Gardening: Strategies for dealing with pine needles

By the looks of the pile of clean green material at the Valley Transfer Station last Saturday afternoon, some of you spent your holiday raking leaves and skipping the shopping frenzy. I did a little of both and still got the rest of my fall cleanup projects done. The snow and frozen ground can come and I don’t care; I have a nice new recliner to snuggle into.

What I discovered this year was that age is getting the better of me when raking needles. So I created a new strategy for dealing with them; don’t move them too far in the first place. We first shredded and winnowed them into piles with the lawn mower, which cut the raking in half. As we raked, we built small piles which reduced the effort of moving a massive pile around the yard. Using a tarp we then collected several piles at a time, dragged them over to a flower bed I am rebuilding and dumped them on as a mulch to keep the winter weeds down. In the spring I will simply clear a space in the mulch and plant.

This will not acidify the soil in my bed. That is one of the biggest gardening myths in the Inland Northwest.

Two summers ago, Steve McConnell of WSU Spokane County Extension ran a series of experiments to answer that very question. Using fresh and partially composted needles, he repeatedly tested six piles for three months and came up with a pH in the 6 to 7 range, which is basically neutral. Granted, pine needles don’t break down very quickly unless they are shredded, and even then it will take a couple of years to accomplish complete breakdown.

While you are waiting for them to fully break down, simply use the partially rotted needles as a top dressing on flower beds and garden boxes. In the South they sell bales of pine needles for mulch, so go figure. They also make a very good rose mulch because they drain quickly. The needles will last about as long as bark chips and, for the most part, they are free. The only caveat to this idea is not to use them in beds right next to the house if you are in a fire-prone area.

Saving the White House Kitchen Garden

In 2009, Michelle Obama created a kitchen garden on the grounds of the White House. The garden became the centerpiece of her efforts to champion healthy diets for kids and to teach people, especially kids, that they could grow some of their own food. It was the first kitchen garden since Eleanor Roosevelt’s Victory Garden during World War II.

With the change in leadership, there will be new residents in the White House come Jan. 20. With that there was concern that the garden would go away. Not so. The W. Atlee Burpee Co., a Pennsylvania-based seed company, and the Burpee Foundation have donated $2.5 million to the National Park Foundation to ensure maintenance of the garden for at least the next 17 years.