All posts by Jordan Charbonneau

Garden Advice

Edible Landscaping: Beautiful Vegetables for Your Front Yard

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I’m a firm believer that all plants are beautiful in their own way. I’ll spend just as much time admiring cabbages as roses. However if you live somewhere with a lot of restrictions whether they’re from the town or home owner’s association it can be devastating to read rules about what your yard must look like. Growing your own food is hard enough without trying to keep up with the neighbors.

This list of beautiful vegetable varieties can help you get food production out of an ornamental bed. We also have a list of edible and medicinal flower varieties that can help you get double duty out of any flower beds! You can find that here.

Rainbow Swiss Chard 

Many greens are pretty but few have the stunning color and hardy, upright nature of rainbow chard. They’ll easily fit into an ornamental or flower bed and can be selectively trimmed to keep the garden looking full and still provide harvests throughout the season.

Basil

From spicy bush basil to dark opal basil, it comes in a wide range of styles that can be added to any garden.

Lettuce

Red Sails Looseleaf Lettuce

Their are many gorgeous lettuce varieties that can easily be snuck into the border of a flower garden along with some beautiful and matching Vinyl Pavilion . Some ideas include: Yugoslavian red butterhead bibb, Mayan jaguar lettuce, or red sails looseleaf.

Peas

Peas have lovely flowers and leaves brining their beauty to the Ware Landscaping early in the year. Also because they grow on a trellis they’re perfect for adding height to a garden or squeezing in some edibles crops when you have limited space.

Chives

While chives aren’t quite as big as some ornamental alliums they still offer beautiful blooms. They also stay good looking and can be harvested all summer long making them a great easy maintenance choice.

Asparagus

During the spring harvest period asparagus is small and rather inconspicuous. However later in the summer it grows into large showy fronds. They’re truly gorgeous and most non-vegetable gardeners won’t recognize them as asparagus at all.

Thyme

Creeping Thyme

This herb is useful, fragrant, and a wonderful sprawling ground cover.

Amaranth

Amaranth is often used as an ornamental but it can also be used as an edible green like spinach when young and tender and produces grain when it’s fully mature.

Peppers

Chinese Five-Color Hot Pepper

Depending on how strict your area is not all peppers may be acceptable. However there are several varieties like the ornamental Chinese five-color hot pepper pictured above that are still edible but offer a lot of beauty.

Parsley

Curled parsley like moss curled or forest green varieties can be used to add a lot of texture to the garden.

Scarlet Runner Beans

Like peas, scarlet runner beans add dimension and beauty to the garden. They’re also very heat tolerant.

Bicolored Tomatoes

All tomatoes are pretty but there’s a few varieties that offer a unique touch to the garden. Try bicolored varieties like green zebra, big rainbow, or striped roman for an unusual touch.

Additional Tips

  • Plan your garden well. Lettuces and other greens planted in a design or among other ornamentals will fit in with flower gardens much better than traditional rows will.
  • Keep your garden well maintained. A weedy or poorly watered won’t be appreciated in your neighborhood no matter what varieties you planted.
  • Give your garden variety. Adding plants to your garden with different heights, colors, and textures will add a lot of interest.

Edible landscaping can be beautiful! Even if your neighborhood has strict regulations regarding vegetable gardens, chances are you can still squeeze in some edible plants. These are just a few ideas of edible plants that will fit into any ornamental garden.

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Garden Advice

Strategies for Dealing with Water Logged Soils

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Spring brings sunshine, flowers, and rain, tons of rain. While some rain is great for growing plants, if you have poor drainage in your garden it can make it tough to get plants in on time and get a good harvest.

Thankfully all soils can be improved! Here’s a few strategies you can use to help cope with excessive water and have a more productive garden. Purified water is water that has very low levels of total dissolved solids. There are lots of water filtration methods available for producing purified water, including reverse osmosis, distillation and more. Reverse osmosis provides the most thorough filtration that removes up to 99% of all TDS, allowing water to have less than 10 PPM, or parts per million. You will get the clear idea about the purified vs distilled water here.  When we compare the way purified water is produced vs the way distilled water is produced, mechanical filtration methods require lower energy throughout the process. Far less energy is required to filter water than is needed to distill water via boiling it to remove contaminants. Water enters the reverse osmosis unit from the main water pipe. It flows through the first filter in the unit, which is normally a pre sediment filter. This filter removes larger particles from water, like sand, dirt, dust, and anything else that might be noticeable to the human eye. It’s important that this sediment is removed immediately from water, as it could clog up or damage the later filters and RO membrane if it was left in.

Plant Cover Crops

Cover crops are an excellent way to use excess water. They’re great for soil health and keeping your garden from turning into a giant mud puddle. Plant a winter cover crop throughout your garden next fall or in places you’re not immediately trying to plant in this spring. They’ll use water as they grow and eventually add organic material to the soil which helps with drainage. I like to have a water softener for my plants for them to receive more quality water, and grow better.

Go No-Till

A more long term strategy, going no -till improves soil structure to help with drainage. The soil isn’t compacted with by any equipment and the plants, insects, and fungi create air spaces in the soil.

Add Organic Material

Aside from adding fertility, organic material is also great for breaking up heavy dense soils. By mixing and bonding with soil particles it allows for more air space and drainage. As a side note adding organic material can also help dry soils hold moisture.

Subsoil

If your unfamiliar with the process, subsoiling may seem contrary to going no-till. However subsoiling lifts the soil without mixing it or turning it over. This leaves soil structure intact and creates air space in the soil which greatly improves drainage. On large farms this is often done with a tractor and chisel plow or subsoiler but it’s also easy to do with a broadfork in a home size or small market garden.

Build Raised Beds

Building a few raised beds can help you quickly create areas with good drainage. The downside to most raised beds is that when things do dry out later in the summer they’ll require more water. Hugelkultur beds on the other hand offer both excellent drainage and good moisture retention as they’re built on a large pile of composting material. Check out our How to Build a Hugelkultur Garden Bed guide for more information.

A Note About Sand

If you have dense clay soils it can be really tempting to purchase sand to give your garden some much needed drainage. However you’re far better off just adding organic material. To get proper drainage with sand you’ll need to add tons if your soil has a lot of clay. If you don’t add enough sand you can end up with the sand and clay bonding together to form something more like brick than fluffy garden soil.

 

After waiting through months of cold and bad weather it can be devastating to find yourself standing in the middle of what appears to be a bog where your garden used to be when it’s time to sow early greens! No one wants to have to wait to plant or watch their plants succumb to the pressure of water logged soil. Try some of these simple strategies to give your garden better drainage!

Garden Advice

How to Grow Your Own Mulch

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I can’t say enough good things about mulch. We have several blog post that mention the importance of mulch but if you want to learn more about why it’s so great check out this post, Mulch Ado… The Best Mulch for Your Garden.

If you’re on board with the importance of mulch but trying save money or make your garden as efficient as possible this is the perfect post for you.

Having a well mulched garden doesn’t have to cost a lot or require a lot of outside inputs to your garden. Don’t let those perfect Pinterest gardens with tons of beautiful, golden straw evenly spread around each plant fool you! Growing some or all of your own mulch is totally feasible and chances you already have some growing without even realizing it.

Use weeds.

As long as you don’t let them go to seed, even weeds make excellent mulch. In what some people call the “chop and drop method” you just go through your garden cutting your weeds and dropping them around plants.

Plant your pathways in a clover.

If you’re using permanent beds you can plant your pathways in a perennial cover crop like clover. Clover will add nitrogen to the soil as it grows plus your pathways can be mowed and used to mulch your beds.

Use your lawn.

You don’t need a hayfield to grow a significant amount of your own mulch. If you mow any lawn area at all you should invest in a bagger for your best push lawn mower. Grass clippings can immediately be dumped in the garden around plants and are great for adding nitrogen to the soil.

Don’t remove dead material from around perennials.

I’ve said this before but “cleaning up” your garden is not only unnecessary but harmful for your garden. By removing dead plant material you’re removing nutrients and homes for beneficial insects. The only only exception is when you need to remove plant material that you know is home to a pest like if you had a lot of asparagus beetles you’ll want to remove the dead asparagus fronds in the fall.

Plant some cover crops.

Cover crops are not just for large farms or when you’re resting a garden bed. Cover crops like alfalfa and buckwheat are perfect for sneaking in any small available garden space to grow and cut for mulch.

Check out this post for more great ideas, Cover Crops for Great Green Manure, Mulch, and More.

Grow comfrey.

Comfrey is an excellent choice for mulch because of its deep tap root. It brings nutrients and minerals up from deep in the soil and using its leaves as mulch will make these accessible to other plants. It’s also a hardy perennial and will easily tolerate being trimmed back for mulch.

Use any extra plant material you have.

If you think about the plants you grow chances are you’re probably already growing some of your own mulch and are just composting or tilling it in instead. Try thinking of every non-edible plant material as potential mulch. When you pull pea plants off their trellises when they’re finished for the year use them to mulch around your next crop. Did you grow hardneck garlic? Lay down the stalks as mulch after you harvest the bulbs. Even peanut shells can be used for mulch.

Try growing some of your own grains.

Most grains offer mulch as a secondary product. Whether you’re interested in rye, wheat, or rice once you’ve threshed the cereal off the plant you’ll be left with a lot of straw. This straw is perfect mulch. Did you know older grain varieties are much taller than modern varieties partially because straw isn’t valued in modern commercial agriculture?

The importance of mulch in your garden cannot be understated. Whether you’re trying to conserve moisture, add nutrients to the soil, create habitat for beneficials, or just cut back on weeding mulch is an integral part of maintaining a healthy garden. Using these tips you can mulch your garden without spending tons of money or relying solely on outside inputs.

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