullet if it is female or a cockerel if it is a male. Pullet can refer to a laying hen or a meat chicken but it is more typically used for a laying hen.

You can’t throw lilies away if Lily is still wearing them (Lonnie Donegan)

A common site in many town gardens are trees that have outgrown their space. Large native trees like Oaks, Copper Beach, Planes, Weeping Willow and horse chestnuts are wonderful, but to be really enjoyed they need suitable space, like in a park. If they are planted in the garden they will

Where space is limited or very limited there are still many ways to create a productive kitchen garden.

We can employ many tricks to grow more fruit in less space. One key strategy that is very useful to understand is growing fruits as cordons in small spaces.

When planting a traditional garden with conventional rows, approximately 100 square feet per crop per individual are necessary to provide fresh food for a season. An additional 100 square feet per person is required if additional crops are to be preserved. As an alternative, using a raised bed with small-scale divisions can yield an abundance of food per individual. A 4-foot x 4-foot raised bed organized on the scale of 1-foot x 1-foot divisions provides a reduction in space to 16 square feet for fresh foods. An additional 4-foot x 4-foot raised bed organized on the scale of 1-foot x 1-foot divisions can provide a total of 32 square feet if preserving for later use per individual. The idea of small-scale gardening revolves around the practice of intensive gardening in a reduced space.

Having successfully got five streptocarpus through the winter and into bloom I am a little more hopeful of my prowess with them, but will feel more confident once I have got them through a second winter too – and may even be tempted to add one or two more! The fern behind them is a couple of plantlets lifted from the saucer under a pot of sarracenia,  kept topped up with water and seemingly an ideal breeding ground for ferns – the asplenium is understandable as there is a lot of it in the garden but I don’t know what this fern is or where the spores have come from.

My original piece of Farfugium japonicum ‘Giganteum’ (then known as Ligularia tussilaginea ‘Gigantea’) came many years ago, from a friend at a New York City public garden. Summers, it was lusty and bold, growing mightily in a pot and showing off like crazy. But I could never make the plant completely happy in the offseason, or so I thought, and after torturing it in my house one winter and in my basement (trying to force dormancy) the next, I gave the exhausted creature to a friend with a greenhouse.I kept his likeness here with me, and I guess I pined for him: A mid-century tray I’d bought at at antiques store bore an image of Farfugium, though not to scale. The plant bears ultra-shiny leaves that get to about 15 inches across.When I saw its shining face not long ago in the Plant Delights catalog, which credited the same person I’d got

IN A RAINSTORM HE DEPARTED, AND IN A RAINSTORM HE RETURNED. One of my five beloved big bullfrogs (above) hopped back in the other wet night after a four and one-half month absence, with not so much as a single word of explanation, and just that same stupid smile on his face.