FRIDAY FINDS

I have more garden cleanup (both my own and at a master gardener project) on the schedule for this weekend, a date with some nasty garlic mustard weed that, I kid you not, grew 5 inches in one night when we got a lot of rain and one more sowing of tomatoes to try to salvage my seed plans scheduled for this weekend. But that's still a day away, so in the meantime, here's some of what I'm digging this Friday.

I have thing about knobs and pulls, so I'm pinning this list of 48 budget-friendly options.

Over at Growing with Plants, Matt is giving awhile a neat, fully compostable compost bucket.

Eric from GardenFork invited me on his radio podcast to talk about Garden Myths. I may or may not have expressed some too-real feelings about what I am convinced is an Espom salts lobby taking over Pinterest. Give it a listen.

It seems like every year at about this time I go on a hunt for a new planter and I drive myself batty. I still haven't found just what I'm looking for but I will say that I feel like there are better options out there than I've found in the past. I pinned a bunch to my Containers Pinterest board. If any
A few fortunate garden writers got to go to California spring trials last week, which is sort of Fashion Week for plants. Here's a report from Stephanie at Garden Therapy.

Don't forget that it's Earth Day, so hug a tree today!

What's on your agenda for the weekend?

A PATH OF GREEN

Last fall I discovered how to get a bird's eye view of my yard via Google Earth and it was rather enlightening. I discovered that the bed on the north side of the house is all kinds of wrong. I already sort of knew that that area had issues. It never really felt right. It was too deep, and the yard drops away as it nears the creek.

There's nothing I can do about the drop off. Well, technically there is but I'm not going to do anything with it. But the deep bed is difficult to organize, harder to maintain and generally visually lacking. The rest of the bed suffers from wavy edge syndrome, something I did a lot of when I was first making gardens at our house.

It wasn't until I redid the back yard that I discovered how much I prefer a nice, bold curve vs. many little ripples. You can see how the bed to the north of the house is curvy for curvy's sake, but the curved oval in the back (really the side) yard, has purpose.

The bulbous nose bit on top is the main issue. You can see how ridiculously deep that bed is. But I like to have garden in that area and I have some nice plants on the tip of that nose that make for beautiful viewing out our living room windows.

So I'm going to take a note from a garden I toured last year (all my best ideas come from garden tours) and create a path through that bed. It should make that garden much more visually appealing and will certainly make it easier to maintain and design. I think it will also add some interest in that area, which, frankly, is needed. I'll reshape the rest of that bed from there, but I'll start with a plan for the path and that should help guide the new outline of the entire area.

As you know, I love garden paths and my most popular (and favorite) Pinterest board is my collection of great garden paths. I'd love to have a garden that incorporated every kind of garden path you can imagine, but I'm pretty sure that would be a mistake. Still, I love the fact that I have a somewhat unexpected opportunity to add another path. But what kind should it be?

I think I've ruled out a grass path because 1.) That seems boring and 2.) I'd have to make it wide enough to easily mow with the riding mower and I don't think a path that wide is appropriate for this application.

However, this path will lead from grass (the path that leads to a bridge across the creek, although some day that might get jazzed up too) to grass, so I don't think anything that is mostly a hard material is appropriate either. Bricks, gravel or even flagstone would feel out of place there.

Some kind of wood plank type path may work, but I feel like a softer, more organic material might be better. So I'm thinking about a walkable ground cover.

I've been down the walkable ground cover route before. When we just had a small path cutting through the garden (before I extended the path all the way to the garage) I attempted to grow all manner of things between fieldstones. I killed a ton of thyme and more than a little Irish moss. It was the combination of winter (frozen, shoveled, stomped on plants are not happy) and some leaching from a screened limestone base I used to set the stones that really did them in, I think. Both of those plants are pricy and covering an entire path with them, sans stones, would be cost prohibitive.

I need a low groundcover that can be walked on, although it would be mostly strolls through the garden, not daily trods. One option I'm considering is Veronica repens or another creeping speedwell. These are very low growing, deer resistant and grow fast.

Of course growing fast is also dangerous because no ground cover knows where it's not supposed to grow and I'd have to figure out some way to keep the beds from being overrun by it. Still, it has the advantage of having a great texture, a short period of bloom (blue or white flowers depending on the variety) and should stand up to some traffic. It also does well in sandy soils, which is definitely what's going on in that area. And Allan Armitage likes the 'Sunshine' cultivar, so that's something.

I'll have to keep thinking on this one. But I'm thrilled to have another place for a meandering path in the garden.

Simple swag

Posting on the blog has been so sporadic lately and I apologize for that. I have so many projects up in the air right now and it seems like it's taking forever to finish any of them. I'm including things like "decorate the Christmas tree" and "hang up the garland outside that I bought a month ago and haven't put up yet but now I own it so I might as well do something with it."

Still, I feel like I ought to show you some sort of progress, right?

So I give you my Pinterest-inspired swag on the back door. It should be noted that this swag was created over the course of two nights (or, more accurately, early mornings) all done at hours after midnight, which sadly seems to be when I'm most productive lately.

Remember when I said a couple weeks ago that I was feeling so confident about being ahead this Christmas? Did you laugh? Because, yeah, that was clearly misguided.

By Monday, I will have Christmas decorations to show you. Not that you probably care anymore. But if it's not done by Sunday (or, rather, Saturday night), it's not being done.

In the meantime, let me tell you how this swag came about: I wanted a double-sided wreath for the back door but I couldn't find any I liked for a price I was willing to pay. I thought about making a wreath, but that seemed like a lot of work. Enter the swag, which is just a really fast way of sticking some greens somewhere.

I saw this picture from Better Homes and Gardens on Pinterest and thought I could probably make something similar.

Here's what I ended up with (fuzzy camera phone pictures and all ... my gosh I'm not winning any Blogger of the Month prizes am I?)

The ribbon is probably a bit big, but it's what I had. Actually it was wired ribbon but I took the wire out to make it floppier. It is attached to the top of the door with regular old thumb tacks.

Upon studying my photo, I just remembered that I bought holly to throw in there and forgot to put it in. Oh well, with all that ribbon you probably wouldn't see it anyway and you can always stick holly somewhere during the holidays, right?

At least something is looking a little Christmassy!

Pinterest Puh-lease! Pinterest tips you'll want to ignore

Isn't Pinterest just the best? So many ideas! So many pretty pictures! So many great tips!

Except, um, when the tips aren't really tips at all.

There are some hilarious blogs that feature Pinterest tips gone wrong and sometimes it's because people just don't have the crafting/cooking skill of the person who originally created the tip/recipe/craft to begin with. But then there are some that are just plain wrong.

Unfortunately I'm finding more and more of these in the gardening realm. It's gotten to the point where I am pretty cynical about most of the "tips" I find there unless they link back to a really reputable source.

So I thought it might be fun to bust a few Pinterest Gardening myths. I'm not going to take credit for this idea. Spring Meadow Nursery's Stacey Hirvela, who I follow on Pinterest, started a board for gardening tips gone wrong and it got thinking about what other myths might be a load of bunk.

Pinterest says: Plant egg shells with your tomatoes to give them a calcium boost.

The Truth: Don't bother. First of all, most soil is not deficient in calcium to begin with. Secondly, it takes years for the calcium in egg shells to break down and by then your tomato plants will be long gone, since like most vegetables, they are annuals. I don't think throwing some egg shells in the hole with your tomato plants will hurt as it's sort of a method of composting, but why not throw them in the compost bin to break down there?

 


Pinterest says: Use Epsom salt for everything from greening up your lawn to growing great tomatoes to having oustanding tomatoes.

The Truth: I think the Epsom salt lobby has an active PR department. Seriously, I don't understand how epsom salt became the thing for the garden. (Upon further review there actually is an Epsom Salt Industry Council, so I guess that's how.)

Espom salt is magnesium and sulfate. Epsom salt will only do anything for your plants if your soil is lacking in magnesium (and most soil isn't). The only way to know is to do a soil test, and the best way to do that is to contact your local university extension, most of which do soil testing for a very small fee. But let's be honest, most gardeners don't do soil tests. Magnesium deficiency does happen and Epsom salt can help fix it, but that is in intensively produced crops, not what is happening in your home garden.

The problem with all the Epsom salt misinformation is not just that it's not going to help your plants. It can hurt them too. Spraying Epsom salt on foliage can cause leaf scorch. And magnesium build-up in soil (which can happen despite what Pinterest and the Epsom salt industry says) has shown to cause root rot in some plants, according to Linda Chalker-Scott, a Washington state horticulturist who wrote a paper on using Epsom salts in gardening.

According to the paper, "One researcher (finds that) 'Magnesium residues from fertilizer unused by plants accumulate in the topsoil and are not rapidly removed by leaching.' Unfortunately, this evidence is generally ignored in advertising literature and application instructions.'

The use of Epsom salt in growing roses is often touted as helping everything from basal cane growth to lush foliage, but again, there are no studies that show this to be true.

And if you want to use Epsom salt on your lawn, as Pinterest will also tell you to do, if you have an intensively managed lawn, like a golf course or a pasture where cows are constantly munching, you might see an immediate improvement by applying Espsom salt. That's because those types of grasses are likely to be deficient in magnesium. The effect, however, will be short lived. Your normal, average back yard lawn, though, probably has no magnesium issues and all you'll accomplish by putting Epsom salt on it is looking a bit silly in front of the neighbors.

Basically, it comes down to this: Epsom salt will only help if your soil is deficient in magnesium. That's pretty rare, but if it is, it might be because you're overdoing it on the fertilizer. A lot of specialized fertilizers, like tomato fertilizer, are high in potassium, and potassium affects a plant's ability to take up magnesium. Nutrient imbalances in the soil are not a good thing.

Use Epsom salt to soak your feet, not your garden.

Pinterest says: Put a diaper in your hanging baskets to help them retain moisture.

The truth: Um, gross! Is it just me or is this a really disgusting tip? I can just imagine pulling that thing out the container at the end of the season. Ick. OK, but let's get onto why this is not just gross, but also an all around bad idea.

Pots do dry out and hanging containers are particularly prone to it. One way to limit how quickly they dry out is to be aware of what kind of container you use. Wire containers lined with coconut husk mats are beautiful (and my favorite for hanging baskets) but they dry out really quickly. Using a plastic container can help a lot and if your hanging basket is going to drape down and completely cover the container, you'll never see the difference.

You can also add hydrogel crystals, which help hold water in the soil that plants can draw from. Yes, there is something similar in diapers, but the difference is that when they are trapped in a diaper, the plants can't draw moisture from them.

Remember drainage is good and if you stick a diaper in there, you will be creating a big plastic dam. Basically nothing is going to drain out of the bottom of that pot. And then the plants' roots will rot and then you will have a dead container planting. And one very soggy diaper.

What do you think? Have you found pins that you know are just plain wrong on Pinterest? Is it starting to bug you as much as it bugs me?

Great ideas from unlikely places

Source: rareandbeautifultreasures.com via Erin on Pinterest

When we were working on the renovation for the house, I spent inordinate amounts of time on Houzz.com. I would save any picture that I liked for any reason and then go back through all of them and see what they had in common. It was a great way to figure out what I really liked so that I could draw inspiration from it for our renovation.

But the problem with Houzz, is that it only deals with pictures of living spaces. What the world needed was Houzz for everything. Enter Pinterest.

I know you've heard of Pinterest, and if you haven't you absolutely must check it out right now. Don't worry, it's not another social networking thing that is going to suck every last bit of free time from you and make you feel guilty when you can't get to it. It's just incredibly inspiring.

Every day I find things that inspire me on Pinterest and with one click I save them (aka pinning). And sometimes I find great things that I'd love to share with you. But instead of blogging every time I become obsessed with a really cool chicken coop, amazing bouquet of flowers or the coolest kitchen I've ever seen, I've been putting links to these pictures up on The Impatient Gardener Facebook page. So if you're a Facebook kind of person and you don't already "like" the page, swing over there so you can see what I'm loving right now. Of course you can also follow my pins on Pinterest. I'll make sure to follow you back because I love seeing what other people love.