Gardening
Now that the April clean-up campaign is over and the gras seed sown, it’s time to think about your garden. If every resident plants a little something Skinker-DeBaliviere will be the best blooming neighborhood in town.
Your garden can be anything from a couple of coffee cans or plastic ice cream containers on a window sill, to a window box or a fire escape shelf, to patch of earth in the front or back yard. Your garden doesn’t have to be flowers. Sweet Bell pepers make a pretty plant. Radishes and lettuce and spinach will grow in sunny spots if you feed them regularly. Patio Small Fry or Tiny Tim cherry tomatoes will grow in two to five gallon cans of good growing medium if you give them a sunny spot.
But nothing is going to grow until you plant it! You needn’t worry about cost or time. Plants need a growing medium (earth or a substitute), water and light. The growing medium supplies the food; you supply water when the rain doesn’t; the sun supplies the light.
For back porch and balcony screens tie string from railing to ceiling and let a scarlet runner bean, morning glory, moonflower, or even a cucumber or squash vine, climb up the string.
For the children try dwarf marigolds, the little thumbelina and lilliput zinnias, radhishes four o’clocks, daisies. Be sure children don’t drown the plants with too mcuh water; and while the containers are in the house put them on plates, cookie sheets etc. so they don’t mar table tops.
For yards. Individual choices will depend on sunny spots, shady spots, etc. In general plant the taller plants to the back of a flower bed and the smaller ones to the front. The seed package will tell you how tall they’ll grow and about how long they’ll bloom, and whether they like lots of sun or will stand some shade.
Shrubs and trees. Consult a garden book in the library to see if a bush or tree will do what you want. Make sure it isn’t going to grow taller or wider than the spot you’ve picked for it. You may want an evergreen for one location and a flowering shrub for another.
Shaw’s Garden (the Missouri Botanical Gardens) has planting courses for children and adults. Call 865-0440 for information. The Garden is on Tower Grove Avenue and can be reached by taking the Lindell bus east to Sarah and the Sarah bus south to Tower Grove and Flora Blvds. This is a beautiful spot for a weekend walk and they have labelled their trees and flowers so you can tell what you’re seeing.
The Des Peres Branch Library has books on gardening, planting, plant care etc. THE PAPER has put a supply of free pamphlets from seed and fertilizer companies at the Des Peres Branch where adults of the neighborhood can pick them up.
The St. Louis Beautification Commission, 115 Union, has supplied some pamphlets on saran wrap gardening which you can read at the Des Peres Branch. The newspapers in their weekend edition print a garden colum which may solve any problems you have.
Originally published in The Paper, May 1970.
Read this article in the original newspaper issue.
