Traditional gardening tricks and tips for the difficult spots
Thursday, August 26th, 2010There’s always some mysterious area in every garden which decides to be difficult. These are the modern versions of the problems of gardening’s early history, and the old gardeners learned how to deal with them very effectively. Technologically, these methods are somewhere between the pool cleaner and the invention of the wheel, but they work.
The problems
Whatever it is, The Problem will be pretty easy to define, most of the time.
It can be:
- A wet area: A drainage problem, by definition.
- A dry area: The dry area, ironically, can be as much of a drainage problem as the wet area, because its allowing water to drain straight through, or causing runoff problems
- Clay which eats footwear: It’s usually a major body of clay, and it can do strange things to foundations, as well as gardens
- That strange alleged “soil” which looks like grey sand and refuses to grow anything but weeds
- The parts of the lawn which look like a Western movie set
These are quite serious problems, if you don’t know how to deal with them. Even minor problem areas tend to become the source of weeds, and some can cause erosion or drainage problems.