How to Make an Organic Fairy Garden

The fairies are there but they won't stay unless you make it inviting. You can make their wishes come true and spend quality time engaging with your children (or the neighbor's or community's) by building a fairy garden together, filled with their dreams. In the process, they learn about gardening and the beauty of nature.


Draw a plan on paper with your child's input. Ask your child what shape he or she would like (or simply tell your child the shape if your garden space is limited). Using this shape, map out the sorts of things your fairy garden will contain. See ideas under "Tips".

Take a walk in the garden and plot out the area that will make the fairy garden. It should be somewhere child-friendly and less accessible to dogs, puppies and cats who might mess with it. Fence it off with small garden fences if necessary (little blunt wooden picket fences are cute).

Dig over the garden. Do this together with your child, so that the soil is ready for planting and is easy to place the faerie pieces into. Fertilize if necessary.

Place a square or circle paver upon which the main feature piece will sit. A terracotta coloured cement paver is ideal. Place a statue on this square or circle, such as a mushroom, faerie, animal or other feature item that the child has chosen.

Mark out a larger outer fairy circle which surrounds this feature piece. Plant a circle of flowers chosen by the child around the inner circle. Edge this outer circle with upright border blocks (the wavy ones are the most elegant).

Make little fairy circles next to the large circle. Use river stones, pebbles etc. Place plants inside these circles, or little trinkets chosen by the child. You could also make other shapes with the pebbles, such as cat faces, dogs, triangles, diamonds etc.; imagination is the only limit.




Fairy Garden

Add extra fairy pieces. A fairy table and chairs can be made from various sizes of pavers. Purchase a small child's tea-set from a dollar store and place on the table for the fairies to have tea.

Follow your child's imagination to include other items in the garden. Listen to their ideas and try to adapt to them with items on hand.

Remind your child to keep the flowers watered regularly. While watering, they can check for faeries. Encourage them to leave little gifts for the fairies (small pieces of fruit, seeds, whatever they like). This will ease the transition from stubborn disinterest in gardening to enjoying it!

Have a special tea party to open the fairy garden. Invite other family members, friends and neighbors over to marvel at the little garden and to provide the child with encouragement to tend it.

Manufactured solid-sided bins are usually constructed of sheet steel or recycled plastic. In cool climates there is an advantage to tightly constructed plastic walls that retain heat and facilitate decomposition of smaller thermal masses. Precise construction also prevents access by larger vermin and pets.

Mice, on the other hand, are capable of squeezing through amazingly small openings. Promotional materials make composting in pre-manufactured bins seem easy, self-righteously ecological, and effortless. However, there are drawbacks.

It is not possible to readily turn the materials once they've been placed into most composters of this type unless the entire front is removable. Instead, new materials are continuously placed on top while an opening at the bottom permits the gardener to scrape out finished compost in small quantities. Because no turning is involved, this method is called “passive” composting. But to work well, the ingredients must not be too coarse and must be well mixed before loading.

Continuous bin composters generally work fast enough when processing mixtures of readily decomposable materials like kitchen garbage, weeds, grass clippings and some leaves. But if the load contains too much fine grass or other gooey stuff and goes anaerobic, a special compost aerator must be used to loosen it up.

Manufactured passive composters are not very large. Compactness may be an advantage to people with very small yards or who may want to compost on their terrace or porch. But if the C/N of the materials is not favorable, decomposition can take a long, long time and several bins may have to be used in tandem. Unless they are first ground or chopped very finely, larger more resistant materials like corn, Brussels sprouts, sunflower stalks, cabbage stumps, shrub prunings, etc. will "constipate" a top-loading, bottom-discharging composter.

The compost tumbler is a clever method that accelerates decomposition by improving aeration and facilitating frequent turning. A rotating drum holding from eight to eighteen bushels (the larger sizes look like a squat, fat, oversized oil drum) is suspended above the ground, top-loaded with organic matter, and then tumbled every few days for a few weeks until the materials have decomposed. Then the door is opened and finished compost falls out the bottom.

Tumblers have real advantages. Frequent turning greatly increases air supply and accelerates the process. Most tumblers retard moisture loss too because they are made of solid material, either heavy plastic or steel with small air vents. Being suspended above ground makes them immune to vermin and frequent turning makes it impossible for flies to breed.

Tumblers have disadvantages that may not become apparent until a person has used one for awhile. First, although greatly accelerated, composting in them is not instantaneous. Passive bins are continuous processors while (with the exception of one unique design) tumblers are "batch" processors, meaning that they are first loaded and then the entire load is decomposed to finished compost.

What does a person do with newly acquired kitchen garbage and other waste during the two to six weeks that they are tumbling a batch? One handy solution is to buy two tumblers and be filling one while the other is working, but tumblers aren't cheap! The more substantial ones cost $250 to $400 plus freight.

INFOGRAPHIC: The stinky truth of Stink Bugs of safe ®

The people of Safer ® together this infographic quite sweet to outlining the truth behind stink bugs. As I mentioned earlier in the year, stink bugs are a big problem for gardeners. Now that the weather is cooler and more people are not gardening, stink bugs will have its way into hibernation for the winter…. so that means they are taking in our House, as they took our gardens in spring/summer.

Insurance ® also has a brand-new Ultimate stink Bug trap which has only limited quantities available so get yours today! So far it is working quite well for me! Click to see full size image

View the original article here