Your Backyard Garden

IF NOT A LAWN, THEN WHAT?

Suppose you decide you don’t want to get a into the lawn rat race.

There are several alternatives to grass, some—like paving the front yard with cement and painting it green—less appealing than others. The first that comes to mind is:

GROUND COVER

The old standbys—ivy,pachysandra, periwinkle, juniper, etc.—are useful, especially in shady or steep spots where grass won’t grow. But here’s what you have to do to establish them: the soil must be cultivated “deeper than for bedding plants” (Wise Garden Encyclopedia).

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Juniper Bonsai Trees

More immediately, our lawns—like so much of our horticultural baggage—come to us from Great Britain. Rather than model our gardens after the Spanish (who use paving for the flat spaces) or Chinese gardens (which have no flat spaces), we follow the English pattern.
Britain’s climate is perfectly suited to lawn-growing.

Summers never get as hot or as dry there as they do almost everywhere on this continent. It’s the latitude: England being farther north, the grass doesn’t fry in the summer as it does in most of the United States. (Of course, the hotter it gets here, the more one craves a cool verdant carpet to wriggle one’s toes in.) (more…)

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Like it or not, what you do with the land around your house tells the world what sort of citizen you are.

A smooth, green, weed-free lawn says that you’re a neat, tidy person, with nothing to hide; affluent enough to hire someone to mow the grass or leisured enough to do it yourself. You’re someone who might leave his golf course-like estate to play a few rounds of golf on the similarly green grounds of the local country club.

To an environmentalist, though, that carefully nurtured greensward is an ongoing ecological crime, and its owner—you—an enemy of the planet, a villain. The green lawn is anti-Green.

Next to having a nuclear power plant in your front yard, having a lawn is about as environmentally incorrect as you can get these days. Immense quantities of noxious chemicals are employed to keep lawns thriving.

In addition to the four horsemen—pesticides, fertilizers, herbicides and petrochemicals—they use inordinate amounts of that increasingly endangered resource, water. Even the seed is suspect, since lawn grasses are almost entirely nonnative. And the amount of money spent on lawn care is, needless to say, prodigious: billions of dollars annually. (more…)

GERMINATION

It’s the miracle of life itself: those little dry brown specks of matter swell and split and send forth a tiny stem, which then pushes its way to the surface, there to grow into the petunia plant—or tomato vine, or leek—of your dreams.

Unfortunately, not every seed germinates without help. Some need to be soaked or nicked or frozen or cooked or otherwise abused, to coax them into life. Some are simply duds, as lifeless as they look. (more…)

I’m a good cook and no doubt you’re a good cook, but there are a lot of gardeners out there for whom growing vegetables is an occasion for creating horrid concoctions, about which the best that can be said is that they use up all the Brussels sprouts.

Everyone knows someone like this: he or she clips recipes from gardening magazines (this is equivalent to gleaning medical advice from Vanity Fair, or personal grooming tips from The Atlantic Monthly), then pulls out the file looking for ideas to adapt to fit the current harvest.

Here’s a recipe for a vegetable ragout that uses spinach and peas: sounds good. But the dish also calls for potatoes and they haven’t come in yet; let’s use turnips instead. (more…)

Bonsai Juniper Trees

Juniper Cascade (juniper procumbens nana)
Juniper “Karate Kid Tree” (juniper procumbens ‘nana’)
Juniper in a Water Pot (juniper procumbens “nana”)
Juniper Cascade (juniper procumbens nana)
San Jose Juniper (juniperus chinensis ’san jose’)
Juniper (juniper procumbens nana)
Juniper Tree - Medium Juniper Procumbens “nana”
Juniper - Trained (juniper procumbens nana)
Juniper (juniper procumbens nana)
Juniper Cascade (juniper procumbens nana)
Juniper “Karate Kid Tree” (juniper procumbens ‘nana’)
Juniper in a Water Pot (juniper procumbens “nana”)
Juniper - Trained (juniper procumbens nana)
Juniper (juniper procumbens nana)
Juniper Tree - Large (Juniper Procumbens “nana”)One day, while delivering a particularly intense sales pitch, I began to realize that I wasn’t lying. There really was some potential here. The more I studied the tree, the more it became apparent that I was not looking at a failure. The failure was mine—I had failed to see.I had been regarding the so-called faults as unacceptable and unforgivable. But I had been ignoring the tree’s assets: the sweep of the driftwood, the strategically positioned branches, the dense growth close to the trunk. I suddenly realized what the initial training followed by years of routine watering and the occasional feed had produced. Surely, any yamadori presenting that kind of potential would probably have equally serious faults that would require just as much work and ingenuity to resolve.

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Bonsai Accessories

Hanes Bonsai Tee Shirt
Decorative Landscape Pebbles
Humidity Tray Pebbles
Mini Pump
B. Drainage Hole Covers
Bonsai Turntable Indoor or Outdoor
B. Drainage Hole Covers
Watering Can
Mist Bottle
Fogger Indoor Water Fountain Fogger
Plastic House Label 1″x1″ writing surface

THE “WRAPAROUND” is arguably the most controversial of all bonsai techniques. The Japanese call the practice a tanuki, implying deception or a cheat. As you can imagine, this technique is frowned upon in Japanese bonsai. On the other hand, American bonsai artist Dan Robinson once coined the memorable phrase “Phoenix Graft,” which views the process from an entirely different perspective. The terms tanuki and phoenix graft clearly illustrate the difference in attitude that can and does exist—not only between East and West, but also between individual artists.

If you set out to make a tanuki—a deception—you will have no respect for your work, so you’ll take less care. But if you set out to create a phoenix graft, the implication is that you are embarking on a more noble quest. What could possibly be wrong with combining a magnificent piece of driftwood—nature’s art—with the living vigor and enthusiasm of a healthy young plant, to create an object of great dignity and beauty?

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Bonsai Accessories

• Bonsai Accessories (29)
• Bonsai Books (8)
• Bonsai Grow Lights (3)

Bonsai Trees

• Juniper Trees (57)

CHINESE JUNIPERS, with their scale foliage pressed tightly to the shoots, are the perfect species group for beginners and experienced artists alike.

Junipers have everything: flexibility, dense foliage, hardiness, resilience and a predictability that is matched by few other species. By carefully manipulating the branches and shoots on a dense juniper, you can create an almost complete bonsai image in a single session.

The most notable feature of Chinese junipers, however, is their natural method of economizing. They shut off water and nutrient supply to certain branches in times of environmental stress or even as a part of the natural aging process. These branches eventually become stripped and bleached by the elements to form bone-colored jins and sharis. Far from indicating that the plant is in poor condition, the appearance of natural jins means that it is behaving exactly as it should.

The opportunity to use the palette of colors offered by the orange-red underbark, the rich green foliage and the bleached deadwood—as well as their malleability cooperation—make Chinese junipers the most sculpturally obliging of all bonsai.

Gardening Articles
Q. I have seed left over from last year. Is it still good?

A. As a rule, yes, but to find out for sure, fill a paper, plastic, or Styrofoam cup three-quarters full of water and add a used tea bag for a minute or two. Then sprinkle a teaspoonful of seed on top of the water; set it in a window that gets a lot of light. In a couple of weeks you should see grass.

Q. What can you do to keep the birds off new grass seed until it sprouts?

A. Adopt six or seven cats. Seriously, though, cover the seed with one quarter inch of topsoil, pat down or roll gently. The faster it sprouts, the more you keep and the less the birds eat. You can also slit an old tennis ball and force it over the end of a six- to seven-foot piece of old garden hose. Draw two mean eyes and a nasty mouth, and place yellow strips of tape like Xs down the hose. Let this lie on the seeded area until the seed sprouts. Why? The birds think it’s a snake. Eagles and hawks won’t be fooled, but then, they don’t eat seed.

Q. Which blend of grass seed is best for a play area?
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Water Features in your garden.

Q. How long are weed killers good?

A. As with any garden chemical you use, you should never purchase more than you can use soon. The vapors of 2,4-D weed killer can kill flowers and evergreens without your even opening the bag. There is a whole new family of weed killers that are now environmentally safe and effective.

Q. Should crab grass be dug out, or can I use a spray of some sort?

A. Dig, dig, dig used to be about the only way, if it’s growing in your yard. There are weed killers that can be used for crab grass control in special crops. Check with your nurseryman.

Q. Can I use the same weed killer to control weeds just offshore at a cottage?

A. No, no, a thousand times no! Your neighbors might even tar and feather you. Fish can be destroyed by ordinary weed killers. For aquatic weeds use a diquat weed killer, or ask a garden center operator near a lake, or make a call to the county extension agent.

Q. I absolutely refuse to use any weed killers on my lawn. They kill birds and our furry friends. What can I use in place of them? (more…)