3 Chores to Do in Fall for Spring!

It's that time of year again, time to think about spring! Yes, I said that right. Spring! Fall is almost here but if you want to maximize the potential of your garden next year fall is the best time to get some work done. The autumn leaves will be changing soon and now is the best time to get some garden preparation accomplished in the cooler weather. What preparations can you do in fall for a good spring garden?

(All supplies pictured in this post were provided by Lowe's through Lowe's Creative Ideas!)

Mulch in the Fall

Mulching your garden beds is one of the best things you can do for your perennials and trees. Mulch insulates the soil from the cold weather can help borderline plants overwinter better. It also protects the soil from compaction and adds organic matter to the ground over time. Cover each bed with a two inch layer of the mulch of your choice for good protection.

Overseed Grass in the Fall

Fall overseeding is an essential part of lawn care. I'm not a overzealous lawn fanatic by any means but I do enjoy having a nice open space for my kids to play. I want my lawn to look good but not be overly reliant on treatments. Each fall I overseed with a new bag of grass seed. I vary what type of grass I use each year to create some diversity in the lawn. I make efforts to grow my lawn as organically as possible which means certain cultural treatments are necessary including overseeding in the fall, mowing the correct height, and accepting and allowing diversity (yes that means a few weeds!). Often weeds like clover and dandelion can be beneficial to your lawn and garden.

Plant Trees, Shrubs, and Bulbs in the Fall

Fall is an awesome time to plant. Trees and shrubs planted in the fall get a head start on building root systems for next spring. The soil stays warmer longer than the air and the roots will continue to grow for a little while until it gets too chilly. Bulbs love to be planted in the fall! Some bulbs need a certain length of time in the cold called "chill hours." Once bulbs receive the correct amount of time they will send up shoots through the soil to gather energy and eventually produce flowers. Daffodils are an excellent bulb for any garden and have always demonstrated a high degree of deer and rabbit resistance in my garden. Tulips look great but do not last nearly as well as daffodils. Often tulips need replanted each year as they are a delicacy for voles and chipmunks. Tulips need to gather enough energy through the spring to store and resprout in the following year so leave the leaves up until they begin to turn brown if you want a repeat performance!

Fall is the best time of year to do many of the garden tasks that need done. It's also my favorite time of year since the weather is cooler and it is so much more enjoyable to be outdoors. So many people dread those chores but I love the fall leaf cleanup (free mulch collection) and dreaming about the potential for spring gardening! What is you favorite season in the garden?

The Border Garden - with a Border!

This summer heat, humidity, and assorted family issues have kept me behind in most of my goals.  One of which was expanding the side border garden so that the caryopteris wasn't completely absorbing the whole area. I tend to take a more conservative approach to pruning my caryopteris and consequently I didn't prune them back enough this spring. They responded by getting large and stretching their limbs beyond the previous stone border edging. I like their current size - large enough for an awesome impact once the flowers begin to bloom.  I had to compensate for the extra growth somehow which meant reclaiming the hidden border and adding mulch.

I decided to use some pine straw mulch. I've spread pine straw mulch before but generally lean toward the hardwood mulches.  My decision was based on a couple factors: 1) ease of spreading - pine straw mulch goes on fast and is very light and 2) it's cheap! At $4 a bale it only took about $20 to cover this area.  

I wanted a cheap mulch because this area flooded once and washed my mulch completely away - I wasn't happy.  I expanded the border garden by pulling the stone border that was there out about 18-24 inches. I removed as many weeds as possible then covered the areas beneath the stones with a thick layer of newspaper. That should discourage weeds from growing through the stones for a while.

On top of the newspaper went the straw mulch which was laid fairly thick - about 4-5 inches deep.  It will compact over time and a little height keeps the mulch nice and thick.

This weekend I wrote a post called The Long View.  In it I talked about looking at different perspectives in the garden to figure out what improvements to make. I used this area as an example and included a picture of the border garden before my weekend improvements. Take a look back and compare how this garden looks now versus what it looked like before. Then tell me what kinds of improvements you would recommend!

Mulching The Vegetable Garden

The vegetable garden is growing "like a weed", in fact its growing a few of them too! I'm really pleased with the progress of most of the garden so far. There are a couple beds that need some attention but I have almost all the beds mulched with a hardwood mulch to keep most of the weeds at bay and moisture in the soil. Mulching your garden will save you all kinds of time and aggravation over the course of the summer. If you don't do it now, you will wish you did! I was tempted to go with pine needles this year but never got around to gathering some. Any organic mulch will work. Organic mulches break down over time and gradually improve the soil which for me makes them vastly superior to plastic mulches and gravel mulches. The only downside is you have to replace them when they breakdown, but then they are feeding the soil, so it's worth it in the end!

Here are a few things to think about when mulching your raised beds:

• Use an organic mulch like pine straw, straw, leaves, grass clippings, or a hardwood mulch. 
• Avoid the colored mulches. I did that last year and didn't see any benefit. I don't know if they have harmful chemicals in them or not but they are a little more expensive.
• Put your irrigation system (soaker hoses and drip lines) under the mulch. Keeping the hoses under the mulch keeps the water under the mulch which reduces evaporation. More water to the plants root systems means more vegetables for you. That's always a good thing!
• If you choose to use a plastic mulch (I prefer organic) put your irrigation system in first so it can go underneath the mulch. 
• If you use grass clippings make sure you are using them from non-chemically treated lawns and from grass that hasn't gone to seed. Unless you like fescue in with your tomatoes, I don't!

If you haven't gotten your mulch down yet it's time to start, things are only going to get warmer here in Tennessee!

One Critical Thing to Do For Your Vegetable Garden This Summer!

The weather here in Tennessee is nothing if not unpredictable.  Some will even say that the only thing predictable about the weather is that it is unpredictable!  So gardeners are left trying to figure out how to best mitigate harsh conditions of any extreme.  Two years ago we were facing floods that washed out gardens, homes, and upturned lives - today, we're dry. Very dry.  Both of these weather extremes make gardening a bit of a gamble, but there are some things that will help mitigate some problems and ease the stress of unpredictable weather.  There is one critical thing you must to for your vegetable garden this summer to help - mulch.

A lot of beginning gardeners don't realize how important mulch is for growing vegetables.  Mulch does so much for your garden that it really is critical for your garden's success.  So what does mulch actually do for your garden?  A lot!

• Mulch first and foremost keeps water from leaving the soil too quickly.  Without a good layer of mulch the soil will dry out and your plants won't have access to enough moisture top sustain themselves.  
• Mulch also keeps the soil cooler during the hot summer. Ours summers get really, really hot here in Tennessee and keeping the soil a few degrees cooler may be the difference between good production and no production.
• Mulch (if its an organic based mulch and isn't something like rock or gravel) breaks down over time and feeds the soil which nourishes your plants.  Many people look at the disintegration of mulch as a problem requiring more work for next year. What it really is is the formation of good quality topsoil that plants need to grow!  Mulch breaking down is what you want.
• Mulch also keeps weeds down.  If weed seeds need light to germinate and can't get it, they won't germinate!  Pretty simple right?  But even if they do germinate or you've had weeds there that you missed pulling before mulching they are easier to pull because the soil stays more moist!  

Hopefully you realize how important mulch is to the success of your garden. I bet the next question you're asking in your head is what kind of mulch should you use on your vegetable garden?  Here you have a lot of options.

• Straw has been used for ages in vegetable gardens.  It's cheap, functional, and breaks down easily which improves the soil.
• Pine straw works too.  It won't increase the acidity of your soil significantly enough to worry about.  It's used ornamentally but is very functional in the vegetable garden since it allows water to easily flow to the roots.
• Grass clippings!  This is my favorite since it's pretty much free if you have enough lawn to use.  Don't use anything treated with herbicides or pesticides since those substances are good for your garden.  

  

  Grass Clippings as mulch around potatoes

• Leaves.  If you happen to have some leaves that haven't decomposed fully from fall you may have some of the best mulch around!
• Hardwood mulch works too.  I would lean toward something like pine bark that will break down faster and is often found in smaller pieces.  Other hardwood mulches will work too but try to avoid anything that has been colored or treated with chemicals.  

Hardwood Mulch in the Vegetable Garden

I avoid the gravel and stone based mulches completely.  They won't improve the soil and could become problematic when planting.

Mulching simply is critical to have a successful vegetable garden here in Tennessee.  Not only will it improve your garden's success and make your gardening easier but it also lowers that water bill!

A Garden Mulch Calculator

While working on the list of things I need to complete my 48 Hour Blog Project I was trying to figure out how many bags of mulch I'll need for the planting areas and I came up with this little calculator. All you have to do is input the dimensions of the area followed by how deep you want the mulch and it will tell you the amount in cubic feet. Please keep in mind this is just an estimate!



How Much Mulch Do I Need?

Enter the area length (in feet):

Enter the area width (in feet):

Enter the mulch depth (in inches):



Mulch in Cubic Feet=

Mulch Don'ts

• Don't mulch right up to the base of trees, leave a gap. Voles love the cover of mulch to get to the bark of trees.
• Don't mulch more than 2-3 inches high around trees and shrubs.
• Don't volcano the mulch around trees. It look silly and will suffocate the roots systems. Mt. Saint Helen's never spewed out Bradford Pears!
  

Since I am definitely not a talented html coder I adapted a script from: Science Buddies.

What's The Best Mulch?

In posting yesterday about my mulch (that I got for $1.34 per 2 cubic foot bag) several people left comments about what mulch they like to use. I thought that maybe today it might be good to take a look at the types of mulch and what's good about each one. The main purpose behind any mulch is to retain moisture in the soil for plants to utilize.

Hardwood Mulch
The mulch I use the most is regular brown hardwood mulch. I usually get it in bulk from a local bulk landscaping supply company because it's usually cheaper in bulk than in the bag. Generally I pay about $30 per yard which is 27 cubic feet. The brown mulch looks good and lasts through each season and then some. It's an organic mulch which gradually decomposes and feeds the soil.

Pine Mulch

Pine Mulch by the bag

The bags of mulch I picked up this weekend were filled with pine mulch. It breaks down a little faster than the hardwood mulch.

Pine Straw
Pine straw is just pine needles. Pine straw usually comes in bales and is very inexpensive. It's even cheaper if you happen to live in areas with pine trees! Over the course of many years it can acidify your soil - slightly. It makes good cover for azaleas, blueberries, and other acid loving plants but really won't effect other soils significantly unless you had very heavy acid soil to begin with. There are two good advantages to pine needles - it's cheap and easy to spread!

Straw
Straw works great on vegetable gardens and decomposes fast to enrich the soil. It's also fairly inexpensive and sold by the bale.


Rock, Stone, and Gravel
This is probably the most expensive of the mulches but it will probably outlast the gardener! I'm not a big fan of rock mulch because is doesn't feed the soil. If the rocks are in a sunny location they will heat up the area more during the day creating a warmer micro-climate. That may be good if you live in cooler regions but for Tennessee it's not necessary. I'd rather save the rocks for use in borders and dry creek beds.

Grass Clippings
I have a push lawnmower with a bag attachment that I use all the time to collect grass clippings. The clippings decompose fast, feed the soil, and keep the moisture underneath. My favorite use for grass clippings other than the compost bin is to start new beds with heavy layers of grass. A 3-5 inch layer of grass will completely kill off the grass and weeds I cover with it. A layer of newspapers underneath is a good insurance policy against a few highly determined weeds creeping through. When the grass decomposes I have a soft soil to begin a new bed with a more attractive type of mulch.

Leaves
In the fall I collect leaves everywhere I can, chop them up with the bagger mower (which inevitably fills with a mixture of leaves and grass clippings) then spread them anywhere that needs more mulch. Around trees, over garden beds, in the vegetable garden, or anywhere else - it works great! Just be careful if you have black walnut trees since the leaves contain a chemical that retards plant growth.

Questions for Garden Bloggers:
In a post on your blog write about your favorite mulch! Why do you like it? Where do you put it? Share a little Mulch Madness with us. Any blogger posting about your mulch mayhem will get linked to in this post with the appropriate mulch!

Mulch Madness

You read it right! It's not March Madness - or maybe it is - but it's also MULCH MADNESS!

This morning I picked up 20 bags of mulch and fit in my Honda CRV. That's a yard and a half of mulch ready to go on the gardens. And at a $1.34 per bag it was quite a bargain!

Preparing the Vegetable Garden in Spring

Over the weekend I tackled more prep work in the vegetable garden. I've already planted several things in the raised beds including onions, potatoes, lettuce, and spinach but planting wasn't the main weekend task. One of the things I really didn't like about my vegetable garden is now officially a thing of the past - the grass! In each of my garden layouts I've had issues with a grass pathway down the middle of the garden.  It required me to bring in the mower each week to cut the grass down to walkable heights and I decided that this year I would make things easier in the long run. I laid down pieces of cardboard over the grass and covered them with mulch to completely smother the grass that was still present underneath. Hauling all that mulch into the vegetable garden wasn't fun but the overall time and work involved will be much less in the future.

As I can I'll convert the mulch pathway to either stepping stones, bricks, or a combination of both. Only two things stand in the way of that: money and time. When you have the money you don't have the time and when you have the time you don't have the money! Mulch was the cheapest option even though it will need replaced eventually. Ultimately I'd like to see a steppable ground cover like elfin thyme in between paving stone cracks. We'll see, I might change my mind again!

Hopefully the vegetable garden layout I have planned will be very efficient and allow me much more room for growing vegetables. I've noticed that each year my vegetable garden ideas get bigger and bigger and my allotted garden space hasn't. That means that my vegetable garden must grow! That's a given isn't it? I may need to expand the garden back another 8 feet to allow for more raised beds, or at least some in ground vegetable beds that could house corn or beans.

You may have noticed some randomly shaped paving stones in the picture. Those are broken remains from another project. They work pretty good as paving stones which gave me the idea to randomly add more and more stones as I could to form the walkway through the vegetable garden. I hope to replace the beds on the right and left with larger beds made from stone or concrete blocks. Not the gray cinder block kind but something nicer, like what you would use for a patio or retaining wall project. When the garden is 100% finished (yeah right) I want it to be a feature of my yard that draws the eye.

The long raised bed to the left of the picture is where the potatoes are this year. Carrots and bush beans will make excellent companion plantings for the potato plants. The raised bed to the left only has garlic and cilantro in it right now but will most likely end up with a tomato or two planted there. I'm toying with the idea of a trellis to go over the walkway from the second raised bed to its twin across the pathway. Cucumbers would cover the trellis.

Mulching a New Garden

This weekend's weather was a sign that there really is a light at the end of this dark tunnel we call winter - and it's not another trains headlight! Spring is coming and the warm weather that we're having this week has me itching to get in the garden - which is exactly what I did over the weekend - without the itching part! I managed to accomplish many of the clean-up chores that I've been putting off for weeks due to the cold weather and I even mulched up a new garden area.

The new garden is in our front yard and was mostly planted back in the fall. I moved transplants of coneflowers and Russian sage and also put in a few discount plant dwarf crape myrtles. I hope they made it through our winter - right now they look quite rough! We'll see how they do when the weather gets warm enough for them to grow. I also found a Montauk daisy on discount sale and put it into this garden. (I took cuttings from it in the fall and kept indoors over the winter which I haven't shared here on the blog yet - it's very easy and I had a 100% success rate!) Daffodils and irises were planted to create a river of spring time flowers from the top of the garden to the front. The daffodils will need to fill in more before they look as impressive as I hope! The irises were passalong plants that needed divided and moved, isn't that a great excuse to start a new garden? The garden itself is in a triangle shape and is cornered by three trees - 2 redbuds and one Yoshino cherry - all three are favorites of mine. The redbuds were transplants from my in-law's woods and haven't bloomed yet but this may be the year. They can be tricky to move because of their root systems.

The base of the garden would look great with a small stone retaining wall which may come later if I can get around to building one.  I always seem to come up with more projects than I have time to tackle.  Ask my wife and I'm sure she'll agree. ;)

Happy Valentine's Day Jenny!

It doesn't look like much yet since none of the plants are growing yet. I went ahead and mulched most of the area this weekend but came up a few mulch bags short. I used a combination of grass removal and newspaper layering to take care of the grass that was underneath but there are a few patches that still need some attention. I'm planning on filling the gaps with zinnias, annual rudbeckia, and verbena that should blend in perfectly with the coneflowers and Montauk daisies.

I love spring, don't you? That's good because it's almost here!