Blanket Mulch and More!

Save your old blankets—the holy ones and cut them up to lay down between the rows—or build a raised garden bed and put gravel between the rows. My ex loved to put cardboard everywhere. If it is on a path with bark over it, it will become majorly slippery—I know this from experience.

If you want to use burlap, that will give you an old-timey feeling—which may be nice. If you are old-timey, you may have that feeling without hunting down burlap. You could use garden cloth—it is black and is made from some weird fiber you wouldn't want to wear. My mother once wore a burlap bag as a dress, she was poking fun at the shift, the straight dress that came out in the 50s. What happened to the waistline she wondered?

You can use newspaper between the rows and read snippets of headlines while you pull the pigweed. You can use black plastic—this one I abhor because it cracks and breaks and eventually you have a lot of shredded black plastic in your garden. You could use old beach towels, or leftover placemats, you could use rug remnants, this one is a very good idea, especially if it is indoor-outdoor and looks like grass. Astroturf. For more ideas see A Way to Garden.

Invention is fun! Flower , aka, Nancy

Mulch Better Now

To keep the soil moist and to discourage the weeds, mulch between the rows. Use newspaper, burlap bags, grocery sacks, your exhusband's favorite silk ties—oops did I say that aloud? No really, mulch is important in the conservation of water and also, so you don't have to work your hoeing muscles too strenuously, it keeps the weeds down. I like to use grass clippings from the unfertilized and pesticided lawn. I have also been known to use heaps of fallen maple leaves between rows, especially in the fall when I cover the row of carrots. They winter over beautifully—did I already tell you this? Well, ignore this if I did. Cover your carrots with leaves and then when the snow comes, you can go to the garden and shovel aside the mound of snow and the leaves, and beneath, rich brown soil full of orange carrots will reveal itself. What a midwinter treat, and what's really amazing, they are sweeter and crisper than ever, almost like apples.

I talked to my neighbor, Paul, and he said when he got his garden spot, it was full of wood and burlap and glass. My spot has chips of glass in it and some small pieces of wood, but no burlap. Burlap will decompose eventually. The train is passing at this very moment, which is part of the ambience of the neighborhood, blasting whistles that scare the bejesus out of everyone, especially at 3 a.m. when I'm soundly asleep.

Where do you get burlap bags these days? I remember as a kid they were easy to come by. Potatoes came in them. Burlap was used for things other than its original purpose—for instance, when the shift—a straight dress--became popular, my mother made a shift out of a burlap bag. She modeled the garment, complete with fake roses attached to the neck and hem, her funny statement as to the frumpiness of the new style. She also hated Capri, which she called pedal-pushers and swore she'd never be caught dead in them.

Well I was told that nothing ever got stolen from the garden plots, but things did walk away. Yesterday my hoe was missing. I will go on a hunt for it tomorrow and when I find it, I'll feel mulch better.

Ciao!

Slugs

Well, I never have seen slugs like I've seen here in the PNW. When I lived in Spokane, I stepped on one once, I think it was the only one I'd ever seen. Here, they are everywhere, leaving their shiny trails up your walls beside your front door, even coming in on the cat's fur and tooling around your living room. In the garden there are supposed to be plants that help keep them away. Well, I think they just eat those plants. The lovely marigold devoured by banana slugs. And how about the lovely lettuce plant, and the cabbage plant; should I go on? Here's what I have to say about slugs: get some of that iron stuff that you sprinkle around the plants. It works and it's not going to kill any animals. Why mess with beer or going out at dawn and pulling them from beneath boards. Just use the iron. If anyone has a good reason why not to use the iron, let me know--and I'll pass it along.