Robert Pavlis

Best Building Material for Raised Garden Beds

In a previous post I discussed the pros and cons of using raised garden beds. If you have decided to make raised garden beds there are many options for making the walls, including concrete blocks, different types of lumber, galvanized metal and even old branches.

Each option will make good walls for the bed but some of them have health or environmental concerns that you should be aware of. Price may also be a consideration.

At the end of this post I will also have a quick look at materials you might consider placing at the bottom of the bed and the soil you should use inside the bed.

raised beds made with wood — Raised beds made with wood

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Slug Bait – Metaldehyde vs Iron Phosphate

How do you get rid of slugs? I’ve looked at several home remedies, and although some work a bit, most don’t work at all. The most effective way to get rid of slugs is to use a chemical slug bait. Slug baits contain both food for the slug and a poison that kills them.

There are two main classes of baits: Metaldehyde and Iron Phosphate. There is a lot of controversy about which should be used. Which is safer for the environment? Which is more effective? The short answers given by many websites do not tell the whole story.

Slug Bait - Metaldehyde vs Iron Phosphate — Slug Bait – Metaldehyde vs Iron Phosphate

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Syringa pekinensis

Syringa pekinensis:photo by Robert Pavlis

Syringa pekinensis is a small multi-stemmed tree that would fit most gardens. It has large clusters of cream-white flowers and exceptional exfoliating bark. If it had great fall color it would be one of the most popular trees on the market, but unfortunately the leaves just go brown.

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Iberis simplex

Iberis simplex: photo by Robert Pavlis

Iberis simplex is an easy to grow alpine that forms a loose bun and flowers a long time. It is a great addition to a rock or scree garden.

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Guelph Organic Conference Review

The Guelph Organic Conference is an annual event that attracts organic minded people from across Canada and northern parts of the US. Much of the focus is on farming, producing organic food and smaller backyard operations. This year, I was an invited speaker and talked about Growing Food in Ponds. The publisher of my book, Building Natural Ponds, New Society Publishing, is a sponsor of the event and we wanted to find a topic that would interest organic gardeners and help promote my book. It was an extremely popular topic.

The conference also holds a large Trade Show which gave me the opportunity to speak to a number of vendors. I thought it would be fun and educational to review some of my discussions and observations.

If you are one of my regular readers you will know that I am organically minded, believe in the basic organic philosophies, but I don’t blindly follow all of the dogma that is preached. Unfortunately there are many snake-oil salespeople in the organic movement.

Organic conference, Guelph Ontario 2018 — Organic conference, Guelph, Ontario 2018

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10 Hacks for a Low Maintenance Garden

The Holy Grail in gardening is the perfect, beautiful garden that exists without any maintenance. I see titles for books and blog posts all of the time claiming to be “no-maintenance”. Any real gardener knows that is baloney, but there are things you can do to have a low-maintenance garden.

As gardeners age, maintenance becomes more of a chore, but we don’t want to give up our gardens. Making some simple changes in plant selection and attitude can reduce your workload significantly and allow you to keep the garden longer.

In this post, I will describe 10 things any gardener can do to reduce maintenance to a minimum.

Aspen Grove Gardens - a low maintenance garden — Aspen Grove Gardens – a low-maintenance garden

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Orchid Media – Hidden Crap in White Bags

Growing orchids is popular now that plant prices have come down and people are starting to learn how to grow the plants. For orchids to do well they need to to be repotted regularly in a good airy media.

In recent years, suppliers of commercial potting mixtures have switched from clear bags to white bags. There are probably some good financial reasons for doing this, but it also causes a problem; you can’t see what you are buying. For regular soil that isn’t as much of a problem, but for orchid media it is a big concern.

Miracle-Gro Orchid media that is unsuitable fro growing Orchids

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Is Soil Fertility Decreasing?

Is Soil Fertility Decreasing? Are agricultural soils less nutritious today than they were 50 years ago? I think most people believe these statements to be true. The idea has certainly been promoted a lot in the last 20 years. The claim is that our food is less nutritious than it used to be, and the main reason is that soils are being depleted of nutrients.

There is also a big movement to remineralize our poor soils. Hopefully, adding things like rock dust will bring it back to historical levels. The organic movement is also very big on solving these kinds of soil issues. Before we can understand the benefits of such actions, it is important to determine how big of a problem we really have. How depleted are our soils? Which nutrients are missing?

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Will Chelates Improve Plant Growth?

Chelates are a hot new additive for soils that claim to make plants grow better and solve the problem of chlorosis. Chelated fertilizer use is also on the rise and even products that aren’t true chelates are reported to have chelating properties.

What is chelation (key-LAY-shun) and should you be adding chelates to soil? Are chelating properties good for plants?

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Aquaponics – Grow Vegetables in Your Pond

Imagine growing vegetables in your pond. You never have to water them or fertilize them. Since ponds stay cooler than soil, cool-growing crops like lettuce can be grown over a longer period of time. Ponds are a natural source of nutrients, especially if they contain fish, and these nutrients help vegetables grow aquaponically. Not only do you produce food, but the growing vegetables also help keep algae levels low.

Vegetables can be grown right in the pond or in an associated bog garden without any extra equipment, or you can get more serious about this and pump water to an external hydroponic growing area.

Lettuce ready to harvest from a Styrofoam raft floating on a pond — Lettuce is ready to harvest from a Styrofoam raft floating on a pond

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10 Top Gardening Myths of 2017

2017 was a great year for GardenMyths.com as we reached almost 3.5 million visitors, since starting the blog. I also managed to publish two books Garden Myths and Building Natural Ponds and sneaked in another video on my YouTube channel before the end of the year.

The new Facebook Group; Garden Fundamentals now has 334 members and is growing quickly. If you have not joined yet, do so now so you don’t miss some any of the great discussions going on there.

Please join Garden Fundamentals Facebook Group now!

I was looking through the unpublished posts and found several in draft form that are ready for 2018. With a large back log of ideas I expect this blog to continue for years.

Thanks to all of my readers for making this such a success.

It is now time to look back at 2017 and review some of the best posts of the year: the 10 Top Gardening Myths of 2017.

Aspen Grove Gardens, my garden winter 2017 — Aspen Grove Gardens, my garden, winter 2017

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Clematis alpina

Clematis alpina, by Robert Pavlis

Clematis alpina is a very hardy, early flowering vine that adds a great splash of color to your spring garden and then goes on to make interesting seed heads in late summer. As seen in the picture below, I grow it in a planter, in zone 5 and leave it outside all year. You can also plant it in the garden and just about forget about it. It doesn’t need to be pruned, and it will not take over most trees and shrubs the way some larger clematis do.

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