Secrets of Green Thumb Gardening

RHODODENDRON

Chapter One

PREPARING THE SOIL

Webster’s definition of to plant is to place in the ground for growth.

The kind of planting we are concerned about here is the replanting of shrubs, roses, trees, grown in a nursery, to your own back yard, foundation setting or hedge, new homes that have little or no landscaping around them, and old established homes that need relandscaping.

The very first thing to consider is the kind of soil that is around your home in which you wish to plant. You must have loam, not fill, in any location where shrubs or flowers are to be planted. It must be rich enough in organic material to grow vegetables. Good shrubs cost money, plus postage, express, and the labor of planting. It is a waste of time and money to plant in poor soil with insufficient food for growth. Most common causes of shrub mortality, especially the first year, are soil that is mostly clay or sand, and too little plant food and water.

Many times when Mr. New Home Owner considers outside beautification, he too often finds that instead of deep loam around his foundation he has a skim-coat, barely enough to grow grass. The balance is fill, and he learns that the fill too often is a cover for all kinds of waste from the carpenters, plumbers, electricians and other workmen—pieces of soil pipe, odds and ends of electric cable, rocks, and in some cases, roots and stumps of small trees.

This practice did not matter so much fifty or one hundred years ago when so few people planted around their homes, but today shrubbery is a very important factor, so much so that without any, the house is quite conspicuous. If you own a lot and you are having your home built, here are some definite rules to follow.

1. When it is time to dig the cellar, remove all of the loam from the location where the house will stand and pile it by itself to be used for foundation planting and for your lawn.

2. Place the subsoil from the excavation in another pile to be used as fill under the loam.

When the forms are removed from the concrete foundation there is a space around that foundation as deep as the cellar itself. See to it that this is graded immediately from the pile of fill to within two feet of the sill of the cellar windows. [Illus. 4.] From there to the cellar windows, for a space four feet out from the foundation, fill this two-foot depth with the good loam which was removed from the top. Do this on all four sides of the house. Regardless of when the planting is done, now or two or three years later, good loam is there to plant in. All waste will then stay on top of the ground to be hauled off or burned.

This is a procedure which every contractor should follow. If he charges extra for it, it is worth it to the owner; he has a selling point of cash value that no one can overlook, for the cost to the buyer is considerably greater after the lawn is completed: much that could have been done by truck, must be done now by hand and wheelbarrow, besides disturbing the newly-sown lawn, sometimes to the point of re-seeding.

4. If you have bought a house built by a contractor, inquire how deep the loam is around the foundation. If it has been graded with fill and covered with only a skimcoat of loam, then it must be removed to a depth of at least twelve inches (eighteen or twenty-four inches is better), and replaced with good loam, proceeding as in Illustration 3.

In buying loam, specify rich, garden loam for foundation planting. There is a vast difference in the content of organic matter.

FERTILIZERS

The next item is just as important as your loam. You must add food for your shrubs to grow on and it must be added each year because the plants use it up as they grow. Today’s food is not sufficient for you to do a hard day’s work on tomorrow; neither is one application of food sufficient for all time to produce growth and beautiful bloom on your plants. Yet, how many times I have found this to be the case. Once planted, the plants are expected to grow by just giving them water. You will likely have many advisers as to planting and fertilizers and beyond a doubt their intent is to be helpful. However, follow these directions closely and you will have good results, for they have been written for your benefit from many years of experience in planting on farms, and as a landscape guide and gardener, and planned with emphasis on advice needed in a variable climate.

THE GREEN THUMB

How often have we heard the expression, My grandmother had a green thumb—she could make anything grow. That started a long time ago, long before chemicals were boosted as the only means of growing plants and vegetables. It was back in the days when every farmer had his own manure pile, and he knew that by mixing and adding the different kinds— cattle, pig, hen, sheep, or goat—to his soil, he would have a good yield. He also knew that by ploughing under green crops such as clover, winter wheat, rye or barley, they would rot in the soil and supply the needed elements for growing the following year.

Grandma used the same tonic for her beautiful flowers by preparing her flower bed with well-rotted manure. Her green thumb help came from the barnyard and that is where it must come from today if you want your plants to grow and to thrive as nature intended they should.

Let’s go back to Bible times and see what they used. Luke: 6-9: "A certain man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard and he came and sought fruit thereon and found none. Then he said unto the dresser of the vineyard, ‘Behold, these three years I come seeking fruit on this fig tree and find none: cut it down; why cumbereth it the ground?’

"And he answering said unto him, ‘Lord, let it alone this year also, till I dig about it, and dung it; and if it bear fruit, well; and if not, then after that thou shalt cut it down.’"

Give your would-be helpers with their commercial fertilizers a pleasant nod, but follow the directions of this book and you will have the same kind of green thumb that Grandma had.

Well-rotted cow manure that has been under cover is the finest all-around fertilizer the world has ever known.

Hen manure is excellent: it has the same properties as cow manure but much stronger. Keep it away from bare roots and use less of it. It is better to work it into the top soil after planting.

Horse manure contains much ammonia: it is better to mix it with other manures or work it into the top soil if used separately.

Pig manure is also better mixed with other manures than used separately.

Sheep manure is a good, mild fertilizer.

Sometimes manures in their natural state are difficult for the home-owner to obtain. However, several varieties can be purchased in dehydrated form, and they are a fine substitute when planting. No fresh manure should be used to plant in. It should be at least three months old.

Following is a list of some of the best manures with their trade names.

DRICONURE: A mixture of cow, hen, and stable manure with litter. It comes in bags of various sizes up to eighty pounds.

BOVUNG: Cow manure only, usually in fifty pound bags.

MILORGANITE: A very potent fertilizer processed from human excretion.

SHEEP MANURE in bags is very good but not as strong as those mentioned above.

Seaweed in any form ranks high in minerals. If you are down at the seashore gather some off from the rocks into bags or boxes and put it in the trunk of the car. It decomposes very rapidly in the