by Genevieve on June 27, 2009
Thrips are a tiny sucking insect that pester Rhododendrons (particularly many older varieties) and Azaleas, some evergreen Viburnums, Photinia, and occasionally other plants in the coastal Pacific Northwest.
You can tell you have them because your ordinarily green leaves will develop a silvery sheen on them, while the undersides of the leaves will get little black spots from the thrips’ feces. Click here to see the silvery sheen caused by thrips.
While thrips can be a hard pest to get rid of, there are some very effective organic and biological controls you can use.
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by Genevieve on June 21, 2009
Watering seems like one of those bonehead tasks that everyone should get right on their first try, right? I wish! The truth is, I see more gardens that are sick and unhealthy due to water stress than any other single issue. Luckily, watering properly isn’t complicated once you know a few simple things.
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by Genevieve on June 17, 2009
Since we’ve been discussing mulching, I thought this tip might be helpful for those of you who are mulching for other people, like me!
I don’t know about ya’ll, but for a long time there, I was risking life and limb getting my dratted wheelbarrow up into my truck to take to clients’ homes on days when we were mulching. Wheelbarrows are heavy!
Maybe you are a pro like me, or maybe you just want to store your wheelbarrow on a table or shelf. Here’s how to lift your wheelbarrow safely, without using any real strength.
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by Genevieve on June 16, 2009
We’ve talked about why a thick layer of mulch, composty soil, and good watering habits are important if you want to garden more organically; it’s all about giving your plants a foundation of good health so that pest problems will be few and far between.
Today we’ll talk specifically about mulch: what it is, what type to use, how to apply it, and why mulching is the single most important thing you can do to improve the health of your plants and reduce maintenance time:
Mini fir bark chips used as mulch
Mulching is when you add a layer of wood chips, chipped bark, shredded leaves, or other material to the top of your soil without mixing it in, so that it will hold down weeds, hold moisture in the soil, and contribute positively to your soil over time.
Why mulching is so over-the-top awesome for your garden:
- A 3” thick layer of mulch will reduce the weeds that come up by 75% or more overnight – it is the single best organic weed control out there. Clients who don’t have mulch are shocked at the difference after we put down a good layer of wood mulch – it smothers the weed seeds that try to sprout from the soil below.
- It helps your soil hold onto moisture so that you needn’t water so often.
- It also keeps your soil from getting so compacted when you step on it to maintain your garden, and keeps hard rains and hot sun from forming a crust on your soil’s surface.
- It keeps plants’ roots cool in summer and warm in winter.
- It helps support the beneficial micro-organisms and worm populations that keep your soil aerated and help change the existing nutrients in your soil into a form your plants can use.
- It can help keep some soil-borne bacterial diseases from harming delicate, over-bred plants like many roses.
- In some cases, mulch can help with erosion control.
For all these reasons, if you want a low-maintenance garden with happy, healthy plants, mulching is the number-one thing you can do to have an immediate, dramatic impact on the time you spend weeding, and the overall happiness of your plants.
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by Genevieve on June 15, 2009
by Genevieve on June 14, 2009
As a professional landscaper, I get to see and diagnose a lot of garden issues. I find many people at wits’ end, spraying for pest problems and dealing with unhappy plants. Most of the time, the pest problem or grumpy plant shouldn’t be looked at as the problem itself – more accurately, they are symptoms of a bigger issue in the garden.
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by Genevieve on June 9, 2009
One of the biggest barriers to organic gardening success, and I mean that literally, is landscape fabric. Any kind of fabric or plastic that keeps weeds down will also keep fallen leaves or mulch from adding organic matter to your soil, leaving behind a hardened, dead zone where plants struggle to survive.
Now, that’s not to say landscape fabric is never the answer, because it can be very helpful in certain situations, but using it shouldn’t be the default, because it interrupts a number of natural cycles which would usually allow your plants to grow healthy and strong with less help from you.
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by Genevieve on June 5, 2009
Snails and slugs are one of the most common pests in the garden, and the traditional pesticide treatment for them is particularly nasty. If you are transitioning to an organic garden, treating snails and slugs differently is an easy (and still highly effective) change that will have a great impact on your family’s health and safety.
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by Genevieve on May 31, 2009
I’ve been asked a lot lately about organics in the garden. “How do I kill snails around my vegetable starts?” is a common question. “Does anything organic really work on roses?”
I even spoke with one gardener who felt chained to her Miracle-Gro routine – having to laboriously water it in every two weeks. It was heartbreaking to me that Miracle-Gro had done such a marketing number on this sweet person that she was going far out of her way to use something that I consider actively bad for her plants and soil!
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by Genevieve on May 25, 2009
