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More garden safety tips

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As with just about anything you do around the home or in the workplace, it’s important to practice gardening safety when you garden. There’d be nothing worse than seriously injuring yourself while you’re gardening and then ending up being unable to maintain your lovely garden.

Health Precautions

Since one aspect of gardening is digging in the earth, possibly working with thorny plants (roses anyone?) and sometimes working with tools that have a little rust on them it’s important to make sure that your Tetanus shots are up to date. Most people only require a Tetanus booster every ten years, but if you are an avid gardener your doctor might recommend that you get booster shots a little more frequently.

You can get some nasty infections from the fungus on rose thorns or the bacteria in your garden soil so if you are working in the garden and end up getting slivers or thorns stuck in your skin try to remove them as soon as you are finished your tasks. Wash the puncture wounds and any other wounds that you acquire while gardening and then apply an antiseptic to prevent infection.

Tool Safety

One major aspect of gardening safety is the safe use of gardening tools. Be sure to store them in an area where children or possibly even pets can’t get at them. When you are using your gardening tools also try to be mindful of where each tool is located, especially if you have friends or family members out in the yard with you. I’m sure everyone can either remember stepping on a rake that was placed on the ground the wrong way and being hit in the face or watching someone else do it.

Perhaps store you smaller gardening tools in a gardening belt or tool belt so they are handy and close to you at all times. A bucket with a handle would also be a great place to store tools as you work in the garden.

Dull gardening tools often make worse cuts (on plants and on our skin!) so make sure your pruners and other cutting tools and blades are sharp and kept free of rust, and handle with care.

Chemical Safety

If you use chemicals in your garden – fertilizers, weed killers or other chemicals please make sure that you are storing them safely and using them as directed. Of course you can make it really easy on yourself and be like me and just not use any chemicals in the garden at all!

Some chemicals are quite toxic when being used and require that a mask and safety clothing be worn when applying them to your plants. Be sure to read the directions before starting to use a chemical in your yard and where appropriate protection if necessary. Also be sure that family members, friends and neighbors or pets aren’t nearby when using potentially toxic chemicals and keep pets and people away until the level of toxicity goes down whether that be an hour or a few days.

Also remember to read the label when it comes to disposing of used chemical bottles or left over chemicals. Sometimes you can simple put the containers in your recycling and other times you might have to drop them off at a special depot.

If you always make sure that you practice garden safety you, your family, pets and friends will be able to enjoy the time in the garden.

Don’t forget to read the first article on Gardening Safety that I published earlier this month in order to avoid injuring yourself while planting new plants in the garden and more.






Making a Raised-Bed Garden

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Back in 2002 when we landscaped our yard and started our garden we decided to create a raised bed garden.

We decided on raised bed gardening for a number of reason. The main reason being the soil in our yard seemed to be composed of mostly sand and clay. It was dry and difficult to dig deeper than 6 inches or so. amending the soil to a suitable consistency would have taken too long.

patio4 Raised garden beds are easy to build. They are also easy to plant new plants in, weed and maintain.

Other advantages of raised bed gardening that we considered before creating our garden were the fact that the soil would drain quickly in the spring when the snow melts, and the beds would warm up a little faster in the spring as well enabling us to either plant earlier in the season or giving the perennials and shrubs a head start.

So how can you make your own raised beds?

– We used easy wall garden stones (you can read the details of how we landscaped our garden here), but you can create your raised garden bed walls with:

– Concrete blocks, bricks, rocks, natural rot-resistant wood or wood that’s been treated with a safe preservative.

You might also need:

  • Sheet plastic and or a wood preservative if you create wood borders.
  • Measuring tape
  • Shovel
  • Spading fork
  • Rake
  • Hammer
  • Nails
  • Topsoil
  • Compost

Since our raised garden beds were meant to be permanent garden structures we also used gravel screening at the base of the easy wall stones to give the stones a good foundation and also to aid in drainage from the garden beds.

Temporary Raised Beds

If you’re still landscaping and trying to decide where you want to place your garden beds you might consider creating temporary raised garden beds. You can easily change your garden design each season using temporary raised garden beds.

All you really need to do to create a temporary raised bed is shovel garden soil into the area that you’ve planned for your raised bed. You might consider using Triple mix soil as it’s been blended with garden soil, topsoil and compost. Otherwise you can amend your garden spoil by adding top soil and compost to the mix yourself.

Permanent and temporary beds can be shaped in any way that you wish. You can create rectangular, curved, or even round beds.

The basics of building a raised garden bed is that it should be about 12 inches deep and usually no more than three to four feet wide.

Our beds are build around the edges of the garden so we only have access to each bed from one side, however you might think of making a round bed in the center of your lawn or placing two raised beds side by side with two to three feet of space between them for easy access. You’ll be able to access the garden beds from both sides so it will be even easier to care for than ours!

Be sure to remove any rocks, sticks or other debris from the garden bed as you create it. Rake the top of the bed smooth and flat when you are finished building up the soil.

Permanent raised garden beds:

When creating permanent raised garden beds you should use rot-resistant wood (cedar for example) or bricks, rocks, stones or cement blocks. As I said above your bed should be at least a foot deep and no more than three to four feet wide.

If you choose to use a rot resistant wood when creating your raised garden bed you might want to use an earth friendly preservative such as linseed oil or a borax based treatment to slow the rotting of the wood.

Raised beds can be build on the soil of your yard, but I’d recommend loosening the soil with a spading fork or shovel first.

Once you’ve completed building the walls of your raised beds fill with triple mix or top soil, garden soil and compost.

Planting Raised Beds

Now that you’ve created your raised beds you’ll be able to visualize how your garden will look when the beds are planted.

Depending upon what kind of garden you’ve planned you can plant vegetables, herbs or flowering plants in your raised beds.

As my regular readers know our raised beds have a mix of roses (over 60); shrubs – boxwood, Rose of Sharon, Rhododendron, and Azaleas; perennials – lavender, bee balm, saliva, Maltese cross, peonies and many more; and spring flowering plants and bulbs. We also grow tomatoes, carrots, peppers, herbs and leafy greens right in our raised beds along side the flowering plants. The mix of plants actually look quite nice together.

Most of your planting should be done during the spring and autumn months.

You might want to add some fertilizer to the soil around your new plants when you first plant them. We use natural fertilizers such as alfalfa pellets or brew some alfalfa tea or compost tea to use as fertilizer.

If you’ve built your raised garden beds along the perimeter of your yard or fence you’ll want to plant taller plants at the back of the raised beds and shorter plants near the front. If your raised bed is in the center of your yard you’ll likely want to plant the taller plants in the center/middle of the raised bed and surround them with shorter plants.

Just be sure not to compact the soil as you work in your raised beds planting your new plants.

Be sure to water your raised beds regularly. One of the cons of raised beds is that they dry out a little faster than other garden beds.

Every year, usually at the end of May or beginning of June we add some mulch to the garden beds.

We don’t do this earlier in the season as we like to turn the soil around the plants a little bit prior to adding mulch. turning the soil tends to keep slugs at bay. Perhaps their eggs die when exposed on top of the soil. Mulch too early and you might find your garden full of slugs.

Adding mulch to your garden beds adds organic material that will break down over time and help fertilize your soil. The seasonal benefit of mulching is of course that it helps conserve water by keeping the soil moist below the mulch and of course a layer of mulch two or three inches deep will keep weeds away too.

Use straw, shredded bark, shredded leaves or other materials for mulch.

Tips

As I said earlier we have a number of plants in our raised garden beds. I put some thought into what kind of plants I would grow so that I would pretty much have continuous blooms in my garden from late March to November and sometimes even early December.

A variety of bulbs and spring plants work well for early to late Spring. Choose some plants that bloom early and some that bloom later in the season.

Many of the spring blooming plants die down once the weather starts to warm up so they are planted near perennials and rose shrubs. So once they die down, the perennials appear or the roses begin to bloom and the space that the spring plants took in the garden is quickly filled by the growing perennials.

If you grow vegetables in the garden you can arrange to grow them in succession as well. Lettuce often does best in the spring or at least before the weather begins to get quite hot. Once your lettuce is done you might plant beans or another crop of vegetable that isn’t mature until late summer.

This is what our backyard looked like in July 2003 – just a little more than a year after we’d put in the raised garden beds –

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Believe it or not, the garden is even fuller now as the plants have reached maturity. It’s beautiful and even more amazing that we did it ourselves.

You can do – get inspired!

Spring tasks to get your garden growing

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It’s been a long winter

Many of us in the North experienced one of the snowiest winters that we’ve had in years. Cool temperatures are continuing even though it’s already officially spring. I’d say that this year we’re probably going to be two or three weeks behind on our normal Spring gardening tasks.

Normally the snow is gone, or just about gone, by this time in March. In fact I usually have crocus’ and snowdrops blooming by now. However, if you experienced the same winter I did your garden is likely still buried under snow!

Still … it’s time to think about Spring gardening tasks.

I’m sure some of you have already started cleaning up your garden and preparing for the season ahead. Those of us that are still unable to get out into the garden, well … we can at least make sure that our gardening tools are in order, oil and sharpen our pruners and purchase any supplies that we need so that we’ll be able to catch up once the snow finally melts!

Spring Tasks

  • As I stated above, this is a great time of year to maintain your gardening tools by cleaning, sharpening and oil pruners, having your lawnmower blades sharpened, buying new gardening gloves and any other items that you might need throughout the coming months.

  • Once the grass is no longer wet and the soil in your garden beds dries out begin your outdoor tasks by raking the lawn to get rid of leaves, twigs and other debris that has accumulated in your yard thanks to winter winds.

  • Rake the dead growth from your lawn.

  • If you have damaged or bare patches on your lawn purchase some grass seed and re-seed those areas. Be sure to scratch the soil with a rake first and then apply grass seed to the area. Lightly cover the seed with a thin layer of soil and be sure to keep the area well watered until the seeds germinate and new grass begins to appear.

  • If you protected your shrubs, trees or any garden plants over winter it’s time to remove the winter protect. As the air warms it’s very important that your shrubs and trees have good air circulation around them. Leaving burlap or other forms of winter protect on too long can lead to bark rot.

  • This is also a great time of year to plant new trees, shrub, roses and other hardy dormant plants. Also if you have any trees or shrubs that you’d like to transplant elsewhere in your yard do it before they begin to leaf out.

  • Many trees and shrubs benefit from a spray of dormant oil as this helps to control scale insects and other overwintering pests. Euonymus, magnolias, crabapples and other fruit trees should be sprayed when their buds are in swell.

  • Take a good look at your garden beds and if you notice that any of your plants have come up out of the earth to the freeze and thaw cycles at this time of year. Replant any heave-ho victims as soon as possible. Most will recover nicely if you find them and replant while it’s still cool.

  • Wait until temperatures are reliably warm before you begin to remove mulch and cut back plants such as roses, evergreen plants and shrubs. You can cut off obviously dead branches but don’t cut into live branches until there’s no chance of frost or a return of cold weather. If you aren’t sure what to cut then just wait until it’s a little warmer and your plant is showing obvious signs of growth. Once you do feel it’s time to prune it’s best to prune plants such as roses before they leaf out.

  • Clear your garden of the previous seasons dead plant material such as dead leaves and other debris as they can harbor molds and overwintering pests.

  • Ornamental grasses can be cut back at this time as well.

  • Don’t overwork your garden beds by digging too early. The soil structure is delicate and if you dig in it while it’s still wet you can damage it’s composition. Soil should fall apart when you pick up a handful. If it sticks together in a clump wait until it dries out a bit more.

  • Once the soil has dried out you can begin to dig garden beds, add manure, compost and prepare for the planting of new perennials, annuals and vegetables.

  • Weeds will likely be some of the first green growth you see in your garden. Pluck them out now while they are still young and their roots are shallow. It will mean less work for you later on!

  • Don’t forget to care for your houseplants. The winter months can be hard on house plants as the air is often dry inside the house due to forced air heating. The light levels have also been lower too. Perhaps take a few moments to pick off any dead leaves, top up their soil and lightly fertilize your houseplants so they too will have a great spring start.

Happy Gardening!

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