The Garden Column: Gardening Tips For August
Saturday, September 05, 2009
By Juergen Jaenicke, MG
(Courtesy Cornell Cooperative Extension)
Wow! Summer is here with a vengeance. The only things doing well in my garden are weeds. My tomatoes are wilting and my peppers are all miniature size. With this heat wave we are having the only thing I can do is water. And that goes for the lawn as well.
We have recently filled up our garden pool. The bullfrogs had eaten all the fish and the whole thing was beginning to look like a disaster area. So we called some outfit to dump us about 8 cubic yards of clean fill on our driveway and I, wheelbarrow by wheelbarrow filled it up over several weeks. Then we spent another several weeks looking for the “right” birdbath/water fountain, which we finally found at Costco. This thing was made out of real stone and I had to call two friends to help me to put it up. We got it up and working. My two friends left and then I realized, that something didn’t look right. We had forgotten the base of the birdbath, which was still resting in the wheelbarrow and too heavy for me to lift out. So another week later we got it right and it looks and sounds wonderful!
Now, what to do with this “desert” we created? The birds certainly liked it. A whole flock was swimming and bathing and rolling around in the dirt! It was a delight to watch!
Brigitte’s idea was to turn the whole thing into a rock garden, “this would do great”, she said. We had enough rocks and stones of all sizes and forms and she started to schlep them around and place them onto the Desert. Now off course we needed plants, particularly low growing ones for our new “rock garden” We looked in every nursery between Babylon and Riverhead but couldn’t find anything we liked. We had attended the Master Gardeners picnic at the Herb Farm and found some plants there and finally this week we took a ride out to Hicks in Old Westbury and bought lots of stuff!
Now, generally, when we buy or get new plants we usually leave them standing around until we know where to plant them. When we finally have made up our minds some of them have gone to plant heaven already. Well, this was not the case here, since we had created this desert with rocks and stones and knew exactly where to plant them. Now it was just a matter of which plant goes with what stone? This too was solved by my garden partner.
So now we have a rock garden with birdbath and it is beginning to look like something.
My advice to any aspiring new gardener out there: Don’t do it! It’s too much work! Stick to container- grown tomatoes and artificial grass!
Our newest venture into Nature is out in Southold were we do “oyster farming” with the help of Cornell University Marine Biology Lab. It’s less work and you get to eat the little darlings.
(Courtesy Cornell Cooperative Extension)
Wow! Summer is here with a vengeance. The only things doing well in my garden are weeds. My tomatoes are wilting and my peppers are all miniature size. With this heat wave we are having the only thing I can do is water. And that goes for the lawn as well.
We have recently filled up our garden pool. The bullfrogs had eaten all the fish and the whole thing was beginning to look like a disaster area. So we called some outfit to dump us about 8 cubic yards of clean fill on our driveway and I, wheelbarrow by wheelbarrow filled it up over several weeks. Then we spent another several weeks looking for the “right” birdbath/water fountain, which we finally found at Costco. This thing was made out of real stone and I had to call two friends to help me to put it up. We got it up and working. My two friends left and then I realized, that something didn’t look right. We had forgotten the base of the birdbath, which was still resting in the wheelbarrow and too heavy for me to lift out. So another week later we got it right and it looks and sounds wonderful!
Now, what to do with this “desert” we created? The birds certainly liked it. A whole flock was swimming and bathing and rolling around in the dirt! It was a delight to watch!
Brigitte’s idea was to turn the whole thing into a rock garden, “this would do great”, she said. We had enough rocks and stones of all sizes and forms and she started to schlep them around and place them onto the Desert. Now off course we needed plants, particularly low growing ones for our new “rock garden” We looked in every nursery between Babylon and Riverhead but couldn’t find anything we liked. We had attended the Master Gardeners picnic at the Herb Farm and found some plants there and finally this week we took a ride out to Hicks in Old Westbury and bought lots of stuff!
Now, generally, when we buy or get new plants we usually leave them standing around until we know where to plant them. When we finally have made up our minds some of them have gone to plant heaven already. Well, this was not the case here, since we had created this desert with rocks and stones and knew exactly where to plant them. Now it was just a matter of which plant goes with what stone? This too was solved by my garden partner.
So now we have a rock garden with birdbath and it is beginning to look like something.
My advice to any aspiring new gardener out there: Don’t do it! It’s too much work! Stick to container- grown tomatoes and artificial grass!
Our newest venture into Nature is out in Southold were we do “oyster farming” with the help of Cornell University Marine Biology Lab. It’s less work and you get to eat the little darlings.