My Garden Site

It seems like most gardeners live where they can grow just about anything without too much effort. Unfortunately, I am not like most gardeners. My soil is full of heavy red clay that must be worked and amended before I can start with my gardens and gardening.

Though it may feel as though Mother Nature is against you, facilitating growth in less than perfect climates has been a problem for gardens and gardening for many years, in many locations far more difficult to work with than yours. Those years of experimentation and experience have yielded a great deal of useful information that will help you to grow what you want without the use of gallons of fertilizers and other harmful chemicals.

What is a Microclimate?

In the simplest terms, a microclimate is created when you manually alter the variables such as light and shade, moisture and wind for each type of plant in your garden. While it sounds like quite an undertaking, it really doesn’t need to be nearly so difficult as you might believe.

In my own garden I have found great success by using time-honored methods such as companion planting. Selecting a taller, sun-loving plant and allowing it to protect smaller, more fragile shade dwellers can be an excellent way to build your own microclimate. In addition you can use sun and wind shades in the form of other plants or even landscaping items (such as large stones).

For plants that need more water, amending the soil surrounding those plants, and using plenty of mulch can make the most of the water they receive and is usually more than enough to help the most thirsty plants put their best feet forward - so to speak.

Using What You Have

Sometimes it takes a third party to make you realize the options available to you in your own garden. Do you have a fenced area in your yard? Many forms of fencing provide a great deal of shade and wind protection, so why not consider creating a microclimate for your gardens and gardening along the fence line?

If you happen to have an area that is visually dead or unappealing, think about adding a nice trellis and a flowering vine (or even a seasonal vegetable like beans or cucumbers).

I hope that the information in this short article has been enough to give you a few new ideas about how to use microclimates in your own garden. Be creative and try to see your own gardening area as a new environment - a blank palette to work with. This is the first step to making your garden a true showplace that will be the envy of the neighborhood.

Above all else, make sure that you are having fun. Gardens and gardening can be back breaking work, but the end results should make you smile. If it doesn’t bring you some enjoyment, what is the point?

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 3rd, 2008 at 6:40 pm and is filed under general. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.