World Naked Gardening Day is this Saturday
What clothes you wear when you garden and how you look in them may not be as important as the sharpness of your pruners. But if you spend a lot of time there, you do give it some thought. For most of us, comfort and mobility come first. Forget traditional blue jeans stiff and unyielding, binding in all the wrong places. I favor old, soft corduroys or maybe stretch jeans the ’90s’ gift to the gardening world. They allow you to bend, squat, kneel and they’re sexy. Most “gardener’s pants” are baggy in the butt, with gathered waists. But come to think of it, that look is making a comeback.
âWeâve got readers from all over the place,â Fair Isleâs Eileen Thomson says, with some amount of pride.
âItâs not just in the isle – thereâs friends and family of folk in the isle, and people who visited, and people with connections going way back still get their
Fair Isle Times, and absolutely love it.
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âWe get lovely messages from folk saying itâs the highlight of their week and theyâll print it out, sit and read it.â
Since 1978 the
Fair Isle Times has been keeping the remote community, which has a population of around 48, connected, informed and entertained each week.
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Many gardeners void growing potatoes because they are so common and inexpensive in stores and they take up lots of room in their garden. But home-grown potatoes can be lots of fun. Let me share 3 ways to grow your own spuds.
Here s a simple way to grow them without planting in rows or hilling plants with soil. Connecticut s own Ruth Stout used this no-till gardening method in the 1970 s. She dropped seed potatoes on the ground, buried them in hay, straw or chopped leaves and had a great harvest. The keys are to loosen the soil with a hoe, cover the seed potatoes with 8 inches of organic matter and keep them well watered. As the plants grow add more hay and chopped leaves. In late summer, remove the mulch and harvest!
The Ruth Stout Method and More Tips to Garden Greener
Just because someone has a green thumb doesn t mean they garden green. Learn the Ruth Stout Method and more ways gardeners can be kind to the earth.
Natural mulch
Even if a gardener has a green thumb, it doesn’t mean they always think green when they’re pursuing their favorite outdoor hobby. Here are 6 ways to be kinder to the earth when gardening, including the Ruth Stout Method.
Use the Ruth Stout Method
The late Ruth Stout wrote a series of gardening books in the ’70s on the benefits of mulching in place. It’s called The Ruth Stout Method and I can personally vouch for the fact that it saves labor, feeds plants and conserves soil moisture. The concept is simple: mulch plants and beds with natural debris such as leaves, straw, twigs, prunings, kitchen scraps and pulled weeds. Then let nature do the rest. I mulch in place in the vegetable garden and in a naturalistic border I’ve created with woody plants and peren
In keeping with the permaculture principles she holds dear, Warren has lettuces and herbs in beds and pots next to the kitchen and house. Compost and worm bins are tucked at the shady end of the garden, blending anonymously into the green “wall” of old established trees (including a lemon) and perennials.
SALLY TAGG/NZ GARDENER/Stuff
Diverse systems have been integrated into this small space. As one climbs the wide stone steps towards the upper terraces, the garden reveals itself: bulging bags of potato plants, beans, berry canes, brassicas… If you’re not familiar with the vege plants, they are easy to miss as the eye is inevitably drawn to the pops of red, pink, purple, yellow, orange and everything in between from borage, rambling nasturtium, roses, masses of sweet peas and alyssum, salvia, daisies – to name just a few.