The article talks about a nursery in Florida that uses human hair that has been pressed into mats for weed control around their plants. The nursery owner says that he’s saved thousands of dollars on herbicides and labour because of the human hair mats.

That sounds a lot more like weed suppression than fertilizer to me.

No where on the internet can I find anything about human hair being a fertilizer, though it would have merit as a weed suppressant – just like plastic mulch, wood chips, hay, and host of other materials. For my garden, I think I’d much rather lay down a strip of plastic mulch than a wad of hair.

So before you rush out to buy a truck load of human hair, check out some mulching ideas from Bob at NorthernGreenhouse.com for a simpler, easier way to suppress weeds and retain moisture.

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However, eventually, a couple of the stems on my Valiant grapevine began to sprout out some leaves. Then along came my Prairie Star not long after. But my Kay Gray didn’t seem like it had any life at all. I was just about to uproot the lifeless stick when a little bud appeared just at the base of the plant.

At the end of the day, all three grapevines made a full recovery, but at least 80% of last year’s growth was winter killed. Because of that, there was no fruit to be had that year.

So let me share with you some of the lesson’s I’ve learned.

What Didn’t Work

Since my grapes were inside a cold frame, I thought that protection from the wind would help protect the plant through the winter. In retrospect, this was probably a mistake for two reasons.

1. The plant had no protection from the severely cold temperatures (even without the wind there were days as cold as -35 degrees Celsius.) The coldframe kept the layers of insulation snow from doing any insulating.
2. The greenhouse would warm up to plus temperatures in the sun, only to drop below freezing again at night. Plants don’t enjoy that.

What I’ve Done Now

This year I’ve tried something different. After the grapevines had lost all their leaves, I dismantled the greenhouse (since I’m building a new one this spring) and pruned the vines.

Once the grapes had been pruned (and some strawberries transplanted around the base – though that isn’t important to this discussion), I carefully laid down the grapevines on the ground. Then, after removing the trellis, I covered the whole lot in some old hay. It looks deeper than it would need to be because some the branches were a little stiff to try to lay flat without breaking them, so I stuffed straw underneath and over top.

One of my concerns at first was whether or not the wind would blow the hay away. But here it is in mid January and we’ve had some good winds blow through (70 – 90 kms per hour last week) and the pile is still there – not all over my driveway.

Once spring rolls around, I’ll peel back the hay (use it for mulch elsewhere) and see if my theories worked.

If you’ve had any experience in this area, I’d love to hear from you. What have you done? How has it worked? Lemme know!

In my early attempts to make new garden plots from scratch, I tried a variety of methods. I tried digging out the sod and then hauling in six inches of topsoil to replace it. Of course, that is a whole lot of work if done by hand, and renting machinery can be quite expensive. Then there’s the problem of what to do with the sods, and where to find quality topsoil.

Another method I’ve tried is to spray the grass with chemical, killing the grass, and then tilling the sod. But that means dealing with chemicals and finding a heavy duty rototiller which wouldn’t be cheap. Then once all that is done, you still have to go through an clear off all the bits and pieces of sod in order to have a workable garden.

So finally, I believe I have found a way to create a new garden space without machinery, without chemicals, and without any digging or tilling. Are you ready for this?

Simply cover the area with spoiled hay and let nature do the rest.

The hay will decompose and turn into beautiful soil, and at the same time…

• Retain moisture
• Rot the underlying sod
• Act as a weed barrier

And while it does take a while for the hay to decompose into rich, beautiful soil, you can add a layer of soil just underneath the hay so you can plant right away. Otherwise, you can plant things like potatoes and onions right in the hay right from day one – no soil necessary.

I made a new patch this fall using this method, so I’ll be sure to post some pictures when things start happening in the spring. If you’ve tried this method of making a garden plot, I’d love to hear your story.

Today I read Ruth Stout’s book, “How to Have a Green Thumb Without an Aching Back”. Although it was written in 1955 by a lady born in 1884, it was full of practical gardening advice that is going to change the way I do gardening.

Eventually, after years of backbreaking toil resulting in less than satisfactory results, Ruth Stout discovered the marvels of mulching. By laying 8 inches of spoiled hay, leaves, and fruit & vegetabls scraps throughout her garden…

• She reduced the need for watering, as the mulch helped the soil to retain the moisture it had.
• She eliminated the need to till the soil, as sun no longer baked the dirt and the worms happily infested the ground beneath the mulch – keeping the soil soft.
• She virtually eliminated weeding, as the weeds were unable to get sunlight through the mulch.
• She improved her soil quality, as the mulch would decompose into rich, nutrient-filled soil.

If mulching can do even half as much for me as it did for Ruth Stout, my gardening experience will improve dramatically. However, since this is something quite new to me, I think an experiment is in order. This fall, I dug up a new patch of lawn and gave it a dose of Round-Up. In the next week or so, I intend to bring in a layer of topsoil and then cover that up with 8 inches of old hay from a local farmer. Then, we’ll give this mulching method a try and see if I can “have a green thumb without an aching back” too.

To read this excellent little book for your self, get How to Have a Green Thumb Without an Aching Back by Ruth Stout.

Choosing Your Compost Container

First of all I had to decide what to put my compost in. Should I buy a fancy plastic tumbling composter? Nah, I’m too stingy thrifty. Although a plastic bin would be a little more pleasing to the eye, I wanted something I could make myself that wouldn’t cost me a lot.

This was my first attempt – the straw bale compost pile. I chose a two-section design for easy mixing. I wanted to fork the pile from one section to the other when the pile started to get too big. The straw bale compost pile had it’s advantages and it’s disadvantages. On the plus side, it was easy to make. And it was cheap. Free, actually. And the bales could be slowly worked into the compost itself and new ones could replace them. On the downside, it was ugly and messy. It was also difficult to create a large enough pile (as you need a significant volume for compost to work best) without spilling all over.

So this was my upgraded version. I had some scrape lumber behind a shed, so I made this one to replace the bales. I gave it higher walls, and kept the two-section design. One thing I may do in the future is to give it a short wall along the front, since things are starting to spill out.

What To Feed Your Compost Pile

It may sound odd, but our family treats the compost pile much like a family pet. The care for both of them is quite similar. First of all, your compost pile needs food. We regularly feed our compost pile a wide selection of potato & carrot peels, apple cores, wilty lettuce leaves, and even egg shells – never any meat, grease, or bread. though. In the summer we give it the weeds and in the fall, we feed it all of the plants from the garden, leaves, a little bit of grass clippings, and some straw. We had a pet pig last winter, so even he contributed his part to the compost pile via his manure.I’ve also discovered that compost likes water. Without water, your compost pile just sits there. And sits there. And sits there. So, if there’s not been much rain, I water the lawn, the garden, and yup, the compost pile. But try not to over do it either – the worms that love your compost don’t care to be drowned.

Six “Must Have” Tips For Efficient Composting

1. You must have enough volume. In order for compost to be compost and not just rotting vegetables, you need to have at least three square feet of volume.
2. You must have greens and browns. Greens are things like your wilty lettuce leaves and apple cores and potato peels. Browns are things like dried leaves, straw, or even small branches.
3. You must have everything chopped up into small pieces. The smaller the better – but it depends on how much work you want to put into chopping and mashing things.
4. You must have water. We talked about this already. No water = no compost.
5. You must have air. This means mixing. The compost at the center of your pile can’t get any air unless you mix it. So either grab the pitch fork or consider getting on of the fancy plastic automated mixing bins.
6. You must have patience. Sorry. It won’t happen in a day. Depending on how you do on the other must haves, it can take anywhere between three weeks to a year to go from this…