I FEEL ROUND 3 OF GARDEN NO-NO’S coming on. When Mary Lynn asked yesterday in a comment about my point of view on using landscape fabric, the fuse was quickly lit: NO! I said. NO! I’ve rounded up some no-no’s we’ve posted collectively so far, but I bet by now there are a few more things to bitch about. Grab a lawn chair and a cold drink, and we can fester together this holiday weekend. Sure beats weeding (which ought to be a garden no-no). Is watering with a coffee pot (or gardening in your long-johns) a no-no? Not for me, apparently.
Some greatest (worst?) hits we shared from Garden No-No’s Part 1 and No-No’s Part 2:
Dyed green bamboo stakes.
Dyed rust-colored mulch (do you sense a theme here?). Any dyed mulch, in fact, is a no-no to my eye.
Volcano mulch (that is, piled up deep against trunks of trees and shrubs).
Cartoon-like or out of scale garden décor items, especially in plastic, to include gnomes (though there was some sentimental dispute about gnomes), wishing wells and lions.
White plastic anything.
Gravel or lava rock as a decorative mulch outside of dry zones or containers.
Chemicals and chemical-laden products.
Too much space between plants. Too much lawn.
Bad staking, particularly staking with other than natural bamboo and twine.
Inserting plastic nursery tags into the garden as markers.
Sprinkler systems running in the rain or when otherwise not needed.
Excess noisy power tools.
And like I said, landscape fabric. Again, dissent expressed here; some people are proponents of the stuff.
So? You?
I actually deliberately planted comfrey years ago after reading about its medicinal qualities (which I found to be highly overrated). When we added on to our house the old herb bed disappeared and so did the comfrey. I was feeling rather smug about this until comfrey suddenly appeared in my nice new herb bed, six years later. How does it DO that?
Hi Angela, …Fred from Loudonville, NY, aka Fred Gonsowski of Fred Gonsowski Garden Home.com
It has been quite a while since I came this way to see if anyone still read my comments on the No-No List. As for your first question, Does Fred still use Preen? The answer to that (cover your eyes and skip this part Margaret) is YES. I have about 4000 square feet of beds and boarders here at Whimsey Hill, and before preen probably pulled 38 big brown bags of volunteers from the garden each Spring. I don’t have the luxury to force paid help to do unthinkable chores around the garden, as some people do, who I read about that live on great estates. With the Preen it is about 8 bags of volunteers in Spring.
I do wonder about it a bit, and would not suggest using it if you are like Margaret on well water. (I don’t think her village has public water?) I want to say here, if I really read all of Margaret’s bio, and saw that she was ORGANIC, I probably would not have wrote that i liked Preen. BUT all the other things that i wrote about DEFENDING all the things people hated, I had fun doing. In all things pertaining to style, looks and things come and go. When it comes to garden ornaments, colored mulch, or even garden gnomes, it is how you Artistically use them on your property. I, having an artistic eye might site something perfectly, where as another person might never find the right place for it in the garden.
Margaret, I hope I gave you a little laugh, up on your Copake hill, I am Smiling/Snickering/ and Laughing as I am writing this note to Angela, your readers and You. As Ever, Fred Gonsowski the blogging guy ;-}
I opened my eyes, Fred. And it made me laugh. Naughty as ever, are you. :)
I think we have to give Fred points for honesty.
Margaret, Just a way of coming by and Saying Hi. Enjoy the Fall cleanup, I’m super busy now cutting back all the the past loveliness of Summer.