The Corona Pruning Saw's Very BIG Teeth

Rabbits hid from a large Labrador retriever under the prickly cover of a large raspberry patch knowing the dog wouldn’t enter and could possibly be distracted by the sweet-tasting plump berries. Also hiding under the prickles was a small forest of maple saplings.  Lush green grass formed the boundary on three sides while the fourth side was a pole barn converted into a large shop. The prickles not only deterred the dog but also the person responsible for removing this rapidly growing forest. By the time the saplings were noticeable they had become small four foot tall trees – a few months later they were stretching for the eves of the pole barn.  Top pruning them only made the trunk get thicker. The time had come to put the toothy pruning saw to work.

Corona’s Razor Tooth Seven Inch Pruning Saw, a pair of gauntlet garden gloves and bulky coveralls made this project quick and easier. This pruning saw threatens with three-sided razor teeth. It cuts coming and going, pushing and pulling.

Ames True Temper Lawn Buddy

Ames Lawn Buddy for my Lawn Butt

 See it at Amazon

Toting all of the gardening tools in the yard couldn’t be easier thanks to the Ames Lawn Buddy and when the day gets hot this rolling cart handles my plants, gloves, tools and most important a tall cool glass of lemonade or icy water (and beer at the end of the day).  Years ago my first garden cart was a Suncast Resin Scooter with a small, simple compartment under a hinged lid – the design of the Lawn Buddy is much improved. It keeps me happy all year. 

Tecnu Oak-n-Ivy Cleanser

No More Itch from the Oil of Poison Ivy

If someone requests your assistance with installing fence posts in a forested area and asks you to prune the roots from holes run. Run and don’t look back – that person is no friend. It doesn’t matter if the land is in Indiana, Colorado or Texas. Poison ivy loves the understories of moist forests and while the vine will climb trees on hairy vines, it is sneaky and aggressive in the forest soil. It’s a sleeper and it’s mean.

Available at Amazon

You will need long sleeved clothing, protective gloves and Tecnu. If the roots break through the surface of your skin, especially multiple times you’re likely to have a very severe reaction. I certainly did and it wasn’t until after meeting the evil side of poison ivy that I discovered Tecnu.

Years Ago

I did a very stupid thing several years ago while helping to install a fence. The fence was going through a forested area on my property and I was determined to keep the trees. Digging holes for the posts required two people, one to dig the holes and the other to prune away the many roots. My hands were smaller than my husband's hands and crashing the post hole digger required more strength (and height) than I could offer. An auger would have been nice, but we hadn’t considered using one.

It was very early spring, nothing was growing yet, and we hadn’t seen any poison ivy BUT it was present everywhere, especially in the soil. My hands kept getting scratched, but working with gloves on was too awkward in the narrow hole. I wasn’t worried about a few scratches. I should have been.

Tecnu is available in convenient foil packs
Available at Amazon

While I had “suffered” small bouts with poison ivy over the years it was mostly a minor inconvenience. The fence installation took several days and in that time I developed a very serious case of poison ivy, as well as a lifetime sensitivity. It went systemic in me, appearing in just about every place you could imagine (and some you shouldn’t imagine). I looked like the ooze monster.

Rather than taking seven to 14 days to go away it lasted for far more than a month, with the most awful blisters and itching. Even with a prescription and shot from a doctor, it took a long time to disappear completely.

Since then, all I have to do is barely touch poison ivy and a similar reaction occurs. My dogs can brush against it and if I snuggle with one of them, I’ve got it. It was soon after the serious reaction from installing the fence that I discovered Tecnu Oak-N-Ivy Cleanser.

Tecnu is a specially formulated detergent that removes the urushiol oil. If you wash vigorously for two

Save Money with Your Sprinkler System

credit:  Seemann/morguefile.com

Taken a good look at your water bill lately? If your home has a sprinkler system, you might be able to trim your bill considerably in the lawn-watering season. While an in-ground sprinkler system certainly makes watering more convenient, if you're not careful they can waste water. If you look at your bill, you'll quickly learn that water is money. With some common sense, research and maybe a bit of sweat equity, optimizing the sprinkler system can save water and save money, too. Try these techniques:

Evaluate Sprinkler Heads

Inspect each sprinkler head: does it spray evenly across the entire area it's supposed to cover? Do your pop-up heads pop up? Are there puddles at sprinklers, brown patches where they should be watering, or both? If you can answer any of those questions “Yes,” you should replace any improperly functioning sprinkler with a new one of the same design. Through time, sprinkler heads naturally become clogged with grit and minerals, so periodic checkups help keep the landscaping alive without wasting water (and money).

Watch all the sprinkler heads as the system cycles (your timer should have a TEST function). Are you spraying water on sidewalks, driveways, or the street? In case you didn't know, they're not going to grow! You can re-aim sprinkler heads to reduce wasted water. If some heads waste water in two directions or more, replace them with heads that have narrower spray patterns. It's a no-brainer: sprinkler heads don't cost much!


You can find tools specially-designed to make short work of testing and removing worn-out or malfunctioning spray heads.

Learn to Use the Timer Did the sprinklers run today even though it rained two inches yesterday? You’re wasting water! Check the timer manual (find a copy onnline if the previous owner didn't leave one) to learn how to use the RAIN setting to turn off the sprinklers by hand. Research the grasses that are planted in your lawn. Talk to your county extension agent or a good local garden shop to determine out how much water your grass, flower beds, and other landscaping needs. Don't bother asking the "landscaping company" who mows your lawn, many of them know little or nothing about plants.

Know Your Lawn

Almost everyone overwaters the lawn; watering too much, too often or both. Grass should be watered well and rarely so that it grows strong, deep roots. Almost no grass species requires water daily: if your system runs that often, water simply runs off the lawn and into the gutter, or evaporates in the hot sun. It's a good idea to take a look at your soil as well. Most people can shorten the length of time the system runs and schedule it less frequently.

credit: kumaravel / flickr

Morning is the Best Time to Water

If you water in the hottest part of the day you'll lose water to evaporation, especially if the sprinklers put out a fine mist. Bright sunlight can also burn tender plant leaves when water droplets act like magnifying glasses; sort of like mean little kids burn ants. You shouldn't water late in the evening, either, because plants that are constantly wet at night are more prone to rot and disease.

Follow these simple suggestions, and you could save as much as half of the water your sprinkler system dumps on your lawn. Like it said at the top: "Taken a good look at your water bill lately?"

copyright © 2015-2017 scmrak

Dremel 675 Lawn Mower Sharpener Kit

Praise, at Least a Little, for Dremel's Lawnmower Sharpening Kit

If you have a family member who grew up in the Depression era, you've likely heard something like, "Use it up and wear it out. Make do, or do without." Now that we have a disposable society, about half of what we Americans buy ends up in a landfill within weeks. In reality, though. getting more use out of your purchases looks more like a good idea daily. Take lawnmower blades: they're simple pieces of steel that the local Wal-Mart says should be replaced every year, if not more often. That's not really true: you can sharpen them, after all. Even the most mechanically-impaired among us can remove a blade and clamp it down somewhere to attack the edges with a file. Or you could use a Dremel Lawn Mower Sharpener if you have a Dremel rotary tool.

I do own a Dremel rotary tool, and I have a Dremel 675 Lawn Mower Sharpener Kit, too. It's a two-part affair: there's an ABS guide that fits on the nose of a Dremel tool, with an included mini grinder fixed in the collet. The guide is molded so that blade touches the grinder only within its narrow slot, thereby limiting the cutting angle. You simply run the grinder along the blade until it's sharpened, making certain to keep the blade balanced.

You can also use this kit to sharpen other tools like shovels and hoes, and cutting tools such as hedge trimmers. You simply need to be careful to maintain the proper angle.

Mexican Fire Bush - Hamelia Patens

The nursery people promised the Hamelia was root hardy -- it is.

An unusually cold winter surprised not only me but my garden's plants. Weather always wreaks havoc on borderline plants, those that should be in the next hardiness zone, either up or down, and those that are drought tolerant or that need lots of water. Even native plants suffer when the weather becomes unusually different for a couple years. Some years my lantana is great, other years it’s obviously struggling and in Houston this is considered reliably tough.


My butterfly and hummingbird garden has been anchored by Hamelia patens and during the first four years the plant grew and flowered all winter. This made early arriving hummingbirds gleeful as they surfed the southern winds on their way to northern states. Like everywhere else in the United States, the winter of 2013-2014 was hard including south Texas. We had multiple freezes and longer periods of non-typical cold. My hamelia, also called Mexican fire bush, did what the nursery people said it would – it froze to the ground. I needed to remove years of woody stems (up to eight and ten feet tall) and then waited.

Sex in the Garden

Sex in the Garden - Anole Love

A garden friend, who has also written numerous popular garden books, lives in a great cottage surrounded by a delightful, ever-changing garden. Weeding and maintenance chores could easily seem overwhelming in her lush green world but she makes a point of exploring it every morning, even if only for 20 minutes. She watches for plants that need pruning, deadheading or moving but she also mentally notes the health of her garden and the identity of potential pests. When talking about her garden she'll often begin telling stories of her garden's small residents. They provide the joy we all hope for. She considers all of her residents part of an extended family. 

This is a philosophy I embrace and thrill every time the garden critters let me observe something personal. My joy with having a garden and possessing a gift of observation lets me pay attention to the other worlds in my relatively urban habitat. It reminds me that I'm a part of some much bigger than me.

Occasionally some opportunistic photo opps pop that can't be ignored. I watched, frozen, mesmerized and feeling slightly guilty. Anole love is one of those moments. These two let me be a voyeur for awhile. It took several minutes for me to realize the camera was only one door away. They let me capture one photo as if uncertain they should move. Once caught on pixels they fell sideways, together, into the shrub behind them, and completely out of sight. Thank you.

Corona Clipper Sharpening Tool AC8300

No longer a question, sharpen with Corona’s Sharpening Tool

To prune or not to prune, that is the question, or the pruner’s the thing, or off with his twig. Take your pick. Gardeners tend to get silly about their hand pruners, especially a good bypass pruner. The moment gardeners hit their landscapes they can be compared to successful detectives, rarely caught without their pruners or holsters. Roses need to be cut back, deadheading is never-ending, and dead branches must be removed. These are necessary tasks keep gardens healthy and productive. Sharp-edged tools provide the best cuts and help keep plants healthy.

We (as a group) tend to be foolish about tool maintenance. A few dedicated tool tenders clean their tools after every use. Most of these gardeners grow lots of roses and they’ve learned the hard way the value of cleaning their pruners. Many excellent gardeners are almost married to their pruners but neglect the nurturing and care of quality pruners. 

When was the last time you actually cleaned and sharpened your bypass pruner? 

Prior to buying the Corona Clipper Sharpening Tool if  I needed to sharpen the pruner I’d ask my significant other. My doing this always meant

Keeping Dogs Out of the Garden!

Dogscape on the Cheap

Anyone trying to establish a new garden knows what your four-legged fur friends are thinking. My drooling Labradors are thrilled by the smell of fresh compost and the texture of diggable soft dirt. 

Experts have their recommendations. 

• Train them to stay out: Dogs resist training (a fact that is obvious the moment you leave the house) 
•  Apply repel chemicals: Smelly chemicals meant to repel them rarely does but instead it does the opposite 
•  Install barriers: Small garden fences get expensive as do invisible fences and ugly hot wire. Dogs still might jump over or simply ignore the expensive collar 
• Plant prickly ground covers: Prickly ground covers take too long to grow. 

The dogs rule in the yard unless you have a fence around it – OR…. Consider my great dogscaping idea, something that’s free and I’m loving it – the dogs aren’t but they understand. 

Prudens Purple Heirloom Tomato

It Takes Just One Tomato to Make a Meal

       
If you’re one of those people who lives by the credo "never eat anything bigger than your head," the Prudens Purple Tomato is wrong for you: the fruits of this heirloom variety weigh more than a pound! More important, they’re not just big, they're tasty too.

A single Prudens Purple tomato, my hand for scale

After a puny tomato crop one year, I decided to try different varieties; planting them in my Germination Station a month before last frost and moving them to peat pots after the true leaves had developed. I only sowed seven or eight seeds, though I did get 100% germination. The remaining seeds were sent to family members up north. I set my seedlings out in early March (in Houston), and occasionally fed them some mild organic fertilizer. Thanks to a couple of cool snaps in May (50 or 60° nights) they set fruit and were producing by June.

Easy Gardener 14 x 45 Foot BirdBlock Netting

The $64 Tomato - Avoid Sacrificing Them to Wildlife

Every spring extra tomato and pepper plants are sacrificed to critters, whether intentional or accidental, and every spring there is always a question about what will survive greedy wildlife. There’s not much to be concerned about in my urban/suburban backyard – birds, occasional rabbits, possums, and of course the guileful squirrels. Covering my four-foot square garden with wildlife netting in the past never created a snug shelter and the netting was easily worked through and under. This year I tried something different using wildlife netting. 

Rather than rolling out Easy Gardener’s 14 x 45 foot BirdBlock Netting  and draping it over the garden, this year I cut small five and six-foot sections. Ten-inch tall tomato plants were placed in the garden and sheltered by large tomato cages that were immediately wrapped around the sides and over the top with netting.  Using the practical and versatile pinch-style wood clothespins I secured netting to the cage. Using a couple landscape staples I secured the nearly inconspicuous netting to the ground. 

Super hoops are the best inventions for gardeners!

The days have been windy, the birds have been plentiful, and the dogs have been curious. Oak leaves are scattered all over the garden thanks to howling wind. With all of these threats looming the plants remain untouched. The squirrel war victory, at least for a while, goes to me. They apparently don’t think working their way past the dogs and the netting is worth the effort. 

Have a Compost Tea Party in Your Garden

After a wild morning at the office, a cup of tea can hit the spot and soothe those frazzled nerves. Tea warms and nourishes, plus it’s easy to make: you just steep some leaves in hot water and presto: it's tea time! The plants in your like an occasional drink of tea, too: they like compost tea. It soothes and nourishes, too, and it’s easy to make, too.

Solid compost releases nutrients and microorganisms into the soil as it breaks down. Compost tea is the same, only it works faster because the good stuff is dissolved in water. If your garden plants need a drink of some healthy compost tea, you don’t need to assemble complex plumbing and string extension cords. It’s easy: all you need is some compost, some water, and a bucket.

Flexrake Classic D Handle Digging Fork

Spring is Here: Got Your Spading Fork Warmed Up?

Though she's best known as a speculative fiction author, Canadian Margaret Atwood is also a gardener. In fact, she's the one who said, "In Spring, at the end of the day, you should smell like dirt."

We gardeners spend winter cleaning our tools, salivating over garden catalogs, and dreaming that the soil is warm enough to begin planting so we can smell like dirt again. One tool I've been sharpening this winter is my Flexrake Spading Fork, the one with classic molded wooden D-handle (stock number CLA106). Spading forks are the tools we use to turn soil in our garden beds in spring and to harvest root vegetables like onions and potatoes come fall. They also come in handy for some emergency aeration. One won't replace a shovel for turning the soil of a new bed, however; nor is one any good for pitching hay and so forth because of that short handle.

Seven Easy Herbs - Mint

Mint, the forever plant

Kitchen gardens filled with herbs delight gardeners of all ages and for many, the joy of simply walking outside to harvest fresh, herbicide-free herbs for a recipe goes beyond satisfying. Herbs introduce children to both gardening and cooking, possibly encouraging them to eat healthier but also to explore their garden. Some herbs are food sources for butterfly caterpillars.  Many tend to attract bees, butterflies, and hummingbirds. Seven commonly grown herbs reward chefs and gardeners with their ease in growing and their fresh flavors.  

Build a Simple Garden Trellis

A Home-Made Trellis

Pole beans grow on a trellis made of EMT conduit
and some 5-foot polypropylene trellis netting

Not everything we plant in our gardens grows up close the ground. Plants like peas, beans, cucumbers and some squash are great climbers. Their advantage is that they let us expand small gardens upward instead of having to spread outward, but the trade-off is that we'll have to provide support for the climbers. A trellis on the side or end of a garden bed is just the ticket for climbers, and dirt-simple to build.

A wooden trellises is heavy and making one requires time and patience, but the widely-available trellis netting is easy to mount, surprisingly strong, and will last for years. If that sounds good to you, head for the local hardware and buy the parts for a frame to support it. Our instructions will make a frame five feet by five feet.

Materials for a Trellis

Garden Quilt Row Cover to Extend the Season

Garden Quilts, Row Covers, and Hoops for March and April Garden Madness – and protecting the Eager Gardener’s early plantings. 

Many considered planting a vegetable garden in November unwise, although in most years this might not have been so foolish. Houston winters are typically mild and offer growing opportunities otherwise impossible – lettuce, cilantro, cole crops, dill, spinach, Swiss chard and beets grow best in the cooler season. They don’t grow in our humid summer heat. These vegetables mature as the days get shorter and cooler – but October plantings are recommended over November plantings. 


Knowing the risks associated with the late-fall planting and potential for a winter freeze (I hadn’t seen one for several years) I purchased some super hoops and a garden quilt (frost blanket) from Gardeners Supply Company. I placed the hoops outside in the square-foot gardens for the “just-in-case” moment.  Unfortunately those moments were far more frequent in the 2013-2014 winter than expected.  Fortunately, because of my efforts with the Garden Quilt and hoops, in March I’m still harvesting from the November planting. 

Super Hoops Set of Six Square Foot Gardens

Shelter Your Vegetable Garden under Supportive Super Hoops

Winter in Houston was tough on the vegetable garden this year – usually lettuce, spinach, cilantro and other salad-type vegetables produce at a time when the rest of the country stares out on cold, snow-covered landscapes. This year we endured far too many hard freezes with an average high frequently below the average low. Last October I picked up a package of Super Hoops to provide support for garden row covers and insulated garden quilts. I was quick to admit that my effort of planting the garden in early November was a gamble and was prepared for both failure or success. It was an educational experiment that succeeded.

Last night, in mid-March, I nibbled lettuce fresh from the garden and harvested cilantro for a beef-cilantro meal.  I’ve nothing but gratitude for these hoops and look forward to using them to protect seedlings from hungry birds this spring.

Small Ladders

It was surprising when the hoops arrived. They resembled short ladders rather than hoops.

Orbit Sunmate High-Rise Sprinkler

Got Tall Plants? Get a Tall Sprinkler

The Problem

At our Illinois house, the soils of the Great Corn Desert were so darned fertile people claimed that a railroad spike stuck in the ground would grow into an ironwood tree. Well, not that fertile, but just about everything we did plant got big - fast. As those plants grew, we had to keep raising the sprinkler so the closest plants didn't block the water from reaching the rest. For a while, we jury-rigged an impact sprinkler whose base rested on the bottom of a 5-gallon bucket, held in place by some rocks.

The Solution

"There must be a better way," we thought, and we were right: it's the Orbit SunMate High-Rise Sprinkler. It's a regular three-arm spinner sprinkler on a telescoping pole that extends to three feet tall. That's high enough to reach over most nearby plants and water the whole garden.

The Germination Station

The Germination Station: How to Get a Jump-start on Spring

It may be surprising, but I often start seeds for my garden in late December. No, I don't live in South America, I'm in Houston. In the steam bath we call zone 9A, the guidelines I learned as a kid - plant on Mother's Day, harvest in July - don't work. That's because tomatoes don't set fruit if  the temperature stays in the 90s all night: chiles, maybe; tomatoes, no. That lets us plant a fall garden, setting out seedlings in August and harvesting while our friends in the Midwest are raking leaves. That is, if the squirrels don't get to everything first...

The first time I tried this was in Illinois, except that then I started seeds in February in the depths of Midwestern winter.  The references told me I needed to heat the soil to start seeds that early, so I picked up a Hydrofarm Germination Station.

Free-Standing Garden Hose Hanger with Faucet

Water Whenever and Wherever You Need it, Without a Plumber

When I owned an old house - a really old house - I had many a chance to wish a curse on some of the house's Previous Owners. PO is a sort of a curse word among those whose houses were built before the War (as for the great, formerly white elephant on the edge of the prairie, that would be the Spanish-American War). What did the do this time? Well, there was a hose bib at the back of the house, but the PO built a deck there, with the hose bib still in place under the floor. you could just barely reach it though a basement window without dislocating a shoulder, but it was  the only place to can attach a hose that would reach the garden! Hmmmm: a quandary.

Wall o' Water

Protecting Bedding Plants from Late Frosts

Every gardener goes through the same syndrome every spring. You know what I mean: your tomato seedlings have outgrown their little peat pots and have gotten leggy, too tall for your grow lights. Worse, they're starting to look a tad peaked. Still, the climate refuses to cooperate: even though average last frost was a week ago, the weatherman's talking about high twenties in the nights ahead. Even here in the deep south, I've been able to find a couple of sun-faded, battered carton exactly what we used during Denver's unpredictable springs; we gardener’s savior called a Wall o’ Water.

What’s a Wall o' Water?

It’s a flexible circle composed of plastic tubes two inches in diameter with open tops and closed bottom. It makes a circle 18" across and 18" high, all heavy-weight green plastic. When you fill those tubes with water, the whole thing stands upright. "So what?" you say. Well, the important thing is important is what’s inside: a tender little bedding plant. The plastic wall protects your babies from chilly winds, and the water holds latent heat overnight. That prevents whatever’s inside from exposure to late-season freezes. The company claims that one will protect a plant to 16°F (-8°C), though they don't say for how long. On the other hand, I’ve never seen one frozen solid, or seen a bedding plant killed by frost when surrounded by one. I have seen plants get fried if you leave one in place once the danger of frost has passed.

A Wall o’ Water operates on simple physics: water is more efficient at holding heat than air, so the device forms a sort of tiny “heat island” around whatever is inside. You fill the tubes part way at first so the top leans inward, teepee-like, for added protection. When it gets warmer you fill them all the way so the thing stands up straight in a cylinder. The trick is to fill them in stages, so the plant has the most protection when it’s smallest, then the top is open to let in sunlight and warmth as the plant grows. With a Wall o' Water, you can put out bedding plants as much as a month in advance without needing a cold frame.

Once the danger of frost is over, I’ll squeeze the tubes to empty out enough water that I can lift it off the plant, and then pour out the rest of the water. We make a point of letting them dry thoroughly before putting them in storage.  If treated properly, they will last almost indefinitely.

Summary:

PLUS: plants can go in the ground even if there's still danger of frost
MINUS: you can fry a plant if you leave them on into the hot season
WHAT THEY'RE SAYING: A Wall o' Water gives bedding plants get a head start, "average last frost date" be damned!

copyright © 2014-2017 scmrak

Dalen Gardeneer Trellis Netting

Plants Grow Up, Not Out

Our current patch of ground in the burbs ca

Pole beans covering a 5' x 5'
section of trellis netting.

me with a yard the size of a postage-stamp; tough enough on two large dogs, but worse for dedicated gardeners. We barely shoehorned in a garden space using the Square Foot Garden method, but hey what are you going to do when the closest farmer's market is forty minute's drive away? Our attempt is meeting with moderate success, although the horrendous heat waves and droughts of the past few years may have influenced that.

One thing we learned from our labors was how to make a homemade trellis from a frame of EMT conduit set on rebar pegs. Instead of a a wood or metal mesh, our reference said to use trellis netting… what? Never heard of it… until we found it at a nearby garden supply shop. We've since seen it even at our local BigBox hardwares.