Cold Climate Gardening

I had a conversation with a gardening friend about watering the other day. We each have strong personalities and the talk was lively and interesting, filled with opinions and advice. When the time came for “I’ll show you mine if you show me yours” I did and I’ll share them with you too.

I have spent a large portion of my life with a hose in my hand and at this juncture I should be able to measure my hose-time in years and not hours, days, weeks, or months. I want my tools to work well and achieve my purposes with a minimum of problems. I also want the labor of watering to be easy.

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Have you ever walked 250 feet uphill to the asparagus patch with a bucket full of hand tools, only to realize after you get there that the weeds have gotten a lot worse than you imagined? So you trudge back down the hill and carry the garden fork back up the 250 feet, only to realize that that fork is too long, it will root up the asparagus as well as the weeds, and so you trudge back down with the big fork and trudge back up with the border fork, and then ten minutes later you realize there’s nettles in there, and you don’t have your gloves, so you trudge back down the 250 feet and get your gloves, and about halfway back up the hill you think it would really be smart to bring up the watering can, too, because after pulling all those weeds the asparagus would appreciate being watered. And then after the bed is all cleaned up, you realize if you had a leaf rake and a wheelbarrow it would be a lot easier to gather up all those weeds you just pulled and bring them to the compost pile, which means another trip back down the hill, in which you forget to bring down the tools you’re done with, which means another trip back up the hill to bring them down. Has that ever happened to you? Well, there have been many times when I’ve had to go back for another tool, but this particular instance drove me to muttering, “There has got to be a better way.”

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Sometimes, it’s better not to think about certain things. Sometimes it’s better to pretend you didn’t see, to not think about it. Sometimes one might wonder how there can be such moral quandaries about mowing a field.

We have a back field of about five acres that runs up the hill to the edge of the woods. I try to mow the field with the DR Brush Mower every year to keep the field from going back to scrub. Normally I mow in the fall when other work around the house is at a minimum, but last year I was working on a house renovation project in the fall. Rather than let all the nasty scrub in the field get another free year to grow I decided I should mow the field this spring.

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It being Valentine’s Day, I thought I’d tell you about my favorite garden tool company. Lee Valley Tools is based in Ottawa, Canada. It was started in 1977 by Leonard G. Lee and his wife Lorraine, and their son Robin now runs the company. They sell woodworking and gardening tools, though you will also find some good cooking tools in the gardening catalog. It seems difficult for me to say enough good things about them, but I’m going to try. So, without getting mushy: Lee Valley, how do I love you? Let me count the ways:

Our ultimate aim has always been to develop problem-solving tools at the best value. That isn’t an easy task. Just being able to develop a tool that solves a problem effectively isn’t simple, but when we add to that the goal of achieving the best value (which is a combination of price, utility, quality and longevity) it increases the complexity.

Price, utility, quality, longevity: music to a frugal gardener’s ears. You have three months to return anything for any reason, and they will reimburse you for shipping both ways. It is truly risk free on the buyer’s part. Not only that, but when an item has a lifetime guarantee, they mean it. I have had occasion to put this to the test a couple of times.

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Had our first frost last night, which for around here, was later than usual. I don’t know exactly how cold it got last night, but I wish I did. I’ve been looking at digital max-min thermometers, especially the wireless ones, for a while now, but the price keeps me from indulging. It always comes back to: “Do you know how many plants I could buy for that much money?” And I’ve discovered that a lot of the wireless ones don’t record temperatures as low as -35°F, which is the lowest I think it’s ever gotten since we’ve moved here. One company that prides itself on making wireless thermometers that do go that low is Koch. Theirs go down to …

Popularity: 7% [?]