What… is it already time to think about spring cleaning?! It might still be winter, but spring will be here faster than we know it. Some quick cleaning is a great way to take care of a garden that we enjoy during the year!
If you’re wondering where to start, this blog post could be a way to jumpstart your cleaning. Here’s 5 tips on things to clean in the garden.
Bird feeders.
It’s a great feeling to see all types of birds using and enjoying your bird feeder. While they’re great, bird feeders can actually pose a major threat to bird health: excrement that is on the feeder perch can pass from bird to bird, spreading Salmonella and other diseases. Even if you don’t see dead birds around your bird feeder, birds that use your feeder could still be passing disease elsewhere, after they use it. Luckily, it’s a simple fix! How to clean a bird feeder: It’s best to clean your bird feeder regularly, say in between fills. Ideally, take it inside and wash it with soap and water. Then, soak it in a bleach solution (9:1 water to bleach) for 10 minutes. Rinse again to rid the feeder of any bleach solution. Make sure to wash your hands after touching the feeder! For more information, check out this link.
Bird baths.
Bird baths: Algae isn’t fun to look at, but did you know it’s also dangerous for birds? Luckily, there’s simple fixes to keep bird baths clean and fresh for visitors! The easiest way to help keep your bird bath clean is to wash it out regularly (sometimes even every day, especially in the summer).
There are two other mixing solution options for doing a deep clean of your bird bath: vinegar or hydrogen peroxide. Each mixture is nine parts water and one part vinegar or hydrogen peroxide. Use a scrub brush to fully clean the bath and then ensure no cleaning mixture remains. Refill with water, and you’re good to go!
Tools help us take great care of the garden… let’s show the same level of care to our gardening tools! Cleaning gardening tools helps to extend their lifespan and can also help prevent the spread of disease.
How to clean gardening tools: Different options exist to clean gardening tools. For those tools that have metal, you can fill a 5 gallon bucket with sand and about a quart of car motor oil. After you’re done using the tools for the day, dip them in the sand and oil mixture. This mix helps to both clean the blade and coat it in a thin layer of oil. If you want to do a deep clean, you can wipe off any tools with a damp rag and some alcohol. If there’s sap or other buildup on your tools, try using sandpaper to get rid of it. Sandpaper is also a great way to refresh the wooden handle on tools (if you want to add a layer of oil after sanding wood, try mineral oil as a finish)!
Debris from diseased plants. Did you find black spot on any roses last year? How about other diseases on plants in the garden? Remove those diseased leaves or other debris from infected plants to prevent the spread of disease.
Stepping stones/moss slipping hazard. Moss is great! But if you have too much of it on your walkways, it can be a slipping hazard. Use your best judgment – if you’re worried about it being a potential hazard, it’s rather easy to select where you want to remove it on pathways/pavers. Mix a solution of bleach with water (up to 15% bleach) and use a scrub brush to agitate and remove the areas of concern.
The growing season is quickly approaching, so I reached out to the members of the Garden Ecology Lab to ask them to share three plants they’re looking forward to growing this year.
LeAnn
Zowie™! Yellow Flame. Photo Courtesy of Johnny Seeds
I love zinnias so much. This year I want to branch out and grow some less usual ones. Like those in the Queen Lime series and Zowie™! Yellow Flame.
This isn’t a plant as much as a technique: I really want to maximize vertical space, and grow tomatoes and squash vertically. I’m going the route of C-Bite stake clips, self described as “tinker toys for the garden.” I can attach and snap to common garden stakes and build my own structures. Up, up and away!
After watching all of the success in the Grow This! challenge last year with potatoes in grow bags, I’m inspired to grow potatoes for the first time. Really excited about this. And remember: the time to plant potatoes is St. Patrick’s Day.
Tyler
The three veggies I am most looking forward to growing this season are tomatoes, peppers, and lettuce. Last season we grew over ten varieties of hot peppers and tomatoes in our hüglekultur beds. These types of beds are great for warm season plants that need just the right soil temperature. I am also looking forward to growing lettuce again next season because I eat so much salad! I got these amazing varieties of lettuce from Wild Garden seeds in Corvallis that I am super excited to try next year. To save space, I like to grow lettuce in a tower. I used chicken wire fencing, plant debris, and potting soil to create the foundation. I then used a stick to poke holes and plant the seeds. It grew into a beautiful ball of lettuce and I am so excited to try it again!
Our hüglekultur beds
Hüglekultur bed forest of tomatoes and peppers
Lettuce tower!
Lettuce tower layers
Lettuce tower grew into a lettuce poof
Sunflower room after we transplanted and seeded
Beginnings of the sunflower room
Sunflower room all grown up!
Random flowers we have planted keep popping up and surprising us throughout the season
In addition to veggies, my goal for my outdoor space has always been to maximize the amount of flowers and wild space, while also reducing the amount of turf grass. During the winter, our garden looks a little unsightly with all the tarps and cardboard we use to smother the grass and weeds. In the spring, we remove the tarps and broadcast seeds all over the yard. My goal is to provide pollinators with year round foraging and improve the biodiversity on our property. One of our big projects last year was making a sunflower room in the yard. We planted American Giant sunflowers in a circle that eventually became a beautiful area for our community to hang out, surrounded by flowers and pollinators.
Jen
Elliot & I don’t have a yard to garden in so we’ve been experimenting with container gardening and a tiered planter box. The only place we can put them is on the north-facing side of our townhouse, which receives direct sunlight for a maximum two hours during the height of summer, so you can imagine our options are limited!
Elliot built our garden box!
The box needed a lot of soil…
Strawberry pots!
My “big” snap pea harvest last year
‘Blue Heaven’ Camas
This year I am excited to stop experimenting and just grow some plants that have been successful: strawberries, basil, nasturtium. Although these are fairly basic selections, they have proven to produce in abundance in our tiny space! ( Abundant compared to squash and tomatoes that grow, take up a ton of space, and then get powdery mildew and die before a harvest is even possible).
Mykl
Marigolds. I’m inspired to make a flower one of my goals this years as well. The timing for some summer and especially fall crops for me has been hard as I usually move in the middle of summer. One way or another, I expect to have a place to grow something over this period, and some of it will hopefully be beds of Marigolds.
Napa cabbage, cuz I need to make kimchi again and stop buying it.
Sweet potatoes, cuz I think I can do it again this year. And hey, when you strike it big, you gotta try again.
Nicole
I don’t have a garden to grow in here in Corvallis, but I do have an apartment… with a north-facing balcony. While the conditions aren’t ideal, I do plan to grow a few things in small containers this year.
1) Begonias! I grew them last year, and since they thrive in the shade, I had great success. They provided such a nice pop of color to the balcony and I loved sitting out there in the morning. Plus, you can get so many different colors that even if I have multiple pots they can all bring their own fun.
2) Chard. I haven’t tried this one before… but even if the crop I grow isn’t quite enough to make a meal out of, I love chard because it’s beautiful to look at. Plus, it’s one of the few crops that might make a go of it in the shade.
3) Fiddle leaf. While I can’t eat this one either, I’ve been growing a fiddle leaf since I moved into my apartment. It lives inside with me during the winter and goes back outside during the summer. It’s easy to take care of, grows relatively quickly, and I love the way the big leaves can add texture and some height to a small gardening space.
Mallory
Last June, I moved into a rental house that has a small, mostly-shaded garden bed in the backyard. I’ve helped out my parents around the garden throughout my childhood, but this is the first garden I can call my own! Last summer I worked on bringing some life into the soil (which was incredibly compacted and muted grayish-brown in color) by growing a cover crop of buckwheat that flowered and brought some bees and syrphid flies to the yard. I then tilled in the “green manure” which attracted worms, millipedes and molds into the soil! Hopefully this will pay off in the Spring, as I’ve seeded a mixture of native and nonnative wildflowers from pollinator seed mixes.
As an undergraduate student studying horticulture I am both thrifty and surrounded by opportunities to acquire plants for free! I am enrolled in a plant propagation course this Winter and will have many seedlings coming my way to plant in the Spring, and through my involvement at the Oak Creek Center for Urban Horticulture, I generally grow whatever comes my way from the rejects, cuttings and leftovers from the greenhouses there.
If the flower seeds don’t pan out, I hope to grow some of my favorite herbs: Rosemary, Thai Basil and Cilantro!
A green sweat bee visiting a Cosmo, photographed by Mallory last summer
Cara
1. Prospera basil- this is a disease resistant Italian type basil that simply makes life easier in the pacific northwest! The downy mildew resistance actually comes from a thai basil parent, though I can’t detect that in the flavor profile much. Planting this, I can rest assured my basil crop won’t be destroyed by wet weather late spring.
2. Japanese trifele black tomato- My favorite heirloom tomato. This tomato is indeterminate, and has a complex flavor profile that usually comes with black tomato varieties, as well as a silky-smooth texture. It is wonderful for fresh eating and canning alike! I like to train my indeterminate tomatoes to a simple trellis constructed of fence posts, electrical conduit pipe, and twine.
3. Heliotropes- I always purchase a few heliotropes for my patio. The smell is intoxicating and I love their old fashioned charm. This is the first year I am planning on starting them from seed.
Signe
Most of my planning for this year has more to do with long-term restructuring than individual plants, but I do have a new bed of Tristar day neutral strawberries I was able to put in last fall. I’m hoping for a much extended strawberry season by adding those to the June bearers. I am encouraging more natives to spread and self-sow along the front of my property, where I put in a dry streambed a couple of years ago to catch a neighboring spring before it goes down the street. This has worked very well to provide groundwater into the summer.
I’ll be continuing the attempt to eradicate a bed of one native, Asclepias speciosa, which got away from me even though I knew it would be a spreader and was watching it. (Anyone want any? NOT recommended for small spaces). I’ve been collecting Carex, both native and non, to evaluate which are best for gardens here (durable, non-running, attractive year-round). In my vegetable garden, I will NOT be growing potatoes this year. Last year’s large crop was riddled with wireworm, so I want to give the beds a rest. I may just grow summer cover crops, and grains that can serve that purpose, except for tomatoes, which I always grow a few of.
Charlotte
I’m excited to grow moringa again. Moringa is a superfood, very nutrient dense, and I think the foliage is quite aesthetically pleasing. Moringa prefer warmer weather, so the plants will grow all summer and then go dormant for the fall/winter. We planted the moringa in containers so we can move them around seasonally without disturbing the roots. We have a few dormant moringa plants hanging out in the greenhouses at Oak Creek Center for Urban Horticulture that are waiting for the return of sunny weather.
Everyone at the ILC Garden is excited to grow Lagos Spinach (Celosia argentea) again. Lagos Spinach (also called Nigerian Spinach, or Efo Shoko) is in the Amaranth family and has beautiful reddish-purple leaves with a bitter taste that really adds to the flavor profile of salads, soups & stir-fries.
Lagos spinach is not quite as bitter as some of the other amaranth leaves I’ve tasted before. As you might deduce from the name, the plant is indigenous to West Africa, but they seemed to be well adapted to the soils and climate of the Willamette Valley summer. Very heat and drought tolerant!!! The plant flowers later in the season, which is an added bonus for pollinators. The lagos spinach was such a lovely addition to the garden last summer… I’ve included a picture, the Lagos spinach is nestled between the collards and sunflowers in the photo.
I also plan to try growing more watermelon this year. We only planted two watermelon plants at the ILC Garden last year, and they did not fair well. We transplanted them a bit late, so I don’t think they had enough time to reach maturity. This year I’m dedicating about 150 sqft under the high tunnel for growing watermelon!
Svea
I don’t have any plans for planting this spring, as there is very little outdoor space at my house in Corvallis, and the indoor space is currently dominated by my twin brother’s many, many succulents, and his newly indoor orange tree. But at my family’s farm, my mom has endeavored these past few pandemic years to bring back her pre-children garden that she loved to work in.
This spring she is planning on planting some different types of tomato plants, as we are a tomato loving family. She also loves to plant sunflowers every year, and we have a measuring contest on which one gets the tallest. I think this year she is going to try her hand at growing different types of peppers and squash. I know she is very excited, and loves to try to to grow many different things, so if anyone has any suggestions, she would love to hear them.
In terms of growing food for the animals, the goats love to eat any (safe) leftovers, or any overripe harvests. Anything they don’t like, the pigs are more than happy to clean up! So we don’t grow anything specific, but some favorites are sunflower seeds for the goats, and potatoes for the pigs. Included here is our goat Nutmeg and her babies from last summer, waiting for some treats!
Gwynne
We don’t have a vegetable garden going yet, but last year we had an amazing cover crop mix for the paddocks that were “renovated” by our pigs. The mix included amaranth, field peas, squash, sunflowers, chia, sesame, millet, sorghum, flax, a variety of cereal grains, and other things that I couldn’t identify. It was certainly the most unusual pasture forage that I’ve seen, but our cows and sheep loved it!
Let us know what you’re looking forward to growing this yearby commenting below!
Oudolf-designed garden at Pensthorpe, Fakenham, UK. https://www.fiveseasonsmovie.com/gallery/
As part of Master Gardener Week at the end of October, I had the opportunity to view “Five Seasons: The Gardens of Piet Oudolf” and participate in a discussion afterwards. This recently-released film has brought renewed attention to the gardens and landscapes created by this internationally-renowned designer. His popular public garden designs, and several books, have had a profound impact on the design of public spaces, as well as private gardens.
Oudolf’s gardens have been described as spontaneous, immersive and naturalistic, and rely heavily on grasses and structural perennials to maintain visual interest well into the winter. They evoke flower-filled meadows and prairies, and seem at first glance like places that could, indeed, have occurred spontaneously. Oudolf himself acknowledges, though, that they require a certain amount of “interference”, and his design process is comprehensive and very specific. He has a palette of plants that he has tested over time for durability and effect.
During the bloom season, one imagines these gardens will be buzzing with pollinators, and be places of lively, hungry activity. When it comes to pollinators, it seems, almost any garden is better than no garden at all, and a garden doesn’t need to be designed especially for pollinators in order to offer benefits to them. As research in this lab has shown, though, a garden designed specifically to be pollinator friendly has an outsized impact.
So I wondered, how pollinator-friendly are Oudolf’s naturalistic gardens, really? On the positive side: • Lots of flowers. From early season to late, things are blooming. Plants are left standing well into winter, providing seed and shelter. • Little or no use of pesticides. • Native plants are often included, though there is no particular emphasis on them.
On the negative side: • Maintenance involves cutting everything to the ground in late winter. This destroys the winter homes of cavity-nesting bees that use the stems. At the Lurie garden in Chicago, this problem was recognized and steps were taken to leave some stems standing. • Lack of layering. The iconic Oudolf garden is composed almost entirely of herbaceous perennials, with trees and large shrubs lacking. This limits the provision of food and habitat for a variety of creatures.
I believe pollinators could be better supported by Oudolf-style gardens with three simple changes. • Keep mowed areas to a minimum. Group plants with good winter nesting stems, and leave them standing until they are covered by new growth. • Include and group small groups of larger plants such as suitable small trees and shrubs. • Prioritize native plants where possible.
Lurie Garden with selected areas left standing for pollinators. https://www.luriegarden.org/2019/03/15/cutting-back-on-the-cut-back/
If you would like to know more about Piet Oudolf’s gardens, plant choices, and design process, here are some reference materials. And if you get the chance, watch the film “Five Seasons: The Gardens of Piet Oudolf”.
Dream Plants for the Natural Garden by Henk Gerritsen and Piet Oudolf, Timber Press 2000 Essentially a catalog (although not all plants are pictured) of plants that Oudolf has culled to be “reliable plants that, over the years, can be maintained in an average garden without too much in the way of artificial props and bolstering”. Many of them “look good dead”, too. These are the plants he uses in his designs. They are divided into categories of Tough Perennials (the longest section by far), Playful Biennials and Annuals, Troublesome Invasive Plants, and Troublesome Capricious Plants – hardly the usual categories! If you are an experienced gardener and want an invaluable reference for plants that will enhance your natural garden without requiring loads of work, this book is for you.
Planting Design: Gardens in Time and Space by Piet Oudolf and Noel Kingsbury, Timber Press 2005 On the other hand, if you are not an experienced gardener, this book might be a better place to start. It is a thrifty introduction to the concepts of how gardens fit into nature, and vice versa, and how plants can be used through space – and time! – to create the desired outcomes. There are many lists of plants for specific purposes, such as Small Trees to combine with perennials, and Biennials for self-sowing, and a short but useful section on how to prepare for, implement, and maintain a planting of this sort.
Planting: A New Perspective by Piet Oudolf and Noel Kingsbury, Timber Press 2013 This book builds on the previous two, offering a detailed look at the techniques and philosophy Oudolf uses to design his gardens, as well as specific ways in which he uses plants in them. A season-by-season guide dissects various effects and combinations, and a chart towards the end concisely organizes many of the plants used. One of the most interesting concepts is that of matrix planting.
Several of Piet Oudolf’s books
For more detail on the creation of specific gardens by Piet Oudolf, there are also books on Hummelo, the High Line, and Durslade Farm.
The Self-Sustaining Garden by Peter Thompson, Timber Press 2007 In this book matrix planting is presented in great detail. This is an effective and efficient way of designing intermingled plantings without having to specify the location of each and every plant. The matrix (often grasses) may be made up of several plant species, and serves as a stage for other, showier compatible plants embedded in it.
Dramatic Effects with Architectural Plants by Noel Kingsbury, Overlook Press, 1997 Oudolf’s chief writing partner has produced many noteworthy books himself. As the title describes, this book focuses on plants with strong and dramatic architecture. Having some of these in the mix is a key technique that makes Oudolf’s designs work.
Naturalistic Planting Design by Nigel Dunnett, filbert press 2019 With a foreword by, who else, Piet Oudolf, this is one of the most recent entries in the category of books focusing on natural or naturalistic design. It’s a dense book with at least as much text as photography, covering garden lore from historic, through contemporary, and looking to the future. Basic design principles, as they pertain to a naturalistic design, are also presented, along with a series of case studies illustrated by seasonal photos. Gardening with Native Plants of the Pacific Northwest by Arthur Kruckeberg and Linda Chalker-Scott, University of Washington Press, 2019. And finally, if you want to use PNW native plants to achieve Oudolf-like effects in your garden, this recent book is an accessible, thorough, well-illustrated guide to those plants. You will find it easy to browse through for plants that have the look you want. Symbols by each photo give a hint as to each plant’s cultural requirements.
