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Archive for Gardening

Mar
14

Early Spring Gardening

by Frame It All

Gardeners, it’s that time again!  Your seeds are ready, your garden is mapped out, and your soil is freshly raked…and you don’t have to wait until May to begin planting! Your yard is waking up for growing season, and even if it may still be on the cool side for some folks, there are plenty of crops that can be planted now!

Frame it All’s Raised Garden Beds are the ideal tool for getting your garden started early.  Perfect for any surface, these garden beds prevent soggy soil because they heat up quickly and drain efficiently.  In a raised bed garden, your soil retains the perfect amount of moisture, so you can also add soil amendments such as compost and peat moss to enrich it in time for cool-season planting.

It might seem early to think about garden pests, but if you typically have a lot of rabbits and squirrels in your yard, you’ll want to check out our small animal barrier. It’s easy to add on to a raised bed, and will protect your seedlings from furry foragers.

There are so many different cool-season seeds, that you can begin your raised bed garden today and enjoy fresh vegetables within a matter of weeks. Spinach, lettuce, arugula, peas, cole crops (cabbage and broccoli are two examples of cole crops) and potatoes are all perfect for the cool season, and you can visit our General Gardening Info Chart to get more information on their specific needs.

If you decide to plant peas, they like to climb, so don’t forget to get a plant climbing wall. Our Veggie Walls are made to easily attach to our garden beds so that your plants can keep on climbing up in the spot they were first planted in.

Early spring is a wonderful time to be in the garden, so don’t wait! Start planting now, and enjoy the fruits of your labors even earlier in the season. Happy Early Spring Gardening!

 

 

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0 Categories : Gardening, Gardening Tips
Feb
24

Plan (and Plant) a Great Garden with Planting Grids!

by Frame It All

With the dry, brown winter landscape around us, we’re already envisioning spring’s joyful energy in our backyards! And we know many of you are lucky enough to enjoy warm weather in your region of the country, even now. We hope you’re doing a lot of gardening!

With so many plants and seeds, it’s hard to limit your choices when you only have a little space. Many of you read our recent article on square foot gardening.  We’d like to tell you a little more about how to succeed in this technique with some great, easy-to-use Frame it All products.

Frame It All’s Garden Planting Grid will allow you to grow a wide array of seedlings and will save you precious space so that you can plant all of the varieties you can imagine!  The 4 x 4 Garden Planting Grid works perfectly with our Raised Garden Beds.  Once the quick setup is complete, you will have 16 one-foot square sections to plant the crops of your choice, so you can really make the most of each 4 x 4 area.  And you aren’t limited to one 4 x 4 area or one raised garden bed–if you have larger garden beds, simply add more grids.

Our Planting Grid provides the square sections required for square foot gardening. It also allows for benefits such as better crop variety, better ability to keep track of which seeds were planted where, and easier upkeep with no tools required.  You’ll love how easy it is to use! Check out our Garden Planting Grid, and get started on your new garden today. Happy gardening!

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0 Categories : Gardening, Planting Grids
Feb
20

Want a lot of Garden in a Little Space? Try Square Foot Gardening

by Frame It All

Gardening is a labor of love, but sometimes the greatest labors don’t reap the rewards we hope for.  A technique called “square foot gardening” was introduced to solve this problem.  Since the 1980’s, square foot gardening has helped many gardeners—especially those with hardships to overcome. It makes gardening easy for beginning gardeners, gardeners with limited mobility, and gardeners dealing with poor soil.

Square foot gardening consists of an open-bottomed box divided into sections.  Frame it All raised beds lend themselves very well to this technique: for best results, use a small raised bed like our Urban Raised Bed and top it with one of our planting grids. Each section of the grid separates out a 12-inch square of rich, uncompacted soil and produces a specific amount of plants based on the plant’s size.  These smaller beds are very adaptable, and because of their size, gardeners don’t have to worry about stepping on plants and compacting the soil.

Here are some benefits to Square Foot Gardening:

  • Less Work:  you don’t need to loosen the soil, and there is less weeding due to living mulch created by close planting
  • Lowers the Water Bill:  the rich soil will hold water well and you can water directly to the roots of the plants
  • Better Accessibility: as you know, Frame it All raised beds can be stacked for less back-aching work
  • Better Protection, Better Output: using our raised beds, planting grids, and matching cold frame/greenhouse covers, you’ll increase your output by using the square foot gardening technique and extending your gardening season
  • Less Space Used:  raised beds use less space than a conventional row garden, and with this technique you can still have a great crop in your small yard or on your deck or patio
  • More Crop Variety:  each grid space allows you to plant different crops

 

With a Frame it All raised bed and a planting grid, you can have a small garden that provides an abundant group of crops.  Try square foot gardening today!

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3 Categories : Gardening, Gardening Tips
Dec
14

Basic Gardening Training

by Frame It All

December is busy with holiday plans and preparations, but true gardeners never stop gardening!  If you’re in your garden, or just dreaming about it, we’d like to share some of our educational videos to help you out.

Frame it All has many educational videos covering gardening topics and instructions to make using our products  easy and fun.  Have you seen us lately? Start with our basic training video:

It has some essential info about our products, with tips for installing. If you live in a warmer climate, use the video to construct raised vegetable garden beds so you can begin planting cool weather vegetable crops. Raised garden beds are also ideal for areas where winter tends to be rainy—they help keep your soil from washing away. Enjoy the video, and let us know what you think!

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4 Categories : Educational Videos, Gardening, Gardening Tips
Sep
15

Think Spring! Even in the Fall…

by Frame It All

It may sound crazy to new gardeners, but avid gardeners know that if you want to create a beautiful spring, you’ve got to work on it in the fall. Bulb planting occurs in September, so even though some of us are preparing for a long winter, now is the time to think about what flowers you’ll want to see peeping out of the snow-covered ground when spring comes tiptoeing back.

Bulb planting allows for different looks in your garden

Bulb flowers, with their showy blooms and hardy stalks, can be planted sparingly for an elegant display.  Planting alternate colors or one color to create rows of flowers standing proudly at attention is a traditional, time-honored way to use bulbs for your garden display. But it’s not the only way—bulbs can also offer a wonderful, easy option to fill in bare areas with lush, unrestrained color.  Here’s where you can have some fun, planting a mixed bags of bulbs in one area for a ready-made display of varied blooms of many different colors, textures, and heights.  Choosing a few daffodil varieties can produce a burst of golden color to brighten your garden after a cold, dark winter.

Use yard borders or landscape edging to define spaces for bulb displays

Installing garden edging around your beds will define areas for bulb planting. Frame it All has many options for lawn edging and garden borders to help you create a spectacular display for spring. Unlike flimsy black plastic edging, which rapidly gets down-trodden and looks awful, our ‘Eco-Friendly’ garden border systems are durable and add eye appeal to your property.  They are simple to install, with composite wood grain timbers and patented joints with long barbed stakes to ensure it stays put. Using Frame it All landscaping borders, you don’t even need to dig around your garden beds! Check out our video for an easy weekend project this month.

Once bulbs are planted, cover with mulch and stones to protect from animals (to a deer, bulbs are practically a delicacy) and let them sit over the winter.  You may want to add the protection of our small animal barrier to keep out those pesky critters once the shoots appear! Spring will bring the reward: a spectacular display of vibrant color around your yard or garden. You can also use one of our lawn edging kits to create a circular border under trees; although there are some special considerations for planting bulbs under trees.

Bulbs can work for you…no matter the weather!

Now, for those of us in cool climates, the nice thing about bulbs is that they require a dormancy period to bloom properly. With our own ready-made dormancy period—frost and winter—we love bulbs in the colder regions of North America.  Hey, all that snow has to be good for something!  But if you live in a warmer climate and want to plant bulbs for spring, do not fear! Some bulbs do very well in warmer climates. Try narcissus (paperwhites), allium, flame lilies or spider lilies, and more.

We hope this information will help you set up for a beautiful Spring this Fall!  You can also get more in-depth information on planting bulbs in warmer climates and the attributes of specific bulbs.  Enjoy your fall bulb planting!

 

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0 Categories : Gardening, Gardening Tips
Jul
27

4 Easy Ways to Enjoy Your Garden All Summer

by Frame It All

It’s a wonderful time to be in the garden—flowers thrive in the summer sun, and all spring’s work gives way to bountiful vegetable gardens. Looking for ways to maximize your summer fun in the garden and yard? Read on!

In the Northeast, there is still plenty of time to plant and enjoy your garden, whereas in other parts of the country, the planting season is just heating up. Here are some easy ways to make the most out of your garden this summer:

Expand your garden: All Frame it all products interface with one another, so if you already have a raised garden, you can easily expand with more raised garden beds. Raised bed gardens offer the ability to extend your planting season with early planting or continued growth in a longer-running season. Love the look of natural wood? Try the Frame it All Western Red Cedar raised garden beds. The 1” frames for these raised bed kits are a great value, and cedar naturally resists rot, decay, and insect damage without needing to be treated with chemicals.

Onward and upward:  If you’re running out of room for a bumper crop of tomatoes or zucchini, go vertical and install a vertical growing system or plant trellis like our Veggie Wall. With a vegetable garden trellis, you’ll get more out of your raised gardens without taking up additional space in your yard or on your deck or patio.

Summer sun means summer fun, but sometimes it’s too much of a good thing.  A heat wave can make your garden—and your guests or family members—wilt faster than you can say “air conditioning!” If too much summer sun is ruining your fun, you need two things: water and shade.

Water: Summer’s heat can dry out the soil, especially in raised bed gardens. Your garden’s welfare depends on YOU! But you don’t have to spend all day watering your yard. You can keep your garden healthy and save money with our soaker hoses and irrigation systems.

Shade: If the kids telling you, it’s just “too hot to play outside!” take a look at where they’re playing.  With Frame it All sandboxes, you can add a canopy for instant shade, comfort, and safety. The Frame it All canopies are durable, colorful, and available in square or hexagonal shapes to fit perfectly over our sandboxes.  A sandbox cover is included to keep it clean, dry, and pest-free! Now, kids can play all day in their sand boxes, shaded from the sun’s harmful rays.

We hope these tips and suggestions can help you enjoy this beautiful summer in your yard and garden!

 

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0 Categories : Gardening
Jul
12

A Community Garden in Garden City

by Frame It All

At Frame it All, we believe that gardening is for everyone, and we love to hear from our customers who feel the same way. Send us your stories–we may decide to share them on our community page!

Cheryl Partin of Garden City Garden Club in Garden City, Michigan, was recently telling us about a community project her club is working on. Their mission? To help keep the garden in Garden City! On July 16, the Garden Club will be hosting their annual community event and fundraiser, a Garden Walk showcasing member gardens throughout the city. This year, the tour will feature a newly planted community garden: the aptly-named Gardenville. “We are so grateful for the help we received in creating this community garden, which has become a peaceful oasis in the middle of our industrial area,” Cheryl told us, “It truly embodies the creative spirit of our neighborhood and town, and we like to say it’s ‘community made and people powered!’”

Times are tough, and with the closing of the local community center, Gardenville has a big void to fill. Cheryl feels that the therapeutic nature of gardening will be of great benefit to the area: “In difficult times, my garden has always been a place of rest, contemplation, and peace for me. Gardenville offers these things on a larger scale, to our whole community.” And it’s not just plants—art and music have pride of place in this community garden. A local shop, Maxwell’s Art & Treasures, donated the land where Gardenville stands, and their influence has infused the garden with creativity.  Unique art pieces by local artists dot the landscape, children gather for group projects showcasing nature, crafts or building during the day, and music wafts through the air along with the scent of flowers on Open Mike Nights.  Co-sponsored by Maxwell’s, Westland-Plymouth Grange #389 and Garden City Garden Club, Gardenville will be donating their harvest to local food banks.

We are excited to announce that Frame it All products were used in this very special garden. “We wanted to create a multi-tiered garden with raised beds to allow people of all ages and abilities to contribute their time & talents. We had planned to build our own raised garden beds, but we decided to make an investment in the Frame it All raised beds because they’re durable and eco-friendly. Our goal is to keep things natural, no pesticides, and the products worked perfectly,” Cheryl said, “After we purchased all the raised beds for our raised bed garden from Frame it All, I contacted them to see if the company would donate some solar lights to light up Gardenville after dark. I thought maybe we’d get a package of four to get us started—I was surprised and thrilled when Frame it All offered all us all sixteen solar lights! The nighttime display is simply breathtaking.”

You can view pictures of Gardenville to see how the Frame it All products were used at the Garden City Garden Club website. We’re so glad to have been able to share in this project…gardening is for everyone!

 

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0 Categories : Gardening, News
Jun
14

Gardening with Kids

by Frame It All

Kids will be out of school soon—some already are—and many parents are wondering how to spend this long stretch of summer! We’ve got one idea: get your kids in the garden. At Frame it All, we believe that gardening is for all ages, and it’s a wonderful pastime to introduce to your children.  Here are a few benefits of allowing your children to help you in the garden:

1)      Educational. Gardening integrates several disciplines: science, health/nutrition, physical fitness, art, math, and more. Planting a garden with your children can provide an educational experience that lasts all summer. Check out this website for ideas on how to create an educational theme and projects for your garden.

2)      Physical. Let’s face it: kids need exercise. Today’s children spend so much time in front of TV and computer screens that childhood obesity is becoming a near-epidemic. Gardening is a great way to get that exercise.

3)      Nutritional. Looking for a way to educate your children about healthy food choices, too? Plant a raised vegetable garden. When kids are growing their own food, they’ll start to see how fun it is to “pick their snack” out of a bed of cucumbers or green beans.

4)      Emotional. The repetitive nature and working by hand that makes gardening so soothing for adults can be great for kids, too! And think of all the good talks you can have with your child as you work side by side, putting up a planter trellis, mending vegetable garden fencing, or picking ripened tomatoes.

And aside from that, it’s just plain fun to garden with your kids! Here are some tips to make gardening with your kids a great experience this summer:

1)      Segment the garden. If you’re an avid gardener, you may not want kids’ “help” to hinder your prize roses, heirloom tomatoes, or delicate tropicals. So let your kids know right away which part of the garden belongs to them. Place your beauties behind garden fencing, then make colorful signs to mark out their part of the garden. Set up a raised flower bed so they can choose their own seeds or plants to nurture. Or choose a raised vegetable bed and add a vertical plant growing system or vegetable trellis (our Veggie Walls are perfect for this and they’re on sale now!) so they can grow their own salad. And your prize roses will stay pretty.

2)      Make it fun!  Use garden edging or landscape borders to make cool shapes.  Plant a garden around your children’s sandbox so they see it as play. Choose plants by favorite color or funny names. Be creative, and allow your kids to do the same.

3)      If you don’t know where to start, or what your kids would be capable of or interested in at their ages, Check out the Parent’s Primer on kidsgardening.org. This website, geared to helping kids learn through gardening, is chock-full of guidance so you can find age-appropriate gardening plans and tasks for your children.

We hope these tips will help you get started on a great summer of gardening with your children. Have patience, relax, and let them get their hands dirty. Gardening is for all ages!

 

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0 Categories : Gardening
May
24

April (and May) Showers Bring Lots of Flowers!

by Frame It All

Garden Basics Part 3: Water

There’s a reason for the saying “April showers bring May flowers.”  April usually boasts the highest rainfall of the year, providing damp, nurturing soil that’s perfect for plant development and root system growth. It’s no surprise that May follows with its burst of color, as all those plants that were growing under rain-moistened soil now pop their blooming heads above the surface. When heavy rains follow into May, gardens can sometimes suffer as badly from too much water as too little. Luckily, Frame It All products can help in either case.  Water is an essential for your garden, but the key here is balance.

Too much of a good thing?

When showers turn to floods, raised bed gardens hold in soil in and protect it from erosion, and because they are elevated, they ensure your garden will not get washed away in heavy rains. Raised bed gardens also offer excellent drainage, helping the soil moisten with rain, then dry before it has a chance to grow mold, compact the soil, or rot the roots. Just make sure to save some of that precious water in a rain barrel—you’ll be glad you did! Here are some signs that your garden is being overwatered.

Thirsty soil?

If you’re having a dry spell, Frame It All’s irrigation systems will get you through. An irrigation system’s setup ensures optimum growing conditions for your plants. Water gets under the soil surface, nourishing the roots instead of splashing all over the leaves.  They’re also a great way to conserve water—read more tips on water conservation here.  It’s a low-cost investment in sustainable living, allowing you to water your garden more efficiently, saving natural resources and money. Even adding a soaker hose (as opposed to a regular hose) can be a great, simple way to maintain a steady flow of water without feeling like it’s all going down the drain, along with your utilities budget.

How much is enough?

There’s no mathematical formula that tells you how many inches or gallons of water you’ll need for your garden, but you can tell your garden is getting the right amount of water if the following things are true:

  1. Soil is moist, damp—not dry and cracked, nor wet and muddy
  2. Plants’ leaves are lush and green
  3. Stalks are growing straight and strong

We hope you have enjoyed the final installment of our series on the basics of gardening, covering soil, sun, and water. It’s amazing how these three simple things come together to create a productive, successful garden!

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0 Categories : Gardening
Apr
20

Gardening Basics: Good Soil Means Good Plants!

by Frame It All

Whether you’re a novice gardener or you’ve spent a lifetime of weekends in a space defined by miles of landscape edging and dominated by several feet of vegetable trellis, you know that there are 3 basic needs for a successful, flourishing garden. These are:

  1. Soil
  2. Moisture
  3. Sun

We’re going to talk about soil in this article, because even experienced gardeners sometimes forget how much the quality of soil can influence the quality of plants, vegetables and flowers. When you’re looking to fill your Frame It All raised garden bed kit, it’s essential to get the good stuff and prepare it accordingly. We recommend using bagged topsoil or ordering a delivery of quality garden soil or loam from a local greenhouse or garden center (to give you an idea of how much, a  4-ft wide, 8-ft long, 6-inch deep raised bed requires a little more than 16 cubic feet of garden mix to fill the bed).

Once you have your soil, you need to prepare it with soil amendments, or fertilizer. This is done based on the type of soil you have—sandy, clay, or loam. Many local garden centers sell soil testing kits or offer annual soil testing in the spring, so you can see exactly what your soil makeup is, and know which amendments to use. Your goal in amending garden soil is to achieve a loose, friable, fertile, well-drained, humus soil.  You also need to take into account what you’re growing (vegetables or flowers/plants) and what type of amendment you prefer (organic or inorganic). If you’re just getting started, here are some basic steps to take:

For sandy soil, your aim is to improve moisture retention. In other words, when it rains, you don’t want all the water to run through the sandy grains before the thirsty plants get any.  You can use compost (organic fertilizer) to beef up your sandy soil so it will hold more water and nutrients, allowing root systems to take hold.  Clay soil needs to be loosened up to allow air and water flow among the plants’ root systems. This can be done by adding organic amendments like sphagnum peat moss, shredded bark, or sawdust. Mix your garden soil with organic matter and coarse or sharp sand or perlite at a ratio of 3 parts garden soil: 3 parts organic matter: 1 part sand or perlite. A fertilizer containing nitrogen will further enhance clay soil.  If your soil is loam, then consider yourself lucky: this type of soil is characterized by equal amounts of sand and clay. A basic fertilizer or compost worked into the soil will maintain its pH and provide the best possible conditions for your flower or vegetable garden.

We encourage you to check out our website at www.frameitall.com for videos on constructing your raised bed gardens and other aspects of raised bed gardening.

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2 Categories : Gardening
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