Garden expert gives Richmond crowd green-thumb advice

By Brooke Barker

February 24, 2006 | RICHMOND -- Around 40 people crowded into the basement of the city library Thursday night to hear Mark Anderson, from Anderson's Seed and Garden in Logan, talk about the five main things plants need to thrive.

"I came to learn a few new secrets," said Charlie Crew, who attended the seminar.

The five things Anderson covered were sun, water, good soil, food and love. Within each of these topics he included advice about fertilizers, plant spacing, watering systems and how to make gardening a leisure activity rather than a chore.

"It's a family event at our house. It's fun, we love doing it. We only chop weeds for 10 or 15 minutes, than we go do something fun. Then when Saturday rolls around, all the work's done, because we've worked on it a little bit every day," said Anderson.

Some other advice Anderson offered:

-- Don't over-water your lawn. You should measure how much water your sprinklers release and adjust the watering schedule so only 1 to 1.5 inches of water per week is emitted.

-- Using a watering system such as a soaker hose in a garden will use 70 percent less water than a sprinkler.

-- Spacing plants such as vegetables and flowers is important. If plants are given more space, they'll often grow better than before. Plants growing too close to one another often end up competing for nutrients and resources.

-- Soil needs to be replaced every year. Some dirt is always lost through erosion and when vegetables are picked. Soils should contain a high level of nitrogen.

-- Composts from the landfill lack nitrogen because of the high wood content, so adding a green manure -- Anderson recommends buckwheat, clover and annual rye -- will replace lost nutrients to the soil.

"I never knew all of the things you needed to do in the fall in order to prepare the ground for the spring," Coye Thatcher, a Richmond resident for 25 years, said after the meeting.

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