This is a question most of us pros have come to dread. Not because we dislike answering questions, but because the subtext is so often, “I want a particular tree, but I don’t have room for it. May I have your professional go-ahead to hack the holy hell out of it to keep it to size?”

The answer is no. We love you and want you to be happy, but no.

If you have to hack the holy hell out of something to keep it a reasonable size and shape for your garden bed, then nobody is going to enjoy the process.

Not you, who needs to get out there to prune every eight months.

Not your plant, which will begin to create crazy long shooty growth in response to being hacked, and will eventually get aphids or just develop a terrible form from being pruned in such an unfortunate fashion.

And not your friendly local gardening professional, who will cringe every time they drive by and see the poor plant struggling unsuccessfully to fit our human expectations of how big it should become.

Rant over. Now here’s a helpful rule of thumb:

In general, you can keep a plant pruned 1/3 smaller than the tag says it will grow.

So if the plant tag says:

• 10 feet tall by 6 feet wide, read that as a minimum mature size of 6.5 feet by 4 feet wide
• 12 feet tall, read that as minimum 8 feet tall
• 15 feet tall, read that as 10 feet tall
• 20 feet tall, read that as 13.5 feet tall
• 25 feet tall, read that as 17 feet tall

That is truly the limit on how far down you ought to prune, and even then you’ll need a modicum of pruning skill to make that happen in a graceful way (check out this book if you need help and advice). But yes, in general, you can keep a plant 1/3 smaller than it wants to eventually grow, without sacrificing the flowers, growth habit and character that made you want to plant it in the first place.

If your plants don’t fall within that 1/3 limit, I’d definitely advise that you select a different plant for the spot, or even be willing to remove a plant if it becomes clear it’s wanting to grow far larger than the space you have for it.

It can really ruin the feelings you have for your garden when you are tied to an endless cycle of too-often pruning, or when you have to look at a shrub that vacillates between overgrown and heavily pruned. Particularly if it’s a plant you have a special affinity for.

There are so many gorgeous plants in the universe, it’s way better to get creative and choose one that will thrive in the space you have for it.

Further reading:

How far apart do I plant things?

This time of year, my landscape maintenance company is busy as anything, pruning and helping all the gardens recover from months of wild blooming abandon.

While a lot of what we’re doing right now is pruning to keep things at the right size in relation to their surroundings (we don’t want the plants leaning boorishly on their neighbors all winter long), we’re also starting to cut back a few plants that are finishing their blooms or going into dormancy.

While this isn’t an exhaustive list by any means, here are a few of the most important tasks we’re doing right now:

Planting winter veggies:

Now’s the time to set out starts of broccoli, cabbage, kale, Swiss chard, lettuce, Brussels sprouts, cauliflower and other winter veggies.

If you aren’t sure what grows well for winter, Peaceful Valley has a great online calculator which gives suggestions for planting what when. Their suggestions are based around planting seeds, so if you’re using starts from the nursery you can plant a bit later.

Or, you can pick up this book, which is a spiral-bound week-by-week guide to what to plant when based on your anticipated frost dates. This was recommended to me recently by a garden magazine editor as one of the best new edible books of the year, and I have to agree – my copy’s already muddy from use (that’s how you know it’s good, right?).

Another great book for winter veggie gardening is The Winter Harvest Handbook by Eliot Coleman. All the people I know with envy-inducing crops in winter swear by this book.

Planting spring bulbs:

Yep, it’s that time again. Daffodils, crocus, hyacinth and grape hyacinth, Calochortus, Tulips (I’m partial to the lily-flowered ones), and more.

Feeling impatient? You can force bulbs, or you can hurry up and plant my very favorite bulb ever, fall crocus. The glowing cornflower-purple ones make me so happy.

If you have gophers but want to have bulbs in the ground, you can sink those flexible Smart Pots into the ground. While it’s possible the gophers will be smart enough to climb out of the ground and over the top of them to eat your delicious bulbs, the company has never heard of a gopher chewing through the pot, since it’s made of a synthetic polymer material that isn’t fun to eat.

If the rain always knocks your tulips over, try planting them under eaves so they’ll have a chance to shine for you.

Planting shrubs, trees, and hardy perennials:

Yep, the nurseries are clearing out old stock and giving some great prices, just as the best time of the year to plant arrives.

Fall planting is the best, even in gardens that use drip irrigation, because the dampness of the winter allows the plants to grow strong roots before trying to grow lots of foliage or bloom for you.

And while drip irrigation is great for keeping plants alive, the fact that the tubing usually only soaks a small area around the plant means that it’s better for keeping established plants happy than for getting new plants going. The rain gets good coverage every time (well, except under the eaves).

Here are some great things to plant this time of year:

Golden conifers

Winter interest ornamental grasses

Unusual rhododendron varieties

Heathers

Winter annuals

Perennials for winter

Aaaaaand… pruning. Lots and lots of fall pruning:

This is what most of our time is taken up by. Deadheading, shaping, small-ifying and making presentable all those sprawling beauties that have so lavishly decorated our summer gardens.

Here are tutorials, some with video, on what to prune now:

Heaths and heathers

How to deadhead Hydrangeas

Alstroemeria

Hardy cranesbills/ geraniums

Mexican bush sage/ Salvia leucantha

Summer-pruning exuberant Miscanthus

Sedum ‘Autumn Joy’

Cane berries and raspberries

Astilbe

And, here’s a list of frost-tender beauties that I take care NOT to prune right now!

Phew! Well, I’m tuckered just thinking about all of that.

In between all of that good gardening activity, be sure to take the time to enjoy the bounty of peaches, and kick back with a drink in the last days of summer.

And in case you’re looking to cut a few corners in your garden maintenance, here is some food for thought on which fall garden tasks you might safely skip.

What are you guys tackling now that fall is near? Let me know in the comments below.

Hold up, don’t report me to the Melanoma Society just yet. You probably shouldn’t actually ditch your sun hat.

But if you’re like me and have never been able to get into wearing hats while gardening, here are two odd things I do to get a bit more protection than the average “slather self in greasy sunblock” strategy most of us use. After all, sunblock lotion doesn’t really stay put all that well in the part of your hair or the crinkly parts of your ears, now does it?

Commence weird tips:

Eat more tomatoes, blueberries, and pink flamingoes

New research has been coming out every day showing the beneficial effects of antioxidants, vitamin D, and omega-3 fats in protecting your skin from the negative effects of the sun. These nutrients can actually keep you from getting a sunburn by protecting your skin from damage at the cellular level.

Astaxanthin is one such nutrient. It’s an antioxidant found in algae, shrimp, salmon, and animals that eat a lot of those things (mmmm… flamingoes). You can buy supplements of astaxanthin to provide protection if you’re in the sun a LOT (like me), or you can just eat more of these foods for some extra insurance.

Lycopene from tomatoes has also been found to be helpful. Participants in one study ate three tablespoons of tomato paste per day (that’s 16 mg of lycopene) and saw a huge drop in sunburns. Mark’s Daily Apple has some great info here about which foods help the most.

It’s not totally proven and standardized, so I wouldn’t rely on nutrition and supplements as your sole protection, but it seems like a smart backup plan for those days you forget the sunblock or miss a strip on a delicate patch of skin.

Powdered mineral sunblock

This stuff is insanely cool. It’s a sunblock, so it blocks all the different kinds of rays, and it’s powder, so it’s non-greasy and settles into the oddly-shaped parts of our ears and face easily.

Here’s how it works: there’s a little tube of powder with an applicator brush attached. You take off the cap, dab the brush wherever you want to apply sunblock (you dab with varying degrees of vigor to get a lighter or heavier application), then you pull the bottom of the tube down to suck the bristles back into the body of the tube, so you can put the cap back on easily.

It sounds messy and weird, but it actually works brilliantly. This is some seriously good design innovation.

If I’m going to be out all day in the sun, I’ll apply sunblock lotion to create a sticky base for the powder, then dab powder anywhere that’s particularly sensitive (snoot, ears, etc.) so that I have a double layer of protection. For gardening just a couple of hours, I’ll use the powder by itself on my most burn-prone spots and call it good.

This is the only sunblock I can get my manly other half to wear, since it’s unscented and doesn’t leave a yucky greasy layer on his skin. If you’re a lady, you’ll be happy to find you can apply this on top of your makeup without smearing everything. (I mean, that’s assuming you garden in makeup. I’m sure I’d look goofy if I tried such a thing, but surely some of you lovely ladies have the attitude to pull it off!)

How do you stay sunburn-free?

Share your tips and favorite sun protection products in the comments below. God knows I could use the help!

Sun hat photo courtesy of the lovely kat reckling on Flickr, flamingo photo courtesy of wwarby on Flickr.

One of the best things about writing for this site is that occasionally, other gardeners will write in with their excellent garden tips. This was the case with Kathy Ormiston, a landscape designer and landscape gardener in the San Francisco Bay Area (south bay region).

Kathy was kind enough to share a tip about an extremely inexpensive soil test that she has done via mail from the University of Massachusetts.

How cheap is cheap?

Ten. Dollars. Seriously, people, if you get a soil test, and find out that you’re cool on phosphorus for a few years or that the reason your such-and-such keeps keeling is that your pH is all wonky, then you just saved the cost of the test.

Here’s how soil testing works:

You decide which areas you’d like to test. Sunny and shady areas deserve separate tests, and sloping areas can have different values than flat spots. If you’ve been gardening for a bit, you probably have an idea of whether your soil varies a lot in different areas. You’ll want a new soil test for each distinct type of soil you suspect you have.

For each area, you’ll want to collect 10-12 vertical slices of soil from random spots within that area, using a (clean) trowel/ soil knife and a (clean) bucket to hold your samples. Slices should be as deep as the roots for whatever you’re trying to grow – if in doubt, just go 6-8″ deep for garden beds and 3-4″ for lawn areas. Try not to collect leafy bits or lawn chunks.

Mix together all those soil samples really good, then pull out about one cup of your soil mixture, and spread it on a piece of paper to dry. When it’s dry, pop it in a ziploc, label it (“south bed” or “shady slope”), and mail it off to those fine folks out in MA with a check and their happy little form all filled out so they know what you want.

Then you wait patiently for a week or two, and they’ll email, fax, or snail mail your results to you with some tips about what to do. Here are some of the results Kathy got for her own home garden:

But why bother with soil testing?

l Overfertilizing can cause pest and disease issues. Plants that get too much fertilizer (especially nitrogen and phosphorus) can grow lush, unsustainable growth that has few of the natural defenses that leaves normally have. If you’ve ever seen aphids attacking the fresh new growth of some plants in spring, you know that fresh fleshy growth is like aphid candy.

l Excess phosphorus (the P in the N-P-K equation) can create conditions where the beneficial mycorrhizal fungi in the soil don’t partner with the plants’ roots as they normally do.

Mycorrhizae are a type of fungus that occur naturally in the soil. They form a symbiotic, you-scratch-my-back-I’ll-scratch-yours type of relationship with plants, essentially extending plants’ roots further out so plants can reach more nutrients and water. The fungi take some that good stuff, but not all, for themselves.

Excess phosphorus interrupts that relationship and makes the plants do all the work of getting nutrients through their roots by themselves.

l Some soils may be contaminated with heavy metals, which means you shouldn’t grow vegetables there. A lot of things can cause heavy metals in the soil, from using treated wood in the garden, to contaminated compost and soil mixes, and even the past misuse of the land. Better safe than sorry.

l You can also conserve resources, prevent fertilizer runoff, and save money by only using the fertilizers your plants actually need.

Have I convinced you to part with your hard-earned ten bucks? Good! Go on over to the UMass website and check into what their soil testing lab can do for you:

University of Massachusetts: Soil Testing Services Offered

University of Massachusetts: Soil Test Order Form

Photo credit: Soil Science on Flickr

Newbie gardeners are greeted to the gardening book section by thick encyclopedias on Crocus, for example, or how to design in specific styles. But when I was a new gardener, I didn’t know what style I wanted to design in. And I was still working my way through the common, easy-to-grow plants – I think that deep passions for one particular type of plant come when we’re exhausted of seeing the same old things on every trip to the nursery.

So what books should a newbie gardener look for? Here are my top suggestions – books that walk you through the processes involved in gardening, while having enough depth so that you won’t grow out of them in time.

From the Ground Up: The Story of a First Garden by Amy Stewart

This is easily the sweetest book about gardening that I’ve read. Amy walks us through her experiences as a new gardener, and manages to capture the transcendent and the dirty with clarity and warmth. I first read it as a seasoned gardener, and it brought me right back to my first few years of gardening – the mistakes we all make, the new joys we discover, and the sense of wonder inherent in helping plants to thrive. You’ll love it, and you’ll want to buy copies for your new gardening friends.

The Well-Tended Perennial Garden: Planting and Pruning Techniques by Traci Disabato-Aust

While this book contains a very helpful plant-by-plant reference section, the best part of this book is the first half, where Traci draws on her years of gardening experience to share the nuances of how plants grow and respond to pruning. Even as a landscape maintenance professional, I go back and re-read this classic every few years to solidify my knowledge of how to care for and prune perennials. Her language is clear and fun to read, even for beginners.

Pruning and Training by Brickell and Joyce (runner-up: The Pruning of Trees, Shrubs and Conifers by Brown and Kirkham)

Pruning and Training is the hands-down clearest reference on pruning everything with woody stems – berries, shrubs, roses, as well as both ornamental and fruit trees. The entire book is full-color, so every page has photos and colored illustrations that make it easy to understand how to prune.

There are generalized sections on how to make pruning cuts or prune for different styles, but the majority of the book is split into reference sections, where you can look up the name of your plant and get very straightforward advice on how to train it when it’s young, prune it when mature, and renovate anything that has been neglected.

The Pruning of Trees, Shrubs, and Conifers provides a deeper understanding of pruning concepts, but has few pictures and diagrams, so it’s less appropriate for beginners. Still, if you find yourself reading Pruning and Training and going, “but WHY do I do that?”, then you should definitely pick up The Pruning of Trees, Shrubs and Conifers.

The Informed Gardener and The Informed Gardener Blooms Again by Linda Chalker-Scott

Linda is a sensible, down-to-earth guide to gardening practices, and these books of essays discuss and debunk all kinds of gardening myths, and try to get at the truth behind our assumptions when gardening.

She takes a scientific perspective and discusses agricultural and other studies to find evidence for and against different ways of gardening. The one pitfall she falls into is that she will sometimes claim that something isn’t a great idea because there is no scientific evidence to prove that it works. However, in some cases, there is no evidence because no relevant studies have been completed, so it’s actually premature to make a strong decision on those practices.

As long as you take a scientific approach to reading (question everything, do your own homework, and accept that new evidence may lead you in other directions with time and more study), these books are a fantastic springboard to use in examining gardening practices and establishing your own ways of doing things. I found it so much fun to analyze the evidence and really think about why we do what we do in the garden, and Linda’s common-sense style is a pleasure to read.

What’s Wrong With My Plant? (And How Do I Fix It?) by Deardorff and Wadsworth

Easily the most valuable pest control and plant health book I own, this handbook walks you through all kinds of problems that you can have with plants, from spotted leaves, different kinds of pest damage, nutrient deficiencies and more.

It’s like the choose-your-own-adventure of plant handbooks. You start out by selecting the broadest category of what can be wrong with a plant and proceed to narrow down what could be wrong with your plant based on colored drawings that are extremely easy to understand. The authors take an organic approach and discuss which types of sprays or controls are useful, and in what conditions they are safest and most effective.

Want to see more garden blogger book favorites? Check out the Five Books for Gardeners lists to read more.

All gardeners evolve. There is something about being outside and working hard in nature that inspires learning and growth.

The issue of fall leaves is one I’ve been struggling with lately. Last year I wrote about why you shouldn’t let your fall leaves stay, and all of those reasons are still true, but…

This year as I’ve learned more about the importance of insects in our ecosystem (they feed the birds, pollinate, eat other “bad” bugs, and generally play an important part in the natural cycles that keep our food growing and our world pleasant), I’ve also learned that many insects overwinter in our fallen leaves.

If you use plants to attract birds, or put out a feeder, but you rake your leaves up, you are kind of sabotaging your efforts to care for wildlife, because the birdies love to eat bugs! In addition, leaves add nutrients and softness to the soil, and can be good protection from the frost in cold climates.

The problem? Leaves can also rot perennials, shade out sections of lawn or groundcovers, and can overwinter BAD bugs too! Not to mention, the wilder aesthetic of leaving the leaves where they fall isn’t right for every garden.

So what’s the conscientious gardener to do? I do think it’s possible to care for wildlife and the environment while still having a clean-looking garden and taking care of our ornamental plants. Here’s some of the middle ground I’m finding in the to-rake-or-not-to-rake debate:

Pro: Good bugs overwinter in our leaf litter.

Con: Bad bugs do too.

A number of garden plants are really susceptible to disease because they’ve been bred heavily for flowers or fruit instead of for disease resistance. Roses get all kinds of bugs and fungus, Camellias get petal blight (brown mushy flowers), Rhododendrons can get thrips, and fruit trees can get any number of insect and fungal diseases.

All of these issues can overwinter in the warmth and protection of leaf litter. In addition, if you have snails and slugs in your garden, they love to lay eggs in fluffy fallen leaves, particularly in fall.

The solution?

I rake up fall leaves from around anything that I have experienced pest problems with or that I know is susceptible to problems like that (Roses, Rhodies, Camellias, hybrid Fuchsias, peach and apple trees, citrus), and I take that leaf litter to my city’s compost, which I know will get hot enough to kill any diseases.

For snail reduction, you can remove the litter around susceptible perennials and compost it on site, or just spread the leaves around trees and shrubs.

With other areas of the garden, leave things as natural as possible to promote the overwintering of salamanders and “good” bugs , both of which eat garden pests, and the native insects that so many birds love to eat.

If I need to rake in some areas, I try to compost it myself to avoid the gas, time and expense of taking leaf litter to the compost site and then bringing purchased compost back from there at a later date.

Pro: Leaves are great protection from frost.

Con: In wet climates, matted leaves can shade out sections of groundcover or lawn, and can rot sensitive perennials.

In my climate, we get a ton of rain and some frost. I’ve seen maple leaves mat down over large areas of groundcover or lawn and totally shade and kill an area in a month. In addition, so many perennials can be smothered and rot from a nearly impenetrable mat of fall leaves.

The solution?

Gently remove leaves that are directly on top of any plant, whether that’s lawn, groundcover, perennials, or even shrubs if you get a clump of leaves matted on them! Then shred the leaves, either in a shredder or by running on top of them with the mower a few times.

Because shredding the leaves makes sure they can’t form a thick, killing mat on top of plants, you can then toss the  finely shredded leaves back into your garden beds, or just compost them for next year’s use.

Pro: Leaves are one of the best types of compost available for improving your soil.

Con: Landscape fabric and wood chip mulch don’t allow the composted leaves to contribute to the soil.

If you have wood chip mulch or landscape fabric in place to prevent weeds, the leaves will break down on top of the mulch or fabric and form a delicious growing medium in which new weeds will love to sprout. That makes landscape fabric in particular worse than nothing.

The solution?

If you want the soil-building benefits of your fall leaves, you can rake them up and compost them, then once it’s all broken down into actual non-bulky compost, you can move your mulch aside and spread it, then move your mulch back on top for weed prevention.

If you have landscape fabric, you can move the wood chips aside around the holes in the fabric where plants are, get a good grip on the edge of the fabric around those holes, and lift it up so you can tuck handfuls of compost under the fabric to feed the plants.

If you do this, you’ll need to be careful to spread the compost evenly under the fabric and reach as far out under the fabric as possible so you don’t just dump soil on the base of your plants (plants don’t approve of that). It’s a bit of a pain, but slipping fresh compost under your landscape fabric can really help your plants thrive.

If you want the wildlife benefits of leaving your leaves, I’ve found it’s fine to just rake them in spring and compost them then. I’ve never seen a significant buildup of compost on top of chips or landscape fabric from leaving whole leaves through one winter.

Pro: I love the benefits of leaves.

Con: I hate how messy they look!

Our personal aesthetics vary so much. The contrast between our garden and a neighbor’s, more crisp lines of architecture vs. the softer style of a country home, and the style of planting we do in our gardens all have an impact on whether or not fallen leaves fit in with our garden’s style.

The solution?

If fallen leaves currently look out of place, you can help your garden and your own eye evolve to make them a better fit, or you can just do what you can to reap the benefits from them without having an impact on how things look.

If you want to go the design route and help your garden be a place where you don’t notice fallen leaves, there are a few things you can do:

• Plant year-round, evergreen plants in the foreground of your garden beds so that fallen leaves towards the back aren’t so visible.
• Plant in larger groups so that the overwintering plants make a bolder, more intentional design statement. If your eye is drawn by a stand of red-stemmed Dogwoods or a drift of Hellebores, you’ll be less likely to see the drifts of leaves as a messy element and more likely to see the poetry in the way they fall.
• Draw the eye upward with hanging bird feeders, structural or sculpture elements, and taller planting elements that bloom in winter, like the evergreen Darwin’s Barberry (Berberis darwinii) shrub, a Hardenbergia vine with purple or white flowers, Silk Tassel or Garrya elliptica with its hanging white tassels, or a Coral Bark Japanese Maple for tall stem interest.
• Spend more time in nature and notice how the palette of browns and greens in winter has a relaxed sense of calm. Visit natural gardens and start to intentionally find the beauty in a garden left naturally.

If you love your garden as it is and prefer the neater appearance of fewer fallen leaves, but still want to help wildlife and get the benefits of healthier soil from your fallen leaves, here are a few things you can do to find a middle ground:

• Rake up leaves from high-traffic areas and places that you can see easily; leave any leaves you can’t really see and let them compost naturally where they fall.
• Try to avoid the gasoline-intensive cycle of using a blower or vacuum to pick up leaves, setting them out for the city to take, then going to purchase finished compost from them later on. Instead, rake by hand, compost on site, and re-use your compost in your garden in spring.
• If you won’t be growing winter vegetables, you can layer leaves on your vegetable beds to hold down weeds all winter while supporting native bugs and improving your soil. In spring, the leaves will be mostly composted and you should be able to plant.
• Plant a few natives in your garden to help support wildlife in other ways. Peter Haggard has some tips on the best wildlife-supporting native plants for coastal Northern California.

Where do you fall in the Great Leaf Debate? Let me know in the comments below, and be sure and check out what other gardeners are saying on this topic:

Kylee Baumle, The Problem with Leaves

Beautiful Wildlife Garden Who Lives in the Leaves?

Heather Holm, Leave the Leaves

Carole Brown, I am the Lorax I Speak for The Leaves

Debbie Roberts,  Weighing in on the Great Leaf Debate

Once upon a time some newbie garden writer thought it’d be a great idea to encourage people to leave their fall leaves on the ground. Hey, it’s got all the qualities of a great article for the masses; it tells folks what they want to hear (stay in your jammies on Saturday and don’t bother with all that raking!), and it sounds vaguely earth-friendly, which generally goes over well.

The problem with this well-intended advice?

• Fall leaves form a thick mat on the soil, which holds water tightly against perennials’ crowns and causes them to rot. If they don’t rot, then they have trouble getting through that mat of leaves in spring and will come up scraggly and thin.
• If you have a pretty layer of wood chip mulch to prevent weeds or if you are using landscape fabric, once the leaves break down and become compost, you will have a layer of really fantastic compost, i.e. Weed Seed Nurturing Soil Mix, sitting on top of the stuff that’s supposed to be keeping weeds from germinating. Whoops!
• And lastly, matted-down leaves on the lawn or on groundcovers can cause dramatic bare spots in a matter of weeks. In one garden I know of where the natural look is preferred, a drift of leaves killed all of the foliage on the Blue Star Creeper groundcover that was acting as a small-space lawn in just a couple of weeks. Then weeds put up a fight to take the space over while we coddled the Blue Star Creeper back to life!

The one time when leaving your leaves is OK is if you’re growing only shrubs and trees, no perennials, bulbs, groundcovers or lawn, AND you don’t have either wood chip mulch or landscape fabric forming a barrier between the leaves and the soil. The shrubs and trees won’t mind the leaves forming a tight mat on the soil since their stems stay above ground, and the leaves can break down slowly and improve the soil.

So if that’s you, stop reading and get back into your jammies, you’re off raking duty. (Though if you don’t have any mulch down you probably have some weeding to do out there!)

Gotta have some fun before getting down to all that raking!

So what are we supposed to do with all those leaves?

In garden beds, rake or use a blower to get leaves into a pile, then shred (more on how to shred leaves below) and compost in a heap till spring, when they’ve broken down enough to make a fine mulch or soil amendment.

You can use them to top-dress beds that don’t yet have wood chip mulch or landscape fabric. Caveat – the fluffy texture of leaves as mulch can harbor snails and slugs, so if that’s an issue for you, compost them longer until they no longer resemble leaves,  and then mix into the soil to improve it or spread a thin layer on your lawn.

Leaves are my favorite compost-making material because the resulting compost is so soft to the touch and seems to aerate soil well.

If you have leaves on your lawn, you have a couple options – either shred the dickens out of them by going over them with your mower a couple times, then leave them on the lawn, OR rake/ blow them into a pile as with your garden beds and make some great compost out of them. You can use your mower to pick them up instead of raking if you like.

On hard surfaces like paths and decks, obviously you’ll need to get the leaves off as quickly as possible to avoid slipping and sliding.

About shredding leaves:

I used to think that since I didn’t have a shredder I couldn’t shred my leaves, and they’d simply take for-ev-er to compost down. Then I realized – duh, I have my mower with a bag attachment! If you want to shred the leaves before composting so they’ll be broken down to use in spring, just scatter them on your lawn and mow over them.  Rinse and repeat till they are well and truly shredded.

If you have neither lawn nor shredder, no biggie. Your whole leaves will take a bit longer to break down, but if you mix them up with your shovel every so often they’ll still compost fine.

Other resources on mulching:

Tips on using your mower to shred leaves, plus the intriguing fact that raking leaves uses up 240 calories per hour! (Ben and Jerry, here I come!)

How to rake without pain or strain: tips to avoid repetitive stress injury from raking. (Anne Asher with some tips on how to rake in a body-friendly way)

Mulching basics: how to apply mulch, what to use, and why to use it. (Mulching 101)

So your garden’s mulch is getting thin, and you’ve decided that you want to add 2 inches of wood chips to top it up. Great! But how much mulch do you need to buy to make that happen?

You can do this using math (yuck!), or you can use these great calculators I’ve found online. I’ll show you both in case you’re an accountant or something and you like numbers.

The simple way:

Use this calculator to figure out the square footage of your garden beds. The calculator’s great because it figures out the square footage of non-rectangular beds, too.

Then, use this calculator to figure out how much mulch you need, in cubic yards for buying in bulk or in cubic feet for buying bagged mulch.

The math-geek’s way:

First, figure out the square footage of the area you want to mulch, by multiplying the length of the bed by the width. You don’t have to be perfect, so don’t worry too much about curves – I just try to mentally break the area into rectangles or squares so I can estimate. So, a 10 x 10 bed is 100 square feet.

Then multiply the square footage (100) by the thickness in inches you want to apply (2), then divide by 324 to give you the amount in cubic yards. If you want to know the amount in cubic feet, divide again by 27.

Should you buy bulk or bagged mulch?

Since most pre-bagged mulches are two cubic feet and cost about $8, and most bulk mulches (for you truck owners) come by the cubic yard which has 27 cubic feet and costs about $50, you can calculate whether the amount of mulch you need calls for a few bags or whether it’s best to find a friend with a truck and get bulk.

The cost is about $4 per cubic foot pre-bagged, $1.85 per cubic foot in bulk.

If you don’t have a truck, many suppliers will allow you to bring an empty garbage can or thick contractor trash bags and shovel your own bulk mulch into them, then they’ll eyeball how much you took and charge you the bulk price. It’s worth asking, as a bit of shoveling can reduce your mulch cost by half or two-thirds!

If you found this helpful, you may also like:

Mulching 101 – the lowdown on which mulches are the best

Soil Improvement 101 – tips on adding compost and amendments to your soil

For you pro-gardeners, a trick for getting a wheelbarrow in and out of your truck even if you’re a wimpy girl like me (check the comments for some great reader tips on this!)

At Costco recently, I was happy to see some acquaintances coming out of the garden section, until… what in the WORLD was in their cart? It looked like bags of mulch, but… wrong somehow.

They patiently explained to this landscaper that recycled rubber mulch is the newest thing and would look very pretty in their garden beds.

I was speechless. Over the years I’ve prepared a number of gardening speeches to help my hapless friends make better gardening decisions – “Why that cute little redwood won’t do under the eaves”, for example, and “Please stick the ivy in a pot”.

“Why putting ground-up old tires on your garden bed is a bad idea” is one I never expected to have to deliver. I mean, recycling old tires is a great idea, but… they don’t break down, do they? And what about all the chemicals?

After sputtering some shocked words (“Think of the earthworms!”), I went home resolved to research the issue more thoroughly and find out if the stuff is really as bad as it seems. Heck, maybe there’s some cool new processing trick that removes the chemicals and turns the rubber into fertilizer-holding goodness for your soil. Perhaps I was jumping to conclusions?

I was relieved to find that Linda Chalker-Scott, author of The Informed Gardener and one of the leaders in bringing a scientific approach to the often superstitious practice of gardening, had just written a piece on this subject.

I found that rubber mulches are indeed made with dyed, ground-up old tires. They aren’t processed or treated in any special way to remove the harmful chemicals – they’re just, well, tires.

But what’s wrong with using them as mulch, you may ask? Linda says:

• It’s not effective: Studies have shown that organic mulches such as wood chips and straw are more effective at holding down weeds than rubber mulches.
• It’s toxic: Not only is it toxic to aquatic life when the runoff leaches into water, but the high concentrations of heavy metals such as zinc in tires can harm or kill your garden plants. Not convinced? Chemicals found in tires are also hazardous to human and animal health, so your rubber-mulched garden beds might not be the safest spots for your kids to play.
• It’s a fire hazard: Tires have some very flammable compounds in them, and prove difficult to extinguish once ignited. Turns out rubber mulches retain that same quality and are more difficult to extinguish than any other mulch.
• It stinks: When the sun heats rubber mulch, it stinks. (And I don’t even want to hear it about compost stinking. That’s not the same and you know it!)

I’ll add that part of the point of using a mulch is that it slowly breaks down and enriches the soil, encouraging earthworms and other good things to flourish. Rubber mulch does none of those things.

Go on over and read Linda’s article, and if you like, you can check out the more scientifically-worded paper she wrote for the Washington State Research and Extension Center.

photo credit: www.ericcastro.biz on Flickr

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.

First, if you’re under the impression that your plants don’t need any summer water because plants in nature do fine without it, read this. Unless you are growing plants that have a specific desire for dryness in summer, like many California natives (Ceanothus, Fremontodendron, etc), and you’ve adjusted your expectations of your plants to allow them to do whatever they do in nature (many wild flowers go dormant in summer!), you probably need to water regularly once the rains have stopped.

The exception to this is if you have a very mature garden of woody plants like trees and shrubs, with no flowering perennials (the soft, fleshy green plants that flower for a long season), then you may not need to water much at all. As a rule of thumb, the more you ask of your plants, the more you need to give in return. If you want them to grow bigger, bloom well for you, or have exceptionally healthy foliage, then you will want to water regularly so they can be at their best.

Here’s what you need to know:

The basics:

First, the goal is to water very deeply, so you need to water less often. That means you really want to soak your plants so their roots are encouraged to spread deeply into the soil to drink. Plants that just get a shallow sprinkle form root systems right near the surface of the soil, which makes them dependent on you to water them again very soon, since the soil surface dries out faster than deeper down.

Second, the goal is to water the “drip line” of the plant, not the trunk of the plant. If you imagine a shrub or tree getting rained on, the water usually falls to the outermost branches and leaf tips and drips downward from there. If you were to draw an invisible circle around the canopy of your tree or shrub, that area would be called the drip line, and you should focus most of your water in that zone, rather than watering right against the tree or shrub’s trunk.

Third, try not to spray the foliage of your plants if possible. It’s not the end of the world if you do, but try to focus on watering the soil around each plant, since water droplets on foliage can sometimes cause sunburn spots (where the water drop acts as a magnifying glass for the sun’s rays and sunburns the leaves), and moist foliage can contribute to fungus problems like black spot or mildew.

Lastly, the best time of day to water is in the morning before the dew dries. Plants take up most of their water while they’re actively photosynthesizing in the daytime, and while they will drink some at night, it’s a bit of a waste to water in the evening because plants are winding down and won’t get the most benefit from having ample water then. Also, if you sprinkle their foliage at this time of day, the water can dry up slowly as the day gets warmer, and the plant won’t stay wet overnight and invite fungus to proliferate.

How do I know if I’m watering deeply enough?

This is easy: water as usual (either by hand, using your drip irrigation system, or whatever you normally do).

Then, 6-10 hours after you water, check your soil. Is it cool and moist all the way around the plant, and under all the areas where your plants have foliage? Poke your fingers two inches down into the soil – it should be evenly moist two inches down. If not, water more deeply next time, amend your soil with compost to help hold moisture, or add a 3” layer of mulch to keep roots cool and moist.

How often should I water?

This is a tougher question because it varies depending on your soil, what plants you are growing, if you have mulch, and how hot and dry the weather’s been. I can tell you how to figure it out, though!

Begin checking your soil for moisture the day after you water. Poke your fingers two inches down into the soil and see if it’s moist. Do this every day until  the soil’s in that sweet spot where it is dry, but still crumbly and cool – that’s when you water. If the top two inches of your soil is dusty or powdery, or your plants are wilting, you’ve gone too long.

If you do this test in each of the seasons, you’ll get a general idea for how often you need to water in different types of weather. In the middle of summer, you may need to water almost daily, especially with fast-growing vegetables or flowers. In winter, you may not water for months since plants are growing less and don’t use up the natural rainfall.

Pay attention too if you have different kinds of planting areas. Lawn, veggies, container plants, flowering annuals or perennials, and newly-planted plants will all need more regular watering than mature shrubs and trees or sturdier perennials. You may like to soak your veggies and lawn every other day, and do your mature plantings 1-2 times a week, for example.

The main idea here is to get acquainted with what your soil’s doing in different areas of your garden so you have an intuitive sense of when it’s time to water.

How do I water with an irrigation system? Are they a good idea?

Yes, drip irrigation systems are totally awesome. Drip systems conserve water and save you money, because they provide just the right amount of water to the plant, exactly where the plant is using it. By contrast, when you water by hand, you’re wetting leaves, the sidewalk, etc – it’s rather inefficient.

Another great thing about automatic drip systems is how reliable they are. I don’t know about you, but sometimes I am rushing to work in the morning and don’t water, or I forget, or I am tired and do a sloppy job. You don’t get any such excuses out of your drip system.

With a drip system using 1 gph (gallon per hour) emitters, watering a mixed garden of perennials and shrubs, I usually set it for 3-4 days per week during the growing season, for around 30 minutes each cycle. You’ll need to adjust for your own mix of plants and soil conditions.

If you have a garden with a lot of annual flowers or reseeding perennials, I often use drip irrigation sprayers – little sprayers which attach to your quarter-inch tubing and will water a larger area – that way you don’t have to set up individual drippers for plants that may not be there next season. They’re less efficient and less healthy for plants, but for gardens with lots of tiny plants they can be the best solution.

If you’re using drip irrigation sprayers, I usually run the system for only 10-20 minutes because the sprayers let loose a lot more water than do drippers.

Lawns, of course, will use larger sprinklers, not a drip system. I usually set an automatic lawn sprinkler system to run 4 days a week for 10 minutes per day, but again, that’s just a guideline and will vary depending on whether you have sandy soil which drains quickly or clay which sops up the water and holds on.

There are also wildly cool new irrigation timers that have weather sensors that adjust the water based on the outside environment, either using satellite data or weather sensors on the timer.

As for how to install an irrigation system, it’s best to have a landscape contractor do this, but it’s possible and not too hard to do it yourself if you’re willing to take the time to research and learn.

Are there any weird bits of info about watering that are important to know but that I’d never think to ask?

Why thank you, hypothetical person, you asked this just to make me happy, didn’t you? Indeed there is some miscellaneous information about watering I’d like to share with you! <clears throat>

If you don’t have mulch, please be particularly careful with how you water by hand. Don’t direct a jet of water at the ground, since it can compact the soil and cause a crust to form. Instead, use a gentle showering head on your hose to allow water to fall lightly on the soil.

In winter, don’t forget to water plants that are under eaves or overhangs and won’t get any rainfall. I’ve seen plants that are halfway under an overhang, and in winter, the back half that was not getting any water died out, while the front half that was getting rained on thrived.

If you are planting a new garden with an overhang and installing a drip system, you might consider setting up a second drip line just to water under the overhang in winter. Then when the rains begin, you can turn off all the automatic drip lines except for the one under the eaves, and you’ll know your plants will stay happy and healthy all winter.

One last thing to consider with drip systems is that as the plants grow, you’ll want to move the drip emitters to water where plants’ roots are. Since most plants start in a container, you need to start with the emitter over the root ball, but as plants grow, they take up water further and further out from their main trunk or stems, at their drip line (see above).

So every two years or so, brush your mulch aside and move the emitters outwards away from the main stem and closer to the drip line, so that you’re watering your plants in the area of their roots where they can actually soak it in.

I hope that answers some of your basic questions about watering and gives you a good foundation of information to go from. Watering seems like such a simple task, and yet so many gardeners have avoidable pest problems because of watering issues – either pest problems due to plants being stressed from lack of water, or fungus from the wet atmosphere caused by deliberately watering plants’ foliage. I hope this watering tutorial helps your plants be healthy and happy!