Pat Colyer and I first crossed paths after the Mukilteo gardener answered my offer to take home a free box of worm poop fertilizer that I’d received. In her household, I am known as “the worm poop lady.”
In my book, she’s known as an accomplished gardener with about 100 ideas I’d like to try.
Colyer is a retired science teacher and she applies the same sharp intellect, organization and problem-solving skills to gardening that I’m sure she brought to the classroom. Her garden isn’t flashy; she grows a mix of flowers, fruit trees and an abundance of vegetables. But it is brimming with practical, easy ways to keep plants healthy and tools organized, and generally make life easy on the gardener.
Below you’ll find just a few of the many good ideas that work for Colyer and her husband, Bob, in their garden.
A few of her ideas have commercial counterparts, found easily enough through nurseries and mail-order catalogs. She’s of the school that gardening doesn’t need to be expensive, and with a little time and effort, gardeners can make much of what they need from what’s on hand.
Build your own hotbed
Pat Colyer starts seeds inside, using a homemade hotbed. Necessary materials include: scrap lumber, a plastic under-the-bed storage box, mesh screening, heating cables and seed starting mix. The frame is a basic box, built 32 inches long, 10 inches wide and 3-1/2 inches deep.
She puts about a half-inch of seed starting mix on the bottom of the box. The heating cable is tied onto the mesh screening with the string and laid on top of the soil. Then more seeding starting mix is added, until it’s about a half-inch from the top. The wood box is placed in the plastic container to “keep the inevitable mess confined.”
When it’s time to plant seeds, she wets the seed starting mix thoroughly and plants the seeds. Then she marks each seed’s place with a toothpick, and labels each row with plant markers made from old venetian blind slats.
Suppliers for the cable heating systems include J.W. Jung Seed Co. (800-297-3123) and Stokes Seeds Inc. (800-396-9238). She said Stokes gives detailed plant and cultivation information, and she cuts out the information and pastes it on index cards, which she files and keeps with the seed packets.
Brew compost tea
Compost tea is a concentrated blast of nutrients for plants and soil. You’d better believe Colyer makes hers at home for free, using a bucket, an old cloth diaper and a plastic bottle. Here is her recipe:
Put 2 cups of compost in a bucket along with a gallon of water. Let it steep for three days. The tea needs to be strained. Colyer stretches an old cloth diaper across the top of the bucket and holds it in place with a bungee cord. She slowly pours the mixture through. The clumpy remains go back in her compost heap. The tea gets poured into old gallon milk containers. She uses the plastic bottle with the bottom cut out as a funnel.
Fence-side storage for potted plants
The couple’s backyard is fenced and they make that space usable by building shelves along one side that can be lined with potted plants waiting for a home, or to stack empty nursery containers.
Fence-side storage for stakes
Here’s another way to use fence space effectively. Two eyelet screws are attached to the fence an arm’s width apart with a bungee cord stretched between them. Colyer stores her garden stakes behind the bungee.
Tool storage
No money or space for a garden shed? Hang tools outside under a small overhang attached to an outbuilding or fence; in this case a corrugated plastic panel, cut to size. The tools are hanging on a basic tool hanger found at home improvement stores.
Fence-side storage for empty pots
An effective and easy way to store those ubiquitous black containers plants come in is a simple board system. She nails the bottom of a short piece of wood that’s standing on the fence’s crosspiece. Nail it loosely, leaving about an inch, and you can slide a stack of pots on the board.
Storage for soil amendments
Colyer keeps her finished compost, manure and vermiculite in separate garbage cans leaning on angled rests. Not only is it convenient to have these in one spot, buying the vermiculite in bulk at a farm supply store is far cheaper than those little packages at garden centers. The tipped cans make it easier to scoop.
Cutworm collars
Cutworms can be disastrous to plants, chomping young, tender greens at ground level. For a nonchemical deterrent, Colyer cuts the bottom off a yogurt cup and plunges it into the ground around her Swiss chard transplants when they’re small.
Overhead tomato cover
Tomatoes in this area are particularly susceptible to late blight, a funguslike pathogen that destroys leaves, stems and fruits. Keeping the leaves dry helps to prevent late blight, and Colyer has found the solution: a lean-to topped with corrugated plastic that lets the light in and keeps the wet out. The red sheeting below the tomatoes is a plastic mulch that enhances yield.
Easy pickings
Rather than growing her beans up a flat trellis, she plants them around a gazebo that her husband built. She can reach the beans easily, and they take up little space. The covered trellis also makes a nice accent in the vegetable garden.
Moveable pot system
Colyer buries empty nursery pots in blank spots in her garden. Then she can swiftly swap her plants out as the blooms fade.
Dahlia stake holders
When she tires of looking at naked stakes standing in her garden for weeks while waiting for the dahlias to grow, Colyer buries a small section of pipe upright near each plant. When the dahlia grows tall enough to need support, she slips a stake in the pipe and it’s held firmly in place while she ties the dahlia to it.
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