How to create a Short Hedge in your Flower Garden

How to create a Short Hedge in your Flower Garden

We’ve been growing a hedge for the past ten months or so using non-perennial ornamental bushes. We’re hoping to make it a small hedge that surrounds our flower garden.  The purpose of this hedge will be to discourage people from stepping on the flowers growing in the garden.  This morning, we spent a few moments trimming the plants so that they would grow in a straight line.  We also put in posts and wire that will help guide the bushes to grow to the height we are targeting.

Posts - Reused wood

Trimming Scissors

Things we needed:

6 posts- can be used wooden sticks.

Wire

Trimming Scissors

Procedure:

1. Make sure your garden is free of weeds first.  This way it will be easier to work with the plants.
2. Measure the size you want your fence to grow into.  Our height goal is 3”, so we measured the posts to be 5” tall.
3. Dig holes according to the length of your garden and how far your fence is.  For us we needed 6 posts, for 6 holes along the fence.  The distance between each post is at your discretion.  The depth of the holes was 2” inches.
4. Put your posts in to the holes, and make sure they are firm. 
5. Tie the wire along the posts at the height you want your fence to reach.
6. Weave the branches into the wires.  This will direct your plant to grow along the wire, and any branches straying away above the wire, get to be trimmed.

This picture on the left is the end result.  This activity makes it easier to trim the branches of the plants as they grow into the wires creating the small hedge below.

Short Hedge

Jade Vermi Composting Project

Facts about Composting and Organic farming

1. Composting is a key ingredient in Organic farming.
1. We use organic matter like vegetable and fruit peels, plant leaves and stalks, and food waste to create compost. The decayed matter that comes from gives us fertilizer to use in our soil to enrich it with nutrients.

Using chemicals in soil destroys the good micro organisms that help our plants to grow healthily so we opt to use Composting. We're always excited to learn new ways of improving our soil. This blog introduces to you our new skill, learned from a very cool, awesome guy who does Vermi Composting.

We have recently learned about Vermi Composting. 

What is Vermi Compost?

-        This is using earthworms to create nutrient rich organic fertilizers and soil conditioner.

Why use Vermi Compost?

-        It helps improve soil structure.

-        Improves water holding capacity.

-        Enriches soil in micro-organisms

-        Attract deep burrowing earthworms already present in soil

-        It enhances germination, plant grown and crop yield

-        Improving root germination

The soil turns a dark black color that absorbs water readily

Jade Vermi Composting Project

Here at Jade Gardens, we have started our own Vermi Compost project. We want to try out Vermi Composting. We are always learning new techniques to improve our organic farming. We'll share this new experience with you as we learn a new way of improving our soil using Vermi Compost! For the next 60 days, we’re going to log in our progress on our blog. Stay tuned as we embark on our own vermi composting adventure. 

Did you know?

A worm has no arms, legs or eyes.

What we need: 

1. A box to keep our earthworms warm and working through the night. 

2. Some earthworms. We'll go on an earthworm hunt around our farm.

3. A warm dark area to keep our worms.

Next Week:

We'll show you pictures of our set up!

Stay tuned.