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Rose glove combines toughness, flexibility
Working on roses presents some thorny challenges for garden gloves. Thin gloves can’t stand up to the pointy dangers. Thick gloves keep you from performing delicate tasks. The County Gardener Rose Glove is designed to do the job. Made from synthetic suede, each pair is tough enough to stand firm against thorns and soft enough to allow fingers to move gracefully. They come in saffron and ruby and are available at local retailers for $30.
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Landscaping for everyone
You don’t need an elegant estate garden to apply the principles of plant, flower and shrub design outlined by the landscape architects who penned “Timeless Landscape Design” ($29.95, Gibbs Smith). They break it all down in broad terms and explain simply the basics of creating a yard that enhances a house and avoids overwhelming it. The photos offer a secret peek at some beautiful, and very private, spaces.
TIP
Give weeds a shot of hot
There’s a pretty serious garden conundrum at our house. Our yard sidles up to vast tracts of city-owned open space, which means every weed seed in the catalog gets deposited in our lawn and gardens by wind and avian friends. We loathe chemical “solutions,” but frankly, we’re a little lazy about plucking and hoeing when the soil is cool and mellow. After some failed – but very exciting – experiments with a propane-powered weed burner, we’re back at it with an even older-school solution for controlling the weeds that pop up between our flagstone pavers: boiling water. It feels wrong to fire up the kettle in the heat of a July weekend, but a good drink of hot-hot water seems to kill weeds’ thirst for the sandy spots on our front walk.
-Dana Coffield
Got a garden tip? Share it with Grow.
E-mail your good ideas to Grow@denverpost.com. We’ll print the best ones and give the tipper a pair of Sloggys garden clogs, courtesy of Sloggers Garden Outfitters.
