When Good Gardens Go Bad: Earth-Friendly Solutions to Common Garden Problems

118 Pages·2018·50.3 MB·English

by  Judy Barrett

“. . . find the balance in your garden—encourage good things B
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and take bad things in stride.”
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ardens do not take care of themselves. Poor soil, pests, disease, fungus, and
inclement weather can ruin plants and a gardener’s zeal. In When Good
Gardens Go Bad, veteran author and pioneer organic gardener Judy Barrett
offers safe, practical, and inexpensive advice for handling common garden
problems and challenges. Dispelling the belief that gardens should be perfectly controlled
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environments, Barrett encourages gardeners to embrace the imperfections.Your task as a
gardener is not to control nature but to be nature’s accomplice, to woo nature and enjoy
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the beauty and surprises the natural world provides. Plant what appeals to you—herbs, e
berries, fruit, veggies, flowers—the plants you love to see, taste, and smell when you step n
out the door. The soft greens of the grass and trees; the fresh, lively flavor of the fruits and
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vegetables; and the bracing scents of herbs, roses, and flowers are all delights that come
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with a “good” garden.
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Plants thrive and fail for many reasons, but if you improve the soil, choose the right
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plants, plant them at the right time, and encourage them along the way you will have

far fewer failures. If you are frustrated because nothing seems to grow in your backyard G
garden or you can’t keep pests or plant disease away, this book offers straightforward
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advice and organic solutions. Barrett encourages readers to learn about their soil through r
observation and talking with neighbors and local experts in order to make smarter plant d
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choices for their yards. She differentiates the beneficial insects from the problem pests,
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offers homemade and store-bought solutions for keeping the harmful pests away, and
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provides resources for tackling other common hurdles, such as weeds and composting.
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Judy Barrett’s personal, often humorous writing style—“soil microbes are Mother
Nature’s little housemaids”—and her ability to present basic information is fresh and o
accessible. Her gardening philosophy is that the best gardeners are those who delight in
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the process and can live with some dead plants, failed visions, and annoying bugs.A gar-
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den doesn’t have to be perfect, but it should be fun. Relax and enjoy it.
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JUDY BARRETT is the author of several books, including Easy Edibles: How to Grow and
Enjoy Fresh Food, Recipes From and For the Garden: How to Use and Enjoy Your Bountiful
Harvest, What Can I Do with My Herbs? How to Grow, Use, and Enjoy These Versatile
Plants, and Yes,You Can Grow Roses. She is a pioneer of organic gardening in Texas and is
present online at Judy Barrett’s Homegrown on Facebook. She lives in Taylor, Texas.
W. L. Moody Jr. Natural History Series
Texas A&M University Press
College Station
www.tamupress.com
When Good Gardens Go Bad
number fifty-seven
W.L. Moody Jr. Natural History Series
When
Good

Gardens

Go Bad
Earth-Friendly
Solutions to
Common Garden
Problems
J U D Y B A R R E T T
TEXAS A&M UNIVERSITY PRESS • College Station
Copyright © 2018 by Judy Barrett
All rights reserved
First edition
This paper meets the requirements of
ANSI/NISO Z39.48–1992
(Permanence of Paper).
Binding materials have been chosen for durability.
Manufactured in China by Everbest Printing Co.
through FCI Print Group
library of congress cataloging-in-publication data
Names: Barrett, Judy, 1945– author.
Title: When good gardens go bad : earth friendly solutions to common garden
problems / Judy Barrett.
Other titles: W.L. Moody Jr. natural history series ; no. 57.
Description: First edition. | College Station : Texas A&M University Press,
[2018] | Series: W.L. Moody Jr. natural history series ; number
fifty-seven | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017035272| ISBN 9781623496210 (flexbound (with flaps) :
alk. paper) | ISBN 9781623496227 (e-book)
Subjects: LCSH: Organic gardening. | Organic gardening—Texas.
Classification: LCC SB453.5 .B377 2018 | DDC 635.9/87—dc23 LC record available at
https://lccn.loc.gov/2017035272
Contents
Preface vii
Chapter 1. The Garden of Eden Is Long Gone,
but the Fruit Was Worth It 1
Chapter 2. Brown-Thumb Syndrome 7
Seven Simple Rules 8
Failure to Thrive 10
Location, Location, Location 15
If You Don’t Like the Weather . . . 18
Timing Is Everything 20
Chapter 3. Without Bugs, We’ve Got Nothing 22
What Bugs Do for Us 24
Important Pest-Control Tools 31
Products 33
What’s Bugging You? 38
Chapter 4. Invisible Friends and Foes 50
Fungi 51
Other Fungal Diseases and Fungicides 56
Bacteria 57
Viruses 58
Chapter 5. Plants Run Amok: Dealing with Weeds 61
What Are Weeds? 62
Weeds in the Lawn 63
Weeds in the Beds 65
Covering the Soil to Discourage Weeds 67
The Scoop on Coffee 69
A Word about Volunteers 71
Friendly and Useful Weeds 72
Despicable Weeds 75
Chapter 6. Compost: Nature’s Miracle Cure 82
Types of Compost 85
Make Your Own 88
Mulch: Compost’s Companion 90
Chapter 7. The Exuberant Garden 93
Acknowledgments and Resources 97
Index 99
vi Contents
Preface
My husband, Bob, who is not a gardener or a country boy, was amazed
when we moved to rural Williamson County years ago that things just
grew—that nature provides a banquet for anyone who is willing to put
forth even a small amount of effort. One early July, we moved into a
hundred-year-old farmhouse that was just barely habitable—but cute.
Oh so cute! We were sure we could transform it in to the antique home
of our dreams.
There were no gardens, no flower beds, no lawn, no air-conditioning,
no kitchen cabinets, one bathroom, and a teenager. The people before us
had moved the house onto an empty plot of land that was too gravelly
for the local farmers to mess with, and then they had sort of abandoned
it. (The story we heard was that they started renovation on the house and
then promptly got a divorce. They never started on the yard.) All around
us were fields sprayed regularly with chemicals of all sorts: fertilizer, pes-
ticide, arsenic, herbicide, and other toxic things.
Our property had wonderful old oak trees, some hackberries, china-
berries, and native pecans. The trees were what convinced me that this
would be a good place to live, but there were no birds in them. During
that first year, we never heard a chirp or saw a flash of color in the
branches. Then, not long after we moved in, we came home in a rain-
storm to find that three of the ancient oaks had fallen over—they just fell
over in waterlogged dirt—their tops healthy green and full of leaves. The
roots, however, were shallow, short, and unattached to the ground.
I called an arborist from the city who drove out, charged me many
dollars, and said, after much walking around, measuring, hemming, haw-
ing, and throat clearing, “Stuff like that happens in nature.”
I didn’t find his words particularly helpful at the time, but they keep
coming back to me. Stuff like that does happen in nature. Bad stuff and
good stuff and unexplainable stuff and surprising stuff. Although some
of the oaks fell down, that first fall the pecans gave us a bumper crop.
Bob kept strolling into the house, looking amazed, his pocket stuffed
with pecans, saying things like, “It’s just free food! Falling from the sky!”
(And those little natives really are the best-tasting pecans and worth all
the effort to shell them.) Then we found a patch of garlic growing in a
ditch down the road. It is an heirloom rocambole type that would cost a
lot of money if ordered from a catalogue. It’s huge, mild, and tasty—but
around here, we call it “ditch garlic.” In the spring, wild Mustang grapes
covered the fencerows, and Bob began his annual adventure in winemak-
ing, an unscientific process that results in surprisingly tasty wine, some-
times really good vinegar, and on occasion explosions that caused purple
rain of a kind unknown to Prince.
We planted fruit trees, my mother’s iris, and ditch garlic, and soon
the gravel began to be covered with green. It was a slow process, ham-
pered by lack of time, money, and energy and by an abundance of rocks,
dogs, and erratic weather, but even our smallest efforts were generously
rewarded. The birds came back year-round. Swallows nested under the
front porch eaves. Redbirds flittered around the trees and nibbled the
horse food. Woodpeckers, mockingbirds, and robins performed their
own rhythm band in the spring.
viii Preface
We didn’t put out any poison. As part of the moving-to-the-country
negotiation, we had agreed to get our fifteen-year-old daughter a horse.
So Midnight, a sweet older Welsh pony, moved in and began supplying
fertilizer right away. We also started a compost pile and gave the ground
some shots of Medina soil activator, seaweed, fish emulsion, and vari-
ous other nutrients. In very little time, the earth responded to our feeble
efforts with bounteous rewards. We had peaches, blackberries, plums,
and mulberries in the spring—free food falling from the sky. Wildflowers
graced our tiny relic of the blackland prairie. The vegetable garden came
along nicely, in spite of too much rain and too little sun one year and too
much sun and too little rain in another.
It continues to amaze me how little the earth requires of us and how
much it is willing to forgive. This book is to help you find the balance
in your garden—encourage good things and take bad things in stride.
I hope you will embrace the fun of being outdoors and growing things
and develop a philosophical and forgiving attitude that helps you brush
off the problems that inevitably occur.
Stuff like that happens in nature.
Preface ix