Check Out My Tools!: Must-Have Garden Supplies

That's right, it's product promotion time, but I still don't get any money for this stuff. And because of that, you can wager that I legitimately mean what I say!

My favorite spring garden supplies are as follows:

Reusable velcro ties & bamboo poles

Check out my adorable pea trellis! Bamboo usually comes in 5 or 8 foot lengths so it meets many large scale needs, but can be cut down to any size. It's sturdy, attractive, plentiful and cheap. Combined with reusable velcro ties, you can make all sorts of great garden trellises. Here's a link to a simple bamboo trellis from Organic Gardening magazine.

Using plastic zip ties will give you a tighter connection, but I really like the velcro ones instead. I've had the same ones now for years and they are still going strong. Plus I'm not great at building stuff, so I usually need to reposition the bamboo multiple times and that means going through multiple plastic ties. The velcro adjusts quickly, and then you're off and running!

Wall-o-waters

How do you get the earliest home-grown tomatoes on the block? These guys right here. Each wall-o-water is like a mini greenhouse. A series of tubes is connected in a circle. Fill the tubes half way with water and place in the garden for two weeks to heat up the soil beneath. After two weeks, plant your tomato, pepper, eggplant or other summer crop in the wall-o-water and fill the tubes the rest of the way. That's it. The water in the tubes absorbs heat during the day and releases it at night, keeping your plant at a consistent cozy temperature. By the time your plant grows too big, nighttime temperatures are safe for those tomatoes to be out of the bag anyway. Using wall-o-waters will give you a serious six week head start on summer vegetables. You can easily have an early (with wall-o-waters in late spring ) and late (without wall-o-waters, and planted at the proper time) planting, which can give you a solid harvest from late spring to frost! These are easily found in any garden supply catalog, but I'm not sure you will find them on the shelves at garden store. But they should be!

Soaker Hoses

Good watering is key to a successful garden, and the best way to do it is to send the water directly to the roots of the plant where it belongs. Regular sprinklers waste water by sending it flying into the air to be lost to evaporation or to land on the entire plant as opposed to the soil. Too much water on the leaves themselves can lead to disease and mildew problems. Also, when a lot of water hits dry soil fast, it initially tends to pool up and run off. That's more water literally down the drain.

Using soaker hoses is the "set it and forget it" method of watering. You don't need to move a sprinkler around, or stand there endlessly with the hose nozzle doing it yourself. Lay your soaker hoses out so that they snake all around your garden beds. Connect your water supply and let the hose drip water slowly to the base of your plant and directly to the roots. Leave your water supply on long enough (depending on your soil type) to water 1-2 inches, and do this once a week. To determine how long that takes, put a shallow plastic container with inch measurements on it under your soaker hose and see how long it takes to fill. Again, these are reusable for many seasons and come in 25, 50, 75 or 100 foot lengths. They are easily found at any big box store or garden center.

That's all for today. I would be putting down new mulch right now, if not for the rain. It won't be long before I hit you with my next topic about the BEST organic method of dandelion weed control! Stay tuned!

Bring It On, Spring!

Early in the week, I got the news. Friday's forecast called for 65 degree temperatures, followed by a weekend of rain. You know what that means? It means that I plant seeds Friday and walk away smiling, and mother nature is stuck theoretically dragging 50 feet of hose all around the yard doing the watering. Sweet! Let's go zone 6, time to mobilize!

Laura's Comprehensive and Probably Still Too Ambitious Spring Garden Plan

Peas: Apparently, the specific date peas should be planted depends on your religious affiliation. If you are extremely religious, peas are planted on St. Joseph's day. If you are only moderately religious, but have a solid appreciation for holidays that allow for excessive alcohol consumption, then St. Patrick's day is your pea planting time. If you are a secular granola crunchy hippie, then March 15th is your day. Regardless, all these bits of advice seem to be different ways to say the same thing: plant your peas in mid-March, as soon as the ground can be worked.

When did I plant peas? I threw seeds down on March 21st, in between grocery shopping and picking Sophia up from school, because that's when I finally got around to it. Make your own assumptions. And of course, I planted two different varieties but didn't keep track of which went where, and accidentally dug them up a week later when fertilizing the beds. Let the games begin!

Garlic, Onions, Shallots: These bulbs got planted in the fall and are coming up nicely! Three 4x4 beds of garlic gave us enough harvest that we finally ran out only last week. All these can be planted now for fall harvest as well, and you can get onion sets and shallot bulbs at most big box home stores. You might have to head to Agway for the garlic though. You can try planting store garlic if you like, but those are generally sprayed with a chemical that prevents them from sprouting, so it's a bit risky.

Root Vegetables - Radishes, Turnips, Beets & Carrots: Except for the carrots, I always have easy success with this cool weather crop group. Carrot seeds don't seem to like the fact that I'm going to forget to water them regularly while they are germinating, while the others seem to be more flexible about this. That's why I like planting seeds right before the rain is due! The other seeds I pretty much just broadcast around the plot, rake or poke them into the ground and then thin as necessary.

Lettuces & Greens: My favorite thing to do is to buy a mesclun salad seed mix and lightly cover the seeds in the ground in a 2x4 foot patch. In a few weeks, you have a colorful mix of salad greens that will grow back if you cut them an inch or two above the soil line when harvesting. Easy & fresh salad all spring and early summer! If you want to be really particular ( I won't mention any names, but someone in this house meets that description), you can buy the greens separately and make your own mix. Mesclun mix usually has endive, mustard, radicchio, lettuces and a variety of other random colorful greens. This is a great beginner gardener crop, and it can really save you some money when you compare the price of seeds to bagged grocery store salads. My other favorite spring planted greens are spinach, arugula, swiss chard and bok choy, which I usually plant separately instead of mixed together.

I thought I would take it easy this spring, and not start too many summer vegetables under lights in my basement. However, the above scheme does not sound much like taking it easy. Check back for further status reports!