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Gardening Tips: Garden tips to do during hot July

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Posted: Friday, July 26, 2013 11:48 am


Gardening Tips: Garden tips to do during hot July

By Matthew Stevens

The Daily Herald, Roanoke Rapids, NC

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Mid to late summer can be a tough time for gardeners.

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Friday, July 26, 2013 11:48 am.

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Tips for turning junk into creative garden decor

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Some people hunt for new-found treasures at yard sales or flea markets for their home. But for me the real thrill comes from transforming those treasures into intriguing art or purposeful pieces for the garden. One of my favorites began as a broken piece (5 feet long) of concrete drain pipe and a well-weathered whiskey barrel  that was falling apart. We stood the drain pipe upright in our herb garden to create a plantable pillar and grew thyme and trailing rosemary. My husband used the metal bands from the whiskey barrel to make an armillary  sphere for the center. And it cost us nothing.

When it comes to creating an artful landscape with personality, it’s time to uncover the hidden potential of salvage materials, recycled items, unused objects around the home and flea market finds. Just as accessories can influence the way your home looks and feels, they can also reflect your individual style in your outdoor space. Any decorative object can be used to add that personal touch, whether as an eye-catching focal point, whimsical display or creative piece of art.

Use your creative sense to combine salvaged finds with existing elements in the garden, such as a broken-down piano or outdated washing machine filled with plants. Arrange a medley of colorful birdhouses to brighten up a shady area. Tuck in yard sale finds such as old frames, garden hats or glass insulators into a customized collection that is subtly positioned for an element of surprise. Set your sights even higher and attach your unlikely treasures to a fence, wall or post. Or suspend them in the air from a balcony,  arbor, pergola or even a tree.

Remember to use your imagination when looking at objects and the ideas will begin to flow. If you need a dose of inspiration you can browse through garden centers, craft fairs, display gardens and public gardens. While thrift stores and yard sales will usually unearth interesting finds, a good place to start digging for architectural treasures may be right at home with items you no longer use: the kids’ red wagon, old toys, a broken bicycle or a metal headboard painted bright red.

An outdated toy chest, a discarded wooden tool caddy or a long-forgotten bathtub can be brought back to life as creative containers. Even found objects — such as a rustic wash basin, worn wheelbarrow or leaky birdbath — can be recycled into intriguing planters with panache.

Your yard can serve as a canvas of opportunity for staging items you collect as decorative outdoor displays. Use a wood fence or a concrete or rock wall to showcase an art gallery of like items, such as a collection of vases, watering cans, set of old scales or ensemble of napkin rings or utensils strung into wind chimes. Bring new life to old metal tools by turning them into a sculpture piece for the yard. In the mood for more privacy? You can use several old paneled wood doors as an outdoor divider, privacy screen or the undiscovered portal to a hidden garden room.

Go ahead — nurture your creative side by using salvage and other household items to decorate your yard. All it takes are a few tweaks or embellishments to transform unused, found or recycled objects from trash to treasures. With a little innovation you’ll discover that just about anything, including the kitchen sink, can be turned into a functional and distinctive piece of art. Ultimately, you’ll be setting a scene that is anything but ordinary.

11 DESIGN TIPS FOR SALVAGED ART

* Use your garden art as traffic signals that cause the viewer to slow down or stop at various locations and destination points within your yard.

* Group larger garden art as pairs that serve as portals to another location, level or garden room. For example, a pair of leaky birdbaths used as containers for colorful plants can frame a garden gate.

* Consider individual appeal and focus on pieces and placement that reflect your personality and set the mood for your overall design.

* Create effect and make your garden art magnetic. Position your salvaged sculpture piece, recycled art or creative containers as a destination piece at the end of a meandering path or as a focal point of attraction that captures your attention and draws you in.

* Use your creative sense to combine garden art with plants.

* Large groupings of small-scale pieces or collections create a cohesive flow that lures you into the garden, whereas a mass of different elements or like elements scattered throughout the yard looks jumbled and chaotic.

* Use all the levels of the vertical space within your yard by displaying or arranging your salvaged garden art at various heights.

* Think about how you can use your garden art to play up the positive features while disguising or modifying the less attractive features of your yard. For example, an artistic arch, a divider of bicycles or a wrought-iron bed of flowers can stop the eye and deflect your vision from an unattractive element that lies beyond.

* Keep in mind that less is often more. Keep clutter under control and give your garden art a sense of purpose or cohesiveness, whether linking objects through a theme, style or color, or composing them into an eye-catching vignette or focal point that confines your collection into one attention-grabbing scene.

* Remember that most unlikely-treasures-turned-garden-art are changeable and can be rearranged or enhanced at whim to compose an entirely different setting or feel simply by changing the plants or by moving your salvaged finds to a new location.

* Above all, let your garden art be an artistic expression of you.
 
Garden writer Kris Wetherbee is the author of “Attracting Birds, Butterflies Other Winged Wonders to Your Backyard“: wetherbee@centurytel.net

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Bee-friendly Garden Tips for the Family

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Tony Gray, expert bee keeper at bee charity Adopt-a-Hive, has put together some top tips to keep your garden bee bee-friendly this summer.

Bee on flower

The British honey bee population has declined at an alarming rate over the last few years.

In the UK there were 27 species of bees and now 3 are extinct with many more under threat!

According to Lord Rooker, Environment and rural affairs minister, this decline could result in the honey bee population being wiped out in just 10 years.

Oswestry Beekeeper, Tony Gray, founder of Adopt-a-Hive has put together some helpful tips to get bees to love your garden!

Don‘t use pesticides: Bees won’t want to visit your garden if you’ve sprayed this everywhere so try not to use one – it’s not very welcoming! If you have to use one, choose the least toxic one you can find.

Use local native plants: Bees love native plants much more than exotic flowers. These plants adapt well to the chilly British weather and don’t require much looking after – plant some of these and your bees will be completely at home.

The more colour the better: When bees are buzzing through the air, they’re naturally attracted to colour as this helps them find the yummiest flowers full of nectar and pollen. Colours including blue, purple, white and yellow help to attract bees.

Group lots of flowers together: Clusters of lots of flowers all together look a lot more inviting. Allow four feet or more in between each clump to give the bees some space to land and take off.

All shapes and sizes: No two bees are the same, so make sure you have lots of different shaped flowers so every type of bee is welcome.

Have a range of plants flowering all season: Some bees like to fly in spring and some in the summer so make sure you have a range of plants for them to feed on throughout the seasons.

Location: Bees prefer sunny spots in the garden with a little shade – they love to wear their sunglasses. They also like some shelter from strong winds – otherwise, it’s a bumpy landing!

For more information about how you can help to save the bees, visit www.thehiveadopt.co.uk

Related Articles:
New Bee campaign is set to get British Summer Time buzzing

Filed Under: garden tips

Outdoors: Tips for keeping varmints out of your garden

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That string of four-letter words you just heard was probably from your neighbor who found out that the deer ate every last hosta in her yard. Or it may have been from your other neighbor who had his tomato vines picked clean by nighttime varmints. Or it may have been your very own words as you discovered all the leaves from your beautiful string beans missing in action.


It happens every summer – pests in your lawn and garden – and it seems to be happening with increasing frequency as deer, especially, find that living among humans can be both productive and nourishing.

So what can be done to keep the mooching beasts out of your yard and back in the woods where they belong? A 30.06, 200-grain, hollow point bullet comes to mind. But that is both illegal this time of year and not very practical within the city limits. But don’t give up or give into these pillaging thieves. There are ways.

So far this spring (listen carefully and you can hear loud knocking on wood) I have kept the deer out of my small vegetable garden. Here’s how.

First, I erected a fence, sort of. My garden plot is small, maybe 600 square feet. I didn’t really want to build an elaborate and expensive fence, so I went to Lowe’s and bought some 5-foot steel posts. They are green, metal posts and are often used in temporary landscape borders. You can push them in the ground with your feet, so they’re easy to erect.

I spaced them every eight feet or so and tied four strands of wire about 10 inches apart around each post. Deer could easily leap across the top wire, but they don’t seem to like to jump into confined spaces. So far, they haven’t. Also, I bought a product online called Deer Rabbit Repellent made by Plant Pro-Tec. It’s a system of small plastic clips loaded with concentrated garlic that repels deer and rabbits. It is supposedly 100 times stronger than a natural clove of garlic. I clipped the repellent vials about every four feet along the fence and I haven’t had any deer (or vampires) in my garden. For more information about this product, go to www.plantprotec.com.

Then, for insurance, we have sprayed the garden faithfully with Deer Fence. It stinks to high heaven, but it seems to help.

My wife Nancy has protected some of her plants in the back yard by hanging a product beside the plants that smells very much like Irish Spring soap. I don’t know why a piece of plain Irish Spring soap, dangled beside plants or flowers, wouldn’t work just as well.

If all else fails, there is a wonderful Farmer’s Market on the Downtown Mall each Saturday. And deer season starts in less than three months

Backyard cooking

I have run across two new products that are handy to have around for backyard cookouts. One is Reynolds Wrap for the Grill and the other is Kingsford Odorless Charcoal Starter.

I bought the Reynolds Wrap by accident. I didn’t realize it wasn’t the regular foil wrap until I got home. But it works great. You can put it on a hot grill (or in the oven) and nothing sticks to it. It distributes the heat very well. Recently, I put a few fresh ears of silver queen corn in the wrap, sealed it with a little water, then put the corn on the grill for about 15 minutes. It was as good as it gets.

The Kingsford lighter fluid is also worth trying. It gets the coals fired up quickly without a trace of odor. Both products are now staples in our house. Give them a try.

Contact Brewer at j44brewer@gmail.com

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Garden Tips from Marianne Oprahdt: Newer pyrethroids less toxic

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I created a challenge for area gardeners a couple of weeks ago when I mentioned that the newer synthetic pyrethrins, also known as pyrethroids, are one of the few options for controlling tobacco budworm and sunflower moth in garden flowers.

Just what are these “newer synthetic pyrethrins?” Before answering that question, let’s first talk a little about the origin of pyrethroids.

One of the first botanical- or plant-derived insecticides was pyrethrum. It was made by drying and crushing the flowers of two types of daisies,
Chrysanthemum cinerariifolium and Chrysanthemum coccineum. When purified, this mix was called pyrethrin. Pyrethrum and pyrethrin were desirable because they were “natural,” had a relatively low toxicity and a short period of residual activity. While a lack of persistence is valuable in protecting beneficial insects, it also made them less effective in controlling insect pests. 

Another obstacle to their use was that the pyrethrum was expensive, and supplies were limited. This prompted the pesticide industry to seek a way to create a synthetic pyrethrin. This was done in 1949 when the first synthetic pyrethrin, allethrin, was developed. The next generation of pyrethroids came in 1960 with the introduction of tetramethrin, resmethrin, bioallethrin and phenothrin. The second generation was more toxic than the natural.

Chemists did not stop there. They have continued to develop new pyrethroids that are more toxic, and most also have longer residual activity. These are the “newer” pyrethroids I referred to a couple of weeks ago. They include esfenvalerate, permethrin, cyfluthrin and bifenthrin.

Home gardeners with insect pest problems have been frustrated because a number of insecticides they used successfully in their gardens for pest control were taken off the market because of health and environmental concerns. These newer pyrethroids are effective against a range of garden insect pests, especially chewing insects, and have helped replace materials, such as diazinon, that no longer are available.

As a group, the newer pyrethroids generally are low in toxicity to mammals and birds, but highly toxic to fish and beneficial insects. They are fast-acting and kill insects by contact and ingestion.

How do you know if a product contains one of these newer pyrethroids? I found out it was not easy to find in local stores. Product names don’t give hints. You have to check the label for active ingredients. There will usually be a common name, such as esfenvalerate, along with its long chemical name in parentheses. Check the label to make sure it includes the crop, such as flowers, on which you plan to use the material. Also note any precautions you should take to protect yourself and wildlife.
By the way, I was able to find several Bayer, Ortho and other brands of home garden products that contain at least one of these newer pyrethroids.

– Marianne C. Ophardt is a horticulturist for Washington State University Benton County Extension.

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Gardening 101: Garden centers offer free advice

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Are your daisies droopy, your perennials puny? Have weeds invaded your lawn? Or do you just want to add a little pizzazz to your property?

At Corrado's Garden Center, Clifton, Rob Suplicki, left, advises the Moranos on choosing the right late-summer plants to brighten up their property.

How-to books and online tips can be helpful, but sometimes you need more personalized answers to specific questions. You can get great ideas, how-to tips and detailed advice on beautifying your landscape from experts at your local garden center, and it doesn’t have to put the hurt on your budget.

SERVICE IS KEY

One-on-one service is an important factor of his family’s business, said Rudy Eisele of Eisele’s Nursery and Garden Center, Paramus. And, he added, it’s free.

“Customers come to us, of course, to buy a product, but a lot of them are dealing with plant or landscape issues that require expert advice,” Eisele said. “We must answer at least 20 questions a day from customers who need help with everything from identifying a weed or pest to problems with soil and selecting the right plant for their yard. We don’t charge for giving advice.”

Eisele said he or one the garden center’s designers will walk customers through the 8-acre property to show and discuss individual plants – “This gives customers a much better look at what we’re talking about.” He noted that having so many types of plants on the premises is a bonus. “We don’t have to order plants for customers, because we have them right here. Not every garden center can say that.”

Some specimens are available in various stages of growth, he added, making it easier for a customer to visualize what the tree or plant will look like as time goes on. He said some people want an instant landscape and prefer to purchase full-grown plants.

Eisele’s designers also will draw up plans based on a photo or a visit to the homeowner’s property, another free service.

“But we don’t give those plans to customers unless they purchase the plants or installation service,” Eisele said. Fees for installation depend on size and scope of the project.

ON-SITE ASSISTANCE

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Host delivers program, shares gardening tips

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Barbara Hargrove hosted the June 22 meeting of the Calla Lily Garden Club and delivered program, “Summer Gardening Tips.”

Hargrove’s “must do” list included help on watering, tips on annuals and perennials and weed control. Her “should do” list included how to feed, enrich the soil, staking for perennials, and dead-heading spent blooms on perennials.

Hargrove emphasized soil and its improvement are key to a good garden. She took questions and provided answers, and shared a “Gardners know all the dirt” water sprinkler mug with each club member.

Laura Alston-Dudley, president of the club, presided and Patricia Adams-Ellis offered the devotional from “Greedy Birds.”

The horticulture report from Willie Mae Hill included an encouragement to install a rain barrel in members’ gardens.

In the business portion of the meeting, the club discussed the 2013 Federation of Garden Clubs Convention.

The meeting was adjourned following a prayer, and a social hour and refreshments followed.

 

 

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Home & Garden Tips: Water-sensible gardening, affordable entertaining

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Video: Chris Olsen: Affordable entertaining

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (KTHV) — THV’s lifestyle guru Chris Olsen with Botanica Gardens is here every Wednesday with great tips for you home and garden. This week he talked about water-sensible gardening and affordable entertaining.

Xeriscaping Defined

Xeriscaping is water-sensible gardening, or using plants that survive on the water that nature provides, with minimal supplementation. The word is derived from the Greek word xeros, which means of course “dry.” Though water-wise gardening has been around for such a long time, the modern xeriscaping movement began in the 1980’s, believe it or not, in Denver, where landscapers worked with the water department to develop more conservation-oriented plantings.

Most of us may live in communities where water shortages are a concern. So the right plant selection becomes important. You want to concentrate on plants that grow like our native plants. Here is a list of low maintenance plants that are durable and tough. A note of caution-newly planted plants require regular doses of water in the beginning until established. Long stretches of hot dry weather can also be a concern, so when possible provide some water to help your plants survive temporary periods of drought.

Wintergreen Boxwoods.
Most hollies except the Compacta and Helleri varieties.
Junipers such as Seagreen and Grey Owl
German Irises
Crape Myrtles both dwarf and tree form.
Abelias
Honey Locust trees
Lavender
Mullein
Dusty Miller
Russian Sage
Sedums
Thyme
Yuccas

These are just a few plants that will thrive in our summer heat with minimum care.

Affordable Entertaining

Are you on a budget but you want to have a party. I can show you how to entertain without breaking the bank.

3-Tiered Planter, Food Caddy, or Home Organizer:

Ready for another super easy, fun, an inexpensive project? Create a planter, food caddy, or home organizer using 3 bowls (large, medium, and small) and two wine glasses! It’s that simple! Invert one of the wine glasses and hot glue the glass portion to the inside of the large bowl. Now, hot glue the medium size bowl to the bottom of the inverted wine glass. Next, invert the second wine glass and hot glue it inside the medium bowl. Hot glue the small bowl on top of the inverted wine glass. That’s it! Now fill your 3-tiered project with succulents and rocks, candy or chips for your next party, or use as a home organizer for keys, mail, etc. Enjoy!

Supplies:

-3 bowls (large, medium, small)
-2 wine glasses
-hot glue gun/ hot glue

*All supplies were found at the dollar store.

Oven Baked Message Plates:

If you are on a mission for a personalized gift, this Oven Baked Message Plate is the gift idea for you! Allow your creativity to bloom with this fun and easy project! A white plate, bowl, platter, etc. (found at the Dollar Store) and a Sharpie marker is all you will need to make this gift idea a reality! Write a message of any kind, a poem, song lyrics, or draw a picture directly onto the white plate using the Sharpie marker. Bake the plate in the oven at 150 degrees for 30 minutes, and your personalized gift is now permanent and ready to give! Have some more fun and utilize the fun colored markers Sharpie has to offer!

Supplies:

White plate, bowl, platter, etc.
Sharpie marker

Filed Under: garden tips

Tips for freezing your garden vegetables

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Posted: Tuesday, July 23, 2013 11:00 am


Tips for freezing your garden vegetables


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Freezing vegetables is a good option for people who want to preserve their garden produce but are daunted by the idea of canning.

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Tuesday, July 23, 2013 11:00 am.

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Summer gardening tips

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While you’re standing at the BBQ, sizzling chicken on the grill and handing out chilled drinks to your friends, remember that your garden friends will be extra thirsty this month too.

Gardens should explode with colour and fruit this month, as long as you don’t let them dry out.

A heat wave is settling in for the time being, so now is the perfect chance to take some time out and relax in your garden. While you’re there, you may find a few things to do to keep your garden healthy.

To assure your garden’s tidy, you could: 

Dead head bedding plants to keep them flowering for longer

Cut back and feed Delphiniums and Geraniums to encourage a second flowering period

Tie in climbers such as Roses and Clematis to trellis, fences, and walls.

Train new growth diagonally or horizontally to encourage more flower buds.

And to maintain your perfect garden, you could: 

Save water by mulching borders – a layer of 2-3 inches will help keep down weeds too

Move pots and containers into the shade to stop them drying out so quickly

Water well throughout July and August as plants prefer a regular, deep soaking to help develop strong roots

Water in the early morning before the heat of the day

Hoe your borders to ensure that weeds don’t take over if you go on holiday.

Now to protect your beautiful flowers, you could:

Try a weed killer or, if you prefer a natural approach, dig them out.

Cut down wilting stems to ground level and the surrounding soil sprayed with a fungicide.

Treat any black spots you may find on your Roses.

Filed Under: garden tips
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