Tag: recommended reading

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Strawberries Make Us Happy

When my two-year-old, Clara, came into the house with bloody, scraped knees from playing outside with her sister, Ella, 5, I asked Ella what happened to her.  Clara was happy and unconcerned about her knees, and no self-respecting toddler allows such an opportunity for tears and attention from mama to pass unused unless there are extenuating circumstances.  Ella, ever the helpful big sister, said, “She fell down and I gave her two strawberries and that happied her up!”  They had been out raiding the strawberry patch in my garden, and apparently, one strawberry was not enough to stop the tears, but two berries did the trick.

One of my favorite childhood memories is picking strawberries from my mother’s patch, but her patch became neglected over the years and I remember it producing a few small berries.  When I first planted strawberries in my garden, although I followed the directions on the package, my plants did not produce many berries either.  Strawberry plants can take up a lot of space in the garden, and if I gave them the room, I wanted them to produce.

The parents of my best friend from high school have a commercial turkey farm and a U-Pick strawberry farm in the Upstate.  Their berries are big and numerous, and I asked their advice.  They have a handy source of strawberries’ favorite nutrient, nitrogen, in the turkey litter, and they spread turkey litter on the fields before they plant the berries.  I began putting manure, heavily, on my berries, and now I have large, numerous ones too.

If you apply too much nitrogen to most fruiting plants, they will grow beautiful foliage but no fruit.  Strawberries, as well as blueberries and blackberries, need extra nitrogen to produce fruit.  Do not try this with your tomatoes, beans, or squash; you will have beautiful plants but nothing edible.  Strawberries also like acid soil, with a pH of about 5.5-6.5.  Most soils in the Midlands are already acidic; get a soil test if you are not sure about your soil.  Do not apply lime to strawberries unless you know your soil is extremely acidic, and do not put them where tomatoes, potatoes, or peppers have grown in the last several years because they are susceptible to the same diseases.

My strawberry patch is disorganized, but the “proper” way to grow strawberries is to buy new plants every few years, or even every year, and to rotate strawberries as you would any other crop to avoid disease buildup.  I set out my original plants in rows, but because strawberries spread by runners, they have filled in the space between the rows.  In the late fall or winter, I dig out and discard old plants, and I move the new ones that rooted at the end of the runners into spaces vacated by the old ones.  In the winter, before new growth begins, I spread an inch or two of cow manure among the plants and mulch them well.  If I used poultry manure, I would spread it much thinner.  If I had no manure, I would thickly apply organic fertilizer and compost.  I usually apply blood meal or another high-nitrogen organic fertilizer like Black Hen or cottonseed meal after the strawberries stop fruiting.    

The “South Carolina Fruit and Vegetable Book,” by Walter Reeves and Felder Rushing, recommends fertilizing an 8×30 foot area containing 30 plants with 4 pounds of 10-10-10 fertilizer a week or so before they are planted, and in June and in September.  If soil is sandy, they recommend applying the fertilizer in May, July, and October.  After the first season, they recommend fertilizing the plants in late winter with 4 pounds of 10-10-10.  This is a lot of fertilizer, and it is simpler and better for your plants and soil if you use compost and manure.

I do not intend to move my strawberries unless disease becomes a problem; they are healthy and productive.  My biggest chore is containing the growth and keeping them weeded because it is hard to apply mulch evenly to a disorganized planting.  Snails, slugs, and birds love berries, so I usually have to take precautions against these critters.  If you want to grow strawberries, look in garden centers for them this spring, although it may be a bit late to plant them.  Fall and winter are excellent times to plant them in our area, so look for plants then online and in stores and in the interim, prepare a place for them with lots of compost and manure.     
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Put Some Color into Your Foundation Plantings

Foundation plantings, also known as a line of green shrubs across the front of your house, are usually so boring people don’t even notice them as they dash by them on the way to the front door. Even the homeowner may not notice them until the shrubs grow tall enough to block the view outside. Then, in an annual ritual, the designated shrub-pruner in the family, precariously perching on an unstable ladder, chops them into submission.
In my family, I am the shrub-chopper. When we bought the house, it contained the requisite line of shrubs, all of which I removed except for the Japanese Holly, “Sky Pencil,” an evergreen, columnar shrub that, at my house, grows about eight feet tall and two feet wide, between the windows.  The holly is a fine choice for the space, but it doesn’t get quite enough sun to make the new growth rigid like it is supposed to, and so the new growth flops over until I give it a haircut and tie it to a stake.

Landscapers that work with home builders are notorious for putting in shrubs that grow quickly so a new house’s landscape looks nice until after the buyer moves in.  The unwitting homeownerhas to chop shrubs several times a year, and soon grows to detest yard work. In my first home, the developer’s landscaper put ligustrum, which quickly grows to 10 feet tall by eight feet wide, in a space about two feet wide between the garage doors.  My husband sheared it into a tiny rectangle several times a year so we could continue to get the cars into the garage.  Avoid overused and fast growing shrubs like ligustrum, pittosporum, Indian hawthorn, and junipers in your landscape; they are useful if you need to quickly screen an unattractive view.

There seems to be an unwritten rule that the front yard must be utilitarian like everyone else’s on the street, with anything imaginative reserved for the backyard.  I wanted my front yard to be as much of a garden as my back yard, and so  I decided on a color scheme I have repeated in other places in my garden: chartreuse and magenta, mixed in with some solid green. My design contains plants that the deer are supposed to resist eating; sometimes they listen to that instruction and sometimes they don’t.  I tried to buy plants that even at maturity will not cover my windows.  Sometimes it is hard to find shrubs that are the right size, color, and are deer-resistant, so I did buy some that, unpruned, would eventually grow too large.  However, they grow slowly; I prune them every couple of years and they behave.


View of front garden

 In the above photo, chartreuse “Golden Euonymus” glows beside burgundy loropetalum.  Behind the euonymus is a burgundy Japanese barberry that will grow to about 4 feet tall.  In the center of the photograph is a peony, with dark pink buds about to open.  After the peony’s show of flowers, the green leaves provide a nice contrast with the bright foliage of the other plants during the rest of the summer.  By the house, the Japanese maple, ‘Crimson Queen,’ has a nice weeping form and lacy leaves.  It will remain small enough not to obstruct the view from the window.  To the left of the Japanese Maple is and Oakleaf Hydrangea; its leaves turn crimson in the fall.

Unfortunately, the loropetalums I purchased, from a reputable local nursery, were labeled as a shrub that was supposed to grow 3-4 feet tall and wide.  They cost at least double the price of the huge version of the shrub.  The labels were inaccurate, and the shrubs require hard pruning every year or so to make them behave.  I discarded the receipt and the labels: in the future I will save both until I am sure I got the plant I paid for.




View of perennials in front garden

 In this photo, I continue the chartreuse and burgundy color scheme with the ground cover golden “Creeping Jenny,” and the taller Persicaria ‘Red Dragon’ in the foreground.  Penstemon ‘Husker’s Red,’ is beginning to flower in the center of the photo, and at the base of the stairs the grass Carex ‘Evergold’ shines.  Included in the design, but not yet flowering in this April photograph, are Bergenia ‘Winterglow,’ Anemone ‘Robutissima,’ Lobelia ‘Monet Moment,’ Monarda ‘Pink Supreme,’ Astilbe ‘Rheinland,’ and Aster ‘Alma Potschke.”

In this area of my garden, the soil is always moist, even during a drought.  I think there is a spring under my house that no one noticed during its construction, but the spring does not cause the house problems. However, it does limit my choice of plants to those that tolerate consistently moist conditions.  If I had a well-drained site, I would plant some of the Euphorbias, like Euphorbia ‘Chameleon,’ Sedums, like Sedum ‘Lynda Windsor’ and ‘Angelina,’ and Heucheras, like Heuchera ‘Lime Rickey,’ ‘Southern Comfort,’ and ‘Purple Petticoats.’ In my garden, these plants keep leaves most of the year.

I order most of my perennials from Bluestone Perennials, http://www.bluestoneperennials.com/.   I like Bluestone because they have the widest variety of plants I have seen, their plants are healthy, and most plants they sell in groups of three for the price most nurseries charge for one.  Granted, the plants are smaller than you might get elsewhere, but they bloom the first year for me and quickly catch up to those I buy in larger containers. Their customer service is excellent, and the catalog provides detailed cultural information about the plants.

Tracy Disabato-Aust’s book, “The Well-Tended Perennial Garden: Planting and Pruning Techniques” is a good reference.  It provides detailed cultural information about most plants and time-saving ways to take care of perennials, such as giving the entire plant a haircut with hedge trimmers or a weed-eater instead of laboriously clipping of each individual spent bloom.  It also gives garden design information.

“The Southern Living Garden Book” is a good reference for folks who live in the South, which includes Delaware and west to Oklahoma and part of Missouri.  The book includes cultural information, including size at maturity, of nearly any plant that grows in the South, and it includes lists of plants for different situations, such as lists of plants with colorful foliage, deer resistant plants, and plants with showy flowers.

If you need help with the design, most local garden center staff will help you choose appropriate plants; show them a photograph of the site, along with measurements and a description of soil and sun conditions.

This spring, discard your preconceived notions of the foundation planting. Pull out the shrubs that threaten to cover your windows every year, and plant some that will grow to maturity while remaining under your windows. Include perennials and grasses in the design, and turn your front yard into a garden, instead of just a path to the front door.

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You can afford organic food

When I talk about eating foods grown without the use of chemical pesticides or fertilizers, and eating meat from animals grown without hormones or antibiotics, and that lived a life free of unreasonable confinement, the first objection people raise is that eating this way is too expensive. Foods grown naturally are more expensive than food grown conventionally without as much care to the well-being of the animal, plant, or the resulting effects on the environment, but the expense is worth it. Many people believe they cannot afford to buy anything but the cheapest grocery-store fare, but I hope to persuade you that buying better quality food is affordable.

The first way to decrease your grocery bill is to have a garden, even if it is a pot of lettuce in a sunny spot during the winter and a tomato plant in the summer. Properly cared for, even small gardens can help decrease your grocery bill. Next, eat what is in season locally, and buy it from a local farmer. In June, eat locally grown tomatoes; in February, eat collard greens and root vegetables like carrots, beets, and potatoes. For more information on eating foods in season, read “Animal, Vegetable, Miracle” by Barbara Kingsolver.

According to the Environmental Working Group, strawberries, blueberries, peaches, celery, apples, cherries, nectarines, potatoes, bell peppers, grapes, spinach, and kale contain the most pesticide residues, and, if you have to choose, you should buy the organic version of these vegetables. Eating foods out of season often means that the food was grown in another country with less stringent pesticide regulations, which may mean more pesticide residue is on the food than if it was grown in the US.

When I say “organic”, I do not mean USDA certified organic, because the regulations add prohibitive costs of production to many small farmers and, although they follow organic practices, they do not choose to pay for certification. I buy my meat, dairy, and eggs from Wil-Moore Farms, in Lugoff, and their farm is not certified organic. However, when I visit their home to pick up my food, I see the animals living on pasture, and because I can talk to the farmers directly, I trust that the animals are raised the way they say they are. You may reach Wil-Moore Farms at 803.438.3097.

My first priority, because I have two small children that drink a lot of milk, is to buy organic milk. Happy Cow Creamery, in Pelzer, produces milk from cows that live on pasture, and they do not use hormones. Wil-Moore farms and some smaller stores carry this milk. One reason I like it is because it is minimally processed, which preserves the good fats and vitamins in the milk destroyed by processing. Their cows also live on the pasture and eat grass, instead of hay, grain, and silage like most dairy cows, organic dairy or not. Organic milk does not contain growth hormones, and the cows are not given antibiotics routinely.

Reducing the amount of meat you eat is another way to cut costs. Eat your cchicken in a stir-fry instead of a huge chicken breast, and reserve steaks for special occasions. Try cheaper cuts of meat, like roasts, instead of more expensive cuts. Eat your ground beef in chili beans and spaghetti sauce instead of hamburgers. Buy whole chickens instead of boneless skinless breasts and use every scrap of meat on the bird, and then boil the carcass to make chicken stock. Eating the typical American diet of a huge hunk of meat and a small amount of vegetables is unhealty and expensive.

Before I switched to buying free-range meat, by watching sales, I was able to buy my meat so cheaply at the grocery store that I often wasted it. If we got tired of eating something, I would throw it out. Now that I buy the more expensive meat, I make sure I use every scrap of it. I turn leftovers into stir-fries and pasta dishes. From the carcass of my Thanksgiving turkey, I canned about 14 quarts of turkey stock, which I will use in recipes calling for chicken stock.

If you want to make buying organic foods a priority, you may have to adjust your spending on other things. Processed snack foods, frozen meals, soft drinks, fast foods, and deli foods are usually neither organic nor healthy. They are expensive, though, and overconsumption of these foods will make you unhealthy. Unfortunately, they are a mainstay of most American’s diets.