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| St. Francis of Springdale |
Facebook has a lot of features designed to lead people into advertisements. "You will not believe what this person just did!" Or - "Ten movies that bombed at the box office with superstars in the cast! You will not believe #5."
I am not selling any garden products so these tips are a little more credible.
1. Buy bags of wood mulch, on sale, if possible. Wood is a great addition to soil. Wood mulch is also a very good way to hold in moisture and suppress weeds, when combined with another wood product, newspapers.
2. Buy bags of mushroom compost, which also go on sale at times. There two ways to move soil. One is to dig it up and wheelbarrow it to another location. The other is to haul a bag of mushroom compost in a wheelbarrow and use it where needed, without digging a hole somewhere else. I use these bags for filling in holes, for enhancing a planting (new bushes), and for wide row planting. When our helper opened up a long, narrow trench for peas, we filled it in partially with mushroom compost. The material is even in texture, unlike freshly dug soil, and easy to apply from the plastic bags.
3. Buy twine. You will always need twine, sooner or later. I ordered more twine and found my supply five minutes later. No problem. I always need it - to hold some bamboo fencing up, to secure the aerial aqueduct, to hang some suet.
4. Buy suet. The low-cost, high value bird food is hard to find, except in overpriced little square packages or in $20 allotments from a bird food supply company. Grocery store meat employees looked at me like I was asking for live roaches. What? Suet? They used to package and sell it cheap. I asked timidly at a meat market, and they had some. I bought it for 60 cents a pound at the meat market, and it lasted all winter. The starlings are feasting on it each day. Woodpeckers also love it. The birds that eat the most insects like suet best of all.
5. Buy large amounts of seed. I hate those tiny packets with 10-20 seeds inside. Am I gardening for ants? It is soul-crushing to have a long row ready to plant and not enough seed. I look at places ready to plant soon and estimate the seed needed. It is good to have extra to use in another place, to swap with someone, to give away for a new children's garden.
6. Buy soaker hose, 75 foot lengths. Why move sprinklers around all day? Soaker hoses will use water more frugally. Birds like the gentle sprinkles of water issuing from them.
