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Create an Outdoor Container Garden
Container Gardening
Container gardens are arguably the most versatile way to garden. They can be tiny and set on a table top, fill in a balcony, patio, or small garden space, define the edges of permanent features in the garden, or be integrated into the overall garden design. They are ideal for specimen plants, creating spots of color or sculpting living flower arrangements. You can even grow your own vegetable garden completely in containers. Container gardens are double the fun because you can plant them any time of the year and if you need to protect them in winter, most of them are transportable. If you really want to indulge in container gardening, you can even create an entire landscape in a miniature garden.
Where soils are not fertile, like where I live in the canyon area of the chaparral, containers can be an excellent solution to poor soil. By filling the space we want to plant with a packaged soil, we can get around all that work of digging and amending. Planting in large containers can also be a way to control some wild critter problems, especially the borrowing types like gophers. Even our pets can sometimes be a threat to carefully planted or delicate areas. The control afforded by planting in a pot, a built up, contained area or any other type of enclosed planting space can reduce some of the work and maintenance of growing plants. Of course, there are other concerns that will have to be addressed like watering smaller spaces that will dry out more easily. But a well-thought-out drip or bubbler watering system should take care of the challenge. You can even set your system on a timer so you don’t have to baby sit your watering on a daily basis.
Make your design fit your garden. Think about what kind of receptacles will fit best with the design and style of your house and landscape. Wander through the isles filled with pots, tubs, troughs and bowls at at your favorite garden center and check out all the different sizes, colors, materials and shapes.
Get creative. Recycle an old sink, wash tub, bath tub, a broken fountain or even plant a worn-out boot or hang a planted kitchen colander, or chipped tea pot. Container gardens can created with a collection of the same type of receptacles, one big container, a mixture of different soil holders all in the same material or color, or an assortment of all the above that are designed to build an attractive, overall effect.
Build your own container. Anything that could hold water can be adapted. Make sure you have holes for drainage in the bottom of your container so water doesn’t build up and rot roots. And add a pan or tray below to catch drips if your container garden will sit above a surface that can be damaged. Add a layer of drainage material like broken pot shards or gravel to keep soil from sifting out through the holes. Some people like to use newspaper to line the bottom, but this can eventually rot away and leak. Then fill the pot with potting soil, set in and water your chosen plants. (Some people prefer to use no drainage material at the bottom of the pot. It isn’t necessary, but it does keep the soil from leaking out of the holes at the bottom.)
Choose plants that will grow well in the location where they will be planted. For sunny spots choose the many fascinating shapes of cacti and succulents (using a cactus soil mix), and for a lush winter look, plant evergreen plants. For a good design, plant at least one tall, narrow plant and one trailer that will spill down the side of the container. If you want to cheer up your container garden with a burst of color, add annual bedding flowers. They’re easy to change from season to season and can add brilliance when the longer-living perennials are not flowering. Other fun plants for container gardens are herbs or even vegetables. You can add bulbs to a mixed container garden to introduce showy flowers while some of the slower blooming plants are still developing buds.
Container gardens can be accents for the landscape. Add a container garden to decorate an outdoor table. Set containers on retaining walls or crown the tops of pilasters. Cascading plants can enliven a blank wall, cover an ugly tree stump or clothe a space with a sheer drop. Set large containers with tall plants to fill an empty floor space.
Winter container gardens can make gardening easy in cooler, wetter weather. They can accent any space or make a whole garden of their own. And they are a great way to make vegetable gardening with cool season crops like peas, cabbage, fava beans or Swiss chard easy, pest-resistant, convenient and downright ornamental. You can also add some of those annual flowers to perk up a bowl of less decorative edibles. But don’t forget that even edibles can be decorative: use the bronze fennel, red lettuce, yellow-flowering okra or the cascading asparagus pea with its bright red little flowers. Most of these are best planted from seed. Strawberries create their own decoration whether they are planted in strawberry pots or regular pots. Some even grow with decorative pink flowers before setting their delicious red fruits.
Outdoor pots also give you a chance to grow some of the plants you’d love but are too frost shy for you winter climate. You can move the pots under shelter– or even indoors — when cold threatens. Consider some of the dwarf citrus trees or the showy hibiscus for more delicate potted choices.
Whether you are a seasoned gardener or just starting out, planting in containers has a lot to offer both decoratively and practically.
Pomegranates offer garden and health benefits
I was just thinking about the pomegranate. It’s such a versatile plant. After planting a row of dwarf pomegranates (Punica granatum nana) as a natural low hedge in a design, I had the opportunity to design the larger variety into a space where it worked as a colorful screen. The bright orange-red flowers are as decorative as any ornamental blooming shrub and the fruit hangs off the tree like jolly red Christmas ornaments — unless you pick them to eat or extract the juice instead.
The pomegranate is a venerable fruit that dates back to biblical times when it was honored in ancient artwork and included in many tales and parables. Popularity today has been boosted by recent research that recommends it as a natural preventative of the free radical cells that can be a precursor to cancer. Some believe it is a helpful aid for weight control. It is also an excellent source of vitamin C, niacin and fiber. Other curious facts about the pomegranate is that it is recorded as having 365 seeds — just like the number of days in a year. Another myth is that they have 614 seeds like one ancient calendar. I haven’t had the patience to count them to find out.
Pomegranates are easy to grow, like full sun and are more drought-tolerant than many other fruit trees. They thrive in rich and poor soil. The flowers are so showy that there are decorative cultivars bred to show off pink, coral or white flowers with flouncy layers like petticoats. These ornamental varieties don’t even bother much with fruiting. You can let the full-sized Punica granatum ramble or sprawl. Or you can clip it into a neat, small tree. The Pomegranate will even tolerate pruning it into a simple, formal topiary.
So, if you are thinking about an interesting fruit to grow, consider the Pomegranate. Small varieties will do fine in limited garden space or even in containers on a patio or balcony. Big Pomegranates will produce lots of fruit and serve as trees, living walls or fill in awkward spaces. Oh, and just for a bonus, the Pomegranate will turn a brilliant yellow at the end of the season before going into winter dormancy, just to add some seasonal color to your garden. What more could you ask of a fruit tree?
Indoor Gardening with Catalogs
Even in the milder climates the late autumn and winter months can still offer weather that makes staying indoors preferable to working outside in the garden. Rains can leave garden soil moist for several days after a downpour and it is wisest to avoid compressing the soil by walking on it when it is wet and muddy. In other areas frosts and snow can freeze soil hard or simply make outdoor work unpleasant. Whether it’s the weather, the short daylight hours or it’s any other reason you choose to stay indoors, you can still have fun gardening. This is the time of year when all sorts of gardening catalogs arrive in the mail. If you are not receiving all the catalogs you’d like, take a visit to online growing sites to pass the time or to order a printed version delivered to your house. It may be old-fashioned, but there aren’t many things more relaxing to an enthusiastic gardener than curling up in front of a toasty fireplace with a pile of the latest catalogs stacked up next to a hot cup of coffee, cocoa or tea as the weather rains, sleets, snows or blows outside.
There are a lot of reasons to check out gardening catalogs. First of all, you can find all the things you won’t find elsewhere. Seed vendors specialize in so many different products from edibles to decoratives, herbs to trees, orchids and rarities to bulk seeds or local native plants. Catalogs offer hours of delight and opportunities to try out varieties that tickle the imagination without having to spend a lot of money. Bulbs also tend to be offered in limited supplies by retailers. Yet even the common daffodil and tulip come in remarkable shapes and colors you might enjoy exploring inside the bulb specialist catalogs. And, of course, there’s always another variety of bulb, corm or rhizome that needs to be tried.
Although some plants can be pricey when ordering through certain catalogs, you can find types and cultivars you’d be unable to find elsewhere. You can find just about any kind of plant you can imagine listed in catalogs. Look for rarities if you want a challenge, or check for catalogs that offer bulk prices if you have a large area you want to plant for the best price. You might even want to experiment with some indoor plants.
There are non-living garden supplies you can shop for in catalogs, too. Look for anything from outdoor furniture to lighting, gloves and tools to foods and pesticides, cloches to full-sized greenhouse kits, waterfalls to imaginative décor. You can plan on starting seeds indoors with your own seed set-up to get a jump on the season or raise plants that might be devoured by pests if you seed them directly into your garden. Or you can spend time making plans to redesign a part of the garden or give a face-lift to your pool or an outdoor room with new items that entice you from the catalog pages.
There are many ways to enjoy putting your catalogs to work. You can even find great bargains between the pages of catalogs. Keep an eye out for specials and close-outs. Some are available only in print catalogs whereas others may only be found online.
Ponds Need Attention in Spring
It’s time for spring pond care. Fish that have been staying down at the bottom of the pond are rising to the surface to bask in warming sunlight and pond plants are sprouting. But this is also the time that the water will turn hazy and, in some cases even become an opaque pea green in color.
Start feeding your fish once the temperature of your pond water rises above 50′F. It’s best to use a specially formulated ‘winter’ food for easy digestibility. Being cold-blooded, fish do not digest food so well when water is still cool. Switch to regular fish food once the water rises above 60′F. Feeding too early with regular food can lead to lot of uneaten uneaten food that can pollute the pond water.
Springtime is the time to clean up any remaining dead or damaged foliage that may remain on bog or water plants. You don’t want it to rot down into the water. This is also the best time to pull out overgrown water plants and divide them up so they’ll have plenty of room to grow in the coming year. While repotting, you can slip in water plant food sticks into the potting soil. Water and bog plant material that you don’t want makes an excellent addition to the compost heap.
Warming temperatures can cause string algae to develop in your pond which will need your attention in spring. String algae can swirl through your pond and clog up everything so it should be removed. The fogging or opaque green water I mentioned above is also caused by algae, but this type will do no harm. It is just unsightly for us humans, but the fish love to eat it. As the water warms, the green water algae will go away on its own.
Pay special attention to your fish during the spring. This can be a time when the fish can stress with temperature changes and that might make them more vulnerable to parasites and other diseases. Inspect your fish daily for any suspicious changes in behavior and look for visible lumps, spots, stringy growths, sores or other abnormal changes. Most illnesses can be treated quickly to avoid problems from spreading. You should be able to get advice and medications at your local pond supply store.
Pumps that have been idle all winter will also need inspection before starting up your systems. Make sure all pipes are clean before turning them on again. Also check for any winter damage to pipes like cracking or splitting. Expect there might be some rotting odor from accumulated mulm in pipes and at the bottom of the pond. Any discolored water and unpleasant smell should clear up in a matter of minutes if all the filters and leaf traps are cleaned and working properly.
Cleaning up your pipes, pumps and filters and checking all connections at the beginning of the season will help your pond start out right. All ponds need attention in the spring, but if you clean, repot and feed plants and check your fish regularly, it’s likely you will avoid many of the problems that arise at this time of year.
Designing a garden focal point
To create a successful landscape you need to design a focal point into the layout of your garden. All you need to do is create one event that catches the eye first when you look at the garden area. A focal point is essential to a good design whether you are designing a room, painting a piece of artwork or creating a landscape. The purpose of a focal point is to give the eye something exciting to enjoy, to keep the view from becoming dull and boring.
You can create more than one focal point, but consider secondary focal points to be supports for your main event. Don’t add competing focal points that take away from the main feature and confuse the composition. Consider points of interest that are less riveting than your main focal point to be like supporting roles in a play. They help build the overall story and support the main event. Focal points can be living or not, a single object or a grouping. You can use rocks and boulders, constructs or sculptures, fountains or logs. Focal points can underscore a theme, like a carved tree-trunk bench in a woodland garden), an unusual banana specimen plant in a tropical garden or a wagon wheel in a rustic Western landscape. Consider a showy seating area with unusually shaped, colored or styled furniture as a focal point.
Lead up to your focal point with paths, garden beds, fencing or decorative border materials. Add an archway or an unexpected gateway to a fence and that can become a focal point in itself.
Creating a focal point can one of the more fun parts of designing the landscape. You can use a favorite item, search through garden centers, check out your attic, garage or wander through a junk yard and find a creative way to recycle some object into a focal point. Or you can plant an exciting area with some really showy specimen plants to create drama in your garden design. Designing a garden focal point can not only be a fascinating project, but it can make a bland landscape beautiful.
Plant profiles: Rosemary ‘Ken Taylor’
There are many different varieties of rosemary you can grow in your garden. There are shrubs that grow from trailing groundcovers to sprawling four foot tall bushes. Some flower in blues, some lavender, some in pink, and some in shaded whites. All are herbs that have the unique rosemary scent and essential oils that can be used in cooking or for medicinal purposes. One of my favorite rosemary plants is the ‘Ken Taylor’. This is a cultivar that grows about two feet tall and stays reasonably neat looking – more than most other varieties. It blooms in early spring with brilliant sky blue flowers unlike the usual dull, pale flowers.
A well-behaviored plant, the Rosmarinus ‘Ken Taylor’ loves full sun in lean, well-drained soil, the same as other rosemary plants. It will handle light frosts and high heat. It also does well in dry air where so many other plants fail to grow.
Grow rosemary in informal or formal garden designs. It will tolerate pruning and looks fine when allowed to determine its own shape. The bright blue color is startling when the plant is in flower so design it where it can strut its stuff in spring. You can even grow a garden of mixed rosemary plants in different growth habits and flower colors. These plants will stay handsomely evergreen and make a good foil for other flowering plants. They also look fine on hills or slopes where they can decoratively help stop erosion.
Basic gardening terms and definitions: Mulch
Garden mulch is the use of a material over the surface of soil. Mulch creates a protective layer. It insulates roots of plants like a blanket, holds soil in place and keeps moisture from evaporating too quickly. Mulch can be organic like a layer of bark chips, compost, peat or straw that will eventually decompose back into the soil. Organic material is a good choice for poor soils as it can enrich the content and texture when it breaks down. A protective layer can also mulch surfaces with longer lasting materials like gravel, stone, decomposed granite or sand. Or it can be any other material that will allow water to permeate the layer like tumbled glass, brick, interlocking pavers or any other permeable covering. Stone and gravel drain quickly so they are good mulch for plants that are prone to rotting at the root join like cacti and many succulents. Garden mulch can not only add a layer of protection, it can offer an element of design and decoration by adding a surface texture and color to the landscape or garden bed. Mulch is growing in popularity as a sustainable, artistic and practical way to handle soil surfaces.
Pond Preditors and Pests
Ponds are beautiful and offer a soothing feature to your garden. They also help restore some of the natural environment being destroyed with urban sprawl. A successful garden pond helps offer water for wildlife and homes for displaced native creatures like frogs, dragonflies and water bugs. Unfortunately, it also invites those native pests who would happily dine on your precious fish like raccoons, herons, egrets and other predators! Here are some tips on how to keep garden pond fish safe from would-be predators.
Protect pond fish with a well built pond. Build your pond with fish safety in mind. Avoid those steps so often shown in common pond designs if you have raccoons. They will use them to wade into your pond and help themselves to dinner. Build smooth, straight sides to the pond to make fishing more difficult. Raccoons don’t mind getting their toes wet, but they aren’t keen about taking a swim. You can also add hiding spaces for your fish to flee when the pond is invaded. Sunken milk crates and painted cinder blocks (painted to prevent the leaching of lime into the water) provide safe harbor where you fish can flee from those prodding little raccoon hands and the long, expert fishing beaks of herons and egrets. (Do paint anything made of cement with an acrylic or vinyl paint before submerging it in a pond. Otherwise, the lime in the cement can leach into the water and throw off the acid-alkalinity balance.)
Statues and fake predators can protect pond fish — if regularly moved. Add some decorative discouragement. Fake owls and snakes can intimidate and sculptures of herons might detour the real things since they think the territory is already taken. (Herons are very territorial and usually will not invade another’s space.) You will have to move your sculptures and model critters every now and then as even the wildlife will catch on to them being no threat if they are always in the same place.
Try some kinetic defense systems. There are whirligigs, water squirters and light flashers you can set up around your pond. Some are motion sensors and display their scare tactics
whenever an invader trips their motion sensors. These are most successful after dark. That means the nighttime motion sensors are most likely to help with the nocturnal pests like raccoons. Be aware they will also go off if a pet approaches the pond.
Sometimes all these efforts are still not enough. Occasionally some individual pests are remarkably resourceful and need to be held at bay with a low voltage electric wire – raccoons being most likely to qualify here. It is best to set these mild shock-giving fences for activation after dark on a timer to avoid accidental shocks when people are around the pond. The electric shock is not harmful but it is definitely unpleasant! Also be careful of pets. Raccoons are surprisingly clever, so make sure you set the electric fence so it is not easily avoided.
Pond netting protects fish so it’s another alternative. I do this anyway to keep the leaves out of the pond in the autumn. It isn’t very attractive, though. So you probably won’t want to use netting as a permanent deterrent. It is also a bit more difficult to use if you have actively growing pond plants that can grow shoots through the netting and become entangled. Another thing that can be problematic with netting is snakes. Most snakes are of the good kind out here. Gopher Snakes and Red Racers may look menacing, but they keep the population of rodents down considerably. They’ll even eat baby rattlers. (Yes, we do have some of the bad kind of snakes, too.) Water does attract snakes since, like all living things, they need to drink. It is easy for a snake to get caught in a bit of netting. The snake will then roll its body trying to extricate itself which will likely only roll it up in the netting even worse. So netting tends to be a better choice to use in the autumn and winter when they keep leaves out and snakes are less active in the cooling air.
The occasional predator is likely to visit your pond every now and again. If you try some of these tips, you should be able to minimize any damage. It’s also a good idea to keep your pets away from ponds to avoid any potential disaster for either the pet or the pond. With a little extra care, you can keep your pond a thing of beauty to be enjoyed year ‘round – safely!
Zebra Grass (Miscanthus Zebrinus)
Grasses are currently very much in favor in today’s designs. This Miscanthus has horizontal creamy-yellow bands and grows in a clumping form about 5 – 6′ tall. Like all Miscanthus, it likes average to slightly moist conditions (so it’s perfectly happy in or at the edge of the grass in your lawn). Though it will take full sun, ‘Zebra Grass’ appreciates a bit of dappled shade in hot climate summers. It is splendid around any and all water features, creates a strong focal point for any garden, blends well with colorful flowers and gracefully dances on windy days. Expect it to turn brown in the winter after it blooms with tall slender stalks of beige to pinkish grass-like inflorences (flower-heads, which, in this case, look more like plumes or brushes rather than the usual colored petals we tend to associate with flowers). These inflorences make wonderful dried flower arrangements. It is best to cut the whole plant down to about 6″ – 10″ in the late winter so it can start its spring growth neatly. Like many ornamental grasses, the Zebra Grass (Miscanthus zebrinus) can become an invasive weed in some areas. So check your local city, university or state weed management programs to see if the Zebra Grass is going to be a good selection for your garden.
An Expert’s Tips on Growing a Bird and Butterfly Garden
For those garden enthusiasts and professionals who missed the Gardening Under Mediterranean Skies VIII: Style & Whimsy in the Sustainable Garden Pasadena symposium, there were some excellent speakers at the symposium. One of the speakers, Steve Brigham spoke on sustainable wildlife gardening, attracting birds to your garden and keeping them there. With his warm, gentle humor, he talked about how important it is to know your own environment and how that will make it easier to attract the wildlife you want. He focused on how to provide food, perches, nesting areas and how to incorporate life-giving water while making your garden beautiful and exciting for people, too. I was fortunate to be able to snap a quick interview with Steve after the seminar. This is just a sampling of what he had to say in our unedited interview about tips on growing a bird and butterfly garden.
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