A Good Garden May Have Some Weeds
Season 4, Episode 46, September 21, 2022
Are you ready for fall? I certainly am, although Carol is a bit more on the fence about it. Winter generally comes earlier for her.
Before we recorded this week’s podcast, I planted my front pots and took a photo for you!
Carol and I started out by discussing how to simplify our gardens, but then we got diverted by battery-operated power tools. I wonder how often Carol and I can bring up battery-operated power tools this year? Can anyone guess?
How else do we simplify? Well, I’m thinking about removing some gardens and maybe giving up beekeeping because one cannot do everything. Carol likes the idea of raised beds and containers. I do too.
Outside of power tools, we mentioned a few things we think make our garden jobs easier like my spear head spade gardening shovel I bought while sitting in a daylily talk in Asheville. Carol loves her pruning shears for smaller hands, and I’m thinking about investing in the upgraded TomCare garden kneeler, but I haven’t made the purchase yet.
In this “flower” section, we also mentioned two books: The Lifelong Gardener: Garden with Ease and Joy at Any Age, by Toni Gattone and Gardening for a Lifetime: How to Garden Wiser as You Grow Older, by Sydney Eddison (Amazon Link.)
Here are other ways to make things easier.
Size your garden for the resources you have: your time, the plants you choose—do you think Carol was talking about my roses and me—the tools you buy, the help you hire and what you can afford.
Work smarter. Try not to touch things twice. In a large garden, use garden tractors and carts,
Water efficiently. In Oklahoma, especially, use soaker hoses or Netafim hosing.
Invest in good tools like ergonomic shovels and pruners and don’t forget battery-operated power tools!
Use raised beds and container gardening.
Get help for stuff that makes you very tired like mulching.
Think about plant selection like letting tropical plants go at the end of the season or, maybe, horrors, don’t grow them at all. Don’t overwinter so many plants.
Moving on to vegetables, we had our annual pepper roundup. The peppers we both enjoyed were ‘Candy Cane’ and ‘Cubanelle.’ Carol always grows ‘Big Bertha,’ because as she said, “If you can’t garden with Big Bertha, what’s the point of summer?” She cracks me up! Carol also trialed ‘Peppers from Heaven’ from Ball Seed.
I made a pledge to only grow poblano, some type of jalapeno, ‘Shishito,’ and ‘Big Jim’ (Anaheim.) We talked about the mystery of Big Jim before on another podcast episode. It’s worth another listen.
If you’re looking for the book on the bookshelf, I enjoyed A Year in My Garden, by Jacqueline van der Kloet (Amazon link.) I learned a few things about planting bulbs that I didn’t know. You can too if you go listen to the episode. Thanks to Linda at Each Little World blog for pointing out the book in a blog post.
Because of van der Kloet’s book, I went down the rabbit hole of YouTube videos: Bulbs with Jacqueline van der Kloet and Jacqueline van der Kloet’s Home Garden: Introduction.
Our dirt involved seed saving. My friend, Karen Collier, grew seeds for at least two different Choctaw heritage plants this year through a program called Growing Hope - Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma open to tribal members. She grew Chahta tanchi tohbi (Choctaw white flour corn), and she shared about her adventures on Instagram.
Whew! Okay, that’s a wrap. As Carol would say, here’s the usual stuff…
Affiliate link to Botanical Interest Seeds. (If you buy something from them after using this link, we earn a small commission at no cost to you. This helps us continue to bring this podcast to you ad-free!) Book links are also affiliate links. We provide a link to bookshop.org as our preferred source for books, if they have them, along with the Amazon link. We also get books from our local libraries, which is where I found this week’s book.
Email us anytime at TheGardenangelists@gmail.com
For more info on Carol and her books, visit her website. Visit her blog May Dreams Gardens.
For more info on Dee and her book, visit her website. Visit her blog Red Dirt Ramblings.
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