Two cheap products with incredibly stupid names have just made yard work a lot easier, and I couldn’t be more delighted.

See, my garden tools are good quality — every garden guru will tell you that’s important — but they’re geting old. (Aren’t we all?) And I have to confess that I’ve never cared for my tools the way all the gardening books say you should. Sharpen the blades, oil the wood, lubricate the moving parts, clean off the mud after using them, store away carefully in a dry place to prevent rust… frankly, who has time for all that?

Particularly at the end of a hot day’s labour, when all you want is a long refreshing shower and some sort of beverage….

As it turns out, however, a bit of time put into proper garden tool care will actually save time (and effort, and unladylike language) later on.

Okay, really I did know that…

But the whole tool-sharpening business is just too difficult and time-consuming (whetstone? grinder? file? what?) — or too expensive, if you tote the tools to the place you get your lawnmower fixed or a full-service hardware store for sharpening.

The Easy Way to Make Old Garden Tools Work Better

Let me introduce you to Jig-a-Loo and the Samurai Shark.

I told you, these products have incredibly stupid names. One sounds like something you’d see advertised on a late-night TV shopping channel, or in a third-rate Ninja movie. And the other one sounds, well, just plain rude…

But don’t be fooled. These two are my new best friends!

They’re cheap, and they work, and you can grab them both at Amazon.com if your local hardware store doesn’t have them in stock.

Here’s the scoop:

Jig-a-Loo is a silicone-based lubricant spray that goes on clear and dries fast. It has a sharp unpleasant solvent-type odour when you first spray it, but that goes away almost immediately. Use it to loosen rusted-together nuts and bolts, fix squeaky doors and sticky locks, lubricate the moving parts of things (like the sliding window in my back door, or the handles of my ancient garden shears) so they move more smoothly and easily…

In short, it’s a great substitute for a spray can of WD-40, the home handyman’s traditional all-purpose lubricant. But Jig-a-Loo doesn’t have any grease or oil, so it’s not going to add to your cleaning problems. And you can use it on leather, wood, metal, and most plastics and fabric. Oh, and it repells water, too — if they could train the little orange can to put itself away in the cupboard when I’m done with it, that would be perfect.

Samurai Shark — I almost can’t say that with a straight face! — is not much more than a plastic handle with a couple of blades and a knob or two to adjust them with. Fortunately, it has two things going for it:

1. it is cheap, and
2. it works.

Sharpen anything from your dainty embroidery scissors to hefty lawnmower blades with this tool, including those serrated paring knives that the knife-sharpening kiosk guy won’t even look at.

It’s remarkable how much easier those heavy garden chores become when you’re not fighting to chop through sod or to divide perennial plants with a dull spade. Simply astonishing. And believe me, both your arms and your shrubs will appreciate it if you prune with sharp secateurs instead of hacking through the branches with a dull blade.

The first day with my Samurai Shark, I rounded up all the garden tools and sat on the back verandah in the sunshine. I spread out the instruction leaflet beside me, weighted it down with a coffee cup, and worked my way through the pile of tools.

The instructions are needed (but be warned, the print is really tiny! — thankfully, there are also pictures) because this is not intuitive. Each kind of knife or blade will need to be sharpened in a particular way, using one or the other of the Shark’s two built-in blades. It definitely takes a few minutes to get the hang of it, especially if you’re not exactly in the habit of sharpening garden tools…

And then I sprayed all the nuts and bolts that hold together the blades of the shears and pruners and loppers and secateurs and scissors with Jig-a-Loo. Just one complaint there, which also applies to good ol’ WD40 as well as Jig-a-Loo — I can never keep the little straw in the nozzle for more than one spritz.

(What do you think, am I spraying with too much enthusiasm? Anyone know a good trick for this?)

The rest of the afternoon, I dashed about the yard doing all the garden chores I’d been putting off — trimming the long grass around the base of trees with my newly sharp-and-lubricated old garden shears, pruning the hydrangea with secateurs as sharp and smooth-moving as the day I got them, and generally being more productive in far less time than usual.

And now that it’s getting on for the season where a lot of the perennial plants in the flower beds need to be lifted and divided, I can face the task with a little more energy (I’ve been doing those darned pushups, after all, eh?) and with garden tools that work for me, not fight against me!

Last night, watching a Law & Order re-run, I had a sudden epiphany — if Television can be believed, the flat roof of a big-city building is

1. an immensely unattractive place, dark, with a high probability of rain or snow
   and
2. almost certain to hold a psychotic serial killer, wild-eyed and poised to drop an adorable child off the edge…

But have you noticed, no crime scenes are ever set on a rooftop with a garden?

Ah, but just yesterday morning, I read a newspaper story about the uncounted number of “small-time criminals” who secretly keep honeybees on urban rooftops and in suburban backyards, fearlessly flouting all manner of good-intentioned by-laws meant to discourage the encroachment of Nature into the concrete jungle.

(Apparently, urban areas are a surprisingly good home for honeybees, because of the long season of varied bloom, sources of pollen and nectar, to be found in window boxes, balcony container gardens, bits of waste land, city parks, and of course roof gardens.)

A third rooftop-garden item was my stumbling discovery this morning of G-Sky, a company in British Columbia (Canada) that has come up with a thin and lightweight alternative to the traditional rooftop garden growing system.

Now, gardens may go where no garden has gone before!

An intriguing option is the Green Wall — a vertical version of groundcover plantings.

I have a vague memory of seeing a “living wall” installed in the atrium of an office building somewhere, a few years back, but it had some kind of a waterfall incorporated into it and was, of course, suitable only for an indoor location.

The whole point about G-Sky’s system, as I read it, is the ability to make the most productive green use of limited available space in the urban environment — not just on a horizontal plane, but vertically in spaces where there’s barely room for the width of a human boot.

They use a lot of sedum, which makes sense in these water-conscious times — but also other plants (I see a variety of euonymus there) of different heights and colours and textures, hardy to various growing zones and conditions.

The photo gallery on the G-Sky site shows some rather exciting real-world installations, including walls where different types of plants are used to create complex patterns, even company logos. My favourite application is the green screening wall — living plants instead of ratty old plywood to screen off the sidewalk from a dusty construction site.

Green, healthful, beautiful, CO2-reducing, soothing, and all in all life-enhancing… Maybe there should be some kind of by-law requiring major property developers to include a minimum square footage of green walls and roofs in their projects?

Just a thought.

Friends are very forgiving about small garden imperfections (that’s why they’re friends!) but this year, we’ve got A Big Wedding Anniversary coming up in the extended family and everyone’s keen on making the party an outdoor event. We’ll want the place to look its very best for the occasion — but re-designing the landscape completely is out of the question!

So I’ve been going back through some earlier garden-related posts of mine, seeking inspiration, and remembering my Aunt Virgie’s old tried-and-true methods of getting a show-stopping yard and garden without actually going to a lot of trouble or expense.

5 Ways To Fake A Show-Off Garden

(with thanks to my frugal and green-thumbed Aunt Virgie)

1. Planter Magic

Need some colour? Group a few containers of lush flowering annuals wherever your borders look tired or dull. Keep your planters in the one single family of materials for unity — if you do terracotta for one, do terra cotta for all — but do mix up the heights and sizes of the pots to increase the interest.

2. Weed Wisdom

If you don’t have the time to weed all your borders before a big garden party or flower-loving in-laws are expected, concentrate your efforts on tidying up the front six or eight inches of each bed. A clean edge gives such a good impression, no one will notice a stray weed among the back-of-border specimens.

If time permits, do crisp up the meeting of soil and turf grass with an edger or straight-edged spade. And if your budget permits (which mine never does, oddly enough), consider a layer of decorative mulch.

3. Artful Dodges

Locate the lawn art with care. A piece of garden sculpture or a wind-driven whirly-gig can do a lot to dress up a garden, if chosen well, but it will draw the eye to whatever you place it near. If your roses are overblown and going brown at the edges, for example, move those garden gnomes out of the rose garden and over to the late-season lilies or whatever else is looking its best at the time.

4. Put It In Perspective

In general, concentrate your major tidying-up efforts for the areas of garden that are closest to the house or outdoor seating area. Distance, when it comes to viewing a garden, can hide a multitude of flaws!

If the view form your patio leaves something to be desired, despite your best efforts, you can make the patio itself the centre of interest. Go for bright cushions on lawn furniture, a pretty table setting, groups of potted plants at the edges of the seating area, maybe a shade umbrella or two for a festive air… This is a great place for a stunningly original piece of garden sculpture, unusual windchimes, decorative pavers, all the small close-up touches that will draw the eye away from a less attractive vista.

5. Cosmetic Measures

Every yard and garden, like every house, is likely to have some bits and pieces lying around that you yourself don’t even see any more because you’re so used to them.

Try to look at your place with an outsider’s eye — the way that real estate people tell you to do when “set dressing” your home for a prospective buyer to view:

• Pick up the kids’ toys (and, of course, the dog’s droppings!).
• Tuck away your garbage cans, garden tools, water hose, and other work-a-day necessities in a garage or garden shed, out of sight. If you don’t have a building in which to hide your tools, a good-looking large deck box will do the trick — and it can double as outdoor seating, too.
• Remove or replace any outdoor furniture or garden ornaments that are showing age and wear, or just plain getting shabby.
• Seed quick-growing annual vines like Morning Glory to clamber up a network of well-placed plant sticks and screen the compost pile (or use one of the many tidy compost bins on the market).
• Consider some flower-filled windowboxes or a new coat of paint to perk up an old garden shed.

Of course, if your nearest neighbour is stockpiling old rusty automobiles in his yard, that’s another thing.

Pick an attractive point in the middle distance — in your own yard — and focus the attention there, perhaps with a show-stopping floral display (in containers, if you must) or a busy bird-feeding station.

In your long term plan, consider a free-standing trellis, overhung with vigorous grapevines or fast-growing Virginia creeper, to screen the unpleasant view. A solid privacy fence can do more than block a sight line, so think twice before installing one: there’s a chance it could block out a welcome cooling breeze, or even make your yard or garden seem smaller.

Here in Atlantic Canada, we’re getting whomped by the traditional St Patrick’s Day snowstorm and the landscape is still very much white and brown and grey… At least there’s one sweet thing about March in our climate — the sap is starting to run, and the maple sugar / syrup season has begun! Yummm!

So I’ve been enjoying a lazy morning, taking the chance to read about gardens that are a little more advanced toward spring. Here, for the other vicarious gardeners in the crowd, are two American neighbours whose virtual gardening exploits I’ve been very much enjoying lately:

Compost Bin (New Jersey)

In Six Gardening Lies, Anthony writes:

I’m going out to the garden, I’ll be back in a minute
I’ll just water these plants and then I’ll be right in. Maybe a little weeding too. Hmm, these vines needs a trellis, I think I have some extra wood in the garage…

What’s your self-delusion (or excuse to non-gardening spouse)?

Granny Gruber’s Garden (Indiana)

In Tater Planting Time, Steven Wilson writes:

Here in Indiana it is almost tater planting time again. The old farmers always plant taters on Good Friday… Potatoes are considered to be cool-season plants and can be planted just as soon as the ground has thawed and dried enough to safely work the soil.

Potato planting time may be still a couple of months away for me, but Steven does a great summary of tips for planting, growing, harvesting and storing potatoes.

(By the way, did you know that potatoes are so packed with nutritional goodness, they can sustain human life with nothing more to eat than a little cheese or yogurt on the side? See Plants that changed the world: Potato…)

The snow has changed to ice pellets now, so it’s time for me to rush outdoors and blow all the snow out of the driveway so we have a hope of getting out on the road in the next day or so.

No doubt the snow is heavy, and the snowblower will huff and puff and labour to squeeze snow out of the shoot like toothpaste (and straight onto what’s showing of my long-suffering forsythia) rather than drifting it merrily across the landscape…

Ah, well, Spring is coming… there’s more garden sites to discover when I return… and did I mention maple syrup!?

Just past Groundhog Day, and there’s already a promise of spring in our cold northern Zone 4 garden — miraculous! Of course, it has been a remarkably mild winter with little snow. Still, the green shoots that show in the rock garden this early are the hardy few among perennial plants.

Photo: withrow

My favourite among the early perennials is the Arabis, because it stays alive under the snow all winter. In the wet spring, Arabis can become a soggy unattractive mass, but it won’t take much sun and warmth for it to show signs of new life, new growth.

Arabis is one of the early and reliable bloomers in the perennial rock garden. Its low-growing fuzzy pale-green rosettes of scalloped leaves form a pretty background for a drift of bright white flowers, when blooming time comes in late May. The flowers will last for the better part of a month, gently scenting the air and attracting the beneficial pollinators to the garden.

As the blooms fade out into untidy seedheads, a quick haircut will tidy it up and often results in a second round of flowers, fewer and more scattered, but still a lasting joy in the sunshine and a luminous beauty under starlight.

The panicled Hydrangea may be slow to leaf out in the spring, compared to other popular shrubs for the northern garden. Once it gets started, however, Hydrangea paniculata puts on an everchanging show until the snow falls… and beyond.

From a mass of lush dark green foliage, the shrub blooms with loose cone-shaped clusters of small white flowers that are intensely attractive to beneficial pollinating insects, such as honeybees.

As the flowers age, the white takes on a delicate pink hue, darkening with the first frosts to a lovely dusty-rose. The flowers have the added bonus of drying well and retaining their colour for off-season bouquets of dried flowers.

It’s a hardy old-fashioned shrub that can easily be trained to a standard — the shape of a small tree, with one central stem — and it’s very tolerant of pruning at most times of the season.

“PeeGee” hydrangea (Hydrangea paniculata grandiflora) is the most common cultivar but many lovely varieties are readily available and equally well suited to our tough eastern Canadian climate.

In a treasured old copy of The English Garden magazine I revisited recently, Helen Gunn wrote:

There is a general feeling, mostly unspoken, that English names are low brow and folksy. Latin implies education and expert knowledge, no matter if it also sounds affected.

She doesn’t deny that it is sometimes very useful to have a precise Latin name by which to identify a particular plant, but regrets the fading-away of more colourful traditional plant names like kiss-at-the-wicket, leopard’s bane, love-lies-bleeding, wake robin and Oswego tea.

There is such poetry in the English names that it seems an impoverishment of our literary heritage to lose them. I would rather think that I was growing sweet sultan than centaurea or bishop’s hat than the dreary epimedium. We could even reinstate some really old names, and refer to gladioli as corn flags and nasturtiums as lark’s heels.

Around here, for example, that tall white-flowering plant I love is called snakeroot, but we are quite able to identify it as cimicifuga if forced to do so.

Oh, but didn’t I read somewhere that the garden gurus have started changing the Latin names around? So now cimicifuga is supposed to be called by another name entirely…
Well, it’s still snakeroot to me!

For autumn colour in the garden, it’s hard to find better than the rich burgundy-red foliage of Virginia Creeper (Parthenocissus quinquefolia).

We grow this versatile vine on a rustic cedar trellis (that’s it in the photo) to screen the view of our house from the neighbouring barnyard — but it also looks beautiful when grown as a groundcover plant, tumbling down a sunny hillside or over a low rock wall.

Hardy and practically pest-free in our Atlantic Canadian climate, the Virginia Creeper quickly grows to 30 feet or more. Keep it away from the base of valuable trees and shrubs or it can overwhelm them. The vine’s thick growth of grapevine-like tendrils and compound leaves provide safe cover for birds, however, and bees visit its late-summer flowers, while a number of bird species eat the small purple berries that ripen in the fall.

Someone told me to pour cold leftover tea and coffee into the potted geraniums. So, is the caffeine supposed to give the plants more energy to grow flowers? I seem to remember hearing something about putting used tea leaves around under rose bushes, too… must look into this…

Updated 28/11/2005:
Yes, I finally checked this out! See Tea and Coffee as Fertilizer!

I was just out in the garden, starting in on the sad autumn clearing up in preparation for winter, half-thinking about getting started on the mulching. But already the mice are starting to find nice homes for themselves in the flower bed, among the dying leaves of the daylilies and in the leftover summer mulch.

Note to self: don’t put the winter mulch on the flower gardens until the ground has frozen!

Otherwise, the field mice will surely dig their burrows in around and under the roots of the plants. That makes pockets in the soil for water to collect in, when we get the heavy autumn rains, and then freeze.

I’m pretty sure that’s how I lost some lovely plants last year. If the ice in the mouse holes didn’t heave them right out of the ground, the roots just rotted away from the extra moisture around them in the early spring.

I don’t much like mice, even when they’re outdoors where they belong, and not in my kitchen cupboards! But that’s a whole other topic…