Garden Smarts

Tools and Equipment

The subject of tools and equipment is a tricky one. There is a tendency to want a tool for every purpose, almost to the point where the tools use the gardener instead of the other way around. It helps to remember that with technology of any kind, the best solution is usually the least complicated solution. You’ll almost certainly enjoy gardening more by using a small range of well-made, functional tools than by filling the garden shed with a wall full of useless gadgets that end up frustrating more than they satisfy. On a practical level, it comes down to whether you’d rather spend your time in the garden with the plants or in the garage with the machines.

Hand Tools

According to my grandfather the most important tool an organic gardener could own was a garden or spading fork, and I agree. Whether preparing a bed for planting, dividing established perennials, mixing compost, or aerating a lawn, it is the most versatile tool I have (except the hand that holds it). With just a garden fork and a little legwork you can maintain almost any sized garden once it is established.
A good garden fork is indeed a heavy-duty implement, usually mounted with a “D” type handle, although occasionally you’ll see one with a long, straight handle. I have both. The “D” handle is best for spring soil preparation, because it gives your hand a lateral grip that helps keep an off-center forkload of soil from tipping. But the long-handled fork provides more leverage for loosening subsoil when double digging, and allows you to work standing straighter. If you can have only one, though, choose the “D”-handled fork because of its versatility.
     The four tines of an American-style fork measure 1/2 to 3/4 inch wide and eight to twelve inches long, are somewhat pointed on the end so they enter the ground easily, but are broad and flattened in cross-section so that they disturb the soil rather than cut it. This is the same kind of tine used on a potato fork, which has to extract potatoes from the ground without harming them. English-style forks have tines that are 1/4 to 1/2 inch thick with a square cross-section.
     Garden forks are made from a stiff, tempered steel that can stand up to the same kind of digging and prying action as a shovel. The best have solid forged heads and a closed socket, or a long strap of steel joining the blade to the handle, to prevent breakage. I have broken a few myself and now wouldn’t have one with a cheap, riveted handle. The advantage of a fork over a spade is that it breaks up the soil instead of just moving it around. For digging, certainly a spade is the tool of choice, but for loosening and aerating the soil, as well as incorporating amendments, nothing works so well as a good-quality garden fork.
Companion to the garden fork is the spade itself. While most American gardeners are familiar with the conventional long-handled shovel, the European spade is more useful for general garden work. It has a flat-sectioned, square or slightly rounded blade, and a “D” type handle like that of the fork. The straight blade makes the garden spade good for edging beds, or for peeling back the sod where a new bed is to be. Heavy-duty spades have treads formed or welded atop the blade to cushion the foot for that kind of heavy digging. The square design of the blade is also well suited for light trenching, chopping, and tamping.
The shovel is really a construction tool, suited for moving heavy, loose material like sand, small gravel, and cinders. For lighter, less dense materials like grain, sawdust, or snow, there are shovels or scoops with large, high-sided aluminum or plastic blades (and a flat back). A shovel can also be used for digging round holes, as the back of the blade is curved. The slope of the blade will taper the hole inward from the edge, which is ideal for preparing a transplanting hole. A nursery spade, with its pointed, round-backed blade, resembles a miniature shovel, except that the angle of the blade to the handle is reversed. This is so that, when digging up established plants, the handle will be back out of the way of the plant, allowing more freedom to work. A trenching spade has a round-backed blade about eight inches across at the tread, sixteen to eighteen inches long, and five to six inches across at the bottom. With it you can cut narrow trenches for drainage (or for blanching) quickly and efficiently.
     You can make a garden, and maintain it as well with a garden fork and spade alone; however, a few more tools will make the process more efficient and enjoyable. The first of these is a cultivator. Where vegetables will grow, so will weeds; to stop the weeds we need to uproot them, and this can be done either by hand—once they have gotten big enough to grab onto—or as soon as they germinate, by simply disturbing the soil with a cultivator. Cultivators come in an incredible range of sizes and forms; it seems that there is one for every situation, whether it be widely spaced transplants or broadcast-sown greens, and every gardener seems not only to have a favorite, but also to have dreamed about inventing one. I have three or four that I’d hate to be without: my stirrup hoes, a hook, a hand harrow, and my grandfather’s own home-fashioned “Ogden hoe.”
     This last, named for my grandfather’s uncle, who taught him how to make it, is essentially the complement to the old-fashioned “Warren hoe,” still widely available, which has a triangular blade that comes to a single point, and is used for furrowing. You can easily make one by cutting off the lower corners of a standard broad hoe. The Ogden hoe is also triangular, but the reverse of the former: the blade descends from a single point at the handle mount to sharp points at the lower corners. These form a flat-bottomed triangle the width of a standard broad hoe. One can be made by cutting off the upper corners of a standard broad hoe. In my opinion it is superior to both the standard hoe and the Warren hoe because if held in the normal fashion, neck up, it can be used for hilling; yet if the handle is rotated so that one of the corner points is down, it can be used for furrowing as well.
     I inherited my cultivating hook from my grandfather. It is smaller than a potato hook, with 1/4-inch-thick, round-sectioned tines, sharpened at the end, which penetrate the soil only a half-inch or so at rest. As you pull it toward you it digs in, but it’s a lot easier on the back than a full-sized potato hook. Cultivating hooks are widely available, but if you buy one, I’d suggest bending the two outside tines inward just a bit, so you can use it to cultivate really close in to plants in the row. A hook of this type can be used like a conventional broad hoe to chop the soil surface, though that may disturb the shallow roots of vegetables almost as much as the hoe. I use it to sweep across the surface of the soil, back and forth, even crossways, lightly disturbing the surface without bothering anything but newly sprouting weed seedlings. Until I discovered the stirrup hoe, the hook was my favorite cultivator.
     I also have a full range of other cultivators that I’ve inherited or picked up over the years from one place or another: a “Warren” hoe, two Dutch scuffle hoes (plus various poorly crafted imitations of each that I’ve received as samples over the years because of our mail-order business), and an assortment of the conventional square-bladed broad hoes. The only one of the broad hoes I use much is the narrowest, which is only an inch or two wide, and thus ideal for cultivating closely planted root crops as they near maturity. Used as a skimmer, it is almost as quick as a stirrup hoe (see below); its tenure in the garden shed is pretty well guaranteed by the fact that stirrup hoes narrower than three inches jam easily on the sticks and stones that pepper the surface of our garden. These obstructions can’t pass through the hoe so easily as they do with the larger-size stirrups.
     I also have a “hand harrow,” a long-handled tool used for preparing a fine seedbed and for breaking up lightly crusted soil after a rain. It consists of three stubby arms mounted into the head, each of which is tipped with a pair of offset spike-toothed rollers. As you push the hand harrow, the meshing of the spike rollers not only breaks the crusty surface of the soil, but uproots small weeds. It is a great tool for established gardens, but if there is a lot of “trash”—for instance, small rocks and bits of root or clumps of partially decomposed straw mulch, say—on the surface, the tines will quickly pick them up and jam.
I don’t know who invented the stirrup hoe, but I sure am glad they thought of it. Because of its built-in depth-regulating design, you can work more quickly with a stirrup hoe than with a cultivating hook, and there is much less disturbance of neighboring plants’ roots. This is because you don’t have to chop to get the weeds; instead, the blade skims along just below the surface of the soil, slicing off the weeds at their most vulnerable point, which is the stem connection between leaf and root. The head of a stirrup hoe has a pair of holes threaded by a small pin. On that axle is mounted a sharpened, stainless steel “stirrup” which, because of the pin mounting, is able to pivot fifteen degrees back and forth in line with the handle. So when you pull a stirrup hoe, it skims along at an angle to the ground, scooping up just the top quarter-inch or so of the soil and vaulting it half an inch. Small rocks, twigs, and other trash pass right through, but weeks are dislodged and, unless it rains right away, their severed stems quickly wither in the sun.
     I have become so partial to stirrup hoes that I have three different sizes, but you can certainly get by with one. The best all-around size is five inches across the base of the stirrup. When you buy, check the oscillating motion of the stirrup carefully.
     One last hoe type is the one developed by Maine market gardener Eliot Coleman. The so-called “collineal hoe” is, like the stirrup hoe, a cutting, not a chopping hoe. The flat, sharp blade is offset on a slight swan neck so that the cutting edge is in line with the center of the handle and parallel to the ground. This allows you stand upright while scuffling the blade just below the soil surface, slicing off young weeds.
     You probably own a garden rake, and might think to use it for cultivation, but most are not up to the task. I sometimes use a rake to clear the surface of a seedbed that was prepared and then not promptly planted, but the angle of the tines causes them to dig in rather than simply skim along the surface. You can keep the work shallow with a little arm power, though it is barely worth the trouble to do so; better to re-prepare the bed, or use a hook or hand harrow to get it in shape.
     There are two uses for which a rake is invaluable, though. The first is for removal of weeds, and for this use a modified leaf rake works well. Simply cut down a leaf rake (using a pair of tin snips or a hacksaw) so that it is just as wide as the row spacing you use most commonly in your garden. Then, if after the weeds are skimmed the weather is not dry enough to wither them, they can be easily raked up and taken to the compost pile. We actually have both a leaf and a stiff-tined steel rake cut down for this purpose, but you should certainly be able to get by with one or the other.
     The second use I have for a rake is in forming beds. The proper kind of rake to do this job must be stoutly built so that you can really move soil with it. This does not mean it must be heavy, though. Our rake collection includes everything from a six-foot iron rake with straight-forged tines, which weighs a good six pounds, to a two-foot-wide aluminum-magnesium alloy landscaper’s rake, that weighs less than half that. My favorite, though, is a lightweight one with the tines and the scraping blade on the back made entirely of copper. It was sold to me as a “biodynamic bed-finishing rake,” and the designer’s intent was that the copper, in working the soil, would leave behind a trace element residue to assist in the control of soil-borne diseases, as copper is naturally fungicidal. Regardless of its disease control abilities, though, this lightweight rake is a joy to work with once the primary bed-forming has been accomplished with heavier tools. The scraper edge on the back of the rake makes mounding and smoothing much easier.
     The final tool of this type—handle tools—that I consider necessary is a pitchfork, which is much lighter than a garden fork, with round, pointed tines like the cultivating hook. Its name expresses its function, which is to pick up piles of garden refuse that are awkward or messy to grab with your arms, and pitch them into a wheelbarrow or onto the compost pile. If you buy wisely, this lightweight fork will also serve to turn the compost piles. There are several forms, not all of which are appropriate: a hay fork has two to four rolled steel, round-section tines; a manure fork has four to six square or flattened, forged tines; there is also a thing I call a stable fork, which has a dozen or more rolled, round tines (see illustration on page 000). You want the manure fork. The hay fork lets too much slip between its widely spaced tines, and on the stable fork the tines are set so close together—to make shoveling horse and sheep manure easier—that the vines and stalks of garden plants get skewered and then stuck on the fork. I am lucky enough to own all three, but if you can have only one, choose the manure fork.
     Along with grandfather, I recommend that you have not just one, but two stout garden lines available for marking rows and paths. Quite often it will save considerable time to be able to use both at the same time. They should be long enough to run the full width or length of your garden, and the stakes should be strong enough so that the line can be made taut without danger of breaking them. In addition, we use a mechanical planter to speed the sowing of row crops. There are a number of models on the market, from simple to elaborate; keep in mind that they are largely unnecessary for gardens of less than 500 square feet.
     One other piece of equipment that will help maintain your hand tools is a scraper tub. This is a tub or half wine barrel filled with sand, into which you dump the waste oil generated by oil changes on any equipment you may own. The resulting oily, sand-filled tub should be kept right near where the tools are hung. That way, each time you return a spade or fork or hoe to its nail you can jam it down into the sand a few times to rub off any newly acquired corrosion (and oil the metal at the same time).

Garden Carts

If your garden is larger than a few hundred square feet, you’ll probably want a cart of some sort for hauling materials between the garden and the compost pile. There are two basic kinds: conventional wheelbarrows and two-wheeled garden carts.
     The former is best for heavy, dense materials, and works well for hauling and dumping operations like spreading compost, but it doesn’t fit well in tightly spaced gardens. Carts have the advantage of being able to straddle properly sized beds, which makes them very convenient at planting time. With a piece of plywood laid on top across its sides you have a work surface good enough to write on, and any seeds or seedlings can wait in the cool shade underneath, along with a few necessary tools and supplies. A few years back some manufacturers designed very intricate systems for these carts: removable sides, racks to hold rolls of plastic mulch so you could unroll it by pulling the cart along the bed, other square racks for holding transplants, even runners to replace the wheels in wintertime so firewood could be carried across the snow. But on uneven ground these two-wheeled carts pitch wildly from side to side, making them hard to control, and their overall lighter construction makes them less long-lasting than wheelbarrows.
     While I use both, I find it hard to choose. Both can be useful, both can be frustrating. Whichever you decide on, get the biggest and best you can afford; a cheap cart or barrow isn’t worth the manure you haul in it.

Mulches and Row Covers

One of the most important changes in the materials and methods of gardening over the last twenty years is the development of agricultural plastics. Nonchemical methods of controlling weeds and pests, inexpensive ways to lengthen the growing season, and water-stingy drip irrigation: all have been made possible by plastics technology.
     Mulch is an essential part of many gardens, particularly organic gardens; the range of materials used as mulch rivals that used for building a compost pile. I have seen just about everything from flat stones and boards, to straw, hay, seaweed, old pieces of carpet, and even thick layers of newspaper used as a mulch. Think about the nature of what you use. Newspaper, for example: black-and-white newsprint is generally considered safe, though for aesthetic reasons I wouldn’t use it in my garden; and if the paper uses colored inks, they may contain significant amounts of toxic compounds. In fact, I use very little mulch at all, as most materials that work well as a mulch are also attractive to slugs, one of the most obnoxious pests of humid-climate gardens.
     Plastic mulches made from very thin polyethylene (only a few thousandths of an inch thick) provide many of the benefits of an organic mulch without giving slugs a place to hide. Over the course of the season polyethylene mulches can prevent weed growth, preserve soil moisture, and raise or lower the temperature of the top few inches of soil. The most high-tech kinds are wavelength-selective. Infrared transparent (IRT) mulch, for example, allows the heating wavelengths of sunlight through, but blocks those wave lengths that drive photosynthesis, thus preventing weed growth under the mulch. Growers in hot climates can choose mulches that prevent overheating of the soil, and even more specific control is possible (see sidebar).
     The only benefit of an organic mulch that plastic can’t provide is the addition of organic matter to the soil. In fact, while polyethylene becomes brittle and shreds easily after only a few months in the sun, the resulting scraps of plastic are nearly indestructible and present a real disposal problem. Newer formulas for making the plastic include additives to make the mulch degrade further, but its essential nature is unchanged. Plastic mulches are inexpensive to buy and come in three- or four-foot widths, just right for raised beds, but season-end disposal of the used plastic brings home its environmental cost. As with other industrial materials, I recommend using plastic mulch only when absolutely necessary, and with full knowledge of its true life-cycle costs.
     There are film mulches made from recycled fiber, treated with just enough preservative to retard their breakdown until late in the season, when the plants have grown over the row and need no help to shade out sprouting weeds. Unfortunately, they are relatively expensive to use, and the preservatives themselves are not beyond suspicion as contaminants of the soil. If you do use a film mulch—either kind—be sure to put irrigation lines beneath it, or lay it down only when the soil is at optimum moisture levels. Mulch laid on top of wet soil will keep it soggy throughout the season, and if laid on dry soil, these largely waterproof films will nearly starve the plants for water.
     Another recent use for plastic is in covers that can be used to rig “mini-greenhouses” or cloches (plant covers) over growing plants. There are two basic types; conventional clear films and textured, milky white “spunbonded” fabric. Within each type there are a number of variations in material.
     Clear plastics, because of their tendency to overheat in sunny weather, must be somehow supported above the plants and vented. Irrigation also needs to be considered, since most clear covers shed rain. The most common arrangement is a very thin, clear cover about a foot or two tall and two feet wide, with parallel longitudinal slits cut in the plastic for ventilation, supported by hoops made from 9-gauge fence wire stuck six to eight inches into the ground on each side of the row. A plastic soil mulch is almost required when using this kind of cover, because the environment under the cover favors weeds growth as much as it does the crop plants. All in all, the labor involved in erecting these cover-and-mulch combinations is barely worth the few weeks’ use they get in short- spring areas. However, in milder climates, or in areas where temperatures aren’t extreme but rarely hot—like most coastal climates, for instance—they can be a very effective way to provide a protected microclimate. Garden suppliers now offer a wide range of hoops and cover sizes as well, making it possible to accommodate all kinds of plants.
     Fabric covers don’t overheat as easily, and have a number of other advantages over clear covers. First off, they are so lightweight (the lightest weigh in at only a third of an ounce per square yard) that while they can be used with hoop supports, they don’t need it. These “floating” row covers are simply laid over top of the row, and the edges buried, leaving all the slack fabric loose above the plants. Multiple layers (or simply thicker fabrics) can provide significant frost protection.
     As the crops grow, they pick up the row cover like the foil top on one of those prepackaged pans of popping corn. Also, since they are porous instead of solid, they allow the passage of both air and water, eliminating the need to provide ventilation and irrigation. But because they accelerate the growth of weeds as well as crop plants, you’ll want to put down a film mulch, or periodically remove the cover to cultivate the bed beneath.
     Perhaps best of all, even the lightest floating row covers, if thoroughly sealed with soil around the edges, will keep out all kinds of flying insects. This function (as a pest barrier) alone more than offsets the fact that their manufacture is just as energy-intensive as that of plastic film mulches and row covers. Pest problems for which most gardeners would otherwise have to spray—with either a synthetic or an organic pesticide—can now be controlled with row covers. For example, a floating row cover placed over broccoli transplants, immediately after setting out, is more effective in preventing cabbage root maggot infestations than the insecticide diazinon. The same row cover will protect all kinds of plants from flea beetles, as well as keeping cucumber beetles from attaching squash family plants until they are large and vigorous enough to outgrow the attack.
     Keep in mind, however, that many garden vegetables need to be accessible to insects in order to be pollinated. This requires removing the cover once the plants flower (specific recommendations can be found in the individual vegetable entries in Chapter 8.
     Not only can row covers protect plants from pests and cold, but they can provide protection from the heat, too. Lath and metal screening, as well as cheesecloth, have long been used to provide shade for cool-weather crops when the temperature rises, but new woven plastic meshes are lighter, easier to install, and can be designed for just about any degree of shade. They are made of a much more substantial thickness of plastic, woven like burlap, and so will last for many seasons, though it still makes sense to store them in the dark during the off-season to decrease the rate at which sunlight makes them brittle.

Irrigation Equipment

One of the most important uses of plastic in the garden is the myriad forms of inexpensive, water efficient irrigation systems now available. And there is no question that irrigation is one of the keys to top crops.
     Water can be supplied to the garden either in the form of overhead sprinklers, or by a system of pipes and tubes of various diameters that drip or ooze water at the base of the plants. Each method has its benefits and its problems. Overhead watering is what most people in the East think of when you mentioning watering, but in the water-hungry West (since the development of the plastics industry over the past twenty years) on-ground or underground irrigation has become very common, especially in mild areas where the ground doesn’t freeze solid in the winter. Drip-and-ooze systems are very efficient in terms of water use; but unless you bury the pipes eight to twelve inches deep, you’ll need to remove them each time you prepare or cultivate the garden. They are also hard to clean if they become clogged.
     There are two basic kinds of drip-ooze systems, and each is suited for different plants. What I call “discrete interval emitter,” or drip irrigation lines, have small metered outlets at a regular spacing (usually every twelve to eighteen inches, though you can make up your own lines from scratch at any spacing you like). This kind of system works quite well for plants that are spaced fairly far apart from one another, like tomatoes or squash. Each plant has its own emitter and stays well watered, while the weeds and open ground in between them stay dry, which saves weeding as well as watering. On the other hand, ooze tubes work better for closely spaced crops, like carrots or spinach. An ooze tube is a porous-walled hose that uniformly oozes water over its entire surface. This moistens the whole area for a foot or two on each side of the hose (depending on soil type).
     Purely as a practical matter, it makes sense to have some lines of each type, but the emitter types are usually made of virgin polyethylene or a related formula, while the ooze tube can be made from recycled auto tires. Since discarded tires are an enormous landfill problem in America, and water shortages are an increasingly frequent occurrence, using ooze tube irrigation is a satisfying way for a home gardener to solve two problems at once.
     The equipment for overhead watering is much more diverse; most of the difference being at the end of the hose. Note that, as with most of a gardener’s basic equipment, hoses are no place to skimp. Cheap, plastic hoses quickly become brittle and stiff, which makes moving them around the garden not only a hassle, but frequently a real danger to the plants. After a few seasons of Christmastime hints to my family, I now have plenty of reinforced rubber hose, 3/4 inch in diameter, in a range of different lengths, so that I can use the minimum length for each job. Not only is this neater, but it preserves water pressure for the job at hand: running sprinklers. The performance of any kind of irrigation system is highly pressure-dependent, and there’s no sense losing pressure before the water even gets to the business end of the hose. For really large gardens, professional impact sprinkler heads are the way to go. There are some new Israeli-designed, plastic impeller types that perform better, but they are difficult to find. Either kind should be mounted on six-foot-tall supply pipes if you want to get even coverage. That way the water spray will be above all but the tallest crops.
     Oscillating wand-type sprinklers can water square or rectangular spaces. But in my experience the coverage is not really even, and the motion of the spray head on wet ground makes a bit of a mess in open soil. Diffusion-type sprayers may make a lot of sense for small, rectangular raised-bed gardens. Diffusion sprayers don’t move, but instead direct a spray of water against a specially shaped part, which causes the stream to splatter in a particular pattern. They, too, are sloppy, but both of these put water out faster than impact sprinklers.
     Some people prefer to water by hand and, for a small garden that may be all that’s necessary. But you should still choose your spray head with care. The trigger-grip types are useful for washing (and for transplanting; see Chapter 7), but are too hard to control for irrigation. The same is true of nozzle types, but even more so. What you should get is a fan spray, which breaks the stream into a wide, relatively narrow band. This slows down the process enough so that the soil has time to soak up the water, and the shape makes it efficient, too. Dedicated hand-waterers like to put a gooseneck extension handle on the end of the hose leading to the spray head, not only to make holding it for extended periods more comfortable, but also so they can get the head down low and spray upward in an arching stream. By doing this they mimic the force of natural rainfall more closely. For more details see the irrigation section of Chapter 7.
One last piece of irrigation equipment we find useful is a siphon proportioner, a small device that screws into the hose line. By suction it pulls liquid fertilizer from a pail at a constant rate (depending on the water pressure and flow). It makes caring for early spring seedlings much easier and allows convenient side dressing of crops later in the season as well. Whatever kind of fertilizer you use, even if not organic, this is an invaluable device for fertilizing seedlings. An anti-backflow device is built in to keep fertilizer or water from traveling back into the sill cock.
     The amount of water your garden gets, whether from rain or irrigation, is vitally important to its success, and a small, inexpensive rain gauge is all you need to track this successfully; just empty it after each rain (or watering) and keep a running tally. After a few seasons you’ll have a good feeling for just how wet or dry your garden is.
     Another small piece of equipment that will put you in closer touch with what is actually happening in your garden is a soil and compost thermometer. This is a small, weatherproof and shatterproof thermometer mounted on a spike that you can stick into the ground (or the compost pile). Soil temperature is critical to the germination of seeds, and planting at the proper time removes the need for chemical seed treatment; so, for an organic gardener this is nearly an essential piece of equipment. The same thermometer can be used to monitor the temperature swings in your compost pile, which is an excellent gauge of its progress at turning garden refuse into nature’s best soil-conditioning fertilizer. As with the rain gauge, after a few years you will gain a practical insight into the actual progress of the seasons in your own garden.

Trellises

Trellises are an integral part of garden equipment. Many crops are not only more productive, but more resistant to disease when grown on supports, whether it’s something as simple as a stake in the ground, or expensive store-bought pipe-and-mesh trellises for trailing and climbing plants. While many garden centers sell inexpensive conical wire tomato cages, most are way too small for an indeterminate tomato, and any tomato plant that is small enough for them probably doesn’t need the support. You can make better wire cages from concrete reinforcing wire (available from most building supply stores). The conventional way is to cut a six-foot section of the five-foot-wide wire, and bend it around to make a column that surrounds the plant. This should be anchored with a stout stake against wind.
     Even anchored, though, they don’t have much lateral strength, and in a windy location may blow right over once the plants are grown. A better solution, using the same materials, was taught me by a French seed salesman who visited our garden one summer to see the vegetable trial plantings (for which he had supplied the seed). Instead of taking the concrete wire and making a column, you cut the wire to any manageable length and then bend it lengthwise, over the rows, in an arch. This way, as the plants grow they will pass up through the mesh and rest on top of it, safely off the ground, but absolutely certain not to blow over. An added benefit is that you can drape plastic or fabric covers over these makeshift “Quonset” trellises for the first few weeks to encourage early plant growth. Whatever kind of wire you use, and however you use it, though, make sure that the mesh is a minimum of five inches square so you can reach through to harvest any fruit growing inside.
     These wire Quonsets are widely adaptable to a number of smaller crops as well. A five- foot section does an excellent job supporting peppers and eggplants (as well as annuals grown far cut flowers!), and a four-foot section, spanning a row of snap beans, will keep even a full crop of pods up off the ground, thus preventing losses to rot.
     For taller crops, one adaptable system is made from vertical wooden posts with lengths of electrical conduit running horizontally between them. All that is required for this kind of trellis is a collection of electrical conduit sections of convenient length and solid, sharpened 2(2 inch wooden poles—two, four, and eight feet long—that can be strung up with untreated garden twine in various configurations. I use untreated twine so that, once the crop is harvested, I can simply cut down the lines, with the plants still attached, roll up the whole affair, and throw it on the compost pile. Treated twine will not rot as fast, and puts biocides in the compost.
     If you choose to use treated wood, keep it to a minimum. When you buy treated wood, or treat it yourself—even by painting—you not only expose yourself to the chemicals involved, but you create demand for them, which means pollution being created somewhere else, in the place where they are manufactured. Use treated wood only where absolutely necessary, use as little as possible, and make sure it lasts as long as possible.
     Electrical conduit is available in ten-foot lengths at hardware and building supply stores and is a relatively inexpensive material for trellises. In my own garden I make two lengths: five and ten feet. This allows efficient use of the conduit, given the size of our beds, but there are innumerable other possibilities that might be more applicable to your own garden. The conduit can be cut with a tube cutter or hacksaw. I buy the 3/4-inch-diameter size, flatten three inches or so at each end with a hammer, and then drill a 1/4-inch hole an inch in from the end.
     To erect this kind of trellis is simple. Set the first stake and gently pound it into the ground to a depth of eighteen inches or so. Lay the conduit next to it, running along the row; its length will determine the spot to erect the second post. Set the second post so that the top is generally level with the first, then lay up the conduit so that the flattened ends are on top of the stakes and screw down through the holes into the top of the stakes. We use black drywall screws, which go in easily and hold well.
     Of all the systems I tried over the years, some store-bought and some homemade, I become convinced that the cheapest, most adaptable, least troublesome to store, and easiest to maintain is bamboo, and I now use it almost exclusively for our tall crops. By using only four sizes of canes (four-, six-, eight-, and twelve-foot lengths) we are, nonetheless, able to construct equivalents to any of the post and bar trellises described above, precisely sized to our 12X20-foot beds. Using a teepee system, the resulting trellises are much more wind-resistant as well.
     The basic unit consists of two sets of four 8-foot canes and one 12-footer. Set the first four canes 2 feet apart each way in a square at one end of a 12-foot row (any lesser length will work just as well, using a shorter top cane), and repeat this at the other end of the row. Then cinch the tops of the canes together with untreated twine 8 to 12 inches down from the top to make two four-legged teepees, lay the 12-foot cane across the two tops, and cinch it down. This makes a very stable, wind-resistant structure functionally similar to the pole-and-conduit trellis described earlier, but capable of handling two rows of plants.
Regardless of which materials and method you use to build the trellis, you should rig it with untreated twine. The first step is to tie a taut line from upright to upright an inch or so off the ground. (Make sure it doesn’t touch the ground, or it will rot prematurely.)
     From this point the method of rigging will differ according to the crop being grown. For tomatoes and large vining crops like cucumbers or beans, run a single line down from the top bar, cinch it to the bottom cross line, then tie it around the base of the plant with an oversized non-slip knot. (A slip knot will tighten up over the course of the season and eventually strangle the plant.) Tomatoes need to have slack left in the line, but for the other crops the vertical lines can be reasonably taut. If the plant climbs by tendrils, or sends out a lot of lateral branches, horizontal lines can be run every foot or so up the trellis to provide extra support. With the bamboo trellis you will end up with sets of twine, both angling toward a common top bar.
     In sum, plants that grow by twining, or can be manually twined (like tomatoes) need mostly vertical lines, while those like peas and cucumbers, which climb by gripping with tendrils, need more horizontal members.

Power Tools

To my mind, power tools are the least important equipment for any garden under 500 square feet, so let’s get them right out of the way. During my ten years as a market gardener I was absolutely dependent on machines to get enough work done to make a living—even a meager one. I started out with 2,500 square feet, double-dug by hand, and kept expanding until I had three acres of raised beds maintained with a tractor-mounted tiller. Along the way I tried many different types of garden machinery.
     Realistically, as gardeners in a modern industrialized society, we can’t avoid some use of power machinery, but I think we ought to be more aware of its appropriate use. A small garden can easily be prepared by hand with nothing more than a spade and garden fork; given time, all garden material will compost, without shredding; and given the human energy (which comes, after all, from the food you grow in the garden) the lawn can be cut with a hand mower. That said, let’s consider which power tools may be appropriate, both to the job at hand and to the health of the planet.
     The three machines that I use most frequently are a lawn mower, a line trimmer, and a rototiller, in that order. Grass is a good cover for garden paths, and not hard to maintain with a mower. Experts agree that you should use a mulching mower, which shreds the cut grass instead of bagging it, so that it mulches and fertilizes the sod as it cuts. If you do rake up or bag your clippings, use them for compost or mulch in the garden; do not send them to the landfill. The size, features, and quality of the machine you buy should be determined by the particulars of your situation.
     Light-duty line trimmers are ideal for cutting tall growth and for places that a mower can’t reach. They can be particularly helpful in harvesting cover crops and battling weeds in waste places too small, too rough, or too irregular for mowing, such as drainage swales, fence lines, and storage areas. The best kinds have a shoulder harness and a pair of handlebars rising out of a straight power shaft; these two features go a long way toward lessening the fatigue that comes with long bouts of trimming. Again, balance your budget against the features that you need.
     There are many kinds of tillers, but we will limit ourselves to three types: lightweight, no-wheel tillers; front-end tillers; and rear-tine tillers.
     The newest of these are the no-wheel tillers. Their design was made possible by the development of truly lightweight two-stroke engines, which made it feasible for the machine to be picked up and carried to the garden for use. These differ from conventional tillers in that the tines are one-piece, star-shaped wheels made of lightweight steel, which are sharper and rotate much faster. Whether these characteristics are of real value, or are simply requirements of the high-revving two-stroke engines they use I can’t say. However, because of their light weight and lack of wheels, they do make more sense for the raised bed gardener—especially one whose beds are timber-framed—because, if the bed is not too wide, they will turn the soil from the edge of the bed without your having to step in it, which is one of the major problems of the larger tillers. These units cost about $200 to $400.
     The next step up in size is the front-end tiller. They are generally powered by a lawn-mower–sized engine mounted above the tines, which are of the standard alternating left and right “L”-shaped configuration. A front-end tiller will usually have a set of wheels behind the tines, so you can tilt the whole machine back and roll it to the garden. Once there, it effectively “walks” on the rotating tines. This kind of tiller is not really effective at breaking sod or turning under heavy cover crops for initial garden preparation, as it tends to walk over anything it can’t immediately cut into with its tines. Thus, to make it chop sod ,you have to hold it back with brute force, which is quite tiring. In an established garden it works well enough; but I have to wonder what the point is then, as cultivation of the average garden is more quickly done by hand, using a good hoe. Plus you can work backwards, covering your tracks as you go, which isn’t possible with any kind of walk-behind machinery. The last time I checked, prices for front-end tillers were in the $400 to $600 range.
     The top rung in rototillers (short of buying a tractor with a tiller attachment) is the self-propelled rear-tine tiller. With a good, heavy-duty model you can break sod, turn under cover crops, and do spring garden preparation—even hill potatoes if your garden is absolutely level and the soil in great condition. I used to have one of these tillers and I did use it occasionally, though for the average gardener I think it would make more sense to rent one in the spring for initial preparation, and perhaps again in the fall to turn under the remains of your crops. The $1,000 to $2,000 cost of a large rototiller is, in my mind, rarely justified by the amount of work that needs to be done.
     Some of the largest components of yard and garden waste—leaves and prunings, as well as spent corn, sunflower and Brassica plants—do not rot quickly. My grandfather had an extra compost pile for these kinds of garden wastes and so do I. But, if you are short of space, leaves and shrub trimmings can be put through a small chipper-shredder first, and then added to the compost pile.
     If you do decide to purchase a chipper-shredder, buy it for the job it was meant to do. Many of the inexpensive electric models can handle only brush and twigs; the throat of the machine is not large enough to take a broccoli, corn, or sunflower stalk, nor can leaves be efficiently fed into them. Other models are designed almost exclusively to shred leaves and have large throats, but will clog immediately if fed solid material. The larger (and more expensive) gas-powered models will handle both kinds of materials, but only if they are fairly dry and stiff.
     Don’t be misled by advertisements that show chipper-shredders consuming branches big enough for firewood (that’s not what most of your waste is, anyway) and assume they will be able to handle everything else, too. I have tried both gas and electric models, and none of them effectively chops up spoiled hay, still-green tomato stalks, or pea vines. If you hope to speed up the composting process by first shredding the materials, you’ll be disappointed. You’ll also spend a lot of time cleaning out the machine. Small electric shredders cost about $200 to $500, while gas-powered models will run you $500 to $1,000. Make sure the garden generates enough refuse to justify such an investment.
     As I implied earlier, my favorite tools are the two I was born with: my hands. One of the great things about hand work is that you don’t have to restrict yourself to a single task, as you are almost forced to with a manufactured tool. Your hand is adaptable. Consider weeding: You can pull your fingers through the top inch or so of soil, breaking up the rain-compacted surface, and then, with the same movement of the wrist, but a slight realignment of the fingers, smooth it out again. If, in your haste, you bump a newly set transplant, your hand, unlike the fast-moving, sharp-edged hoe—which would shear off a tomato or pepper seedling as if it were merely another weed—recognizes it as a plant to be saved and passes it by. Only your hand, when it meets a rock, can instantly transform itself from a cultivator into a grabber and toss the offender off into the puckerbrush. Only your hand, if it uncovers a grub, can quickly perform the best and only completely effective form of pest control: crushing it. Only your hand if it accidentally disturbs a young seedling, can immediately replace it and firm the soil around its roots. In contrast, the tool-bound gardener must put down his tool, the farmer must dismount (assuming he even notices the damage) before switching tasks.
     Just about the harshest criticism one market gardener can aim at another is that he “farms from the seat of a tractor.” What this means is that he doesn’t really know what is happening at the plant level—and that is where the garden is alive, at the plant level, at the soil level. Many commercial growers are forced into this position by economic necessity, but as home gardeners we don’t face the same pressures.
If you want to really know and enjoy your garden, don’t neglect the intimacy that comes with hand work. Get down on your hands and knees, run your hands through the soil, smell it; there are as many living things in one double handful of soil as there are people on earth! Check the undersides of plant leaves for insect eggs instead of just walking by and dousing them with spray, even an organic-approved spray. You might find that the time you spend taking care of your garden is a whole lot more satisfying, and a lot less like work.

Pesticide Smarts

Throughout this site you will see recommendations for particular pest controls, very few of which involve the spraying or dusting of pesticides. Nonetheless, a basic understanding of what pesticides are and how they work is invaluable. Pesticides run the gamut from homemade remedies to high-tech and highly toxic chemicals, and in one form or another they have been in use since humans first began cultivating plants. The ancient Sumerians and Chinese, for instance, used mineral and botanical compounds to control various pests.
     There are four main categories of pesticides: insecticides, bactericides, fungicides, and herbicides. But we will concern ourselves only with insecticides because, except for fungicides like Captan or Thiram, most vegetable garden use of pesticides is for the control of insects. There are four basic types of insecticides using three general methods of action. Pesticides can be biological, botanical, mineral (or elemental), or synthetic, and they generally kill either by infection or poisoning, though some pesticides act mechanically. We will discuss them in terms of their origin, stating the method of action for each class.
     Biological pesticides are those that kill by infection, and they essentially involve the destruction of one organism by another. The best example is the microbial insecticide Bacillus thuringiensis, or Bt, which is a naturally occurring bacterium that infects the gut of soft-bodied caterpillars. By applying a solution of this bacteria to the edible parts of affected plants, we guarantee that the pest caterpillar becomes infected with the bacterium, which produces a toxin that poisons the caterpillar. The old homemade remedy of “bug juice,” described in detail under Broccoli in Chapter 8, is also a bacterial spray. Other bacterial pesticides have been developed; in most cases they are quite specific to the pests for which they are applied, and thus nontoxic for humans and other creatures. A problem may arise with the widespread use of bacterial sprays, however, if the pest species develop genetic resistance to the diseases they cause.
     Botanical pesticides are those derived from plants. Pyrethrum and rotenone are two well-known and widely used botanical dusts. Both are contact poisons and, as such, are relatively toxic to a wide range of organisms, including humans. They are, however, short-lived in the environment, and not responsible for the kinds of long-term health and pollution problems associated with synthetics pesticides. Sprays made from hot peppers or garlic juice have also been used since time immemorial as pest and disease controls, respectively. Garlic juice depends on its sulfur content for its effectiveness, as sulfur is toxic to all kinds of bacteria and fungi, while the former depends on capsaicin, the essential compound found in hot peppers. Other botanical (as well as some petroleum) oils are also used as pest controls, primarily on shrubs and trees. They work by coating the pest with oil, usually during its dormant stage, so that it smothers.
     Mineral (or elemental) pesticides are those composed of mined and/or refined materials. The sulfur naturally present in garlic is also available in pure form for use as a fungicide, as is elemental copper. Both can be toxic at high levels, but are rarely used extensively enough to cause immediate problems. Arsenic and mercury are far more toxic, and were once widely used, though rarely now. Diatomaceous earth is mined from ancient marine crustacean deposits and forms a gritty dust that gets into the joints of the exoskeleton, or shell, of hard-bodied insects, wears holes in it, and thus causes them to die of dehydration.
     Synthetic pesticides are those that are manmade. Soap is a relatively benign example; like diatomaceous earth, liquid soap sprays, properly formulated, can break the skin of many insect species and so kill them by dehydration.
     Most of the chemical pesticides are synthetic materials, and among them are different kinds, with different levels of toxicity and effectiveness. The first generation of synthetics, developed primarily as a result of Allied chemical warfare research during World War II, were the organochlorines, or chlorinated hydrocarbons. The most famous (or infamous) of these is DDT; but others, some even more toxic, include chlordane, aldrin, endrin, and Dieldrin. These are all nerve poisons. In addition to their effectiveness at killing not only insect pests but other wildlife, they are responsible for numerous human deaths and illnesses. They persist both in the environment and in the tissues of plants and animals (including humans), so that exposure to these extremely toxic chemicals is cumulative over time.
     A second group of pesticides, developed by the Germans for their own nerve gases during World War II are the organophosphates. As problems began to develop with DDT and the others, these new compounds found widespread use both on farms and in the garden. Look on the hardware store shelf: you’ll see two widely used organophosphate pesticides: diazinon and Malathion. While they seem not to be as toxic to humans as the organochlorine pesticides, organophosphates are very toxic to bees and other beneficial insects, so their use interferes with the natural balance of the garden.
     The third category of synthetic pesticides that interest us here is the carbamates, developed in the late 1940s. Their method of action and toxicity is similar to organophosphates. The major carbamate insecticide used in home gardens is carbaryl, sold under the trade name Sevin. Aldicarb, or Temik, a chemically related farm insecticide, was responsible for a highly publicized mass poisoning some years ago after it was illegally applied to a crop of watermelons sold to a supermarket chain.

If You Must...

Prevention of problems is, of course, the hallmark of a good gardener, organic or otherwise. But for most of us, there will be at least occasional outbreaks of pests and diseases. The most basic form of control is to physically remove pests or diseased parts from the plant, where possible, and destroy them. This is easy with the occasional infected leaf and slow-moving grubs or caterpillars; no disease or pest species has ever developed a resistance to being burned or crushed underfoot. But with tiny, fast-moving flies and beetles, or widespread disease, spraying or dusting is often the only practical method of control.
     Under no conditions would I use any of the synthetic insecticides (or fungicides). I use the botanical and mineral controls only if absolutely necessary, as their effect on other species in the garden (including me!) disrupts the balance I seek to maintain. Only the microbial insecticides like Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) species targeted are truly selective—that is, hurt only the pest—and thus fit into an organic program of pest control. As a matter of principle, though, even they should be used only as a last resort, not as a crutch.

Pest Control Equipment

If you will be using dusts and sprays you will need the equipment to apply them, and safety equipment for yourself. As noted above, many of the pest controls that are considered organic because of their natural origin are nonetheless as toxic to humans as they are to the pests they are meant to attack: they are preferable to synthetics primarily because they break down quickly into benign materials, and thus have no long-term, cumulative side effects on the environment. You should always wear protective clothing while using them. A paper mask is usually sufficient, but I wear an actual respirator to be on the safe side. Gloves and goggles are not strictly necessary, but still . . . we organic gardeners are a cautious lot.
     The best kind of duster to get is the kind that has a rotating blower to power the dust, some sort of hopper to hold the powder, and a relatively long, adjustable nozzle to direct the dust. If your garden is large, get one that has a shoulder strap, as holding the unit while rotating the crank will quickly tire your hands. The adjustable nozzle is important because you need to get the dust up under the plants’ leaves where the pests hide out, and unless you plan to get down on your hands and knees each time you dust, the extension tube on the nozzle duster comes in handy. For small gardens a trombone-type plunger duster will work, but you’ll wear out your arms trying to cover any substantial amount of space with one.
     The same concerns apply to spray equipment. The little pump bottles see at the hardware store may be fine for a small garden, but if yours is bigger than about five hundred square feet, go for a backpack sprayer and save yourself a lot of aggravation. There are a number of good models on the market that allow you to pump with one arm and spray with the other. These sprayers work very well for foliar feeding (applying dilute liquid fertilizer to plant leaves) as well as pest control.