Category Archives: Horticulture

Newfoundland #1: gardens gone missing

September 14, 2008 by The Manic Gardener

My husband and parents and I had been here in Newfoundland (“Best place in the world,” pronounced Chris, our B&B host) for several days before it occurred to me that I’d not seen a single vegetable garden. It’s true that the soil is excessively stony,

so much so that in some flat areas it seems that every dip holds a pond, which simply doesn’t drain.

It also rains practically every other day, which may explain why there seem to be so few water-saving devices in evidence. No low-flow showerheads here, even in the B&Bs. Coming from a drought-prone area like Montana, it takes some getting used to.

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Posted in Vegetables

Bindweed #3: Beating Back the Bindweed Jungle

September 11, 2008 by The Manic Gardener

I’ve gotten a couple of interesting responses to my earlier posts, Bindweed #1 and Bindweed #2 (thrilling titles, eh? Makes me feel like the Cat in the Hat introducing Thing 1 and Thing 2) which I’ll take up in more detail in a separate installment. Alan of Roberts Roost has suggested that bindweed is evidence of calcium deficiency. Has anyone else heard this?

Any other experiences, advice, or rumors (we’re scraping the bottom of the barrel, here) about bindweed?

Okay, on to the business of the day, which is this:

How to grow vegetables on a bindweed-infested patch with no blood, minimal sweat, and very few tears.

This post was inspired by one of the photos sent me by Laura, whose query about bindweed started this whole series. Even though it’s in the first of my posts on the topic, I’m going to save everyone a click and reproduce it here:

That was taken a couple of months ago (I got the photos on July 25), and Laura says that everything in the foreground of the photo in front of the beets is bindweed, to which I say, That’s a lot of bindweed.

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Posted in Organic Gardening, Vegetables, Weed Control

Bindweed #2: Digging it out

September 4, 2008 by The Manic Gardener

Several days ago I mentioned the bindweed question I’d gotten from someone by e-mail, and started this long, involved answer. This is the second installment.

So far I’ve gotten one response, from Mr. McGregor’s Daughter, detailing a novel way of handling bindweed: she snips the stem and dabs the cut end with a cotton swab dipped in Roundup. Read all about it on her blog.

When I look at the number of shoots coming up in Laura’s garden, I quail at the thought of dabbing each one with a bit of anything. Of course, once you see what I’m recommending below, you may think I’ve got my priorities seriously skewed. I prefer to drastically reduce the number of sprouts and then kill off those that remain with a method like the cotton swab favored by Mr. McG’s Daughter.

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Posted in Weed Control

Bindweed, garden enemy #1

September 2, 2008 by The Manic Gardener

This is the first of several posts on bindweed, scourge of the gardener’s life. I’m hoping to hear from plenty of people about methods and tactics. After all, it all started when a woman in the north-east corner of Montana sent me these pictures of her garden:

Those are bind-weed sprouts there against the bare ground and bindweed climbing the tomatoes. (I think those are tomatoes.) Now take a look at this one:

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Posted in Organic Gardening, Research Spin-off, Weed Control

Beautiful but Dangerous

August 24, 2008 by The Manic Gardener

My latest favorite wild-flower, Western St. John’s Wort. This patch grows amongst the rocks by Pine Creek Lake, at about 9,300 feet elevation.

Another lapse in posts; another back-packing outing, this time for three nights, two full days of flowers, sun, water, and rock. There could hardly be a more idyllic setting than this: