Mike Streaker

What are some easy, low-maintenance, preferably perennial plant and forget cover plants for small garden ponds?

I'd like to put in a couple small (4-6 ft diameter?) ponds in the 100'x50' garden area I'm planning at our new house. I don't know much about water features yet but have read you want about 75% of the surface area covered. I took a community workshop on water container gardening a couple weeks ago, and picked up a couple books at the library. Unfortunately the only things they talked about were tropical type plants that you have to maintain constantly and move indoors 5 months out of the year (I'm in Southern Ohio). The workshop instructor said those were about my only option.

Are there other things I can put in small ponds that won't be so much work? I just want a couple small water features to increase biodiversity, bring in beneficial predators and such.

Thanks.

Hi everyone, we moved into our new place with five acres last November. By the lack of dandelions and other lawn weeds, it's pretty obvious the previous owners had the law treated with something. The neighbor across the street confirmed. Obviously I won't be doing that.

How long until it is safe to add our grass clippings to a compost pile? I plan to use the compost in the vegetable garden. Months? Years? Decades?

I don't know what specifically was applied, but I can probably try to find out if it matters.

Thanks.

We just moved to five acres, which I'm pretty excited about since it's a clean slate. Three-ish acres are mature 20-30 year old woods. The edge between the forest and our yard is pretty choked with invasive honeysuckle and I'm starting to slowly manage/remove it so it won't take over and choke out more beneficial growth. I'm planning on turning around 1.5 acres of pure grass adjoining these woods into a food forest.

What do you recommend I do or plant to fill the void where honeysuckle was so it's not as easy or hospitable for it to come right back? (It'll take me quite awhile to remove all of it from the property, so I'm sure the birds will continue to spread it.)

Thanks.

Hey everyone, new poster here but I've been reading everything I can for many months. Thanks for such a great place!

I'm pretty much a newbie gardener after only dabbling in a typical raised bed for a couple years. This past winter I read a ton of books as I want to step up my skills. This is our first attempt at starting a large garden from seed in our homemade Grow Light Rack (link for that below also if you're interested), now that we've moved to a place with five acres and finally have room.

In case anyone is interested, here's my review of the Soil Cube Tool I bought which allows you to make your own little seedling homes. I'm posting some things like this on my wife's foodie blog (which has a pretty decent sized following) to hopefully help the typical suburban unaware gardener that reads her, think a little bit about a more sustainable way to be a little self-sufficient.

Anyone else have tips on seed starting they can share with this newbie?

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Dirty Little Uteruses

Last time I hijacked the wife’s blog we talked about building the Seed Starter Rack that is happily chugging along in one of our guest bedrooms.

Today, let’s take a look at the soil cubes living on that rack, nurturing our future little buddies.




There are a lot of benefits to using these for seed germination instead of more traditional containers.

1. There is considerably less shock to the seedlings when it’s time to transplant them into the outdoor bed. Instead of digging and yanking them out of a plastic tub disrupting the root structure, you just plop these cubes into their new home. I’m sure veggie puberty is hard enough without adding additional trauma.

2. It’s very easy to water the soil cubes from the bottom once the seeds germinate. Just make sure to gently water from the top until something sprouts.

3. Money and storage space are saved by eliminating the ugly, messy containers.


Here’s how to make some little seed wombs of your own.

The grow medium consists of:

-- 3 parts Peat Moss
-- 2 parts Compost
-- 1 part Topsoil
-- 1 part Sand
-- 1 part Perlite

Read the rest HERE.